Kommersant: Being Objective
Whenever you talk about news coverage and ethics, the word “objectivity” is bound to come up. While true objectivity is nearly impossible, trying to be as objective as possible is at least part of the job.
And trying to be as objective as possible makes writing about metals magnate Alisher Usmanov’s purchase of Kommersant a little bit tricky. It would be easy to brand the deal as simply the latest move by the state to bring the country’s media and its message under greater Kremlin control. There is surely sufficient evidence from the past to support such a reading.
In 2001, Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky were forced out as the owners of ORT (now Channel One) and NTV television, respectively, and their stations were taken over by the state. There were blanket assurances at the time that the ownership changes would not affect editorial policy at the stations — particularly at NTV. But anyone who watched news coverage on the two stations five years ago would hardly recognize it today.
In the print media sector, other Kremlin-friendly buyers (Usmanov is the president of Gazprominvestholding, a subsidiary of state-owned monopoly Gazprom) have picked up the dailies Izvestia and Nezavisimaya Gazeta in recent years, with a corresponding change in the tenor — and drop in the quantity — in coverage of the federal government. The operating assumption for the new ownership appears to have been that, when it comes to the government, “If you can’t think of anything good to say, don’t say anything at all.”
Much of the “sky is falling” rhetoric that has accompanied the Kommersant deal is eerily reminiscent of that heard when Berezovsky bought the paper in 1999. While he clearly used the publication as a forum for his own criticisms of the Kremlin, it still retained a reputation as an independent outlet, if only by the standards of the Russian media market.
The only assurances we have so far that Kommersant will not become a bland, toothless newspaper like other national dailies are from Usmanov himself. Usmanov, however, has no experience in the media, and it is probably naive to hope that he will not simply fall in line with the rest of the news outlets with ties to the Kremlin ahead of a crucial national election cycle.
An election season without the coverage we’ve come to expect from Kommersant would be bad news indeed.
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