Governors want continued control over media
Russian governors oppose President Medvedev’s request to sell out of regional newspapers, arguing that the papers are instrumental in securing local information flows.
In his state-of-the-nation address this week, President Dmitry Medvedev underlined that regional administrations should no longer be the owners of factories, newspapers and ships, thus urging the governors to start local privatization processes, newspaper Kommersant reports.
The presidential request was later followed up by Presidential Adviser Arkadii Dvorkovich, who stressed that newspapers and TV and radio companies owned by the regional administrations will be subjected to privatization because they are “a meaningless spending of money”.
The statements from the presidential administration followed a request to the governors last week by Finance Minister Sergei Kudrin to sell out of regional companies. As reported by BarentsObserver, Kudrin indicated that the regions might not be allowed to get additional federal transfers before after local privatization programmes have been approved and implemented.
Read also: Moscow says regions must privatize companies
The request to sell out of their media assets might however not come easy in the regions. Many governors see the local newspapers as key instruments for spreading of official information and view points, and will be highly reluctant get rid of the newspapers.
As reported by Kommersant, the governors not only see the papers as instrumental for regional information flows, but also as keys to securing high ethical media standards and supporting patriotic upbringing of children and youth. They also argue that current federal laws support the regional administrations’ ownership of media companies.
Should the regional administrations be forced to sell out of the newspapers, the governors are still likely to find ways to secure continued media control. As noted by analysts, the local media will most likely be sold to government-loyal companies, which subsequently will support the former editorial lines of the administrations.
In the Russian part of the Barents Region, the lion’s share of regional and local media companies are owned and controlled by the authorities. That has made the newspapers and their editors vulnerable to changes in the regional administrations. On a number of occasions, newspaper editors have been replaced parallel to the replacement of governors. As reported by BarentsObserver, that was also the case in Murmansk Oblast after the appointment of Dmitry Dmitriyenko as new governor in 2009. Then, the editors of three key media companies were forced to leave their jobs.
