1 March 2010
11 October 2009
The Yeltsin Scandal
Who’s ruining Russian democracy? Stephen F. Cohen has long been arguing that Gorbachev was the real democrat and it all went to anti-democratic hell with Yeltsin, long before Putin turned up, or Medvedev followed.
A recent interesting media analysis by William Dunkerley, media business analyst and consultant, points to a similar argument. The media scandal, says Dunkerley is “the Western press’ inexplicably lenient treatment of the Yeltsin presidency, especially in comparison to his successors”. Some extracts:
[The Yeltsin Scandal begins with a drunken Boris Yeltsin hailing a cab in his underwear across from the White House in Washington. But that’s just the beginning. This story includes murder, unthinkable acts of military aggression, and journalistic malfeasance. At its heart, it’s really a story about the media and how they have bungled the coverage of Yeltsin and his successors. You’ll never look at media reportage of Russia in the same way!]
Over the years, Yeltsin has been characterized variously as a hero who brought down communism, as the foremost proponent of Russia’s transformation to democracy and a market economy, and as a stalwart of Russia’s free press.
Beyond that popular imagery, however, there was a less attractive side. Yeltsin presided over a looting of state assets that created a circle of newly-minted tycoons that helped to protect Yeltsin. In addition, acting against the constitution, Yeltsin dismissed the duly elected parliament. And when the members refused to go, he brought in tanks to shell the parliament building in a confrontation that ultimately claimed approximately 150 lives. Somehow he was able to win reelection in a contest where he held roughly a 5 percent approval rating going into the election season. Ultimately, Yeltsin led the country into a financial collapse near the end of his presidency.
A Closer Look at Yeltsin
As a case-in-point, I examined the New York Times coverage of Yeltsin’s shelling of the parliament in 1993. That was one of Yeltsin’s most egregious acts. The Times ran a story entitled “SHOWDOWN IN MOSCOW: Tactics; Yeltsin Attack Strategy: Bursts Followed by Lulls.” Here are some excerpts illustrating how the Times covered the story:
“The assault on the Russian Parliament building today was a textbook example of the decisive application of military power…
“And as the daylong assault went on, it was clear that Mr. Yeltsin’s commanders had decided on gradualism…
“The Russian troops were looking for Bolshoi Devyatinsky lane … where the defiant lawmakers had maintained their headquarters…
“With the outcome of the battle never in doubt, the clear preference of the military was to scare the anti-Yeltsin demonstrators into surrendering and to limit casualties…
“The only question was the number of lives that would be lost. And that was largely left up to the rebels as they were alternately bombarded with shells and appeals to surrender.”
Just note how soft this coverage is. I’m not taking sides on whether Yeltsin’s actions were appropriate or not. But, the Yeltsin side is characterized as valiant and measured. The other side is characterized as defiant and to blame for its own fate. The story has a factual basis. The president really did launch a tank assault on the parliament. However, the circumstances clearly seem to be spun in a way that tempers that stark reality.
17 April 2009
Police assault during G20
G20. London. 1 April. A police officer assaults Ian Tomlinson, pushing him from behind. He falls to the ground. Shortly after, he dies. An official police statement announces he died from the effects of a heart attack. Apparently, another police statement says that protesters hindered medics from helping him. Findings of a second postmortem released today show that Tomlinson died from an abdominal haemorrhage.
The Guardian’s video of the incident, including slow version and commentary:
This event offers a quick academic or student a perfect opportunity for some ‘investigative discourse analysis’ (let’s call it IDA). Meaning: gather the news coverage texts from the “critical discourse moment” (Chilton), i.e., the initial incident. How was it reported? how quickly did Ian Tomlinson’s death disappear from the media radar?
Optimally, to contextualize the textual analysis in wider relations and practices, conduct some interviews with key actors (journalists, editors, police spokespeople, political spokespeople working during the G20 meeting…). The incident is still recent; they will be able to give the analyst a clear and legitimate version of what they recall.
Off to press with the analysis.
31 March 2009
Projection onto Moscow
Here we are, in a time of crisis, and once again Russia operates as a space onto which “western” (in this case, German) fears can be projected.
Moscow, so the German state television channel ZDF tells its viewers (at prime time this evening), is a city of mega-rich and shockingly-poor. While the rich ignore the crisis and continue to party, drink champagne and eat caviar (fade in: image of ballroom dancing, tuxedos, etc), the poor get poorer (fade in: image of poor homeless couple, freezing, being picked up by the police).
The strong implication of the rhetoric in the opening minutes of this “documentary” is that these issues are specific to Moscow’s glittering elite.
Such excess would never be relevant in Germany or anywhere else in the West/North, now would it? Especially not during a financial crisis.
Or would it:
- Partyelite Berlin. Vodka only 60 € for 1 litre
- “JPMorgan Chase, beneficiary of $25 billion in taxpayer bailout dollars, plans to spend $138 million for swank corporate jets and a new hangar”
- AIG’s infamous payout of $165 million in bonuses in this same crisis year. (Plus public backlash)
- Sir Fred Goodwin’s pension of £703,000-a-year. The former chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland’s “departure from RBS was negotiated on the weekend of October 11/12 [2008] when the bank was saved from collapse by an injection of £20bn by the taxpayer.”
- “Bob Diamond, the hard-charging boss of Barclays’ investment banking arm [...] has suffered a brutal £4m cut to his annual remuneration – leaving him last year with a meagre £17m in cash and shares.”
- Josef Ackerman, Deutsch Bank boss, also took a massive 90% pay cut, leaving him with only 1.39 million euros ($1.89 million) earnings last year.
