|
|
|
|
|
|
30.11.07
|
Turn On, Tune Out
|
|
|
By Yelena Biberman
|
Russian Television Provides Coverage of Political Discourse, Without Much Discourse
This parliamentary election season, Russian television spared viewers the dull details of party platforms, political points of contention, and, in many cases, reality. All the dirty work has been done for them. All they need to do is show up at the polling station and vote for the right party.
The Levada Center predicts that 63 percent of Russians will vote in Sunday’s parliamentary elections. While a larger young and urban demographic is expected to turn out to vote than four years ago, the largest part of the electorate will be pensioners and workers from the provinces. However – be they young or old, provincial or cosmopolitan – nearly every Russian voter has a television at home broadcasting a unified, and thus droning, political message.
A powerful medium
As in most other developed countries, television is a powerful political medium in the Russian Federation. Forty-one percent of Russians admit that, in general, the media – which include television, newspapers, and radio – influence their voting behavior, according to a Levada Center survey from November. When it comes to television, another recent Levada Center survey shows that 88 percent of Russians regularly watch television, although most of them do so selectively. At the same time, even though a small minority believes that television offers a full and objective picture of events, many still think that, with some effort, useful and objective information could be extracted.
While television is a robust political force, it is playing a remarkably negligible role in the 2007 Russian parliamentary election campaign. Nearly the same amount of those who regularly watch television (85 percent) say they do not pay much attention to political coverage, according to the poll. Nearly two-thirds have not seen the television debates during the last ten days, while more than half have not discussed the parliamentary election with family members. Most say they have lost interest because the results seem apparent to them.
According to TNS Gallup Media findings cited by Nezavisimaya Gazeta, between 1 and 3 percent of Russia’s television viewing audience are tuning in to pre-election coverage at any given time. The ratings also found that at the beginning of November – during the peak of viewers’ interest – rating of television debates, even in Moscow, was only about 3 percent for the Rossiya Channel and even less (about 1 percent) for the First Channel.
The politics of boredom
What accounts for the lack of enthusiasm among Russian television viewers in the run up to the Duma elections?
The Chairman of Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC), Vladimir Churov, says the main factor is boredom. “The interest in the television debates is low because the debates are carried out in a boring manner,” he explained at a press conference on Nov. 28.
While most experts would agree with Churov’s assessment, they also point to systemic factors that undermine television campaigning.
According to Oleg Panfilov, director of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, on the surface it appears that the CEC is playing by the rules by designating time for the parties to show their campaign ads and participate in the debates. However, he points out, television campaigning takes place either early in the morning or late at night, which renders it virtually ineffective.
Sergei Davydov, head of the media research department at the International Institute of Marketing and Social Research, agrees, adding that televised campaign material suffers from a lacking a fully developed political culture. When it comes to ads, Davydov said “most of them are not made professionally, and, in many cases, are just very bad. Simply showing the talking heads of those who make all the decisions is not the best move.”
Television advertisements for United Russia, Just Russia and the Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) left Yury Korguniuk, a political analyst with the Indem think tank, wanting more, and he said they were the only parties with prominent commercials on television. “I have not seen a more disgraceful election campaign since, perhaps, the Soviet times. Judging solely by the television content, a person who is not actively engaged in looking for campaigning material would be unlikely to realize that the election season is in full swing,” Korguniuk said.
Alexander Kynev, director of regional programs for the Information Politics Foundation, said that when viewers come across campaign material, they are likely to tune out because real discussion on Russian television has been made illegal. “In December of last year, the State Duma made changes to a law that addresses political campaigning, making counter-campaigning against the opposition illegal,” says Kynev. “Consequently, many candidates use sarcasm and irony in their rhetoric, but voice no direct criticism. Since the hot topics are not mentioned, the ads and debates are exceptionally dull. At the same time, there are some obvious double standards. The government-controlled television channels’ pseudo-analytical programs are used to discredit the opposition, but the opposition does not have the chance to respond because of the law. As a result, parties like the Union of Right Forces (SPS) have turned to the Internet.”
