Rossiyskaya Gazeta October 11, 2006 Interview with Pavel Gusev, chief editor of Moskovskiy Komsomolets and chair of the Public Chamber Commission on Communications, Information Policy, and Freedom of Speech in the Media, by Natalya Konygina: "A Measure of Objectionableness. Why Journalists Are Dying, and for What"
The murder of Anna Politkovskaya has shocked society. When such tragedies occur we tend not to wait for the police's conclusion but to try to diagnose the social and ethical factors underlying the attack.
Such events explode the public consciousness, and we have to find ourselves an explanation for what is happening: Otherwise, how can we live with this explosion inside us? Today we reflect on this with Pavel Gusev, chair of the Public Chamber Commission on Communications, Information Policy, and Freedom of Speech in the Media and chief editor of, which lost a journalist in equally tragic circumstances.
(Gusev) Anna was a very specific kind of journalist. She probably did not enjoy great popularity among the mass readership. She often defended actual Chechens, and a certain section of society immediately took against her without even realizing what she was saying. Anna dealt with topics that were not always received unequivocally in society and in politics, but that was her honest position. She believed in her own idea. That idea may have been unpopular and controversial, but she fought for it. And the idea was founded on careful analysis of the facts, so that in that sense it is true to say that hers was the journalism of facts and not of conjecture.
(Konygina) Could it be said that this "journalism of facts" is on the way out?
(Gusev) I would not make that claim so categorically. Although there is a crisis in journalism. According to all the polls the prestige of the journalistic profession is declining. For young people journalism is no longer what it was in the nineties, when journalists were looked on as a kind of beacon. Remember how in the early nineties it was easy for journalists to become parliamentary deputies, because they had society's 100% support. Now terms like "bought journalist" and "paid-for journalism" have become more widespread. This situation has taken shape over the past 10-12 years, in a period when a number of publications have transferred to big financial-oligarchic structures. This has naturally reflected on the state of affairs in journalism and on journalism's potential for survival: Publications have found themselves forced to publish paid-for PR materials. Anna Politkovskaya did not serve in PR structures, she worked in the "other" kind of journalism. Do any journalists like her remain? I am confident that they do. They are present on many publications and they work not for PR but for their own good name. But there are not many of them. They are dinosaurs, and one way or another they will become extinct in journalism. And I do not see a new generation replenishing their ranks.
(Konygina) Will journalists start to be more fearful now?
(Gusev) Well, journalists were not frightened by (reporter Dmitriy) Kholodov's murder in '94.
(Konygina) That was the first time it had happened. They probably thought at the time that it was a one-off. Now we have an entire martyrology....
(Gusev) To some extent this murder is, of course, calculated to frighten the journalistic community: Don't go monkeying around where your opinion is not wanted. I think that some journalists really are in a state of shock and may be intimidated, but that will pass, I am sure. When you are traveling in a car and you are in an accident, of course it shakes you up. But you get back behind the wheel just the same.
(Konygina) You said that confidence in journalists is diminishing and that Politkovskaya herself was not everyone's favorite person. But reality tells us that journalists are feared, nevertheless.
(Gusev) I go back to Kholodov again. He was murdered to please the Defense Ministry, because not everyone understands what the limits are to doing that. I fear that the situation was similar with Anna Politkovskaya: They wanted to please somebody.
(Konygina) So the purpose of the murder as not to prevent Anna from telling something extremely important?
(Gusev) Maybe that too, but.... Let's be honest: no matter what kind of damning material might be pubished, would it change anything? This is no longer the nineties, when society trembled before the newspapers and the broadcasters. Who gets excited now over what gets written about Chechnya? People are not murdered for that.
(Konygina) Will her death change anything in journalism or in society?
(Gusev) I fear not. For those working in journalism it is a great blow and a great pity. But will journalists unite in some way following this event? I think not. For politicians and those involved in public life this is a minus point. A sign that criminality is on the march: The deputy chair of the Central Bank was murdered not long before Politkovskaya.... We had not seen a sensational murder in a long time. It looked as though we had moved on to a new phase of development, when issues would not be resolved through anyone's violent death. But this is not a sign that we are recoiling. Any historical trend involves backward or sideways steps, but society moves on. Nowadays we have a quite different mindset. And I am absolutely confident that such incidents are not going to become systemic.
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