And at the same time:
- “Numbers of Homeless Increase as Nation’s Financial Crisis Continues” (USA)
- “From June 2007 through May [2008], PADS [Lake County's homeless shelter] saw a 17 percent increase from the previous year in new clients and a 48 percent increase in children.” (USA)
- Estimates place Germany’s number of homeless people between 300,000 and 860,000. (More on Günter Wallraff‘s experiences)
29 March 2009
Blogs vs. joint action?
A thought I’ve been having recently is mirrored in a New York Times commentary on the lack of riots in the face of the current financial mess:
The texture of discontent (or lack thereof) can say a lot about a nation, and that Americans today are less likely to rebel may not be an entirely positive sign.
It certainly doesn’t mean we have more love, patience or tolerance for one another. Indeed, it may mean just the opposite, that we tend not to trust one another and that we are more alienated from our neighbors than ever before. The lack of direct action could signal the weakening of a social contract that keeps people meaningfully invested in the fate of our country — which may, in turn, be hindering our ability to resolve this crisis.
Before blogs and radio call-in shows, people joined forces and turned to the streets as their most effective means of expression; a unified, angry crowd was often sufficient to win concessions from employers and governments. And so most rebellions of the 20th century were over bread-and-butter issues like unsafe work conditions, wages and high prices for basic commodities. Even “race riots” were usually motivated by competition between ethnic groups over access to jobs and housing subsidies.
But some outbreaks of lawlessness were also indicators of strong, shared sentiments and were driven by a sense of higher purpose. [...] Today widespread anger and collective passivity exist side by side.
Where “passivity” means spending time with oneself and one’s internet/tv/radio/___________ (insert preferred form of media)?
After suggesting that at least one of the reasons that Americans are not acting out our anger is our personal shame about not being able to pay the mortgage or credit card bill, Sudhir Venkatesh ends with:
To restore our social bonds, each one of us must overcome our isolating feelings of embarrassment and humiliation and understand that this is a shared plight. We’ll also have to accept that anger, real anger, has a role to play in producing collective catharsis and fostering healing.
Fury, after all, can manifest itself in more productive ways than urban rioting or cable-TV ranting. Fury can inspire real protest, nonviolent civil disobedience, even good old-fashioned, town-hall meetings. That’s how we’ll recover our public life and perhaps help one another through this crisis — storming angrily into the streets and then, once we’re out there, actually talking to one another.
Sudhir Venkatesh, Professor of Sociology at Columbia, wrote the inticingly titled “Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets”.
22 March 2009
“Dissident” – a resignification?
Something interesting happened in the news media last week.* After the fatal attacks on security forces in Northern Ireland on 9 and 10 Marc, the suspects were repeatedly referred to as “Irish Republican Army dissidents” (AP), “dissident republicans” (Guardian), “IRA dissidents” (The Star), “dissident republicans” (BBC), “dissident republican groups” (Telegraph), etc.
This fits with the standard dictionary definition of dissident (“disagreeing, esp, with an established government, system, etc.” according to the Oxford Concise Dictionary). But it does not fit with recent corpora, i.e., databases of the ways in which language is actually used. For example:
Note the distinct tendency for the majority of these “dissidents” to be positively valued (for a particular political position)? The dissidents are disagreeing with very particular types of governments and systems, and in a way which is pro-liberal, pro-democracy, pro-West and/or anti-Communist.
This is a random selection from the Collins WordbanksOnline English corpus (56 million words; contemporary written and spoken English). The British National Corpus (100 million words; British written and spoken English) returns similar results. (Oxford also now has a corpus, but they only have a video demo online.)
*It undoubtedly happened earlier, but I only became aware of it last week, reading the British coverage of the recent killings in Northern Ireland.
5 March 2009
25 February 2009
Discourse and ethnography
Leon Barkho’s paper “The Discursive and Social Power of News Discourse: the case of Aljazeera in comparison and parallel with the BBC and CNN” in the latest issue of Studies in Language and Capitalism (3/4) (p.111) combines textual (CDA) analysis with ethnographic analysis (e.g., observation, stories, field visits, interviews, media reports and style guidelines).
24 February 2009
Alternative Media and Resistance
In my search for politically and/or medially useful research (the pragmatic streak in me is growing stronger by the day), I happened upon an announcement for the book Alternative Media and the Politics of Resistance: Perspectives and Challenges, edited by Mojca Pajnik and John D. H. Downing (Peace Institute, 2008).
The book looks to be a wide range of both theoretical and more situated, analytical chapters, in which authors get to grips with what they call “nano-media.” Contributors “discuss different “nano-media” forms and practices, which surface as tellers of truth, which serve as sites for fresh interpretations of our realities, and which often disrupt the frames and conventions of mainstream mediated communication.”
And after disrupting the frames and conventions of mainstream media, it seems to me that a signal strength of researching alternative media — or the fissures in the media — is to explore the possibilities to construct new frames and conventions in order to strengthen the politics of resistance.
22 February 2009
RTBF and banks
Excellent investigative journalism on the Belgian television channel RTBF today. Which I had the pleasure of watching in globalised fashion on German mainstream news this evening.
RTBF sent a journalist into a leading bank, armed with a hidden camera and apparently 500,000 Euros to invest. She asks the bank advisor how she can best invest it, and he provides a good range of advice on how to avoid paying taxes. This from a bank which has just received millions in financial support from the state. From, that is, taxpayers.
Ah, the irony of it all.
Watch it on Tagesschau, 22.02.09, 22:50
