The Russia Journal

After years of complaining about what Russian political and business elite has repeatedly called biased, anti-Russia coverage in the mainstream Western media, the Kremlin has finally given a green light to a TV project, which is expected to counter these negative sentiments and put the country, its people and their achievements in the right perspective on the global arena.

Officials directly involved in the project dubbed Russia Today TV (RTTV) and those pulling strings in the shadow say the channel is tasked with improving the image of Russia by changing the recalcitrant ideological, Cold War and other negative stereotypes that have largely continued to taint the West’s view on events happening in Russia, including countering what the political elite often refers to as the “Anglo-American” view on world affairs.

Top government officials are particularly irked by what they see as non-objective commentaries and views on events going on in Russia. Specifically, they have bitterly complained of biased criticism in most foreign media’s coverage of President Vladimir Putin’s execution of political reforms, which has been labeled ‘managed democracy’ and the Kremlin’s electoral reforms which have revoked the popular vote for regional leaders and raise the State Duma’s mandate vote-cut-off mark for political parties. They are also dissatisfied with the coverage of human rights issues in war-torn Chechnya, which until recently, the Kremlin had difficulty in selling to the outside world as a ‘core part of al-Qaeda-funded international terrorist operations in Russia because “the bloody warlords fueling the uprising had been often portrayed, albeit, wrongly, as freedom fighters in the West and most of the Arab world.” The issue of mistrust of Western media climaxed in the Yukos case — whose founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky, convicted on six counts of criminal charges — has often been painted in the Western media as a political martyr of Kremlin’s arm-twisting policies against people with opposite views. The situation is further worsened by a group of exiled oligarchs and their sympathizers who generously and openly fund anti-Russia publications from their hideouts in other countries.

The idea of improving Russia’s image to the outside world has been in the making since 2000-01, when top officials repeatedly stressed the necessity of running positive PR programs about Russia in the West and other parts of the world. Those programs never took off though many millions are said to have been spent on the “image” projects. But the new project, according to the brains behind it, has higher chances of success. If everything goes to plans, real and/or perceived anti-Russia rhetoric and sentiments in the world are expected to start changing for the better when RTTV hits the airwaves sometime in September.

RIA Novosti officials scrambled to put together explanations after a recruitment ad for the TV station appeared in London newspapers in early June. According to RIA Novosti, the channel’s editorial policy will be overseen by a public advisory council, which will comprise outstanding Russian and foreign public figures. RTTV will broadcast round-the-clock in English from Moscow for foreign audiences and maintain four major foreign bureaus in areas strategically important to Russia — Washington, Brussels, London and Jerusalem — and use other news services to cover the rest of the world. On the international arena, RTTV is expected to reach global viewers through Direct TV and Echostar satellite channels, with plans to link up with local cable networks, which will increase the channel’s global outreach. On the home turf, Russian viewers will receive the RTTV signals via NTV-Plus and Kosmos TV satellite channels.

But the Kremlin stamp is all over the project

With RTTV called to improve the country’s largely blemished image abroad, a task strategically vital to Russia, especially from political and investment points of view, it is, therefore, not surprising that the project has Kremlin stamped all over it, including its staffing and funding.

For instance, the project is being organized by RIA Novosti, a state news and information agency, and will require at least $30 million of state funding every year. Chaperoning the project are also influential Kremlin officials, including presidential aide Alexei Gromov, Mikhail Lesin — a former media minister, who now advises Putin on media-related affairs — and, Mikhail Seslavinsky, director of the Federal Media Agency, the official watchdog in the media industry. At the channel’s topmost managerial and editorial positions are also people with links to the Kremlin or in its good book: the general director is Sergei Frolov, a former deputy general director of state-owned Scientific Research Institute of Radio and Television, while the editor-in-chief is Margarita Simonyan, 26, a former Kremlin pool correspondent for Rossiya TV channel, who was personally congratulated and presented with flowers by Putin on her last birthday.

These factors, and the fact a rather young editor-in-chief was chosen from a roster of older, more experienced media executives to run the project, have led observers to doubt the Kremlin’s real intention. However, top government media officials have given assurance that RTTV would not be a Kremlin’s propaganda mouthpiece. RIA Novosti’s managing director Svetlana Mironyuk insisted that it would not be feasible in the competitive global television industry to operate a news channel strictly as a propaganda tool. “It is almost impossible to impose your own point of view on others on the global arena because there are scores of alternatives. But the idea is to provide an international audience with an understanding of what is going on in Russia — from Russia’s point of view,” Mironyuk said. Simonyan and other staff members have been selected because of their youth and lack of exposure to the Soviet-era propaganda-style, she noted. “We want a team of people who are less than 30 because we want this to be a new kind of television.”

Also offering a similar view, Seslavinsky said RTTV would not become a propaganda instrument for the Kremlin because the government will not interfere with the editorial policy. He, however, conceded that RTTV would be partly funded by the government, though the channel is also largely expected to generate enough revenues through grants and commercial activities to boost its financial sustainability. “It is practically impossible to launch a new TV channel these days without the official support, and most projects launched in the past without similar supports had failed,” Seslavinsky said, feeding questions on government’s role, including funding, in the project. “State support in the initial stage of such projects is a common practice in most countries, but that does not mean that the government will be involved in the project forever.”

Target audience of Russia’s answer to CNN and BBC unclear

Calling the newly born project “Russia’s BBC and CNN,” Simonyan told a packed press conference that RTTV’s mission is to portray the Russian view to the outside world because most foreign media do not always objectively cover events going on in the country. “Many foreigners are surprised when they see that Russia does not present the picture often painted in their media. We shall try to create a more balanced picture,” she added, noting she plans to follow the same principles used by large global TV channels. “We do not want to change the professional format, which has been put in place by such channels as BBC, CNN and Euronews, but at the same, we want to express the Russian opinion to the outside world and increase its visibility in it,” she said. “RTTV will reflect the Russian position on key issues and inform foreign audiences about different sides of Russian life. We want to be distinguished by our Russian approach to this news.”

However, Senator Mikhail Margelov, a former Kremlin’s spokesman who currently heads the Federation Council’s Foreign Affairs Committee, is pessimistic about the channel’s mission and its chances of success. In an interview to Gazeta, he said it is not quite clear what concrete audience RTTV will target on the global media arena — a factor that will largely determine the nature of information broadcast to its English-speaking viewers. Two probable scenarios would be targeting mass viewers abroad or foreign experts on Russia. “But targeting mass viewers will be difficult as it will entail huge funding and other expenditures,” Margelov said. “And, on the other hand, foreign analysts and international experts on Russia currently receive, at least, five-six Russian-language TV channels. Therefore, it does not make sense to set up a special TV channel to reach these people as most of them know and speak Russian.”