Flight on the trolley

A week ago, I lost my job on the Sakhalin Internet radio "Owl". For almost a whole year, a little less than the radio existed, every Wednesday I conducted a two -hour program there, in which the news was an occasion to look for analogies in history. We talk about women's protests in Belarus and recall the frantic cripple-soufrazhist Rosa Mai Billinghert, who came in a three-wheeled stroller at a protest and, in fights with the police cleverly used crutches. Pandemia and quarantine were an occasion to talk about justian plague and cholera rebels, and the recent law on educational activities was to ask the rector of the Sakhalin State University and recall the Enlightenment and Encyclopedia of Didro. I did not receive money for work, there was moral satisfaction.

The program closed because the radio closed. Over the year, it could not reach the payback. It was expected. It was only unexpected that it was precisely the bat in Juan who was heated by a private business in Russia. Investors have ended money. There is nothing to keep an owl.

The guys who invented the “owl” tried to find new investors, but could not. They drove themselves to a dead end - they drew up an agreement under which none of the founders had the right to interfere in the editorial policy, even refused to discuss the possibility of state contracts for "information support", paid broadcasts with guests, and in general any intervention of money in the information agenda. But regional media today survive only at the expense of state contracts. Building the media as a business is now impossible. The authorities or this or a kind of uncontrolled, financially independent publication will crush.

For the creators of the Owl, closing has become hellish stress. For me - no. And not because I did not lose anything, but because I always understood: this story will end sooner than late. All my 20 years of experience says that the independent, distant from power and not afraid of the political agenda of the media in today's Russia is doomed. It is as if you are sitting in a trolley and rolling on it into an abandoned mine. And the whole question of what will kill you is a sudden abyss (read the “lack of money”), a stone on the rails (pressure on the founders) or another of a dozen run -in ways to destroy freedom of speech.

I was already pleased that there was a short flight on the trolley. Because almost all of my career is attempts to get away from censorship, which caught up with me every time.

At the end of 2002, the commercial director in the regional newspaper, where I was a journalist, put a fussy woman who had previously worked as a sound engineer, a friend of a friend of one of the Moscow founders.

The editors were young, all plus or minus 25 years old. The destruction of the former NTV had already happened by that time, but we did not think that this canceled for us freedom and principles of work of journalists. With clinical courage, topics were taken, which were refused by more experienced groups. The courts considered part of their work, they were not afraid of them, although the newspaper did not have money for lawyers. Our 22-year-old editor was confused by the judge, when she bravely came to defend herself from the lawsuit filed by the mayor of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk alone. A girl with a scythe against the legal administration of the city administration. We came to a amicable agreement. And the court with the largest Sakhalin bank, I also won.

But soon the commercial director said that from now on the policy is changing. This was called "friends", although it is more correct to call "to repent" to everyone. “We will write good about them, make it pleasant, and maybe they are to us too,” the director fucked up. In 2003, only technical workers remained from the editorial staff.

This newspaper still exists and everything with the same leader. Reprints stories about serial actors and a television program. It has state contracts from the regional government.

Several years passed, the regional tab of “arguments and facts”, where I was the head of the head, moved from one founder - private media holding to another - regional printing house.

According to the charter, the founders did not have the right to interfere in the editorial policy. In fact, each of our steps controlled the Sanhedrin in the person of the director of the printing house, his deputy and head of the personnel department. This woman was terrifying me - sad, with ghouls on her head, in glasses and a intolerant voice of a strangler of cats.

I did not have time to send the material to the layout, as the layouts signaled - "these came." When I remember that year, I see myself with a ferocious ostrich-I then wore 12-centimeter heels and every day he rushed along the stairs from my third to the second floor-to fight for articles.

"Why do you have Putin in the eighth lane?" - shouted Sanhedrin. And he instructed Putin on the first. I yelled that I forbid. The unforgettant smiled sadly and did as they ordered "these."

Materials, even the most harmless, were removed from the strips. No matter how much I run around the corridors and shake the charter, I have never managed to defend a single one. The Moscow edition of the penalty that we turned into a toothless provincial newspaper, demanded bright materials, but never stood up for us.

Since then I have not wear heels.

The regional tab "AiF" is now publishing the same lady who taught me to "be friends".

Then there was a shortcuting television channel belonging to the regional administration. I left quite quickly from there, even before the collective began to train from the mainland. The hunger strike, which was announced by several people, had to be presented as starvation. On the air, this should not have looked like a protest of desperate people, but a practically therapeutic procedure.

A few years later, with the new governor of the Sakhalin Region, Oleg Kozhemyako Media Holding, where I was the editor of the site, squeezed out with the owners. They created it in the 90s from scratch, putting each penny into development. They squeezed out, I must say, in a child-bought it, but they could simply destroy, like other regional television companies. The new leaders of the company were very seriously sure that the former was terribly lucky and they should be grateful - this was how many millions received at once. The fact that you can cherish your business, that work can be a source of joy does not fit in their head.

Well, journalists immediately surrounded the invisible, but very dense wall of "friends". "We will not indicate that he ( the deputy is under investigation. - Approx. Author ) from" United Russia ", our friends are very worried about this," "We can’t tell that a worker died on a coal career, our friends will be upset." It was impossible to put even the release of the Ministry of Emergencies about this, so as not to injure friends. For the sake of "friends" half an hour after publication from the site, my material was demolished about illegal landfills. For the sake of friends, comments were cleaned, blogs pre -production, and rewritten the rules of the site. These friends were not advertisers. It was actually businessmen of the governor's team, which for some reason was imposed on the editorial office. At the same time, like a shy thief Alhen, the new leader of the holding with all his might tried to seem like a person who was glad for freedom of speech: “I promise that I will help to place an article on Medusa,” he swore, shooting my next material.

I have not been working there for several years. Now the only publication that takes my articles is a “foreign agent”. The editor asks me, implying the status of the publication: "Are you not afraid?" I'm not afraid yet. It is so strange - to be afraid to speak and write. But who knows how much more my courage is.

Lyubov Barabashova - journalist, Sakhalin

The "Opinion" expressed in the heading of the point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial office