Hi, Ivan. I’m very glad that you not only finally responded, but even wrote a fiery address to me.
Communication between us somehow broke down about a year ago. I expected to see you at the rally in your support on June 12. You didn’t come—you went “to drink wine with the guys” and celebrate your return. That’s a valid excuse, I suppose; you did have a reason.
You didn’t reply to the letter I wrote a couple of days later. And then routine swallowed us both up—I went off to serve time under arrest for that rally, and you went off to give an interview to Margarita Simonyan’s RT (Russia Today, the state-funded broadcaster).
But now there’s an important conversation to be had, since you wrote such an interesting post whose main point is that I’m a hypocrite: I treat Safronov badly, yet make full use of his unique journalistic work. According to you, many of my posts and ACF investigations are based on Safronov’s articles.
The best part is that you didn’t just say this without evidence—you attached a long list of paired links: look, Safronov wrote it first, and then you reprinted it.
That is exactly what sent many of your colleagues into raptures, while it left me in utter astonishment, then even a little sad. And later—even, I admit honestly—quite deeply sad. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll say a few words not only about your post and the crushing evidence you presented, but also about some of your colleagues, and more broadly, about the kind of journalism you practice.
I regret only one thing: in this text I’ll have to go through the links to Ivan Safronov’s articles that you attached. I don’t want to distract the public from the substance of the Safronov case, which has nothing whatsoever to do with his articles. Let me reaffirm what I’ve already said:
I see no evidence of Safronov’s guilt. And neither does anyone else. Secret charges with secret witnesses against any Russian citizen are absolutely unacceptable to me. All the facts currently known about Safronov’s case indicate that he is being persecuted for his journalistic work. Overall, what is happening certainly looks like part of a campaign to persecute everyone who says or writes something officials dislike.
Any criticism of Safronov’s work that follows has nothing to do with the substance of his persecution and should not affect our position.
And one more disclaimer. Both Ivan’s text and mine use the word “journalists” a lot. In Russia, any discussion using that word is an overgeneralization.
Journalism is a great thing. The media are a basic institution of any normal society. A key one—for fighting corruption and enabling political competition. But—I think everyone will agree—it’s important to remember the context.
In our country, 95% of the people whose employment record says “journalist” are simply people who lie for money. And they’re very different, and they lie in different ways.
Presumably, Ivan, your pompous letter wasn’t referring to them. Although when it comes to RT, we obviously disagree.
But the remaining 5% are very different too. Very smart. Very stupid. Lazy and hardworking. Honest and crooked. In other words, people like any other—journalists, lumberjacks, lawyers, politicians.
And with many of them, frankly, it’s impossible to tell.
There was once a journalist named Yury Pronko. Very good. It was precisely on his program that the phrase “United Russia is the party of crooks and thieves” was born. Then Yury Pronko got worse, and I stopped going on his show. He was indignant and repeated the favorite phrase of your whole crowd, Ivan: Navalny is picking fights with journalists.
Now Yury Pronko works for the Tsargrad TV channel. Is he still a journalist, or have we struck him from the honorary list? If so, from what point exactly—from when I started arguing with him, or only after I stopped?
And Katya everything-was-so-good-until-navalny-showed-up Vinokurova? Is she a journalist? Probably for you, yes. For me—not really.
And—to be completely honest—sometimes I have nightmares that I’m a journalist too. After all, all day long I’m either writing, filming, or broadcasting. I gather information, process it, and distribute it. If I did all that very badly and got paid for it, then I’d definitely be a journalist; but as it is, of course not.
So we need to narrow down and define the group of people I actually want to address—the group you clearly represent in your passionate letter.
