Freedom of speech as an excuse to puff out cheeks At the last meeting of the conference, dedicated to "freedom of the press between the authorities and the oligarchs", in the list of speakers between the names of the chairman of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company Oleg Dobrodeev and the general director of ORT ...

Freedom of speech as an excuse to puff out cheeks

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and at the last session of the conference, dedicated to “freedom of the press between the authorities and the oligarchs”, the list of speakers between the names of the chairman of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company Oleg Dobrodeev and the general director of ORT Konstantin Ernst included: Boris Jordan, Director General, NTV. This strangeness was explained by the organizers by the simple fact that in the list of participants all the participants announced by the Russian side were in Russian, and those announced by the co-organizers of the conference from the American side were in English, and Mr. Jordan was declared as a participant from the American side.

This linguistic accent, as well as the presentation (already written in Russian) of the former head of Gazprom-Media, “Alfred Koch, publicist”, can be included in the category of cute details that reflect the essence of the organized SPS, the Davis Center of Harvard University and the Department of Journalism of Moscow State University International conference "The Power of the Press and the Press of Power", held in Moscow on February 8-9. More than six months late.

Initially, the conference dedicated to the problem of freedom of speech in our country was scheduled for June 13th. But the scandal surrounding NTV, which had not subsided by the beginning of June, and the fact that Gazprom-Media was one of the co-organizers of the conference at that time, forced many well-known people in the press world to refuse to participate. And representatives of Harvard University, who stand up for freedom of speech in Russia more than Russian representatives, considered it reasonable to postpone the event to a later date. When passion subsides. Brought up in the conditions of well-established relations between the press and the authorities, the Americans could not even imagine that by the time of the new term of the conference, new passions would already blaze.

Which, however, was no longer a reason for the participants to abandon the discussion on the topics of freedom, the press and power.

The composition was really impressive. Press Minister Mikhail Lesin and US Ambassador to Russia Alexander Vershbow, Head of the CEC Alexander Veshnyakov and Head of the European Commission in Russia Richard Wright, Dean of the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University Yasen Zasursky, President of Radio Liberty Thomas Dine and TV presenter Vladimir Pozner, editors of all major socio-political newspapers and magazines, heads of major TV channels, representatives of regional media, former and current government officials.

And, of course, politicians, among whom the organizers of the conference from the Union of Right Forces were the soloists. Irina Khakamada, as a seed for discussion, threw in the theses that now “the entire press is divided according to a primitive principle - you are for Putin or against Putin”, and that “during 10 years of free reforms, the press, which has enormous freedom, has turned into a power ministry” , and SPS leader Boris Nemtsov said that "for the West, freedom of the press is a problem of the past, for the East it is a problem of the future, and for Russia it is just right."

Paying tribute to the organizational efforts of the Union of Right Forces representatives, it should be noted that the painful topic of the existence of free media in today's Russian society has become another reason for politicians to publicize themselves. Otherwise, what else, if not the eternal thirst for newsmaking, made Boris Nemtsov declare about the agreements allegedly already established between Kiselevskiy TV-6 and a number of large investors: “These are all Russian people, wealthy enough to sacrifice for the sake of freedom.” And the words of the SPS leader were widely expanded by the same free press, which reported details about the consortium of big business convened by Chubais to finance TV-6 LLC.

But the configuration of the financial well-wishers of the Kiselev team, like everything that is happening now around the competition for the sixth meter channel, is changing so rapidly that it is hardly worth looking into the faces and wallets of all the participants. It is obvious that in a month and a half everything will change many times, and by March 27, the good ten applicants for the sixth button that are now available will not fit at all in the current composition. And if the Union of Right Forces sees its role in organizing control over relations between the authorities and the press and proposes to organize a special independent commission to verify compliance with the legality of the competition, then it was hardly worth associating your political movement with one of the parties ahead of schedule.

This, as Minister Lesin said at the same conference, but on a different occasion, "leads to evil." And someone always has to answer for the goat.