Television and Culture in Putin's Russia

Remote control

Stephen Hutchings, Natalia Rulyova

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780415419079
• eBook ISBN: 9781135277918
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines television culture in Russia under the government of Vladimir Putin. In recent years, the growing influx into Russian television of globally mediated genres and formats has coincided with a decline in media freedom and a ratcheting up of government control over the content style of television programmes. All three national channels (First, Russia, NTV) have fallen victim to Putin's power-obsessed regime. Journalists critical of his Chechnya policy have been subject to harassment and arrest; programmes courting political controversy, such as Savik Shuster's Freedom of Speech (Svoboda slova) have been taken off the air; coverage of national holidays like Victory Day has witnessed a return of Soviet-style bombast; and reporting on crises, such as the Beslan tragedy, is severely curtailed. The book demonstrates how broadcasters have been enlisted in support of a transparent effort to install a latter-day version of imperial pride in Russian military achievements at the centre of a national identity project over which, from the depths of the Kremlin, Putin's government exerts a form of remote control. However, central to the book's argument is the notion that because of the changes wrought upon Russian society after 1985, a blanket return to the totalitarianism of the Soviet media has, notwithstanding the tenor of much western reporting on the issue, not occurred. Despite the fact that television is nominally under state control, that control remains remote and less than wholly effective, as amply demonstrated in the audience research conducted for the book, and in analysis of contradictions at the textual level. Overall, this book provides a fascinating account of the role of television under President Putin, and will be of interest to all those wishing to understand contemporary Russian society.

1 (Dis)informing Russia

Media space and discourse conflict in post-Soviet Russian television news

Introduction

Russian television news in Putin’s second term reached a new nadir in its descent into ideological servitude. With Russia officially designated by international observers as ‘not free’, Putin’s power over the flow of information and the framing of political debate became almost akin to that of his Soviet predecessors.¹ Reporting of the 2004 Beslan tragedy, and of Victory Day celebrations in May 2005, provided two examples confirming that the national media were tacking ever closer to the official, Kremlin line on events, predicted and unpredicted.

There is little need to elaborate on why control over television news is so important to the Kremlin, particularly in light of the central role news broadcasts have played in recent Russian history (see Introduction). However, the persistent fluidity of the political situation (following unpopular welfare reforms in 2005, Putin’s own supremacy came under question for the first time) and the fact that Putin felt obliged to assert his dominance so crudely, suggests that classic hegemony has yet to work its magic in post-Soviet Russia; had the values of the forces dominating post-Soviet society penetrated it throughout, there would be no need for the heavy-handed manipulation of news agendas practised under Putin. Indeed, the overarching purpose of this chapter is to challenge the view of Russian national television news as entirely monolithic and uniformly subservient to government ideology.

Another way of accounting for the imperfect functioning of Gramscian hegemony is by reference to Bakhtin’s dialogic theory which remains an implicit influence throughout our analysis in this chapter. It would appear to be entirely appropriate to apply Bakhtin’s notion of monologism to the situation occurring in Putin’s media. However, the term is often misunderstood to mean the silencing of non-official discourses and the erasure of dialogue, when in fact Bakhtin made it clear that the monologism of the centralised state is merely one variety of dialogism—one in which a single voice or discourse has secured a position of authority over that of others and attempts to subordinate them to it. This coincides with Gramsci’s notion of hegemony as a constant process of renewed resistance to a dominant discourse which never ceases to incorporate and thereby disarm that resistance. The difference is subtle, but important; for Bakhtin (as for Gramsci), all discourse is dialogic and open, all positions of dominance temporary and constantly subject to challenge. Indeed, as he points out in respect to the seemingly pure monologism of the late Tolstoi, the very heavy-handedness of the assertions of authority betray the strength of the hidden dialogic challenge that they are called upon to rebuff. This was the case even at the height of Stalinism (whose characteristic paranoia can be read in just these terms), but is especially so under the conditions of the proliferating influence of globally disseminated discourses under which Putin’s propaganda machine must operate.

Bakhtinian dialogism extends in two other directions of acute relevance to the case in hand. First, Bakhtin makes it clear that discourse is always oriented towards its recipient(s) and is enacted at the threshold at which the voice of the self encounters the voice(s) of the other. In this sense, television is the supremely dialogic form. For, owing to the fluidity of its textual boundaries (it is hard, for example, to say whether the popular meanings generated by soap operas or reality TV shows are located intratextually, or within the readings that they elicit) meanings are negotiated between text and audience in a way that is much less true of traditional, author-centred forms such as the novel, or even film. Thus, when discussing the degree of ideological servitude endured by television news under Putin, we must have regard to the role of viewers, exposed as they are under the conditions of globalisation, to an increasing array of discourses from an expanding range of sources, in negotiating the meanings produced by news discourse, and, just as important, to the efforts of television producers to anticipate, account for and respond to viewer contributions to those meanings. This, too, attenuates the potential effects of Putin’s naked propaganda making.

Secondly, unlike popularised versions of the concept which talk merely in terms of multiple references to, and citations of, other texts, Bakhtinian accounts of intertextuality insist that all utterances are essentially re-accentuations of prior utterances, with whose entire context and intentionality they enter into dialogue, and which remain an active force, shaping the discourse in which they are cited. Thus, post-Soviet news broadcasts cannot simply accommodate the passive textual forms of western news making (or, for that matter, those of the Soviet news making which preceded them) to their own ideological agenda. This, too, has profound implications for the ability of post-Soviet news to control the meanings that it articulates.

Dialogism was a key influence on Lotman’s notion of semiosphere (Lotman 1990), which, by analogy with Vernadsky’s concept of biosphere, he interpreted as the ‘semiotic continuum’ in which all meaning is created—an organic, but heterogeneous, totality in which different structures come into contact and generate new meaning. John Hartley’s adaptation of the notion of semiosphere as ‘mediasphere’ to account for the particular semiotic continuum from which meanings emerge in the contemporary, globalised, realm of media texts (Hartley 2004) is particularly apt for the purposes of examining the significatory ambiances of post-Soviet news. A section of what follows deals therefore with what, in our turn, we have referred to as ‘media space’, with particular attention given to the meaning-generating role of generic boundaries, whose instability in post-Soviet television opens up possibilities for considerable activity within that space.

Following Hartley, we have chosen to translate the implicit theoretical assumptions underlying our approach into a set of terminological tools derived from media studies rather than literary analysis. Thus, in following the section on heteroglossic media space with a segment addressing the representational space within which the monological voice of post-Soviet officialdom attempts to (re)assert its control, we adopt the tools of frame analysis (investigations of the pre-established narrative models, myths, discourse structures and semantic fields into which news stories are packaged in order to accord them ideologically appropriate significance), agenda setting (including running-order hierarchies), and Barthesian ‘inoculation’ strategies (the principle by which dominant discourses vaccinate themselves against the seditious potential of oppositional voices by incorporating manageable instances of those voices).² At the same time, in a to-and-fro movement between theoretical underpinnings and methodological tools, we re-invoke the Bakhtinian framework by turning to the concept of chronotope to capture the temporal constraints on Russian news’s ability to manipulate this representational space to its own ends. This, in its turn, returns us to the wider semiotic space in which Russian news meanings unfold, and which complicates, dilutes and subverts the ideological mission to which they are harnessed.

However, it would be entirely misleading to present Russian television news as a hotbed of dissidence, or to deny the ideological manipulation to which it is increasingly subject. A cursory comparison of news output in the mid-1990s and between 2000 and 2007 would reveal that news teams have become increasingly supine in their relationship with the President, and exponentially more obedient to his agenda (a fact explained most obviously by the effective take-over of Channel 1, RTR and more recently NTV, by figures loyal to Putin). A portion of what follows aims to trace the deleterious effects of these changes on the Russian news agenda. Our proposition that all is not quite what it seems is based on the semiotic principle that meaning is shaped not just through a text’s intended ‘signifieds’, but also by the culturally laden signifying forms and codes expressing them, and that forces located at the level of the code are liable to complicate and impede the effectiveness of those operating at the level of the signified.

We focus on three aspects of post-Soviet Russian news ‘form’ in which we detect these principles at work:

1. Media Space (we focus particularly on generic boundaries, and on that space within the official realm set aside for emergent post-Soviet commercial and celebrity cultures);
2. Representational Strategy (the importance of authenticating inter-texts, myths and narrative structures bearing memories and meanings incompatible with the agendas they serve; the tensions generated by the need to adopt the procedures and forms of democracy as well as to mimic its ambiances);
3. Discourse Structures (ways in which the multiplicity of vernacular discourses which have now entered Russian media space frame and reframe one another and undercut the authority of the dominant discourse).

Our argument is advanced through examples from the main evening news bulletins of the three national channels (Channel 1, NTV and RTR) recorded on a weekly basis from April 2003 to July 2007. It is supported with data analysis of categories of news stories covered, and of voices represented in those stories, during a cross section of the same period (November 2006 to April 2007). For the viewer dimension, we rely primarily on cross-referencing with our audience research chapter, but brief reference is made to web forum commentary contained on the Channel 1 website. Throughout, references to the dates, times and sources of particular broadcasts are given in parentheses in the text.

Media space and generic instability

The notion that the ‘objective facts’ constituting the content of news bulletins are heavily mediated by the forms and discourses through which they are expressed is rarely contested. One of the dominant concepts within current theories of television news is that of media ‘frames’: those sets of a priori structures, selections, exclusions and ritualistic gestures which enable news producers to package events according to their implicit agenda, and viewers to identify them as ‘news’. In Todd Gitlin’s words: ‘Media frames are persistent patterns of cognition, interpretation, and presentation, of selection, emphasis, and exclusion, by which symbol handlers routinely organise discourse, whether verbal or visual’ (Gitlin 1980: 7). For Gitlin, news frames simplify, prioritise and structure the narrative flow of events (Gitlin 1980). One of the key ‘frames’ is that of genre. Television, like other forms of cultural production, deals in texts whose definable boundaries and recurring attributes enable them to be categorised into particular types, or genres, each of which carries identifiable worldviews and ideological assumptions. As Fiske puts it:

Genres are popular when their conventions bear a close relationship to the dominant ideology of the time … Genre is part of the textual strategies by which television attempts to control its polysemic potential … influencing which meanings of programmes are preferred by, or proffered to, which audiences.

