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Robert Chandler on " BBC’s Russian service: worth doing properly"

Robert Chandler — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:06:00 +0100

A big thank you to Elisabeth Robson for a clear and important article. We must hope that the new Director of the World Service thinks that the opinions of a former Head of the Russian Service are worth listening to.
Many Open Democracy readers have already signed our petition on the website of 10 Downing Street. But if you haven’t, please don’t forget about it! Here is the link:
What would help more than anything is for you to pass the information on to other people likely to share our concerns. We’re now about 730. 1000 might make a real impact. To be eligible to sign, it is enough to be a UK resident. It is not essential to be a UK citizen.
Here too is a link to a new article of my own just published in STANDPOINT:
http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/bbc-kremlin-service-april-09-counterpoints
Yours, Robert Chandler

Zebedee on "The Kremlin's virtual squad"

Zebedee — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 21:51:27 +0000

I hope I am able to make another comment on the same subject.

Something related to what the article writer said on differences in opinions between sites which are or are not protected from repeat voting, I just wonder how protected the BBC's "Have Your Say" and "reader's recommended" section are from organised voting.

Is it not possible for those with the right recources to register multiple times, perhaps by making their own computer give false IP addresses or using others' computers, with or without their knowledge? I don't know exactly because I am not an expert.

Perhaps I am being paranoid but recently there was a HYS on whether people were worried by the recently announced Russian arms buildup, (involving 4 trillion roubles, or £80 billion over three years with priority given to new nuclear weapons).

I was not suprised that there were plenty of people saying that Russia should not be criticised on this because the US spends so much more. What was truly amazing was that I counted down to the 27th most popular comment before I found one that did not support the Russian arms buildup.

Since a very large proportion of readers must be from NATO countries (particularly UK and US) it is suprising how many of them seemed to be saying "It is absolutely right that they should point more nuclear missiles at me." Very fishy.

The HYS on the Russian military action in Georgia last year resulted in an equally overwhelming preponderance of pro-Russian responses and votes.

spok on "The Kremlin's virtual squad"

spok — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:20:22 +0000

Вам ещё не надоело этот старый баян таскать по сети.

Zebedee on "The Kremlin's virtual squad"

Zebedee — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 17:19:40 +0000

I don't know who the editor of actually is, but this article was by Anna Polyanskaya, Andrei Krivov & Ivan Lomko and was originally published in Russian on http://www.gulag.ipvnews.org/article20060916_01.php and translated into english for La Russophobe: http://larussophobe.wordpress.com/2007/02/21/commissars-of-the-internet-part-i-installment-3/

E. Henry Thripshaw on "The Kremlin's virtual squad"

E. Henry Thripshaw — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 11:27:40 +0000

I have had very limited experience of Russian open forums of the type described in the article. I have, however, read many "Live Journal" (zhezhe) blogs in Russian, not only from Russia but from post-Soviet and Western countries. There, the atmosphere is completely different - it is much more possible to sustain a normal conversation or debate. Of course, there is the usual contingent of trolls, kooks and provocateurs, but they are much more controllable. Since the "yuzer" (blogowner) can moderate, and since the contributors generally have to identify themselves, the kind of swamping described above is hardly possible. For this reason I consider them much more worthwhile to read than the impersonal open forums.

Cathy Fitzpatrick on "The Kremlin's virtual squad"

Cathy Fitzpatrick — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:45:20 +0000

This is an excellent piece of research and social commentary. It's a brilliant expose of the KGB method at work, all the classics.

It's also accidently a good expose of the oppressive methods one constantly finds in use in online communities, both of the closed, company-run type, and of the opensource projects that pride themeslves on being so "open".The patterns are there, and it doesn't trivialize the deadly issues in Russia (murder of journalists, Chechnya) to say that the same patterns of manipulation and propaganda straight out of the Kremlin live on today in latter-day bolshevism, or technocommunism, as I call it, which has spread all over the web.

The culture of the IRC channel; the culture of the Second Life forums especially in the early days; the YouTube Commentariat, the Twittertarians who tell you how to behave, and especially the Wikinistas -- they all show either similarities or full-blown exact copies to these hideous traits of a closed society with totalitarian culture.They are all the more insidious because they operate in an arena that is "open' and "anyone can speak" in theory, and because to compare them to anything related to the Soviets or the Kremlin or Bolshevik is an instant trip to PC jail, as nothing can ever be compared to the Kremin, as this would be "red-baiting" and gosh, we can't have MacCarthyism now, can we.

It's all very important to document, think about, and figure out how to defeat and undermine, as we will all be seeing lots more of it, not less.

