MacKENZIE: No matter who ordered the killing of television journalist Vladislav Listyev, and no matter what the motives were, the results are the same: a clear loss of freedom of speech and freedom of the press in Russia.
"They are no longer strangling freedom of speech," said an Ostankino commentator after Listyev was killed. "They are shooting at it."
Vlad Listyev was a symbol of freshness and renewal for every Russian journalist. As one of a team of new journalists who broke new ground with "Vzglyad" in the late 1980s, he pushed glasnost to the limit and beyond. But he was not, in the pure sense of the word, a controversial figure. He had not been drawn into the political fray on any one side. He was first and foremost a professional. But as the director of advertising for Ostankino television said to me after Listyev's murder: "He was a true professional. Unfortunately, no one needs professionals in Russia today."
Most observers link the murder to Listyev's recent appointment as head of the new Russian Public Television Company, which was to replace the state-run and state-financed Ostankino on April 1. Advertising had been temporarily banned from the new company, and advertising companies - which skim off approximately 50 percent of the cost of advertising - stood to lose millions of dollars in the short run, and possibly much, much more if the system were changed.
Other versions of motivations for the killing include a recent interview Listyev held with a member of the Chechen opposition - that is, opposed to Chechen President Dzhokar Dudayev. But this explanation has not received wide credence in the press.
Again, the reasons may not really matter. What is important is the effect. And the main effect of Listyev's death on journalism in Russia is that journalists are once again afraid for their lives. Listyev's murder has provided a focus, a concrete symbol for this growing fear.
The past six months have indeed been bad ones for the press in Russia. Newspaper correspondent Dmitri Kholodev was killed in a bomb blast on October 17, in what most observers saw as an attempt to silence the intrepid reporter on the subject of corruption in the Western Group of Soviet forces in Germany. In December, Nationalities Minister Nikolai Yegorov publicly stated that the Russian army would be ordered to turn its guns on the press after initial reports from Chechnya showed the Russian side in an unfavorable light. Members of the press in Chechnya were subjected to personal harassment. Both Western and Russian correspondents were repeatedly detained. Some were severely beaten or had cameras and tape recorders confiscated.
NTV - the one independent television company in Russia, whose initial coverage of the war in Chechnya was sharply critical of the Russian position - was faced with repeated threats to have its license revoked. One source high up inside NTV told me that the company had consciously decided to tone down its coverage because, as he said, "We could continue on and be brave, and we would have lost access to the airwaves. The future of the company was at stake."
Just a week ago the press minister, Sergei Gryzunov, narrowly survived an attempt to remove him. Gryzunov has been an outspoken champion of a free press, while trying to close down fascist newspapers - both of which actions have earned him plaudits from the liberal intelligentsia. Gryzunov was faulted for the press coverage of the war in Chechnya. Control of press coverage was taken away from him and given to the government in the first few days after the invasion.
This is all by way of background into Listyev's murder - a bit of the atmosphere surrounding the Russian press today. In the short term at least, the reaction of the authorities is likely to be a strengthening of police-state measures, which were called for by President Boris Yeltsin in his speech to Ostankino workers on the day following Listyev's murder.
As far as television is concerned, the much-publicized privatization of Ostankino will likely be postponed. In the same speech, Yeltsin promised that a decree on Ostankino would be forthcoming, but as yet there has been no news.
Coverage of events such as the war in Chechnya will likely be composed with one ear cocked to the internal censor that all Soviet journalists carried with them in the old days. And for the foreseeable future, all journalists in Russia will be watching their backs while they ask themselves, "Who is next?"
ZAGALSKI: I believe that this is not the last killing in Russia, because a new type of censorship has emerged: There was official censorship a few years ago, now this is just censorship at gunpoint. It's very hard to do investigative reporting. The so-called commercial structures try to bribe journalists, and it's a very common thing to write according to the "order." Journalists are paid off for writing articles.
Russian media is the only institution in Russia now that is truly democratic. The coverage of events in Chechnya was the first time that a Russian audience could see the real situation - not like it was during this artificial war in Afghanistan, where people didn't see what was really going on.
QUESTION: Who had the interest in the advertising, how did Listyev threaten it, and what might the motive be?
MacKENZIE: Russian Public Television was going to begin on the first of April with a completely new structure - privatized, with the state having 51 percent of the shares and the remaining 49 percent apportioned among shareholders. The way the system works now ... Ostankino established a company called Reklama-Holding to impose unified control over advertising. But advertising is still sold through middlemen, through advertising companies that routinely and legally keep 50 percent of the proceeds.
Listyev and the council of directors for the new company - which does not yet exist - had decided to put a complete moratorium on advertising for at least five months until they could develop a new structure that would bring more of the proceeds into Ostankino and provide less room for corruption. There's a tremendous amount of money involved in advertising - although much less in Russia than in the West right now - and tremendous grounds for corruption. They were trying to figure out a way to break that hold and get the money going into the pockets of Russian Public Television.
ZAGALSKI: Let me add something to that. Listyev had what we would call a total conflict of interest: He was a partner in the VID company, which is an independent production company. At the same time he was appointed the head of Russian Public Television. And of course his company got the biggest chunk of prime time.
I have to mention that one minute of commercial air time at prime time on Channel 1 (Ostankino) is about $30,000 (some other estimates put the cost per minute as high as $50,000), and the monthly revenue from advertising is about $8 million. So VID, his company, got a bigger chunk of prime time....