(Fiske 1987: 112, 114)

Genres imply adherence to sets of rules relating both to formal and content aspects of the texts for which they legislate, with the formal attributes carrying clear ideological weight. Thus, prior to 1991, Soviet news bulletins shared some attributes, formal and ideational (e.g. the ritualised recitation of industrial successes; the avoidance of live reports; and the use of newsreaders as government spokespeople) which would, in western countries, have contravened the rules and ideological remit of the genre. Since the fall of communism, there has been a rapid convergence of generic features between Russian and western news output. The opening sequences of RTR’s Vesti (News), NTV’s Segodnia (Today) and Channel 1’s Vremia all include montages of busy newsrooms, purposefully engaged journalists, production teams equipped with the latest news-gathering technology, world maps and abbreviated ‘headline’ summaries of the main items to be covered. These features, absent from Soviet predecessors, have been imported from western sources. Each is preceded by the ticking clock (cf. the chimes of Big Ben at the beginning of ITN’s News at 10) which serves the dual, and contradictory, functions of reminding viewers of the up-to-the-minute ‘liveness’ of news coverage, yet also reassuring them of its never-diminished regularity in their daily routines.

Such markers all carry distinct semiotic value which, in turn, and, according to the principles outlined by Fiske and Gitlin, shape the content and control the meaning of the news reports themselves. Thus, the world maps connote the global remit typical of news bulletins. And the images of bustling journalists and technologically advanced production teams contribute towards the construction of news reporting as an autonomous professional sphere, as well as highlighting the value of technology-led, scientific objectivity, none of which would sit comfortably within Soviet ideology.

Continuity with the past underpins the nation-building role assigned to news programming across the world. The retention from Soviet times of the title and signature tune of Channel 1’s Vremia and the traditional Russian troika in the opening montage of RTR’s Vesti can be compared in this context to ITN’s Big Ben. Also bearing comparison with western equivalents, and an instantly recognisable feature of the television news genre, is the formally dressed news presenter whose authoritative, autocued script and use of standard pronunciation mark him/her as the carrier of official, establishment values. The anchor introduces each item, providing the voiceover for graphic sequences illustrating aspects of the event in question. For important items, there is live reportage from the scene. The framing of the live reporter’s voice by that of the establishment in the person of the anchor authenticates the discourse of the latter by separating out a sphere of generalised assertion from a realm of live witnessing. John Ellis has argued that witnessing is one of television’s defining functions, tying it to the ever-increasing emphasis on liveness which is its unique privilege (Ellis 2001). During Soviet times, live witnessing threatened the maintenance of ideological control and was substituted by pre-recorded reports. Post-Soviet news operates in a globalised media environment and cannot afford to excise generic features familiar to all those viewers who have had access to CNN or BBC World News. Moreover, the authenticating function of the live report is not lost on post-Soviet news production teams; the ‘truths’ about the oligarch Khodarkovskii’s tax avoidance enunciated in the newsreader’s impersonal discourse in 2005, which we deal with below, became far more believable when bolstered by the personalised discourse of the live reporter.³

A related generic feature of the live report is the question and answer sequence between the anchor and the reporter. All three Russian national channels have adopted this feature, complete with the informal first-name address mode preferred by the participants. A danger inherent in the anchor—reporter exchange is that its unplanned absence inevitably de-authenticates the anchor’s discourse. This happened during coverage of the Beslan School Siege when, following the tragic and unexpected dénouement, Vremia briefly suspended live coverage and resorted to brief, unconvincing summaries from the anchor. Post-Soviet national news is increasingly prone to such reversions to Soviet type. Another example is the return of the ceremonial slot when lengthy accounts of official meetings with dignitaries and state rituals are introduced quite openly under the rubric of ‘official chronicle’ (ofitsial’naia khronika). On...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 (Dis)informing Russia: media space and discourse conflict in post-Soviet Russian television news
• 2 St Petersburg 300: television and the invention of a post-Soviet Russian (media) tradition
• 3 Russia’s 9/11: performativity and discursive instability in television coverage of the Beslan atrocity
• 4 Promiscuous words: the post-Soviet Tok-shou as cultural mediator and hegemonic pressure point
• 5 Unfulfilled orders: failed hegemony in Russia’s (pseudo) military drama serials
• 6 Laughter at the threshold: My Fair Nanny, television sitcoms and the post-Soviet struggle over taste
• 7 (Mis)appropriating the western game show: Pole Chudes [The Field of Miracles] and the double-edged myth of the Narod
• 8 Russian regional television: at the crossroads of the global, the national and the local
• 9 Television through the lens of the post-Soviet viewer
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography