The Lightning Rod of the Russian Press
Moscow News 1/2 January 16-22 1997 p. 2

Vitaly Ignatenko, vice premier of the government and director general of ITAR-TASS, talks with MN's editor-in-chief Victor LOSHAK.

MN: I, as a reader, remember your reports as a journalist changing professions, for example, how you worked as a waiter in a restaurant in Leningrad. Don't you get the feeling that you changed professions in the government, and will you write about this?
V.I.: There is a certain delicacy to my position and there are certain re straining counter-balances. Of course, I could write about working in the Central Committee and about working with Gorbachev. People placed a lot of trust in me, I saw them in all kinds of situations. But I don't think that I deserve to put my two cents into modern-day history right off the bat, because my opinion will always be very subjective.

MN: Are your personal ethics stronger than your desire to write?
V.I.: Yes, I immediately set myself certain limits.

MN: You worked closely with Mikhail Gorbachev and also observed other leaders at different times. What were they like, as readers, as television viewers?
V.I.: I must point out that teaching these people to watch and to see is one of my main tasks. They don't have to read between the lines, just read what's written. And the main thing is that they do it themselves not with the help of aides. If I managed to get this across, then the effect it had was very strong. The distance between journalists and politicians has became shorter and therefore, no one expected any dirty tricks. After all, formerly there was a notion that journalists were just troublemakers. This comes from the old school: "What's written in ink must be approved by the party committee." Out of all the genres, this class of people preferred innocuous news items. As concerns everything else (especially when there was an upsurge of social and economic journalism penned by the likes of Anatoly Agranovsky, Inna Rudenko, Vitaly Ganyushkin, Yuri Chernichenko, Otto Latsis, and later Yegor Gaidar), they had a hard time reading it without exclaiming: "Who allowed this, what's going on?!" Yes, becoming a good reader and a good observer is difficult.

MN: How are your relations coming along with the new mass media oweners, such as Most Bank, LogoVAZ and Gasprom?
V.I.: A completely different mechanism and different methods are at work here. First of all, they must be convinced that all the conditions created by democratic reforms were not invented for individuals who own a newspaper or operate a television station, but for society as a whole. I meet with them all, and we talk and argue, for me it's very important that they understand the role played by the press in the country correctly. It should be free from the state, but at the same time it must be tied in with statehood in its own way: the themes, problems and coverage of this or that event must proceed from the position of the public.

MN: You feel that the people we are talking about are state functionaries?
V.I.: Yes. MN: As general director of TASS, do you feel that our scope of information field will change if major Western publishing capital comes into Russia? V.I.: Let's suppose they release yet another Western-style newspaper. We see this happening in Eastern Europe. So what? The national press has become international, but practical noone cites it because everybody knows that it's easier just to quote Le Monde or the Washington Post where the exact same thing can be found. Let's take the theme of "NATO and Eastern Europe". Absolutely identical theses can be found in the papers, each paper just changes some little thing. Le Monde even understands our position: What if you talk with the Russians like this, or what if you do that, will it make things worse for the Baltics? Protecting Russia's information territory is one of our most important tasks.

MN: The 1996 elections somehow unexpectedly altered the presses' distance from the authorities. Looking on from the sidelines, it seems as if the most state-oriented television station has become the most independent in its opinions, and the one that has nothing to do with the government has become the most tame. The same goes for the newspapers; the formerly neutrally critical ones like "Kommersant" are now the mouthpieces of the authorities. What happened?
V.I.: You have exaggerated the situation somewhat. The fact of the matter is that from your standpoint you can look and see how all these newspapers and television stations have changed, how they treat the government. On the other hand, these same power structures do not feel these changes. It seems to me that the distance is the same. Moreover, so is the criticism and the injustice on their part. Just different points of view.

MN: Do the authorities come to you with their problems?
V.I.: Yes, of course. I have someone complaining to me, telling me that something received inaccurate coverage or, and this is very deplorable, that they didn't give an interview that had been published both day and night.

MN: How do you feel about certain changes in journalistic ideology? Today, the most notorious publications are those dealing with documents, tape recordings and compromising material, but with essentially no effort on the part of journalists. Someone might slip a cassette or a document to a rival journalist out of political interests, and that journalist unwraps it, puts his own headline and name on it and becomes famous throughout the country.
V.I.: The impact of politics has done something to our moral values. There is no sense of responsibility, no feeling of elementary shame or squeamishness. I understand that sometimes people make mistakes in their research, but when they receive ready made material and print it unedited simply to compromise someone's position, I don't understand why they get involved in this unenviable battle of compromising materials. I know many respectable people who'll say: I've been driven into a corner, that's why my safe is filled with compromising material on everyone. I just don'tunderstand that! Why go into journalism? Why not just open up your own office and hand out all this compromising material. I'm extremely wary and suspicious of this kind of journalism.