This is the part of the journalistic community obsessed with guarding the perimeter of “journalistic exceptionalism.” For you, these are practically the rules of life: — journalism is a profession that places you above everyone else and beyond criticism; — only a journalist may criticize a journalist; — if someone from outside criticizes a journalist, everyone must rise up and attack the insolent offender; — if a politician criticizes a journalist, then ATTENTION RED ALERT THE FACEBOOK MILITIA IS HEREBY MOBILIZED; — if everyone understands that the journalist is being criticized fairly, then afterward the critic should be told, condescendingly, your favorite saying: Old man, come on, you know how it is. Fighting with journalists is like shearing a pig. Lots of squealing, very little wool. Even if the journalist is wrong, don’t mess with us—it’ll only get worse for you; — a press card is a sacred document that opens the doors of the police van; — the arrest of an ordinary person is a hundred times less important than the arrest of a journalist; — the quality of journalism doesn’t matter much to those great people who, like Prometheus, bring information to the masses; — and most importantly: society, politicians, everyone and everything owe journalists and should feel grateful to them. Journalists, meanwhile, have only one obligation—to inform. While switching between the status of “activist/not activist” depending on convenience and circumstances.
That last rule was perfectly formulated by another Ivan—Kolpakov, your colleague and boss—under circumstances known to everyone.
Tens of thousands of people were preparing to come out to a spontaneous rally in Moscow to protest police lawlessness. Scoundrels planted drugs on Ivan Golunov. And there are thousands of such Ivans across the country. The situation stirred everyone. Journalists called on people to come out and protest. It was a real chance to review thousands of convictions. To change law-enforcement practice. The authorities got scared. Golunov was released, and secret negotiations were held with journalists. And then those same journalists suddenly wrote: don’t come to tomorrow’s rally. We will not call for an unauthorized protest. We got our guy back, and we don’t want to do activism. Thanks, everyone, you’re free to go.
We got our guy back. That’s the essence of it all. Our guys—we get them back. Journalism serves the interests of journalists. A corporation. Mutual support, collective cover. There’s nothing inherently bad about that, by the way. Of course you have to get your own guys back. Professional solidarity is great. So let’s introduce a term for it: we-got-our-guy-back journalism. WOGGB journalism, and its prophets, the WOGGB crowd.
Ivan, thank you for reading the disclaimer to the end. It’s very important to me that you understand I’m responding not only to you—a cowardly, dishonest person—but to the entire wonderful WOGGB community, which long ago lost any journalistic qualification yet still demands that everyone snap to attention before it.
WOGGB journalism destroys real journalism just as much as state censorship and oligarchic censorship do. That’s what I want to say.
Reader, let’s hurry and read Ivan’s post before your outrage at my calling Golunov a dishonest man cools off. I want you to feel your emotions turn into surprise: why, he really is a dishonest man. That will definitely happen.
Here is the post.
A detailed breakdown. Supporting links. A beautiful conclusion at the end.
Or rather: at the end there are 5,000 likes and hundreds of comments and reposts from the profession’s most “respected and worthy” representatives. Everyone is thrilled. A spectacle. In one voice they marvel at how skillfully Golunov flattened me into the asphalt. How neatly he laid everything out. How he left me not a single chance. “Vanechka ❤️.” People with radiant faces have merged in ecstasy with Margarita Simonyan’s columnists and are thanking Ivan for finally putting me in my place.
And I read Ivan’s post carefully, click the links, and realize the scale of the disaster. It really is time to despair. We are at rock bottom and below. People whose job is to “fact-check,” to “verify, unlike bloggers,” turn out to be a gathering of indescribable fools incapable of simply reading a paragraph of text and understanding what it says.
After all, many people actually clicked the links. How can anyone later convince them that journalism is an important and respected profession?
Of course, I realize that many people liked the post because “Navalny thinks too highly of himself.” A perfectly legitimate reason to hit like. Or maybe they liked the idea that “he thinks he can do without journalists, and we’ll prove he can’t.” Or maybe just the pompous ending: “journalists are not your servants, they serve readers.” At that point I almost liked it myself.
And most importantly: although I do not share the view that because Safronov has been arrested, everyone must instantly forget his last place of work and start calling him “Russia’s best journalist,” I understand that position very well. After all, a year ago I myself wrote a whole series of posts saying that Ivan Golunov was one of Russia’s best investigative reporters, even though inside ACF we have an internal joke: “Ivan Golunov knows ten ways to ruin any investigation.” And I believe I was absolutely right to do so: Ivan was in mortal danger, he wasn’t working for Rogozin, he was doing good work and no harm.
But—holy mother of God—how can you, as a journalist, link to this and write “good breakdown” or “put the materials together well”?
This is no different at all from the “investigation” by “journalist” Oleg Lurie claiming that I received one million euros for organizing the protests in Khabarovsk. The lie is absolutely identical in scale. Equally shameful.
Actually no—in Golunov’s case it’s much more shameful, of course.
And if, my dear WOGGB people, you all like the “just the facts” and “laid out neatly” format so much, then let me use it today. I’ll give you a master class.
Alexei, could you clarify where you learned about the Khrunichev plant being redeveloped with “luxury housing and some giant rocket”? Of course, from a Kommersant article signed by Ivan Safronov.
Ivan, sure, I can clarify—no problem. I acquired the secret knowledge about the “giant rocket”-shaped office on the grounds of the Khrunichev plant in a unique way. On a cold, gloomy day, February 22, 2019, I secretly logged onto the global Internet and... found D. O. Rogozin there. That day he was giving a press conference attended by approximately every media outlet in the country. There he personally described and, believe it or not, even showed the rocket-office project that we all laughed at together. On the very day of the press conference, detailed reports were published by (shall we count them on our fingers?) the Roscosmos press office, Vedomosti, RBC, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Esquire magazine, RIA Novosti, and LifeNews. Segments were broadcast on Channel One and on Rossiya 24, and everywhere they discussed the rocket office in detail and marveled at it.
The “Kommersant article signed by Ivan Safronov” came out three days later. And four days after that, someone else’s article appeared. And from 2018 to the present day, hundreds more articles about this construction project have been published. So, to answer your question as precisely as possible, as if in court: I learned about the redevelopment of the Khrunichev plant from Dmitry Olegovich Rogozin himself, who explained everything and even showed the pictures.
I’m amazed that you managed to Google Safronov’s article but somehow failed to find the reports from three dozen media outlets that came out three days earlier. I doubt that, as one of Russia’s investigative journalists, you don’t know how to use date-based news search. Of course you do. So the only conclusion is that you simply made this story up. You wrote, purely for effect, that I “OF COURSE” learned about the reconstruction of the Khrunichev design bureau from Safronov.
You did it knowing that your fool-of-a-colleagues in the WOGGB camp would swallow it, because they are very bad, incompetent journalists. But I want everyone else to know and see it too: Golunov is a liar.
Let’s move on, and we run into the same problem again: shameless substitution of links and facts. After all, no one is actually going to click the links, right, Ivan? So the bait-and-switch gets repeated several times.
Many of your posts about Russia’s military-industrial complex are based on articles written by Ivan Safronov. Including the accident on the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft (Navalny. Safronov) https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/3738617 https://youtu.be/u2OL3rRHUa4?t=427
Here, under the word “Navalny,” Ivan has hidden a fragment of Sobol’s news program from September 2019 and claims that it is “based on” a Safronov article from 2018. Strange already, isn’t it?
But if you click the links, your eyes practically pop out. Lyuba’s news segment about Rogozin “knowing the cause of the Soyuz accident but not saying it” is a RIA Novosti item. Safronov’s article, published a year earlier, says that Roscosmos suspects the hole was deliberately drilled by Americans. And, as in all his articles about Roscosmos, Safronov is clearly pushing Rogozin’s line. In other words, he was already acting as Rogozin’s PR man back then. These are two completely different articles, a year apart. But according to Golunov, Lyuba learned about the hole in the ISS specifically from Safronov. Even though Safronov’s article came out two weeks after the incident, and by then literally everyone had written about the accident, including Rogozin himself. The first to report the leak was Interfax, around noon on August 30, 2018—two weeks before Safronov. But apparently we’re still supposed to be grateful to him.
Are you at least starting to agree with me that Golunov is a “dishonest little man”? Let’s keep going. It gets worse.
Here’s Golunov’s next set of links. Apparently I copied something about the Mistrals from the genius journalist Safronov. Let’s just click the links.
And about the purchase of the Mistrals https://navalny.com/p/3778/ https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/1350224
My post “Bad Mistral, Good Mistral” is from 2014, and it’s about the Defense Ministry abruptly changing its mind about buying Mistrals after France refused to sell them to us. Some deputy called them “tin cans.” That’s it. But you, journalist Ivan Golunov, link to a 2010 Kommersant article that simply says the Mistrals will be purchased—nothing more. What’s more, the article is NOT SIGNED by Ivan Safronov; he is not listed as the author. Do you really take your readers for complete idiots? What connection is there between my post and that Kommersant article, other than the word “Mistral”?
In my post, I express my view of that deal. I criticize it. I explain how the Defense Ministry hypocritically changed its position on the Mistrals. Safronov wrote nothing about that. But the stupid WOGGB crowd keeps writing that “Safronov did deep investigations into the military-industrial complex.” Where are these investigations? Maybe he’s a good friend and a pleasant person to you, but when it came to the Defense Ministry and the military-industrial complex, he mostly just rewrote press releases.
Moving on. What else did I supposedly copy from Safronov?
And about Rosoboronzakaz https://navalny.com/t/1023/ http://kommersant.ru/doc/2485295
This is outright mockery. Just open my post and everything becomes clear. It begins with the words “people are asking me.” In other words, I was asked a question about the dismantling of Rosoboronzakaz, which Kommersant had written about. Read the article, and once again you’ll see that here too Ivan Safronov is working for Rogozin, this time defending him against Shoigu.
Having very few warm feelings toward Shoigu, I explain that in this case he is right. Rosoboronzakaz is garbage. This falls within ACF’s area of expertise, since we file complaints about public procurement. I answered a question about something I understand. But according to Golunov, that means I used Safronov’s article for my own articles/investigations. I honestly don’t know what else to add.
In all these cases, Golunov uses the same dishonest trick. “Ivan Safronov wrote that the sky is blue, therefore from now on, whenever we describe the sky, we are obliged to thank Ivan Safronov for his work.”
But here he goes even further. In the post and in the comments, you, Ivan, write that Sobol’s investigations into the Vostochny Cosmodrome are also based on Safronov’s articles.
This isn’t even falsification anymore. It’s just a lie, plain and simple. And he didn’t even bother with fake links this time. Because Ivan Safronov wrote nothing about corruption at Vostochny that was worth paying attention to. A couple of times he reported on investigations against Spetsstroy when... (I’m sure you’ve already guessed) Rogozin was criticizing Spetsstroy.
Sobol herself analyzed this part in detail. For several months she fanatically did the most boring job in the world: sitting on the public procurement website and analyzing tenders connected with Vostochny.
When I read this part of your post, Ivan, I realized: unfortunately, I would probably have to respond. I simply cannot allow some worthless liars to leave posts all over the vast expanses of the world wide interweb claiming that we copy investigations from a person who has nothing whatsoever to do with this subject.
You, Ivan Golunov, are a journalist. You write about the “context and information you learned from him.” Well, Sobol did the work to determine the “context” created by Safronov. Unfortunately, that work proved beyond you and the other WOGGB people. She read every piece Safronov wrote containing the word “Roscosmos.” Anyone who does that will come to the same conclusion: for a long time, Ivan Safronov consistently worked for Rogozin, praising him in his articles. Did he do it for money? I don’t know. Did he simply fall under the spell of his bosses? I don’t know. Did Rogozin repay Safronov with a government post and an official Mercedes? I don’t know that either.
I know one thing: anyone who claims that Safronov could have “investigated” anything in this area and that ACF could have learned something from him should be immediately smacked in the face with a stack of Kommersant newspapers still wet with saliva from licking dear Dmitry Olegovich’s boots.
And now, my favorite pair of links. My blood really started boiling at this point. And this post—which many will call aggressive and intemperate—became inevitable:
And about the spectacular career of Roscosmos chief’s son, Alexei Rogozin https://navalny.com/p/5881/ https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/3241600
We publish an investigation showing that Rogozin’s little son, Alexei Rogozin—whom his daddy had placed in government service while he was still barely grown up—was buying himself an Audi A7 for 8.5 million rubles in public funds.
At the time, for reasons no one could explain, he had been appointed head of Ilyushin and decided that his bureaucratic carcass could only be transported in a top-of-the-line Audi. But buy it with his own money? Of course not. The car was purchased with funds from a state-owned company.
Now let’s open Golunov’s link. Let’s see where, in his view, we copied this from. And there we find a bluntly rewritten UAC press release about the appointment of the younger Rogozin to the post. And that’s all. Literally. So-and-so was appointed to such-and-such position. And this article, AGAIN, is signed not by Safronov but by the “business desk.” What exactly am I supposed to thank Safronov for? For the fact that while supposedly “covering the military-industrial complex and Roscosmos,” he didn’t write a single word about how our space program was, for some reason, headed by an MSU journalism graduate, and aircraft manufacturing by his little son? For the fact that Safronov did everything he could not to notice this, and was ultimately rewarded for it?
The Kommersant article:
The UAC press release:
Ivan Safronov, by the way, wrote a completely different article on this subject, but it too is filled with hymns to the professionalism of the younger Rogozin.
These are examples of the worst journalism and outright political prostitution, yet Golunov pops up and declares: Navalny got this information from Safronov. And a whole crowd of idiot WOGGB people squawks: yes, yes, exactly, Golunov laid it all out perfectly.
Once again: the quality of Safronov’s articles has nothing to do with his case. It changes absolutely nothing. Secret charges for journalistic activity are a threat to society.
Even so, let’s not confuse objectivity with whitewashing. Let’s not confuse “impartial journalism” with omitting key details about the people and companies you write about.
How can anyone write about Rogozin and his “space achievements” without ever mentioning that Rogozin himself is a walking illustration of corruption? That billions are stolen under his leadership? That he himself becomes the owner of, for example, a 350-square-meter apartment acquired through an extremely murky scheme involving offshore companies and oligarchs. Or a country house worth 200 million rubles. Or that his father, at age 77, buys the neighboring country house for another 150 million.
Rogozin is a corrupt and incompetent official. He receives tens of millions a year from our taxes for his useless work. And without that information, no coverage of his activities by Safronov can be objective. By definition. This is an absolutely obvious point, an axiom, a genuine journalistic dogma. We at ACF wrote about it. Safronov stayed silent. And if you, Ivan Golunov, have decided to become such a blabbermouth that you claim otherwise, then I will draw my flaming sword, even at the cost of yet another round of whining that “Navalny is fighting with journalists again.” You’re not journalists at all. You’re WOGGB people.
Unlike Ivan, I’ll be completely honest and say that Golunov’s list of links does include some valid examples. Ivan Safronov published items about the secret awarding of orders to Chemezov and Kiriyenko. I really did tweet about that. Guilty on all counts. And about Sergei Chemezov being awarded the title “Hero of Russia” https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1179402860368408578 https://www.vedomosti.ru/…/2…/10/01/812610-sergeyu-chemezovu And about Sergei Kiriyenko being decorated https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1014786533361152000 https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/3676874
And our Moscow headquarters cited a Safronov article in one of its investigations. We’re very proud, by the way, that our regional offices, where there are no journalists, constantly produce excellent investigations entirely without ACF’s help. They learned how on their own.
Only now that I’m being reproached for tweeting links to journalists’ articles, I have an important question for you, Ivan, and for your colleagues who so furiously liked your post.
— Guys, do you know what takes up about 30 percent of my working time?
Reading your messages:
— Hey, could you tweet a link to my article, please? — I did an interview, but no one’s watching it—could you promote it? — Could you mention my piece, please? — Can you share it on Facebook, or better yet on VK too? — Could you tag me on Instagram as well? — And could you forward it to your Telegram channel too?
I read all this and I share, tweet, comment, promote—and I do it constantly.
And no one owes me gratitude for that. It’s not a favor. It’s my job and my duty as a politician. If I have an information platform, then I share it, because we live under censorship.
And if I don’t do that, what use am I at all?
And I really like tweeting, promoting, and sharing. And my followers know it: Navalny reads everything and tweets and shares the most interesting things. That’s why I have a lot of followers.
And I’ll keep tweeting/sharing/reposting, but—damn—it’s a strange situation when it turns out that I somehow owe something to the people whose articles I mention.
Ivan, do you want me to stop linking to your articles? I’m afraid the only consequence will be that no one will read them.
ATTENTION, A QUESTION FOR EVERYONE. Try to answer honestly. Have you read even one article by Ivan Golunov? Not in another outlet’s retelling, not in a tweet, not as a headline or subheadline. I mean actually opening “A Golunov Investigation” and reading it to the end.
Your honest answer: no.
No one reads Golunov. I think not even Meduza’s editors read him. Because although Ivan has learned how to use three databases, he writes in such a way that reading his text is like watching a cat being sawn apart with a chainsaw. Only if you’re tied to a chair and your eyes are pried open with a special device.
It’s just a heap of data. An endless, monotonous description of the contents of the Unified State Register of Legal Entities or the SPARK database. An ordinary person simply cannot understand it or make sense of it. So when I wrote about your investigations, Ivan, I briefly retold them. Like here.
And it seemed like everything was fine. Ivan wrote as best he could. I retold it for a large audience. Everyone was happy. But now it turns out that I somehow owe Ivan Golunov for his magnificent links.
I remember when Meduza was launching, I really wanted to help it and kept posting links to it constantly. If I’m not mistaken, traffic from my blog amounted to whole percentage points. Just imagine—if they send me a bill for that now, I’ll never be able to pay it off.
Although maybe we should start offsetting accounts? Here’s Meduza, where you work, Ivan, writing a news item based on my Instagram, inserting my photo, and advertising a house with a sauna in it (though I suppose that’s just contextual advertising and the algorithm knows I want to tell all of you to go take a hike—literally, “go to the bathhouse” in Russian).
Should Ivan Kolpakov thank me, and should Galina Timchenko give me part of the sauna ad revenue? Or has the ideal world of WOGGB journalism decreed that first I owe you for all the links of yours that I posted, then I owe you for all my materials that you used, and for every use of my surname in a headline I owe you something too?
I would still prefer to go on living in a world where no one owes anyone anything. If I’m a normal politician and a normal person, I gladly share your links to interesting material. And you, as a normal media outlet, write about whatever you want.
And here I have to say something about an important pillar of WOGGB journalism: “bloggers and journalists.” In his post, Ivan takes a swipe at “clever bloggers” and praises the hardworking journalists whose work supposedly supplies the news.
But Ivan’s best and truly brilliant statement—his manifesto, you might say—is down in the comments.
One surprised person, who actually did click the links, asks specifically about the episode involving Rogozin’s son: Safronov’s article is flattering and basically just a press release. How can you compare it to an ACF investigation?
To which Ivan Golunov, puffing himself up to the size of a large toad from the jungles of South America, informs us all: don’t forget that you might never have learned this fact at all.
Thank you, dear father. A deep bow to you, my falcon. God grant health to you and to everyone who rewrites press releases. We kiss on the sweet lips all those who read tweets on Twitter and then wrote us an article about them. Your feat will not be forgotten. First we’ll hold a parade in honor of the Great Patriotic War (the Soviet term for World War II), and then an even more solemn one in honor of those without whom we would never have learned about news on the internet.
Dear Ivan and dear WOGGB journalists. Your journalism has long since become nothing more than stealing news from clever bloggers.
— Alexei, we read your Twitter and wrote an article about what you wrote on Twitter. Here’s the link. Could you tweet on Twitter the article about what you wrote on your Twitter? So that Twitter users can learn about what you wrote on your Twitter.
That is 90% of your journalism and of the content on your websites.
And there’s nothing to be done about it. That’s life. And what do I do? What is my weekly show made of? I sit there for an hour and a half discussing who said what and who wrote what where.
Are we seriously going to be discussing “journalists and bloggers” in 2020? Then let me explain to you, Ivan, how the world works.
It is big and diverse. It is full of people. Many write well. Many take excellent photographs. Many are funny. Many do interesting things. Many happen to be in places where events unfold. And some of them work as journalists.
It’s like cooking. There are a million chefs in the world. And two billion people cook every day. Obviously, a hundred million of those who cook only for their families do it better than most chefs. But it’s also clear that among chefs there are a thousand who cook divinely.
The modern world gives everyone the ability to receive and distribute information. Journalists snatch up pieces of it, publish them, and make a living from it. Good journalists look for hidden information. Or do a great job of systematizing open information. Most news, texts, photos, and videos are produced not by journalists or bloggers at all, but simply by people who have talent or got lucky. Do we learn everything about what’s happening in Khabarovsk from journalists? Of course not. We learn it from TikTok, Instagram, and broadcasts by “Navalny HQ.” Though some of it comes from the news as well.
You often hear this: ordinary people just write things, but we—journalists—bear responsibility and verify.
Ivan Golunov’s post shows us perfectly that this is complete nonsense. A man calling himself an “investigative journalist” deliberately lied in every word of his “fact-checking” post, and a bunch of his colleagues are simply too stupid and incompetent to understand that.
There are no such things as “clever bloggers.” There are simply people from different professions who share information. Some are trusted. Others are trusted less. Starting today, Ivan, far fewer people will trust you.
As for Ivan’s aside about me as a vice governor and his remembering some reaction of mine—it’s awkward even to discuss.
Well, if you remember it—then say it. Go on, spit it out.
I’m not writing, “I remember perfectly well what Meduza’s parties are like,” or “I know perfectly well how your outlet is financed.” I don’t remember, I don’t know, I haven’t the slightest idea.
Just the usual meaningful-sounding lie.
In Ivan’s post and in the reaction to it from the journalistic community—both the normal part and the WOGGB part—I sense irritation at the fact that I criticize and lecture journalists. And they get offended, jealous of the audience, and so on.
Let me explain. First, about investigations.
Russian journalists are as far from ACF’s investigations as the Moon. The best of them are as far away as the Moon; Golunov is as far away as Mars.
And I write this as someone whose personal role in producing investigations often comes down to saying: let’s check this guy, he has such a nasty face, I can feel he’s a crook. The investigations are done by a team, and it’s a very good team.
And there’s nothing to be offended by here, and we’re not being arrogant. It’s just the nature of the work. This is our specialty. We investigate whatever we want. We often have no deadlines. We’re not afraid of the authorities or their lawyers. We don’t need to work with advertisers or get grants. We don’t have to churn out 20 news items a day like any media outlet does. We don’t need to write news.
Yes, a few times a year people in balaclavas run into our office and seize everything inside, but overall our work is easier than that of the media.
Everyone has their own advantages.
I can’t inhabit the camera as naturally as Parfyonov.
I couldn’t organize the routine, exhausting courtroom live streams that Mediazona does.
I can’t conduct interviews like Dud.
I couldn’t run a large newsroom the way Timchenko does—newsrooms which, as we know, always tend to turn into a nest of snakes.
I’m not going to build a huge niche media outlet like Sports.ru.
I doubt I could build a major radio station like the one Venediktov had.
I put commas wherever I feel like it, and my texts are full of typos. In that respect, just about any journalism school graduate would beat me.
And so on, and so on.
But at ACF (the Anti-Corruption Foundation), we did manage to assemble the best team—one that conducts investigations, shoots video, packages it all with strong design, distributes it, handles the legal work, and raises money to support all of it.
And, by the way, we can see this is a broader trend. For example, great investigations are being done by Bellingcat and the CIT Team, who, generally speaking, aren’t really journalists at all.
Any media outlet that tried to do investigations at our level would simply go bankrupt.
Now, as for journalism and whether I’m in a position to give advice about it.
Dear OHP people and you, Ivan. I’ve written more texts in my life than any of you. I’ve written and filmed more scripts than any of you. And the audience for my journalism-like work is bigger than all of yours put together.
So yes, I am going to lecture you about journalism. There are 5% of journalists—journalists in general, not just OHP ones—whom I myself would listen to with my mouth hanging open. There’s another 15% with whom it’s genuinely interesting to discuss everything. But 80% of the journalistic community could stand to listen to my advice as well. Sorry for the immodesty.
