Dry the rain: the disgraceful hounding of Dozhd TV

(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Natalia Antonova – January 31, 2014) The scandal surrounding the independent Dozhd TV channel has so far progressed in a predictable and chilling fashion: Media organization does something that many people find to be tactless and/or offensive, said people express their dismay, the media organization apologizes… and then surrealism begins to take over.

In case you’re not up on the latest Russian media dramas, here is what happened: At the same time as Russia was commemorating victims of the devastating Siege of Leningrad, one of the darkest chapters in World War II history, a Dozhd online poll asked the public whether or not Leningrad should have been surrendered to the Nazis “in order to save thousands of lives.” The poll was launched as part of a historic program dedicated to the siege.

Obviously, the timing of the poll was terrible and the wording highly insensitive. Dozhd was right to apologize and suspend the poll.

What happened next was a scenario many of us have come to know and loathe. As anti-Dozhd sentiment reached critical mass, cable and satellite companies hastily began dropping the channel from their service. The head of the Cable Broadcasters’ Association, clearly eager to score political points, said that carriers ought to “exercise certain censorship functions.”

Who cares about consumer rights and freedom of speech, right?

Meanwhile, the Prosecutor General’s Office, which has launched a probe into the poll’s possible extremism, so far reports that “possible violations conducted at Dozhd do not fall under the category of extremism.”

Meanwhile, an Education Ministry-approved textbook for ninth graders was found to contain a similar question to the one that Dozhd raised.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin rights council has asked the prosecutor general to determine whether or not dropping Dozhd broadcasts violated the Constitution.

The issues the scandal highlighted run bigger and deeper than meets the eye. For one thing, the legacy of World War II in Russia is a sensitive topic altogether. While there is general consensus that the war was a terrible sacrifice for millions upon millions of people, the particulars of each sacrifice can inspire furious debate. Stalin’s strategic decisions in all of this are also painful for many people to talk about. When such topics are involved, scandals are bound to flare up.

The other issue here is that Dozhd’s role as an independent, liberal-leaning channel automatically makes it an attractive target. For contrast’s sake, consider the fact that when the state-owned Vesti channel recently included a quote by Nazi criminal Joseph Goebbels in its Facebook round-up of “Great people’s quotes on Lenin,” nobody rushed to suspend any broadcasts.

You might argue that Vesti dodged a bullet when it immediately fired its social media department following the outrage (nobody has been fired for the Leningrad poll at Dozhd), but then you would be ignoring the bigger picture. Simply put, Vesti is too big to mess with. Dozhd, on the other hand, is considered fair game – especially for people who are seeking media attention and approval.

A journalist friend of mine who is not a fan of Dozhd perhaps summed it up best when he wrote, “What’s being done to Dozhd is disgusting and disgraceful. If you don’t want to watch, do so out of your own volition – not because a bunch of jerks decided for you.”

Simply put, it’s high time to treat Russian consumers like adults. Exercising “censorship functions” is demeaning to everyone involved.