Operation "Pure.Ru"

Russian media will be able to effectively fight corruption only if their audience takes an active part in this struggle

In Russia, there is a very high level of corruption and a very low indicator of freedom of speech. The trouble is that it is impossible to defeat corruption without a strong institution of independent press, but at the same time, a corrupt elite will never allow ...

In Russia, there is a very high level of corruption and a very low indicator of freedom of speech. The trouble is that it is impossible to defeat corruption without a strong institution of independent press, but at the same time a corrupt elite will never allow the transformation of individual independent media that still exist in our country into a strong institution.

There is only one way out of this impasse. On the Internet.

An Internet audience is 40 million people. Minus children, old people, soldiers, prisoners and statistical error - all the active population of the country. This is comparable to the resource of any federal television channel and incomparably more than the audience of any socio-political publication.

You can argue: most Internet users do not read sites of socio-political newspapers. I will answer: in the fight against corruption, the efforts of everyone and everyone do not need, but those who are really interested in this are “registered” on the Internet. In this 40 million cuisine and you need to combine efforts.

It is worth doing around those few independent media that are in our country today. Because only the media simultaneously have experience in conducting investigations and working with a large audience.

The journalistic investigation, I must say, turned out to be the most conservative, still not quite coacked genre, unlike an interview (now online conference) or copyright columns (now-blogs). Therefore, probably, that requires a lot of time, effort and professional skills, which come only with experience.

The direct investigation will remain the prerogative of professional journalists, but the effectiveness of their efforts will be increasingly dependent on the degree of participation of the audience.

What can you do?

Firstly, disseminate information about corruption over the network. Social networks and other communities allow you to do this on an industrial scale and at the same time targeted.

For what? The corruptionor should at least be deprived of the right to reputation.

Secondly, use such a powerful network weapon as spam against corrupt officials. Officials are easy to ignore a request sent by one single newspaper, or respond to it extremely formally. Now imagine that thousands (better than tens of thousands) of the same requests from different users come to the official sites of the authorities. In some cases, ignoring them will be more difficult than saying the truth unpleasant for yourself.

Thirdly, the Internet audience collectively is an immense storage of information, some of which may well be interesting to professional journalists during the investigation. Perhaps they will never receive her if you will not share of goodwill. The Internet in this regard is extremely convenient, technological and anonimen.

We leave pickets, flash mobs and other offline at your discretion.

All this does not give a guarantee of success and does not even necessarily increase the chances of success. But then it gives hope. So far, it is worth counting more on the reaction from a small but rather influential group of officials who use the Internet to obtain information about the actions of their subordinates, which the subordinates to them for obvious reasons do not report. If we get at this stage a sufficient number of success stories - namely, intelligible and ideally tough, “with organizing” reactions to our anti -corruption initiatives, then we will develop a habit of afraid of the Internet from the gray bureaucratic mass. Fear is one of the few irritants to which they react.

And if we have a resource, thanks to which we can talk from the perspective, albeit virtual, but strength, we will find how to properly dispose of.

Today, on the day of the fight against corruption, we first want to offer you to take part in a joint investigation. We honestly say: the topic was not specifically selected, but nevertheless it is good that we will talk about business interests of the family of the head of Rosmolodezh, the ideologist of “ours” Vasily Yakemenko, the character, in the online well-known, having a huge number of supporters and opponents. The more general motivation for the search for truth will be.