Russian Authorities Resort to Censorship to Cope with Financial Crisis
by
on November 19, 2008,
We have already heard voices in the blogosphere that media people (both bloggers and reporters from traditional media outlets) should be cautious about how we cover various economic events in these hard times as we are partly responsible for what our readers will think and how they will behave. And since it is hardly arguable that the financial crisis is partly due to panic and irrational behavior of traders and investors, this issue definitely deserves our attention and consideration from every reporter or blogger.
It looks like here in Russia the authorities have already figured out how to cope with financial crisis by influencing opinions of people living in the country. For quite a while here it has been visible that the Russian government is way too optimistic: while we already see layoffs and credit crunch here, the government has been trying to pretend that the crisis is not here and the government is perfectly prepared to help businesses cope with the crisis. Unfortunately, the measures that the government has been undertaking here have not been efficient enough and everyone now understands that many industries have already been affected - and many more will follow.
So we now hear about a new counter-measure: trying to keep media people - both online and offline - from destabilizing the financial situation any further with their coverage of the financial situation. To keep media people from publishing news and commentary that may cause financial collapse, the office of the Russian Prosecutor General has initiated inspections of media outlets in numerous regions of the country.
The official explanation sounds quite reasonable as the prosecutor of one of the Russian regions cites an example of a story about a local bank being on the verge of bankruptcy that was widely covered by local publishers and caused panic among the bank’s customers. As a result, the bankers soon saw long lines of people hoping to withdraw their money from accounts before it was too late.
Basically the prosecutors are supposed to check articles that could be characterized as media attacks on financial institutions to see where such information comes from and how reliable it is. Those publications distributing information that is not reliable and can damage the financial situation will face appropriate penalties.
Here I have to mention that internet publications are more or less safe in Russia as the legislation here does not oblige a website to be registered as mass media unless its owners are willing to do so themselves. And of course if you have not registered your blog as a media outlet you will hardly face any inspections from the prosecutor about your personal opinion on the overall financial environment and situation in the local banks.
I myself think that bloggers and reporters should really be twice as cautious as ever about what we say and how we say it. My own opinion is that destabilizing the situation that is far from stable anyway is hardly what we should expect a responsible reporter to do. But at the same time preventing reporters from covering what we think is important because it may result in bankruptcy of a bank that was on the verge of a failure anyway looks very much like censorship to me. And I don’t believe that keeping silent about problems will make people stop noticing problems - like when they are laid off themselves.
