Journalism In Intensive Care

Michael Hedges November 8, 2010 Follow on Twitter

Media workers are literally running for their lives. Another beating, another threat; it’s scary. The powerful – and scary – like it that way. Chasing a story can mean always looking over your shoulder.

Shortly after Friday midnight Moscow time Kommersant journalist Oleg Kashin returned home after an evening with friends to find two men outside his apartment holding bouquets of flowers. The men then proceeded to beat Kashin brutally using, said paramedics, “heavy objects, not with fists.” His jaw was broken in two places, both legs and arms broken, his hands mangled. His skull was fractured. Some Russian media watchers expect him to be flown out of Russia for specialized medical care.

Russian journalists are not prone to hyperbole. This particular attack on Oleg Kashin, they would say, is unlike others. Kashin is well-known, as a reporter for a major newspaper and frequent blogger, and well-respected. His beat, of late, has been Russian youth gangs, far-right and far-left. He’s been critical of them all but not necessarily dismissive.  They are, he said to Ekho of Moscow (September 6), “a product of our times.”

Russian media and human rights observers say the mangling of Kashin’s hands – fingers have been amputated – and broken jaw were a specific signal. Robbery was ruled out as Kashin’s iPad, mobile phone, with which he’d just taken a photo, and money were not taken. “It is clear,” said Kommersant editor-in-chief Mikhail Mikhailin on radio station Ekho of Moscow (November 6), “that the people who did this did not like what he says and writes.” Kashin’s most recent article in Kommersant was about the construction of churches in Moscow.

Within hours of the attack on Kashin, Russian media was, literally and figuratively, all atwitter and, universally, horrified. By Saturday morning (November 6) the major news agencies, television, radio and newspapers were carrying accounts, each adding new details, many adding new theories. Russian Federation President Dmitry Medvedev, informed in the middle of the night, brought in Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika and Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev to take control of the investigation and “take all measures for solving it.”

Media workers in Russia are targets. This year alone, eight have been killed and more than 40 attacked. Most are local reporters and camera crew venturing into bad areas, not limited to geography. Kashin had written extensively on the relationship between extremist groups and Khimki forest highway project, touted by Prime Minister Vladmir Putin and put on hold by President Medvedev. Two days before the attack on Kashin (November 4), Russian environmental activist Konstantin Fetisov was brutally – and similarly – beaten, hands mangled. In 2008 local Khimki newspaper editor Mikhail Beketov, often critical of “irregularities” with the highway project, was beaten so severely he has permanent neurological impairment. Beketov also lost the use of his hands.

“Horrified” was Reporters sans Frontiers Secretary General Jean-François Julliard. “The culture of impunity has prevailed for too long,” he said. “No crime of violence against journalists has been solved since the start of the past decade. A month ago, we marked the fourth anniversary of journalist Anna Politkovskaya’s murder and we sadly noted that the investigation has gone nowhere.”

Journalist and human rights activist Anna Politkovskaya was gunned down by assassins in her Moscow apartment building in 2006. Investigations, arrests and trials have proved inconsequential. Vladimir Putin referred to Politkovskaya at the time as “unimportant.”

Interestingly, Kashin wrote critically of Politkovskaya’s murder and reaction to it. She was, a “newsmaker, but not a journalist,” he wrote in Izvestia (October 9, 2006). “I’ll disappoint the romantics; there is no terrible truth for which a journalist should be killed.”

Becoming the news has long been anathema to news media people. Once that line is crossed a new dynamic takes place. None of that is lost on Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who traveled to Geneva (November 4) for a UN sponsored human rights conference. Celebrity – or notoriety, depending on the enemy – keeps Assange on the run. Sweden recently denied him asylum.

Meeting a packed room of journalists at the Geneva Press Club, Assange tried to keep to the human rights theme and defending Wikileaks release of once secret files. He’s managed to upset the Americans, the Chinese, the Russians and certainly others. Reporters on duty pressed mostly for details of his personal life. He said he only feels “safe” in Iceland or Cuba. Swiss media was all atwitter when Assange told public television channel TSR he might consider moving to Switzerland. “Security considerations affect anyone in investigative journalism,” he said, flanked by bodyguards provided by Geneva police.

On Sunday (November 7) journalists and social activists gathered with signs in front of a Moscow police station in the area of the attack on Kashin to protest the improbability of a cease-fire between thugs and Russian media workers. They were asking President Medvedev for protection. Kashin is in an artificially induced coma – in intensive care - due to the severity of injuries.

See also in ftm Knowledge

Media in Russia

Media in Russia is big business and big politics. Media companies are consolidating as they move into new media and new territories. At the same time independence is still questioned. It's all changing. ftm looks at media in Russia and its neighbors, 72 pages. PDF file (March 2010)

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