Texts for sight translation Text 1 Overview

In recent years the Kremlin has secured greater control over the country’s main national TV' networks — Channel One, RTR and NTV. Critics say independent reporting has suffered as a result.

Bringing court cases against two of the country’s biggest tycoons, Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, and acting through the indus­trial groups Gazprom and Lukoil, the Kremlin wrested control of NTV in 2001 and ordered the closure of TV-6 in January 2002. TV-6 was replaced by TVS, which soldiered on as Russia’s only privately-owned national net­work until the authorities pulled the plug in June 2003, officially for finan­cial reasons.

Russia’s TV market is highly competitive; state-owned or influenced TV networks have the largest audiences. Hundreds of radio stations crowd the dial; traditional state-run networks compete with music-based commer­cial FM stations.

The conflict in Chechnya has been blamed for government attacks on press freedom. Journalists have been killed in Chechnya while others have disappeared or have been abducted.

In Moscow and elsewhere, journalists have been harassed or physi­cally abused. Journalists investigating the affairs of the political and cor­porate elite are said to be particularly at risk of intimidation.

Free coverage of the 2003 parliamentary elections was said by the media watchdog Reporters Without Borders to have been “obstructed” by the authorities. The top state TV networks had “openly backed” President Putin’s party, it added. (The Economist online)

Text 2 To join the elite it’s tv that counts

It’s not how powerful you are but how much coverage you get on television.

That was the finding of a recent opinion poll that asked Russians across the country to name the most influential personalities in politics, business, culture and science.

Unsurprisingly, respondents readily picked President Vladimir Putin as the most powerful politician and pop diva Alla Pugacheva as the leading culture figure.

But their selections for the business elite essentially turned into a hate list topped by Unified Energy Systems chief Anatoly Chubais.

Many respondents were unable to name a single scientist, leading to a top-10 list that bunched together Nobel prize winners with dead scientists, television hosts and a hostage negotiator.

The sometimes startling answers are a direct result of television, which is the sole information source for many people these days, said Irina Palilova, a sociologist with the Levada center, the independent polling agency that carried out the survey.

“This poll reflects that people just don’t understand what the elite is and can only come up with names of figures who are popular in the media”, said Olga Kryshtanovskaya, head of the Center for the Study of the Elite in the Russian Academy of Sciences.

“Members of the elite are those who rule and decide, but the public knows little about those people”, she said.

As such, Putin was followed on the list of the political elite by ultranationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, whose fist-waving antics are often shown on television.Third place went to Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, whose complaints about government social reforms got significant television coverage in January, when the poll was conducted. Also on the list were State Duma speaker Doris Gryzlov (4), liberal politician Irina Khakamada (5), Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov (7), and one-time political heavyweights Yabloko leader Grigiry Yavlinsky (9) and Mayor Yuri Luzhkov (10).

After Pugacheva, the list of cultural figures included Oscar-winning film director Nikita Mikhalkov, crooner Iosif Kobzon, comedian Yevgeny Petrosyan and pop singer Nikolai Baskov. Not a single writer, artist or philosopher made it into the cultural top 10. (The Moscow Times, by Nabi Abdullaev, March 15, 2005)