Reply to Deputy Kostunov

State Duma deputy from the United Russia faction Ilya Kostunov, who in an interview with our publication said that the dumbest deputy is smarter than the average citizen, now refuses responsibility for his words and accuses our publication of dishonesty. Mr. Kostunov claims that if the interview had been agreed upon, he would have removed “some phrases” from it. Following logic, the best defense is an attack.

I want to make some clarifications about this.

1) The journalist is responsible only to the reader. The task of a journalist is to make public the words of government or public figures, and not to help them look beautiful.

2) The text of the interview can be checked with the newsmaker only in two cases: if there was a preliminary agreement on this matter, or the subject of the conversation concerned numbers, special terms and other specific information that is difficult to keep in mind and which requires clarification. There was no agreement with Mr. Kostunov on any kind of agreement on the text. Neither he nor his assistants asked our correspondent to send them the text before publication. There was no special information in the text that required clarification.

3) Regarding the accusations that Ilya Kostunov’s words were taken out of context, I would like to note that the vast majority of interviews that are taken for text publication and not for broadcast are subject to editorial editing. Of course, we did not leave out everything that Mr. Kostunov said during the hour and a half conversation. In addition, spoken language differs from written language, so the editor makes stylistic changes to the text. Not meaningful! The skill and integrity of a journalist lies in preserving the context and meaning of the conversation when preparing an interview for publication.

Since Mr. Kostunov questions our integrity, we are ready, if necessary and solely at his request, to publish the full audio recording of the conversation with PublicPost correspondent Alisa Ivanitskaya.