If I may, Ivan, I’m not going to go into the part of your post about “push the one who’s falling.”
You and everyone else understand perfectly well that after what Meduza did in its coverage of the “Network case” (a high-profile Russian terrorism case), all of its journalists should respond to the phrase “push the one who’s falling” by modestly keeping quiet for 15 to 20 minutes.
And finally, about “the help” or “the service staff.” The most important part of Ivan’s post. I think that to those who’ve read this far, it no longer seems quite so grand or impressive.
The idea was to “tear me apart with facts and then draw a moral.” What actually happened was just lie after lie after lie.
People should be judged by their actions. When journalists report honestly, they are not servants. But when Elizaveta Osetinskaya, Galina Timchenko, Ivan Kolpakov, and whoever else go into an official’s office and help him neutralize the tens of thousands who are ready to come out into the streets for Golunov and for everyone else—that is a service rendered to that official.
I get it. A difficult decision. A terrible compromise. No one knows what the right thing to do is. A human life is at stake.
But damn it. You were calling everyone to the barricades. And then some guy sits there and says: yes, we planted drugs on this man, and people got upset. Bit of a problem. Help us solve that little problem, and we’ll let him go. The other guys, though—we’ll leave them where they are.
And that service to the villains was provided. And to this day, no one knows what kind of compromise or deal was made there. It has become an ongoing service that journalists are rendering to the people who plant drugs on others.
And you, dear journalists, all need to understand that the broad movement to defend Ivan Safronov was killed a year before Ivan Safronov was arrested. It was killed by the people who said: we got our guy back, thanks everyone, you can all go home now—we’re not activists.
A service is when you, Ivan, go on RT or appear on the same discussion panel as people from Roskomnadzor (Russia’s state media and internet regulator) and Sergei Brilyov, and say there: "Russia is a fairly pleasant country for journalists."
At that exact moment, you become the help. And not the readers’ help, either.
Your arrest was a dramatic moment in your life. And a dramatic moment for the country. But it is not an indulgence for the future.
Few people know that you, Ivan Golunov, have already cleared the FSB officers of the accusation that they planted drugs on you. They’ve been slandered. They’re victims themselves. Let’s hurry up and embrace them.
Well, would you look at that. Journalists across Russia worked hard and produced joint investigations proving these FSB officers’ ties to the funeral mafia. At ACF, we simply put together a hard-hitting investigation on it in two days.
But Ivan talked to a couple of people and found out that it wasn’t like that at all. And he’s not going to tell us anything about it.
You know, had a little chat with the operatives.
Doesn’t that remind you of anything?
After your “proofs and breakdowns,” Ivan, there is one thing we know for certain about you: you lie a lot. You provide links, say they’re evidence, and inside there’s falsehood. So from this point on, I’m going to do the same myself, and I urge others to do it too: if there’s a link to state procurement records in a Golunov article, it needs to be checked. If there are “sources,” don’t believe a single word. It’s entirely possible that the stuff about the “operatives” is a lie too. Another service rendered. I hope not. But I can no longer take Golunov at his word.
To end my post—which is obviously far too intemperate in tone and unbecoming of a politician—I should probably say something conciliatory. So I will:
To hell with your OHP journalism. And to hell with journalism for journalists, too. And with your special status—same place. And with the ban on criticizing journalists. With all of that, you have done and continue to do more harm to our society than Roskomnadzor.
We will judge everyone by their actions. Bad pizza—we don’t buy it. Bad taxi driver—we don’t ride with him and we leave a review. Bad politician—we don’t support him. A politician who used to be good but sold out—we don’t support him. A journalist lies—we stop believing his articles. Journalists write supportive posts without checking what’s actually inside—we consider them incompetent idiots. There is no evidence that Safronov is a spy—we demand his release.
We don’t care about your press IDs, your employment records, or the fact that your mother took you to journalism school when you were 17. You are the same as the rest of us. With the same set of rights and obligations. With the same feelings. Journalism is just a job—one as important as any other. It needs to be done well.
All people are equal—that will be the guiding ideology of the Beautiful Russia of the Future.