Zombie attack

The “case” of the Ural news agency URA.RU reflects processes and problems much more significant than imaginary thefts, cashing of salaries or a conflict between the editorial board and the governor. Therefore, the reaction to it, primarily from the media community itself, should be serious. Here, vulgar gloating towards competitors is inappropriate and effective solidarity with colleagues is in demand.

The point is that, just like the communist regime 25 years ago, today its zombies , the “vertical of power,” are staggering and cracking with all their joints. As then, the information technologies of the global world (then radio and the press, now the Internet) turn out to be a deadly virus for the archaic system, and independent media and journalists are face to face with the moribund relic, no matter how critically we treat each of them in separately. It is not the rally opposition, not the phantom “middle class” and not the bastard parties, but free information flows that are now undermining and washing away this system that has outlived itself. Everything else—and everyone else—will come later.

Before our eyes, media resources (only some so far) are again turning into a “fourth estate”, strongly squeezing out the second estate. This is happening with the rapid development of information technology, without intermediaries and controllers, addressed to every resident of the country: mobile Internet, social networks, digital television.

The news is that with the sharp simplification and reduction in cost of content production, the media are also freed from dependence on “oligarchs” easily controlled by the authorities.

It is around these media (including the blogosphere and networks) that a new “crystal lattice” of Russian society, including regional ones, is now being formed. URA.RU is one of these media resources, and therefore the agency became the target of a zombie attack.

Zombies are right in their own way. Free information in the global world today is much more dangerous for any regime that has relied on closedness and ossification than hostile intelligence agencies or terror - because it can cause events and solidarity on a scale that it will never be able to cope with. And the world will not help here, quite the opposite.

The media now manage these new opportunities very differently, and there is almost always something to reproach them for. But much more dangerous for society is the confusion of power. She doesn't know how to bring information flows under control. She does not understand that control here is impossible, useless and harmful. We need a new, modern policy of values and openness, which the current Russian regime cannot, does not want, or does not have time to generate.

Therefore, local princelings react to new challenges as they are taught - with provocations, blackmail, criminality, searches, arrests. They do a disservice to the regime, whose interests are transformation, not self-destruction, which has spread from the capital to the regions. Such reactions of people who have lost their adequacy in protecting personal interests drive us all into a very bad situation, where the solution to problems lies beyond the framework of the law and the values of the civilized world. Therefore, we cannot allow these people to win this conflict.

Today we must all support our colleagues from URA . RU, because we are talking about fundamental things, about how we understand the main meanings of life and profession. And about the personal fate of each media outlet, each journalist in the very near future. We need to write about this story constantly, every day. Without hiding your personal position and without turning into a redneck, obediently chewing popcorn in front of the monitor, awaiting their own fate.

Each of us knows what to offer our colleagues. Their opponents should not complain about the lack of attention to their own affairs: past and present.