Opinion: Oleg Kashin on trust in Izvestia

Journalist Oleg Kashin spoke out about the widespread distrust of the Izvestia newspaper among media workers: although its articles are often refuted, in the end it turns out to be right. Kashin wrote about this on his Facebook .

Oleg Kashin. Photo by Nikolay Solodnikov

According to Kashin, the habit of not directly referring to the Izvestia newspaper has reached the point that large publications prefer to include a link to the media in their headlines, rather than directly to the newspaper that is the source of information. Nevertheless, the journalist’s experience suggests that although Izvestia’s articles are often almost immediately refuted by the heroes of the events themselves, in the end everything happens as the newspaper said.

Every night in the headlines of state media (RIA, TASS, RT, sometimes even Rossiyskaya Gazeta) something like this appears: “Media: Starting from the new year, everything will be banned in Russia.” Just today: “Media: Dachas and garages will be confiscated for mass development.” “Media” is such a euphemism; in fact, it is guaranteed to mean the Izvestia newspaper, but the ritual is not limited to this. Tomorrow morning, a responsible person from news like “Media:” will give a comment to some “Echo of Moscow” and say that all this is not true, nothing like this is planned. Then on social networks (now there is less of this, a year ago it was very active) someone will write that you see, Izvestia lied again. Finally, in a month, the decision that Izvestia lied about will, of course, be made, but new news like “Media:” will already appear on the feeds, and everything will repeat itself. […] You have to believe Izvestia, but no one believes it, you fools. Oleg Kashin, journalist

In February, due to several tweets by Oleg Kashin, a media scandal broke out related to Izvestia, when the journalist quoted the words of a former employee of the newspaper, Alexei Nepomnyashchiy. According to Nepomnyashchiy, Lenta.ru editor-in-chief Galina Timchenko paid her employees for publishing “nasty things” about Izvestia.

Due to the style of quoting without quotation marks, characteristic of Kashin’s Twitter, the CEO of the NewsMedia holding (publishes Izvestia) Aram Gabrelyanov and his son Ashot considered the journalist a source of information. The reason for the scandal was a note by Izvestia correspondent Vladimir Zykov, which was refuted by Roskomnadzor.

On January 20, Zykov wrote in the newspaper that Pavel Durov was leaving VKontakte and leaving with a team of developers for the Telegram project. VKontakte press secretary Georgy Lobushkin promptly denied the newspaper's information, and Zykov himself later complained of being unwell. Three months later, Pavel Durov actually left the company and began developing Telegram with part of the development team from VKontakte.

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