As both Korguniuk and Kynev point out, the Internet has started to catch on as a campaign tool this election season. In the United States, for example, the Internet has been used effectively for soliciting votes and financing the campaign. The Internet may soon overshadow the television as a campaign medium in Russia, particularly for the opposition, as the traditional channels continue to be restricted.
A one-party broadcast?
The Moscow Times reported in August that more than three months before the parliamentary election, Channel One hired a television executive, Andrei Pisarev, linked to United Russia to oversee its election coverage. Pisarev, formerly head of small Moscow-based Third Channel television, has been credited with advising United Russia on several initiatives, including its Russian Project. The Russian Project, unveiled in February, aimed to promote Russian culture and language in a series of conferences across the country, but was viewed by many as an attempt to steal the nationalist vote.
Medialogia, a private media research firm, has monitored all major television channels on a daily basis over the past month. The results reveal that coverage has been extremely biased in favor of the pro-Kremlin United Russia and especially hostile to the SPS, an opposition party of Russian liberals.
Throughout the month of November, according to Medialogia, United Russia has received the most television references (roughly 25 percent of the total). The Communist Party garnered 13 percent of all television references while Just Russia, headed by the Chairman of the Federation Council Sergei Mironov, received just 2 percent fewer references than the Communist Party. The LDPR and SPS came in fourth and fifth places, respectively, both receiving about 10 percent of total television references. The rest of the parties, including Yabloko, the Patriots of Russia, and Civilian Power received less than 10 percent of references on Russian television.
United Russia is mentioned the most often in conjunction with other parties, according to Medialogia’s findings, more than twice that of the closest party. There have been four times more positive than negative references of the party in power and television stations broadcast more United Russia speeches than all other parties. At the same time, the Union of Right Forces received the most negative comments: the disparaging references outweighed the positive references 9 times over.
Medialogia also compiled an index of information preference on the Russian television. Not surprisingly, United Russia received by far the highest index, which was nearly four times higher than that of the second-in-line – the Communist Party. The SPS received the lowest score of all the 14 parties examined.
According to Medialogia, out of about 135 hours of total on-air coverage of Russian parties between Nov. 1 and 28, United Russia received nearly 30 hours, while the Communist Party received just slightly less than 20. In third place, the SPS drew 14 hours of coverage. However, as the findings above indicate, most of that time was devoted to discrediting material
“The television debates remind me more of inmates strolling under the gaze of the warden who is forbidding them to take any steps neither to the left nor the right,” Korguniuk said. “There is also not enough time given for any real discussion, and the debates are offered the worst time slots on the government channels, while the nongovernment channels don’t have them at all. As a result, those who gain the most from the televised debates are those who have the least moral reservations, such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky and the ‘parties of power,’ which rejected the debates altogether. Meanwhile, the rest of the air time is devoted to United Russia.”
“In regard to the pseudo-analytical shows on government channels, their structure looks like this: the first 15-20 minutes are devoted to sanctifying the work of the greatest leader of all times and nations, who brought Russia out of the dark 1990s; then, for several minutes, representatives of United Russia are presented under some non-partisan pretext, following which about a minute is used for describing United Russia’s most recent efforts, and then half-a-minute to other parties. Finally, towards the end, some minutes are devoted to discrediting the Union of Right Forces,” explains Korguniuk.
Panfilov also underscores the fact that President Vladimir Putin has been shamelessly, but effectively used as a campaign tool by United Russia, convincing the electorate that voting for United Russia is just as good as voting for Putin. “The results of our monitoring of five state television channels are self-evident: the channels not controlled by the Central Election Commission are actively campaigning for Putin and United Russia in news programs. It is obvious that this election campaign is neither fair nor objective, nor democratic.” |
| The source |
|
|
|
|
|
|
The virtual community for English-speaking expats and Russians