I, too, sensed, when going on some forums, especially on Russia Today, which seems so *managed* that I was dealing with some concerted force. Something organized. Some power that was deliberately jacking up the voting mechanisms in ways that didn't seem true; making anti-Chechen comments that simply seemed over the top, and so on. Sure, be pro-Putin if you are for a strong state but wait...you also have to be anti-Chechen, anti-American, anti-Semitic *too* in lockstep predictable chorus...except when you do a 180 degree twirl when the winds blow differently out of the Kremlin?

To this wonderful list, I'd add the topic of Kosovo and the Balkans. You can be sure to find it on any Russia-related forum, and even some not at all related to Russia, in which the Kremlin's busybodies still show up to hawk this hateful moral equivalence.

And that's just another feature of this G-team, which in spirit is like China's 50 Cent Party and whose roots lie, I guess, in the Oprichina, some class of people bought out by the powers that be, whose livlihood depends on their loyalty -- and the more obsequious they can be to their superiors, and the more vicious they can be to their inferiors, the beter!

Moral equivalence, of the kind blanketing the web now in YouTube or Al-Jazeera's Listening Post, making it seem that there's something "wrong" with the indictment of Bashir; that it is the West's "fault"; that the West "has a double standard"; that the West should equivocate morally the victims of Israel's retaliation against Hamas in Gaza (500? 1000?) with the hundreds of thousands killed in Sudan and the millions displaced. Awful. All straight out of the Soviet playbook.

What's interesting to me to ponder is how the patterns remain the same from the past decades before the Internet, and how interesting new capacities are added to the G team with the Internet, both making it more vicious, but also perhaps containing ways to defeat it.

For example, the nasty hate letters sent to the Sakharovs in exile in Gorky in the 1980s, bore all the signs of G-team thinking -- the exaggerations, hate, anti-semitism, etc. All the same markers. And people didn't need to be paid or prompted to do this, they wrote quite zealously all on their own (it's what Yevgeny Myasnikov called elsewhere here on opendemocratic.net "the outsourcing of hate).

Or the nasty little booklets put out by various Soviet "peace" committees by lawyers and doctors -- professionals, but mediocrities, regime-tools schooled in these G-team methods. The "podval" in the Soviet newspapers, denouncing dissidents -- they were always "renegades", they were always "Russophobes" (I remember that term from the 1970s even), etc.

How to fight back? I think you expect not to take them on, for one, you will lose, if they have the power to IP-block you and have the mods ban you, and the mods are so often in their pocket. But what you do make sure in fighting is that losing is winning, that their criminality and lawlessness and arbitrariness are all made visible. Of course, they always either fly under the radar, or enjoy impunity of the mods, and incite and goad you to then yourself violate the TOS and then you're the hater who is banned, not them. I've seen that old trick played a million times. So at one level you can not give into to their provocations, but at another, you can just keep fighting, regardless of the outcome, because your audience is not them. They are a known quantity. They will not be changing, except under duress of their sycophantic loyalty to the regime, when the regime tells them to make an about-face.

So you play over their shoulders, looking past their screeds to those whose minds aren't made up. Who might be weak-willed, and uncertained, unable to decide "what's right". You fight for their sake, and your goal is at least to make sure they don't *become like them* -- and that you don't, either.

Cathy Fitzpatrick/Prokofy Neva

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/un_tethered

http://secondthoughts.typepad.com

kcf19 on "Moscow calling: a view of the BBC Russian Service"

kcf19 — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 12:17:21 +0000

I welcome Lyubov Borosyak’s call for more research by the BBC Russian Service into the nature and wishes of its audience. One of our central criticisms of the World Service management is that they carried out their cuts without first doing any serious research.

How much the Russian audience wants programmes about life in Britain is, of course, hard to establish without such research, and I have heard different opinions. We have not, however, been placing such a one-sided emphasis on the need for such programmes as Borosyak makes out. In one of our letters we wrote about Features, ‘Their themes vary from the work of Doris Lessing to the closure of the British Council, from Rostropovich's work in Britain to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s book about Dostoevsky, from the analysis of judgments made by the European Court of Human Rights with regard to incidents in Chechnya to a comparison of English and Russian children's playground songs.’ Features have covered a huge range of subject matter – certainly not only ‘Life in Britain’.

I would also like to remind Borosyak of a passage from Professor Rayfield’s letter to Nigel Chapman of 9 November 2008 (It can be read on <http://tinyurl.com/6pcme4>):‘I get a lot of feedback from Russian listeners, on internet sites such as polit.ru as well as privately, from all over the country, and the BBC is prized for discussing books, topics of mutual interest,such as language acquisition or sensitive issues (such as recently the closeness of Georgian-Russian cultural contacts), topics not broached by other broadcasters, and which you have now been misled into believing to be “soft”features. We are not as blithely unconcerned about the feelings of the Russian audience as Borosyak suggests!

Borosyak also makes some surprising mistakes. One of our criticisms of the Russian Service was their refusal to publish Politkovskaya’s "Putin’s Russia" on their website; no one expected a book of this length to be read on air. And regular FM broadcasts of Russian Service programmes certainly did not last for 15 years – only from 2004 to 2006.

