Honestly, I’m simply baffled to see some people seriously debating whether Channel One, VGTRK (Russia’s state broadcaster), and others have the right not to say a single word about the murder of a child in Moscow.
If such monstrous circumstances had surrounded an incident in Europe—a severed head, a migrant murderer, cries of “Allahu Akbar,” threats to blow up everyone around, statements (made in court today) like “Allah told me to kill her, and I’m not going to apologize to anyone”—then we would have been subjected to WEEKS AND MONTHS of this being picked apart in daily talk shows about the decline and degradation of the West.
With political analysts and foreign experts.
But when a head is severed in Moscow, the ever-charming Vladimir Pozner immediately appears, telling us that even in America they don’t show things like this, and that during the 9/11 terrorist attacks all TV channels decided not to broadcast footage of people jumping from the windows.
Apparently Mr. Pozner has decided that the blessed year 1980 has returned, when he was once again explaining how wonderful it was to send troops into Afghanistan, and remained one of the few lucky people with access to ham in special ration packs (privileged Soviet food allocations) and Western television.
That is a lie: television showed the people jumping as much as it wanted, and only decided to stop once the fact was already universally known and the footage was bringing people nothing but emotional trauma.
Yes, there was a well-known debate about the famous photograph “The Falling Man,” and many criticized The New York Times for publishing it, but it has been widely used in print and is known throughout the world.
And now in Russia, we are not demanding that they show a severed head or other shocking footage; we are demanding that state media perform their public function and report on an incident that caused such an outcry that any news about it stayed at the top of the most-viewed rankings.
What is being concealed is the very fact itself, not the format in which it is presented.
And I will repeat once again: this is censorship. Censorship is prohibited by law and by the Constitution. The officials who “recommended” that these reports not be shown are criminals and should be held criminally liable.
You may consider this a naive gesture, but for the ACF (Anti-Corruption Foundation) it is a civic act and a public call to obey the law. We have submitted complaints to the Investigative Committee and the prosecutor’s office regarding this act of censorship:
The text of the complaint to the prosecutor’s office is here.