Damn Friday. Why do the worst news report at the end of the week

The searches of the editor -in -chief of the “important stories” of Anin’s novel , recognition, and then “foreign agents”, the detention of lawyer Ivan Pavlov , the request of the prosecutor’s office for recognition and extremist organizations - each of the transmitted events occurred on Friday. And this is not a coincidence, political technologists surveyed by the Mediazone are sure.

Lower the information water into the toilet

The tradition of announcing unpopular decisions on Fridays is coming from the 1990s, says the deputy director of the Center for Political Technology Alexei Makarkin. The idea itself, he says, is associated with the technological cycle of daily - more precisely, leaving six times a week - printed newspapers. If journalists learned about something closer to Friday evening, when the Saturday number was already over, then this news could only be released on Monday, the political scientist explains, who worked in the newspaper today. For being late, adds Makarkin, printing houses put a fine to the editorial office, so the newspaper men make urgent changes to the already handed over the submitted number.

“Accordingly, it was assumed that the news should be given out when [it] will be picked up or not picked up by newspapers,” adds political strategist Konstantin Kalachev.

But the rule “Bad News at the end of the week” was widespread only at the first stages of Vladimir Putin, says a political strategist, general director of the Center for Development of Regional Policy Ilya Grashchenkov. He connects this practice with the arrival of the presidential administration.

“Before him [the former head of AP Alexander] Voloshin harshly did not regulate the media policy-well, that is, they influenced any specific reasons, but not much. And Surkov, as I recall, tried to build in detail the model of the presentation of information, ”Grashchenkov explains.

According to the political strategist, at first on Fridays they “tossed up” were not even negative, but simply ambiguous news - which could not cause a protest in society, but a discussion. “For example, the State Duma will discuss the law on the ban on anything next week. That is, they threw [at the end of the week, well, they talked minimally and forgot by Monday, ”says the political strategist. - Surkov, as it were, generated from the point of view of the administration of [the president] the information farms that will be lowered in the media. That is, he distributed when we report the news. And this approach is that let's negate at the end of the week was somehow connected with it. ”

With the sunset of the printed press in the 2010s, the PR technology owed it to its appearance. On the contrary, according to the political strategist Sergei Polyakov, when the Crimean consensus began to exhale, and protest moods - to grow, issue undesirable for discussion on Fridays became even more often. There is a simple explanation for this, says Polyakov: a nutrient protest in Russia is office workers who have fun on Friday evening.

“Friday is the best time to lower some kind of info-toilet,” Konstantin Kalachev echoes him. - Saturday and Sunday clearly do not have serious information, people are busy with other matters. Therefore, if you need to make some kind of pleasant news not very noticeable, not very resonant, then the easiest way to send it on Friday, in the hope that no one will pay attention to it. ”

Ilya Grashchenkov, as such examples, gives decisions to tighten coronavirus restrictions that Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin made. The quarantine in the capital was declared March 29 - this is Sunday. And the law on raising the pension, the age that hit the ratings of the authorities was submitted to the State Duma on Saturday June 16.

Siloviki on Fridays

On the morning of Friday, December 25, police officers came to Lyubov Sobol lawyer and took her for interrogation to the Investigative Committee as a witness in the case of violation of the immunity of the dwelling. The application for it was written by the mother -in -law of the alleged participant in the poisoning of Alexei Navalny. Before that, a many -hour search was held in Sobol’s apartment, during which the security forces seized equipment . Sable was interrogated all day as a witness, and by the evening she had already become a suspect .

Her lawyer Vladimir Voronin gives the story of Sobol as an example of “system history”, when the sities specially put off the detention and searches from a more or less famous person on Friday.

And the point is not only that law enforcement agencies do not want to create excess noise in the information space - Friday searches and detention allow the use of various procedural tricks, when the whole weekend is not formally detained, but is actually subordinated to investigators and is forced to fulfill all their requirements.

