Yesterday I called idiots everyone who suggested that the journalists at Vedomosti would not respond to my question to them.
How could they not respond? They’re not Volodin, after all, keeping silent the way he did about his mother’s apartment and pretending nothing happened.
I honestly expected a lot of responses from different journalists. I assumed they would range from “it’s all lies, Meduza, TV Rain, and the others used unverified information” to “yes, there was a problem, we suffered because of it, and we’re looking for a way out of this situation.”
But it turned out I was the idiot. Not a single response. Not an official editorial one, and not even one from a journalist. Not even a single one.
Konstantin Sonin, a Vedomosti columnist with 15 years at the paper, felt the need to explain his personal position. But no one from the newspaper itself did.
The reaction is exactly the same as Volodin’s when we ask about his mother’s apartment.
Or Prikhodko’s, when we ask about the yacht, Rybka, and Deripaska.
Or Shuvalov’s, when we ask about the planes and the castles.
Modern Russia is often called a corporate state. And here too we see a fine display of corporate spirit: a shared unspoken agreement to stay silent and ignore an uncomfortable question.
Well, what can I say? Thank you all for your attention, I understand everything now, and I’m ending this conversation. I won’t press the issue. Let’s turn the page and move on.
I do not consider *Vedomosti* journalists enemies or political opponents. They’re ordinary, decent people making a living by writing articles.
A scientist, Galileo’s contemporary, was no less intelligent than Galileo. He knew that the Earth revolves, but he had a ~~family~~ mortgage.
They’re just people with mortgages. That’s what they are, and there is nothing insulting or degrading in that description. People are weak. It’s not as if they killed someone to make the next payment. They just looked away at the right moment, in the right direction. They just pretended not to hear the question. They stared down at the table.
(DISCLAIMER: and I absolutely do not mean to insult everyone in the country who has a mortgage!)
So, nothing extraordinary happened—except for the collapse of my personal myth about this amazing newsroom, where written rules and traditions were supposedly so strong that they could overcome rotten leadership. All you had to do, I thought, was shame the journalists when necessary, wave the “Dogma” in their faces, and everything would sort itself out. They would come to their senses, snap out of it, say, “oh, what are we doing,” and go back to the old path.
That did not happen. From now on, we understand: there is no longer any such thing as the “Vedomosti dogma.” And please, let’s stop bringing it up in discussions. I used to do it all the time myself; now I won’t. And the famous “fact-checking” is gone too. This is explained well here and here. A long, detailed analysis is here.
The legendary “Dogma,” as it turned out in 2018, was just a piece of paper like the ones used to inform me—very persuasively, and with full references to the relevant regulations—that:
- all places for public rallies in our city are already booked
or
- you are prohibited from running for office.
Another example of how any institution loses its meaning under the wrong leadership. Only a combination of both factors brings success.
This whole situation is often discussed in terms of a “crisis in journalism.” I do not see a crisis in journalism. On the contrary, I want to repeat once again: right now, it is a hell of a time for journalism in Russia.
Not an easy time, yes. But it is even harder for lawyers, politicians, NGOs, human rights defenders, and so on and so forth.
Can you imagine, for example, the level of frustration a decent lawyer feels in a Russian courtroom? Journalists, by comparison, are practically happy people.
And every day they have something new and exciting:
The Bell launched some unusual media outlet built around email newsletters, and it works brilliantly. I read it every morning.
Mediazona is an astonishing and wonderful hybrid of a media outlet and a human rights organization.
Sports.ru has released its billionth app and massively expanded its audience during the championship.
Echo is still setting records for reach and influence. It keeps going even though one of its own shareholders is trying to destroy it.
Yury Dud created a new media outlet with an audience comparable to that of a federal TV channel.
Outlets like New Times keep working and set new records for sheer resilience under pressure, and that is a miracle in itself.
Meduza — those guys up and moved away somewhere entirely at their own risk. They could easily have disappeared, but instead they’re doing quite well.
Leonid Parfyonov launched a channel, and it already has half a million subscribers. He has become one of the country’s biggest media outlets!
Badanin has come up with something new.
A sense of calling + a desire to serve the public good + mastery of the craft. And everything will be fine. No crisis at all.
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