“It seems to me that our journalists have lost the taste for in-depth work”

“Journalism is a broad notion. There is the journalism which informs us about the most essential things, the journalism which builds. And there is the journalism which grazes. It can be truthful or mendacious.

“The one which informs and orients must essentially be objective, diagnostic, and competent. It is reliable: ‘According to the correspondent of such and such newspaper,...’ A newspaper that is relied on is also prestigious, and this is due to the high level of its journalists.

“The journalism that builds requires talent, imagination, and erudition. The one that grazes, grazes on the grass and motives of today: cheap, foul sensations, and canards. It seeks to please the mass reader or TV viewer. In my opinion, it is a great threat, this street journalism, when it is grazing, and also when it parasitizes on petty, adventure, and criminal stories and when it raises trifle questions concerning some scandal, be it in the political or cultural life. There is a certain category of journalists who are only interested in cultural life as long as it provides them with side scandals.

“Now I am sometimes asked if the Soviet journalism had its own advantages. There used to be party pressure. This pressure placed a journalist into a rigid framework. You were allowed to ask certain questions but could not ask others. Or you were allowed to cover a hackneyed topic but could not touch the most interesting one. In that layer, there also were tiny cracks, and there was some flirting with the forbidden themes. The reader was very sensitive to hints and implications.

“Now, we have freedom. There are no forbidden topics. Meanwhile, this freedom has not reached deep or high. It is just space. There are not many journalists that can rise that high. For example, we reprinted, in the newspaper Nasha Vira, an article by the journalist Anatolii Striliany on what it takes to be a true president. He considers Viktor Yushchenko a true president.

“In what way is this journalist’s view special? Firstly, that he is really ‘striliany’ – an old stager, as they say. He has been through thick and thin, this critical journalist of Novy Mir. He can put questions, and he can see them. This is not just a matter of experience — it is a peculiar experience of the critical realization of the visible.

“Striliany is from that cohort of journalists who undermined the foundations of the red empire. I guess that the opposition to Putin is the continuation of his anti-Soviet retrospections, in which he decoded the symptoms and revealed the concealed.

“Nowadays there is a young generation of journalists who have never heard of the struggle against censorship. However, it has a lot of problems.

“Speaking of the young, they have at least to learn from the aces how they can put questions. The young, inexperienced journalists tend to ask about venality and integrity. Meanwhile, everyone is very well aware whom s/he serves. However, it is not an intellectual challenge. It is a matter of formal methods. Of course, a venal journalist will never make a real journalist. He will invent all sorts of likelihood, imitate journalist freedom, but he will never be a researcher.

“If you consider an incorruptible journalist, it is a more interesting theme. What’s the point of discussing one who is corrupt, if we know that the fish is hooked and now can only writhe and wriggle. However, if you speak of an incorruptible journalist, this also is an ambiguous figure. His integrity has to be based on some sublime principles and goals. If he is neither fish nor fowl, there is no point in speaking of independence. And it’s absolutely different if a person sacrifices his talent on the altar of truth.

“It seems to me that our journalists have lost the taste for in-depth work. It is the post-modern era that is to blame for this, because it feeds us with TV pictures and newsreels providing only some scanty information with a taste of scandal. There are virtually no deep, eternal questions. Such problems are out of style, they are pushed out into the periphery of our society.

“A journalist has to be a well-read person who understands a lot and who is always daring. Journalism is a form of intellectual power somewhere out there, while in this country it appears to be only a servant.

“The primitive division into good guys and bad guys used to make things much easier. Now, a journalist must be perfectly well-oriented in the psychological war being waged on our planet. The world has become a lot meaner than it used to be.

“In Soviet times, masks were all uniform, and they were not many. Now, there are lots of different masks. The mask market is very resourceful. There even is an entire industry serving various temptations, as there used to be an industry which served various weapons. It is still around in our time, but back then it was an ideological war. Industry works on the market of psychological war. It justifies all means, as it is very hard to catch the thief. Who knows which way the wind blows and who’s set the ball rolling?

“That’s why our journalist must be armed, first of all, with some deeper principles, knowledge, and a sense of what is true.

“Since our informational space is dominated by the Russian mass media, the Russian viewpoints naturally prevail. We have also to specify what a Russian viewpoint is. The Kremlin’s viewpoint is one thing, while the viewpoint of the people who find it stifling to live in Russia is different. It is hard for them to live in this space. That is to say, speaking of a ‘Russian viewpoint,’ I mean one cunningly contrived by the relevant institutions.

