Russian Networks Reportedly Scrubbed Footage of Weekend Protests
The reports of anti-government protests on television news networks across Russia over the weekend reportedly took a much different tone than those who viewed similar stories outside of Russia, reports the Associated Press. This does not bode well for the likes of former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, who is trying his best to spark, what is otherwise a docile Kremlin opposition. Scrubbing media content can go a long way towards muting such a fragile opposition movement, particularly when faced with having to get that message across the wide expanse of land that is Russia. Also, when locals are not seeing the full picture of the kind of unprovoked brutality that was being used against the protestors on Saturday and Sunday, the chance for widespread public outrage is decreased significantly.
An excerpt from the AP report…
…Analysts say the media clampdown decreases the chance the protests will gain momentum.
“There is little risk of contagion … since the Kremlin continues to filter the domestic television news,” Rory MacFarquhar of Goldman Sachs said in an e-mail to investors Monday.
Viewers of NTV’s main newscast Saturday night might have thought the demonstrators were a few bad apples trying to spoil exhilarating pro-government marches in the early spring sunshine.
It segued from a youth movement rally of 10,000 people at Moscow State University to glum, dispirited protesters. No beatings were shown, and police were seen gently escorting protesters onto trucks.
Witnesses at the scene, meanwhile, saw young people grabbed with no apparent provocation and manhandled into vehicles.
NTV and Rossiya both seemed to play on Russians’ instinctive suspicion of outsiders.
NTV showed Garry Kasparov, the chess champion who has become an opposition leader, shouting from inside a police bus, but the voiceover said “he made comments in English to foreign journalists.”
Rossiya framed its report on the protests in the context of calls for a revolution in Russia by the self-exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky, and of a U.S. State Department report on democracy and human rights that criticized Russia. | Read more…
Putin Overreacted?
Stanislav Belkovsky, head of the National Strategy Institute and Russian political analyst, made the following comments regarding the Kremlin’s (over?)reaction to the Dissenters’ Marches this past weekend in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
“From a political point of view, the authorities had no cause to fear marches like the one on Saturday. If all events planned for the march had been permitted, then 6,000-7,000 people would have calmly walked through the city, in no way threatening the existing system.
“Putin failed to understand the causes of the Orange Revolution, failed to grasp the mechanism of its rise. And what is not understood fuels fear. Any public opposition activity makes Putin overreact.
“For people working in the Kremlin system and in the Kremlin orbit, the struggle against the opposition is a business. The struggle against the opposition in today’s Russia is a very profitable business. If the Kremlin perceived the opposition adequately and maintained an adequate dialogue, it would not, first, be spending millions of dollars on such spin projects as Nashi (Ours) and the Young Guard, nor on training and indoctrinating members of these phantom bodies. Second, security agencies also get additional funds for operations to disperse opposition activities.” | Read more…
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