Oleg Kashin: Not a reputation, but karma

It was the very beginning of the zero and the very beginning of my journalistic career in Kaliningrad. I walked around the city with a girl, and we hugged to the wasteland in the center of the city, where, due to some holiday, a mobile moon park was opened-carousels of all kinds of "American slides" and so on. It really was the very beginning of my career, I was a young and not very smart, they had just been given out what was now customary to call a press card, and then it was a red shout like a police. I was interested in the extent to what extent this crust makes me a person with some special rights, which the rest did not have, and these carousels seemed to me an excellent opportunity to experience the effect of crust. I don’t remember how much the ticket cost, because I did not buy it, but, waving a certificate, went to the carousel and said that I was the press and that I and the girl should be skipped for free.

The carousel did not object and only asked (for sure just to ask something): "And what, will you write about us right?" And of course, I replied that I would write, I am a press. And the next day, as an honest person, I sent an editorial photographer to carousels, he took a picture of them, and I wrote a small report, that this way and so, in our city, a real moon park was visiting, as in the best cities of Europe during holidays and fairs, excellent carousels, I checked. The note came out, and the next day (in general, this was rare) the owner of the newspaper entered the editorial glider, who told something important, and already goodbye asked about this note about carousels-is this advertising, its carousel workers paid through the advertising department?

I honestly answered that no, no one paid for anything, I just wrote it myself, because we had no important city event, we haven’t had such carousels, let everyone read and come to ride. The owner was clearly surprised and already asked carefully, in the tone of which they talk with sick people, whether the carouselmen gave something for this note at least to me. I honestly replied that yes, they let them ride on carousels; It became funny for everyone, to me too, and I realized that there would be no scandal, but perhaps it is not necessary to do this anymore.

I remembered this story so well, because it was my first acquaintance - thank God, so quite childish, student and therefore painless - with culture, as it is now called, native advertising. It now seems to me that this was the moment when I abruptly wiser, having learned that it was very unpleasant to be suspected in the “jeans”, and such situations should be avoided, even sacrificing the opportunity to ride a carousel for free. Until now, in my opinion, there is a fashion for some special journalistic crusts, according to which they are allowed abroad for free to museums. I don’t know anything about them and I always cry for museums myself; Perhaps the fault is just that case with the Moon Park.

Now, after many years, I understand: my main luck was then not even that my story with the carousels did not cause a scandal, but that there was already some kind of formed order in these matters by my arrival in this edition. I did not have the opportunity to work in the anarchist version at all, where everyone enters everyone, and every second article is custom -made. However, I’m not sure that such editions have ever existed at all: I am poorly imagining an editor ready to turn a blind eye to journalistic corruption even in the conditions of a wild advertising market and universal corruption. That is, now we are not even about serious business newspapers prohibiting journalists to go to pressures and accepting gifts more than a hundred dollars, but even about the most garbage publications, about which it is immediately clear that there are a lot of “jeans” in them. Even if there is a lot of it and if it is put on stream, it is still in most cases that it will not be such a model when someone bribes a journalist, but, albeit illegal, but a system in which the editor-in-chief is captivated primarily. Such is no longer entirely anarchy, but simply the beginter stage of development of a normal edition with a normal advertising department. I even remember at least one newspaper, in which at the end of the zero there was a whole deputy editor -in -chief, responsible for the “jeans” - he was brought money in suitcases, and he was responsible that the publications paid by these suitcases from the stripes at the last moment.

We did not have such an editor in Kaliningrad, but the practice of writing advertising texts in the headings of the type of “event” or “point of view” of the editorial staff was quite established. We wrote reports from the opening of some shops or from fashion shows, we took ceremonial interviews from the local business, and for this, the advertising department was paid by a fee that significantly exceeded conventional editorial fees. Without these advertising income, it was simply not possible to live on pure journalistic earnings in principle. I had enough “normal” fees only for food and alcohol, and books and clothes are only advertising. And so you work like that, the newspaper comes out, and in its lanes you are mixed up with your problem essays about housing and communal disgraces or about the prospects of the governor’s elections, and next to your name-a new restaurant has opened, go for lunch.