Listyev ... was involved with just a tremendous amount of money circulating around, particularly in advertising. So there were some other structures, lots of small advertising companies, which were very unhappy with this ban on advertising time because they were on the verge of bankruptcy. I believe that's how it happened.
QUESTION: Are you implying that Listyev himself was corrupt?
ZAGALSKI: I can't imply that.... But he was certainly involved (in matters involving advertising). He was running the most popular shows, where the commercial interruption cost a lot of money.
MacKENZIE: If I could add something to that, because I think there's some confusion arising here: VID is not an advertising company, VID is a production studio within Ostankino, of which Listyev was the director. To repeat, Russian Public Television had not yet begun. Listyev was going to have to resign his position in VID, although I think it would be naive to assume that he would relinquish all financial interest in it. And who was going to get what slot in prime time under the new system had not yet been released. No one really knew. But, as Leonid said, the VID studio did produce the most popular programs, so it may not be surprising that VID would have the choicest slots.
ZAGALSKI: I would add something to that: When Listyev was appointed head of Russian television, he asked for a $300,000 salary, which is just almost unbelievable according to Russian standards. He ended up having a $100,000 salary.
QUESTION: I want to get back to the idea of the motive... Who stood to gain? And also, what are the political ramifications for Yeltsin and his rivals?
ZAGALSKI: There are at least three reasons why Listyev was killed. The first one is the purely commercial reason, because he got in the way of so many advertisers that they were so unhappy. Another reason could be that he was running a very famous talk show, and it could be revenge for something that he said or something his host said. The third version is not widely discussed, but we may touch it at least: Yeltsin is facing the new presidential and parliamentary elections in 1996, and all this tension is very good for him because he's losing his popularity. Actually, he and the Duma, which are constantly contradictory, have the same goals: Both of them don't need this election. So it could be used just for (delaying) the elections and staying in office.
MacKENZIE: If I may add to that, a little more concretely: I think the version most widely spread around is the first one, that commercial reasons are at the root of this, that it is the advertising companies who may be behind it. That has been broadly hinted in the press... It may very well be that this explanation ... may be seized upon as the easiest one, where the real reasons are much deeper.
As far as the political ramifications, Yeltsin was in my opinion totally shameless in using this murder for his own ends. He immediately removed two Moscow officials, the head of the public prosecutor's office and the head of the police, who are people he had been trying to get rid of for quite some time for his own political ends. And now he seems to be using this as a way to get back at or cut the ground out from under the Moscow mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, who has been making a bid for national office.
I think it would be much, much too strong to say that the government would orchestrate something like this in order to exploit it for political gain. But the government has been quite quick to exploit it for political gain....
QUESTION: Is the attempt to suppress freedom of the press systematic, and if it is, who is enforcing it? Is it politically motivated, is it economically motivated in terms of the mafia structures? Do journalists see the possibility of freedom of the press being destroyed, and what is being done not to let that happen?
MacKENZIE: I think we have to keep in mind that freedom of the press is a relatively new concept in Russia. Tremendous gains have been made in the past six or seven years, to the point where there's almost no control on what can be said and cannot be said in print....
But there is right now quite a movement to re-establish some control, both from the liberal side, which wants some control on things like the fascist press, and from the government side, which wants much more control on criticism. When you say "political vs. economic," the two are very closely tied, because the government still controls the pursestrings which support the press. The government supports many newspapers. The market in Russia is not very well developed now, and most newspapers cannot support themselves with advertising. Very few do. And television cannot support itself on advertising.
So the government does not have censors in place who are going to pass on something before it can be aired or printed, but they do have ways - such as I mentioned with the NTV company - of letting a television station or a newspaper know that it has stepped over the line and could very soon find itself without support or deprived of its license. Those control mechanisms are still very much in place, and when the government feels it needs to, it can jerk those strings very quickly.
QUESTION: What is the source of the increased fear today? I understand that the two specific murders - Kholodev's and Listyev's - are certainly tragic and frightening. You keep talking about the danger to the press. Are you referring to these mechanisms that exist already? What else is going on today that wasn't going on a year ago, two years ago, five years ago?
MacKENZIE: Russian journalists are very closely attuned to what is allowable and what is not. It does not take very much to have a Russian journalist again start looking over his shoulder, start expecting the hand of the state to come crashing down upon him. All that has to be done is to activate reactions that have been developed in journalists over 70 years of crackdowns, 70 years of control. So when we're talking about dangers to journalists, yes, a lot of the talk about this is coming from journalists who perhaps, in talking about it, are trying to keep the government from employing those control mechanisms that it can exercise.
ZAGALSKI: Also, there is a big threat of self-censorship. Before journalists start to write something or do some investigative reporting, they think hard: Do I need to do that? Can I publish something and stay alive?...
EPILOGUE: On March 15, Russian news agencies reported that Listyev's murder was actually the fourth killing linked to Ostankino's advertising department. The three earlier victims were executives of advertising agencies that, like Listyev's VID, held large stakes in Reklama-Holding. "A possible relationship is being analyzed," investigator Boris Uvarov told the Interfax news agency.
On March 16, the respected chairman of Ostankino's board, Alexander Yakovlev, submitted his resignation, complaining that the network was crippled by greedy incompetents engrossed in political infighting. "These people do not want fair competition. All they want is to divide up state funds and make fortunes on commercials," he told the Itar-Tass news agency.