As for the advisability of broadcasting from Moscow, I can only say that I hope Borosyak is right and that political relations between Russia and the UK will not deteriorate further. None of us has been suggesting that the BBC should close its Moscow office today. I do, however, know that BBC staff in their Moscow office are already being subjected to serious pressure. Three members of staff were, for example, beaten up within a single month in 2007, at a time when NASHI were demonstrating not far from the BBC office. And the BBC management’s lack of grasp of the political situation is shown by the fact that they were seriously considering transferring production of one of the main broadcasts to Georgia – of all places – from London to Moscow.

So, in spite of Borosyak’s reservations, I still ask readers to sign – and do all they can to publicize – our petition against the axing of the most important programmes of the BBC Russian Service and the general World Service policy of ‘moving producers closer to their audiences’, i.e. relocating them, against their will, to parts of the world where they will be unable to preserve their editorial freedom:

<http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/BBCWorldService/>

‘The government has increased its funding of the BBC World Service by 20% over the past five years. Despite this, the BBC has axed much of its quality feature and cultural programming in favour of cheap news coverage across the World Service, significantly reduced its funding for Russian broadcasts and is now offshoring South Asian language services ‘closer to their audiences’, to countries where intimidation of journalists is widespread. Therefore, we call on the Prime Minister to launch a full and independent investigation into the BBC World Service.’

So far (15 March, a.m.) we have 425 signatories for our petition. 1000 would make a real impact. To sign, you must be a UK citizen or resident. We have another three weeks.

When the French government recently decided to close their own Russian-language broadcasting service, 900 people signed a petition. Copies were sent to every deputy in the French parliament, and the broadcasts were reprieved!

For further background, please read my recent article, published on the OpenDemocracy site on 10 Feb:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/Russia/article/BBC-ridding-itself-of-a-troublesome-Russian-Service

Robert Chandler

kcf19 on "BBC: ridding itself of a troublesome Russian Service?"

kcf19 — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:56:48 +0000

Dear all,

Please consider signing the following petition, created by Sergei Cristo (a former Russian Service producer). Please also, if possible, forward the link pasted below to as many people as possible.

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/BBCWorldService/ <http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/BBCWorldService/>

This will only take a couple of minutes. In order to get an official response, we need at least 200 signatories. All of them have to be UK residents. We have a month.

When the French government recently decided to stop their own Russian-language broadcasting service, 900 people signed a petition against this. Copies were sent to every deputy in the French parliament, and the broadcasts were reprieved!

Many thanks,

Robert Chandler

editor on "BBC: ridding itself of a troublesome Russian Service?"

editor — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 11:56:00 +0000

From Martin Dewhirst: a Wreath for Reith?
Barring a last-minute intervention, the Features Department of the BBC’s Russian Service (RS) will be closed down in the middle of March, 2009 – a fortnight after the departure of the previous Head of the BBC’s World Service (WS), halfway through the period of responsibility of the Acting Head, and a month before the incoming Head of the WS takes up his post. When questioned in the future about this lamentable decision, the latter two gentlemen could presumably claim that they might have wanted to put the matter on hold for a month or two and asked some new, competent advisers for their views, but unfortunately it was too late, for operational reasons, to do so. Thus it is likely that the previous Head of the WS, together with his advisers on broadcasting in Russian, will have to accept most of the blame.
Clearly, the RS in the future will be run without its most distinguished and distinguishing component – its feature programming. The WS in English is still carrying numerous really excellent features every week, and why WS listeners in Russian (and in other languages as well) are to be totally deprived of such broadcasts (snippets within other shows are not Features) is something that has still not been satisfactorily explained. Of course, the RS has been degenerating and going downmarket for quite some time, but why concentrate almost entirely on news and current affairs when, as the advisers to the Head of the WS must know, there are several other excellent Russian-language news and current affairs outlets which are not financially supported by the British tax-payer and with which the BBC RS, however much it expands its coverage, has little chance of competing?
Naturally, a small number of people in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) will also have to share the blame for this disastrous decision. The FCO rightly keeps its distance from the BBC WS, but the decision to liquidate the RS’s Features Department must have been known to, and approved by, these hapless officials long before March 2009. Their non-resistance to this calamity is not only incomprehensible but astonishing, not least because of the excellent idea to run a regular blog by David Miliband on the website of the radio station Ekho Moskvy. Moreover, they must be aware that many of the anti-Western comments by ‘ordinary people’ on this blog may well have been written by the notorious Komanda G (those with a reading knowledge of Russian should go to
http://www.expertiza.ru/expertiza.phtml?id=671, continued in 672 and 674), one (or more than one?) group of hacks who falsely claim to be representative of Russian public opinion. But at least these people are paid by the Russian, not the British, taxpayer. The interactive programmes that the BBC RS plans to expand at the expense of Features will provide further opportunities for Komanda G personnel, but now the U.K. taxpayer will be helping to support them.
I keep on wondering why some employees of the BBC are so blatantly betraying and perverting the ideals and legacy of Lord Reith. So that their strategy becomes completely clear, perhaps they should be advised to invite Ramzan Kadyrov or Vladimir Putin to give this year’s Reith Lectures?
Martin Dewhirst, University of Glasgow

Sergei Cristo on "BBC: ridding itself of a troublesome Russian Service?"