I saw this provinciality in this, I said that imagine how it is: on TV, “results” with Evgeny Kiselev, and after them the same Kiselev tells in an advertising story that an elite porcelain tile is sold in Moscow, indecent. And pretty quickly I bargained myself the right to sign advertising texts by some pseudonym in order to protect my real name. There was no doubt that this was a shameful earnings, albeit the necessary - you, in the end, came to this profession not only for money, and writing only for money is harmful to ideals and for values. I went to Moscow in 2003, and then for the first time I came to Kaliningrad already to visit, being a reporter for the prestigious Kommersant. And, flipping through his native newspaper, he saw the text of his friend, entitled “United Russia” - a party of national success, ”and thought that I had dumped in time.

Once believing that you have the right to trade in your opinion, you will commit an irreversible violence against yourself and will forever remain its victim

In Moscow, I was also lucky to immediately get into the environment in which custom -made articles were considered a crime and was punishable by dismissal. Compared to the entire Moscow journalistic world, this adverse space was small, but, apparently, which caused additional corporate patriotism. I remember how I was impressed by the article by the then owner of Kommersant Boris Berezovsky about the Yukos case, published within the heading of the Specialist Comment on the Rights of Advertising. Now, years later, I probably will not dare to say that the then world of serious Moscow newspapers was completely free from journalistic corruption. In situations where the relations of a journalist and a Newsmaker (and more often not even a Newsmaker, but a PR man) are made too trusting, their non -corruption is proved only by the honest or dishonest word of the journalist, and there are always opportunities for corruption.

I saw journalists who live beyond their means, and I can only guess what their part -time was, but I know for sure that if the then chief of the Kommersant Andrei Vasiliev or the recently departed from Tatyana Lysova learned about the fact of a successful bribery, the career of such a journalist would end immediately. And, apparently, the fact of this repeatedly pricked threat was so strong that it allowed even to avoid innocent temptations. Once I wrote about some kind of conflict associated with real estate, and one of his defendants, when I came to interview him, handed me a box with a new mobile phone: they can listen to us, so let's only communicate on this proven phone. I gave the phone to the donor in horror-no, it wasn’t so accepted for us-and just in case, he didn’t write at all on the topic of the conflict, so that, for example, if that uncle, he suddenly gave someone else to someone, the other gifted would not winked at me knowingly, they say why you wrote about him, I had the same.

Orders in their editorial office is an unconditional crime. And in a stranger? At one time, being, let’s say, in the worst moral form for all years, I combined work in the “expert” with a part -time job in one Kremlin “analytical” fund, which placed my three large articles in Izvestia. I poorly imagine how it happened technically, but the texts that I handed over to the funds in the evening, the next morning I went out in Izvestia, and it looked quite impressive. I really didn’t interest someone and how to corrupt the alien newspaper, but about the rest of the explanation for my own reassurance, I had quite convincing: everything that I wrote in those articles coincided with what I really thought, and if so, what difference does it make, how and where it is published? Now I can’t formulate this difference, but I know for sure that it is. At least today, when I read the explanations of the authors of the same columns about Navalny, who write that no one ordered them, and they are really long -standing and consistent critics of Navalny, I try on their excuses and I understand: if I had to make excuses now, when I could not stand it at forty and, I don’t know, burst into tears from shame.

Texts are often stronger and smarter than their authors, custom -made texts are always stronger and smarter than those who write them. The custom text is arranged so that it is always not even between the lines, but is written on top of them with fiery letters that this text is initiated and paid for the interested party. And this is not even a question of reputation, this is a matter of karma, metaphysics. Once believing that you have the right to trade in your opinion, you will commit an irreversible violence against yourself and will forever remain its victim.

Oleg Kashin - journalist

Opinions expressed under the heading "Law" may not reflect the point of view of the Radio Liberty editorial