“They will not hide. They come here as if it was their own home. Five years ago, they were very indiscreet. Now they have arrived at the conclusion that they should provoke old sins: despair, contempt, and negativism.

“Our journalists, poor devils, like to pick up the problems imposed by the aliens and raise them as ‘fresh.’ It would be interesting to look into what questions were made in the anti-Ukrainian center, which never stops working. It is clear as day that all those questions aim at creating a depressive atmosphere and discrediting the Orange Revolution and its main character, Yushchenko. They are all very well designed, and all are constantly repeated in various forms and shapes. Our journalists are captured by those questions. They will not be able to get free unless they have their own developed space and visions. Every time they wonder and ask hackneyed questions: Is it worth spending funds on what is not top-priority goods? Do we have to appeal to our historical memory? Or is it just a weakness of the president who cares for all those issues?

“My good fellows, if you are serious and thoughtful, do look for questions concerning his crucial mistakes. But you shouldn’t ask a question in the way someone prompted you in order to discredit the president’s stand in advocating national values.

“In a word, a journalist has to be intelligent to see who suggests a theme cleverly and doesn’t even pay for your services. Of course, they won’t sell their stuff to an old stager! However, they can do that to the young ones, and the latter will buy eagerly.

“This theme is certainly very painful for us. It always comes back in the form of national humiliation, beginning from the top leader of the Russian state and finishing with the scribblings of the most low-grade journalists or politicians. We have developed a manner of ignoring this for decades. One can ignore it from a position of strength or height — or from a sheepish position.

“What is important, however, is to know this and keep an eye on it, because this theme is being exploited in the Ukrainian press in various shapes or forms. It builds people’s moods and guides their consciousness. Only positive information about the world of love and good can build the man. But is it only that?

“I’ve been very unfavorably struck to see that now satanic figures are even more publicized than when they were around. Look at any newspaper or book covers — everywhere you’ll see the silhouette of either Stalin or Hitler, as if these characters are really badly needed. The figures which do not contain any depth are just good for nothing. There even isn’t any intrigue to them. The information space confines us to yesterday’s pool of dirt.

“Are we exploring any other ideas outside that pool? What is the source of the positive? So we find this positive somewhere in the past.

‘The goal of art is to hand oneself out, but not in exchange for success.’ Why don’t such words ever get quoted now?”

“There used to be a common, alphabetical truth: man is not measured by his success. Now, this alphabet is lost. Besides, it always matters what kind of truth, what one paid for it, and what the nature of this truth is.

“I am often asked if, with the arrival of the new president, there will be a growing demand for venal journalists, and if the freedom of speech is going to disappear.

“The first person, no doubt, greatly influences the climate in a state. However, in my opinion, no person can make fundamental changes. I think what has been gained over the past years in the freedom of speech is impossible to destroy.

“Ukrainian society is moving along the path of liberation and loss of fear. I think it is no easy task to cultivate fear without terror. So, there will not be a fundamental change here, but it is obvious that, through mass media, a party policy will be implemented.

“Nowadays, the BYuT demonstrates a very distinct party approach. Say, a person is speaking on a question and doesn’t allow himself to step an inch aside from the leader’s instructions or positions. This person is a servant! They are just service staff, nor an independent entity. We do not even have a personality cult as yet, but the servant is already there. And it sounds so ridiculous. For some reason, they are ‘always ready.’ And it is ridiculous. I always watch Yevgeny Kiseliov and the way he smiles at this in his show.

“The absence of a general view of events among journalists is depressing.

“I had a meeting with the journalist and ‘analyst’ Kost Bondarenko at the Youth Debate Academy. I was speaking about my vision of politics as an art of order, politics, and how it relates to morals. Nothing original. I just said that any immoral stand is eventually bound to lose. It may seem advantageous at first, but then turns out a disadvantage. The Soviets’ colossal diplomatic victories at the end of the red empire were of no consequence. In a word, I was speaking about such important things using concrete examples.

“Bondarenko and I are, of course, people of different cultures and epochs. He began speaking about how politics is made and who is who in politics. The anchorwoman said that was a deviation from the topic. On the one hand, there was the theme of ‘morals and politics.’ However, it was substituted for ‘morals of the MPs.’ Speaking of the platitude of journalism, this is exactly what it is based on. Journalists discuss the politics of cunning and unworthy individuals. And they do not discuss that from a more elevated position, containing at least an implication of the understanding of some sublime values and the weight of the country’s national interests.

“As there is not even an elementary higher level; everything results in a discussion about the behavior of unworthy individuals — hence the low level, because everything is being done either on the level of second-hand information or gossip.”