“They come home at seven in the morning and the search goes to dinner. Then a person is taken out, he is not formally detained, he may not have any status by this moment at all. He is not even a witness to the case. He is the face in whose apartment a search was held. Then he is taken to the Investigative Committee, then they begin to interrogate him as a witness, they can be interrogated several times as a witness, they can immediately conduct confrontation with him, ”Voronin explains Mediazone. - That is, it is procedural for everyone that it will soon be replaced, but now there is no danger to him as if procedural for him. Therefore, confrontations are conducted with him, some examinations can be appointed with him. All this time he is in such a floating state, and time goes on. ”

Toward evening, the detainee is assigned the status of a suspect or charged, and he, according to the lawyer, can not go anywhere. “He could not get away anywhere, because investigative actions were carried out with him. And the countdown of these 48 hours, which are provided for by law - it begins only from the moment of detention, but the detention is not actual, but according to the 91st article, ”adds Voronin.

In some cases, says a lawyer, a person can “pickle” until Saturday morning. Then the officially detained is taken to the IVS, where it is not easy for the defender on the weekend. “The lawyer later is quite difficult to find the principal later. The weekend is dead time. Only the attendants are sitting, that is, a gear, for example, can not be conveyed to a person, ”says Voronin, clarifying that there are usually no problems on weekdays.

Further, on Sunday, the detainee is waiting for a court to choose a preventive measure. Sunday is the day when neither journalists nor relatives will be allowed to go to court, and the lawyer will be more likely to defend the suspect, because it is often difficult to find a person in the IVS on a weekend.

“The problem is that it is necessary to receive some documents to the court as it is suppressed-for example, an extract from the house book [to ask for house arrest] or the characteristic of the accused-to make it very difficult on the weekend,” the lawyer adds.

The security forces use the technology of Friday visits not only in relation to oppositionists - they come to both officials and businessmen. So, for example, in the case of the Deputy Minister of Transport of the Novosibirsk Region Sergey Stavitsky - he was detained on Friday on March 19 on suspicion of receiving bribes, and on Sunday he was already sitting in a pre -trial detention center; And in the case of the mayor of Tomsk, Ivan Klein, also detained on Friday . On Friday, March 30, 2018, the owner of the Summer group Ziyavudin Magomedov was detained and arrested .

All this, according to Voronin, is aimed at ensuring that the suspect in a closed and maximum accelerated mode is behind bars. “That is, on Friday morning, a man is still sleeping in his bed, and already on Monday - in the investigative insulator.”

"To a certain extent, this technology works"

The use of “Bad News on Fridays” became especially noticeable in 2021. Over the past five months, almost all significant events fell into the media review directly on Friday. These are court hearings in the case of slander in the veteran of the Great Patriotic War, accused of which opposition politician Alexei Navalny took place - the first two meetings were scheduled for February 5 and 12 and dragged on until the evening; And even earlier - the detention and arrest on Friday January 15 of the operator Pavel Zelensky (he was also sent out on Friday - April 16); All day of Friday January 29, they elected a preventive measure in the “sanitary business” of Lyubov Sobol, Oleg Navalny, Oleg Stepanov, Maria Alekhina and Anastasia Vasilyeva - and they did not allow journalists to cover these meetings.

Political strategists interviewed by the Mediazone say that all these events occur in the middle of the week, then the public reaction to them would be much larger.

“The logic is absolutely clear here. If you throw the news on Friday, then by next week it will already be “outdated” and will be blocked by more fresh news, ”Polittechnologist Abbas Gallamov explains to Mediazone.

According to him, then there is a chance that the topic unpleasant for the authorities will “go to the archive” and will not be discussed. That is why, the political strategist adds, bad news is thrown in the afternoon on Friday, and good ones - in the first half of the week - so that they can be discussed for several days - before they “grow old”.

In addition, Ilya Grashchenkov adds, the authorities manage to develop a consolidated position on the acute topic over the weekend: “That is, they threw it that [for example] prohibit something, the comments of the bloggers of them went, the comments of the experts were sent-and by Monday the position with which Putin may come to them.”

At the same time, political technologists surveyed by the “mediazone” agree that this method is absolutely effective, since it is impossible to completely discard some negative event from public consciousness, the source of which has become a state.

“To a certain extent, this technology works, but, like any PR tools, it has a limited area of ​​action. He is not able to change the political, long-term component-and if some social group is not like some kind of action of the authorities, then all the PR-make-ups taken will not help to cope with this, the political technologist Abbas Gallyamov says. “But other groups - less interested - will pay less attention to the topic.”

Editors: Dmitry Tkachev, Dmitry Treshchin