The plan to get rid of uncensored media is easy to implement. But it's worth thinking about the consequences

Independent media, as we have often been reminded in recent years, does not exist. But there are uncensored ones. Now they are like dented tins in a primitive shooting range under the gun of an experienced shooter. Minus "Kommersant". Minus "Gazeta.ru". Minus "Rain". Minus "Tape".

“This is not forever,” we repeat when another can falls. “We believe that this is not forever,” employees of the online publication wrote after the dismissal of Galina Timchenko, who worked at Lenta for 15 years.

It's like life will start again

as if there will be light and glory,

a good day and a lot of bread,

as if life will swing to the right,

swinging to the left.

There are more - how many? Two or three uncensored media with a serious audience, from which you can get a clear picture of what is happening - Vedomosti, Forbes, perhaps Slon.ru. I do not include in this list the resources of RBC, although it is being updated under the leadership of ex-editor-in-chief of Forbes and Vedomosti Elizaveta Osetinskaya , but still owned by Mikhail Prokhorov , a person who is built into the system and can at any moment behave as he is suggested.

Apparently they will come for “Elephant” soon: it is part of the same holding as “Dozhd”, which is being shot at point-blank range. Who will come is a meaningless question: the Moscow media have long lived like the current Crimea , surrounded by nameless people in Yudashkin uniforms , but without insignia.

It will be more difficult to come for Vedomosti and Forbes: they are owned by foreign companies. It is still not easy to expropriate the property of Pearson, Dow Jones, Axel Springer in Russia. But after the now almost inevitable introduction of Western sanctions against Russian officials, and possibly businessmen close to them, it will be possible to put more harsh pressure on the Russian divisions of these companies. It’s just that the method has either not yet been found, or has not yet been applied - they are waiting for the first steps from Europe and the States to answer them.

In order to avoid omissions, illusions and other evasions from the unpleasant truth, it is time to say that a task has been set and there is a plan to rid the country of uncensored media.

From all of us. That is, the media will remain, and many even under the same names, but they will be subject to both self-censorship - journalists and editors in them will firmly know what is possible and what is not - and external censorship. The latter will manifest itself in the form of warnings, like the one Lenta received for Ilya Azar’s interview with one of the leaders of the Ukrainian Right Sector, and dismissals of editors-in-chief who do not understand the warnings.

For those who are accustomed to uncensored information, there will then be several options left. Firstly, Russian-language websites of foreign news organizations like the BBC or Reuters . Secondly, the resources are foreign language. Yes, there comes a time when foreign sites - from Buzzfeed to Bloomberg, from the Financial Times to Le Figaro - become more reliable sources of news about Russia than local media.

Dear readers, learn foreign languages. Perhaps you will soon read familiar authors in English, French, and German.

Reading “offshore” resources will have to be supplemented by forays into censored territory: otherwise it will be impossible to understand which direction the propaganda machine is turning. This will not allow us to predict the specific actions of the authorities, but the fluctuations of the information field, which in recent years have been painstakingly created in place of the present, are still important: these are the last remnants of communication between the current government and the people living under it.

Why haven't I said anything about social media yet? Because they are only good as another additional source of information. What is true and what is not is almost impossible to figure out. While there was a lot of media, we got used to scolding them, prophesying their end, their loss to “civil journalism.” Now we will see that a “collective editor” is unable to replace professional editorial filters, because the authorities have learned to twist it by throwing in links to incomprehensible sites, comments, “exposures” of true stories and false “sensations” at the right moments. The picture of the Crimean conflict on social networks is the best confirmation of this.

But the pendulum, of course, will swing in the other direction.

A cleanup similar to the current one in Moscow was undertaken in 2012-2013 in Kyiv. First, quasi-media outlets were launched, designed to create a news picture favorable to the authorities (Capital, Vesti, etc.), then Sergei Kurchenko, who was friendly to the presidential “family,” bought the strongest existing editorial offices. After the departure of editor-in-chief Julia McGuffey, Korrespondent.net continued to be updated, but it was a different site. After the departure of editor-in-chief Vitaly Sych, the weekly Korrespondent, the most widely read in the country, continued to be published, but was no longer itself. Many remember the story of the Ukrainian Forbes, in the creation of which two veterans of the Russian Forbes, Vladimir Fedorin and I, took part: most of the team there also left, but the shadows of the magazine and website remained.

Very soon, most of the fired and resigned journalists ended up on the Maidan. There was practically nowhere for them to write in Kyiv - but that’s okay, they spent the winter. The other day, the American Forbes finally revoked the license from Kurchenko’s company: what convinced the Americans was not the truthful stories of journalists about censorship, but the personal sanctions against this “businessman” announced by the European Union. And “Capital” stopped appearing on paper.

Now in Kyiv there is devastation and there is practically no advertising market. Where will it come from when the threat of dismemberment and war hangs over the country? But new projects have already begun to appear: some former Forbes journalists, for example, are making the Hubs portal , while others are working at The Insider , which established itself well during the revolution. Other uncensored media will appear - all that is needed is for economic recovery to begin.

I don’t want the media industry in Russia to be revived this way: blood was shed during the Ukrainian revolution. But the power of Viktor Yanukovych a year ago seemed unshakable, and the situation of honest journalists seemed hopeless. And so the pendulum began its return journey - not without the participation of those who found the courage to reject the censorship system.

Yes, colleagues from Lenta, I also believe that this will not last forever.

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