to russia with savvy

The war in Chechnya may turn out to be the undoing of Boris Yeltsin, but it has been the proving ground of Russia's new independent television news organizations. Independent stations have been sprouting up in the former Soviet Union since 1990 and have provided an alternative to the government-controlled coverage since the war broke out in 1994 by sending their own correspondents and carrying foreign broadcasts. They have also broken a number of important stories that would formerly have been quashed -- for instance, that the bombing of Grozny, the Chechen capital, was continuing after President Yeltsin announced that it had stopped.

The success of the independent stations in Russia is due, at least in part, to
 Internews, a private American nonprofit organization that has been boosting non-governmental media in Russia and the other former Soviet republics since 1992. The independent coverage in Chechnya, says Paul Greenberg, an Internews director of training, "is a real example of where Internews has had an effect."

Powered by grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the financier/philanthropist George Soros, Internews has provided professional, technical, and financial assistance to more than 300 independent stations in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, as well as former republics in the Caucasus and Central Asia. More than 2,000 journalists, producers, and station managers have attended Internews workshops on subjects ranging from the "basics of good journalism" to programming, management techniques, and attracting advertisers.

Though Internews has been spared the ax so far in this time of government cutbacks, it is unlikely to keep its current level of financing for more than a couple of years, says Greenberg. Nevertheless, it has begun to expand its services to the Balkans and Palestine and is considering moving on to Africa and Haiti.

The California-based organization was founded in the early 1980s by David Hoffman, a union organizer experienced in fundraising, and the documentary filmmakers and news producers Kim Spencer and Evelyn Messinger. From 1987 to 1990, Internews cooperated with ABC News to create the Emmy Award-winning series "Capital to Capital," which linked U.S. and Soviet national lawmakers by satellite to discuss superpower relations.

 Since its first attempts to aid the emerging independent media in Russia, the primary goal of Internews has been to promote "ethical conduct" and professionalism, said Vincent Malmgren, who is the organization's director of operations. Its offices in Moscow and Kiev, Ukraine, provide training and production facilities for journalists and, in cooperation with member stations, produce nationally broadcast news programs.

Internews has also helped in the formation of the Independent Broadcasting System, an affiliation of 115 stations across the former Soviet Union that is believed to have the potential to reach 112 million viewers. Along with sharing programming, the network has already hooked such big-money advertisers as Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, Revlon, Cadbury Schweppes, and Procter & Gamble. According to Internews's associate director for broadcast media, Sheldon Markoff, TV advertising in all of Russia in 1995 could be as high as $800 million, up from $550 million in 1994.

One of the major new initiatives at Internews is the media development program, whose tasks have included developing standardized audience research in Russia -- critical to attracting advertisers. A recent Internews-sponsored polling of twenty-two cities indicated that independent stations are indeed keeping up with state stations.

Outside the news realm, much of the programming on independent television has improved little from its early days of broadcasting pirated MTV and B-grade American movies. Programs like The Love Boat and The Bold and the Beautiful, which are cheap, easy to get, and tend to attract Western advertisers, often clog independent airwaves. "Ultimately," Malmgren says, "I would like to see these stations producing their own programs." In the meantime, he says, he's not worried about the junk-food programming. "They survived seventy years of Communism," he says. "They'll survive McDonald's."

Perhaps the greatest challenge currently facing the Russian news media is how to cover the presidential election -- especially the campaign of the popular Communist leader Gennadi A. Zyuganov, which segments of the Russian media appear to have largely ignored. Internews has held workshops on campaign coverage during past parliamentary elections, but is avoiding such activities for the presidential campaign. Persephone Miel, who works for Internews in Moscow, said the organization had been urged by both USAID and the U.S. embassy in Moscow not to become involved. The independent stations themselves, of course, are free to cover the campaign as they see fit. Having pledged to remain objective, they are faced with trying to report disinterestedly on a figure whose election, many fear, could prove disastrous to freedom of the press.

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