Sergei Cristo — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 23:36:41 +0000

Please put your name to the following petition to the Prime Minister:

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/BBCWorldService/

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to launch a full and independent investigation into the BBC World Service.

The Government has ignored recent calls by MPs from both sidesof the House and members of the public for an investigationinto the BBC World Service. There are several serious concerns about the way taxpayers’ money is being spent by the BBC.

The government has increased its Grant-in-Aid funding of the BBC World Service by about 20% over the past five years.

Despite this, the BBC axed much of its quality feature andcultural programming in favour of cheap news coverage across the World Service, significantly reduced its funding forRussian broadcasts and is in the process of offshoring South Asian language services “closer to their audiences”, to countries where intimidation of journalists is widespread.

Therefore, we call on the Prime Minister to launch a full and independent investigation into the BBC World Service.

editor on "BBC: ridding itself of a troublesome Russian Service?"

editor — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:48:00 +0000

From Helen Goodway
As an avid listener to, and as someone who understands the unique value and importance of the BBC World Service, I wish to add my voice to the protest against any axing of the Russian Service. In the circumstances of a world in crisis, it is utterly imperative to maintain all channels of communication and information.
Yours,
Helen Goodway (English Editor, 'Tadeeb International')

Sergei Cristo on "BBC: ridding itself of a troublesome Russian Service?"

Sergei Cristo — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:55:52 +0000

In an interview with Ian Burrell in The Independent (TV & Radio, 2nd March), Nigel Chapman, the outgoing Director of the BBC World Service complained:

“I totally reject, in any sense at all, that there's any evidence whatsoever, that there was some sort of compromise about the editorial standards of the Russian service, this is a wild allegation put around by people frankly who have got axes to grind and it does not stand up to analysis".

I am afraid Mr. Chapman has not been entirely honest. Only last month, the BBC upheld my complaint about the Russian Service’s fully moderated online forum about Oleg Gordievsky, who was decorated by the Queen for his services to the security of this country.

Mr Gordievsky, the highest ranking KGB officer to have ever worked for the British, provided vital information to the West in the final years of the Cold War. There is still a death sentence for him in Russia.

Following Mr Gordievsky’s investiture, the BBC World Service’s website published hate messages calling for his execution. However, following a review lasting for about a year, BBC Online ordered for about thirty messages to be removed. The World Service has yet to issue an apology to Mr. Gordievsky.

Sergei Cristo, Radio journalist, BBC (1994-2000)

Not logged in on "BBC: ridding itself of a troublesome Russian Service?"

Not logged in — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:48:44 +0000

Please do NOT AXE BBC Russian service. it is so important

Antony Wood on "BBC: ridding itself of a troublesome Russian Service?"

Antony Wood — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:40:26 +0000

I think it would be a great blow to relations between two important countries to dispense with the BBC Russian Service, which has established itself over the years as a unique forum and bridge with Russians and the current situation in Russia, and informer of Russians about the British and what is happening in the UK.

Antony Wood
Publisher, Angel Books, London

Marina Jakobsen on "BBC: ridding itself of a troublesome Russian Service?"

Marina Jakobsen — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:51:31 +0000

The communication between Robert Chandler and Mark Thompson is like a conversation between foreigners. They are speaking two different languages: the questions are about discussions, the answer - about news coverage only. This is surely the main problem!
“Your letter refers to the BBC's Royal Charter, which you believe specifies that the BBC must "offer thoughtful programmes that allow for genuine discussion of political and cultural matters from a number of points of view". We firmly believe that the World Service offers precisely the programmes which you describe. I think the most relevant part of the Charter on this point is in the Agreement (CM 6872). This says (para 1O.b) that the BBC Trust must ensure that the BBC "brings high quality international news coverage to international audiences", and (para 64.6.a) that the World Service objectives must include "the provision of an accurate, unbiased and independent news service, covering international and national developments. We believe that the changes will deliver a service that meets these and other objectives, and will continue to offer programmes of the kind your letter describes.”
When the situation in Russia is getting worse, BBC Russian Service must increase its efforts, not to decrease them. It must not abandon its respected history and values.
Will the BBC Russian web site be limited in analysis and criticism too? If not, how is the management of BBC is going to provide this if it gets rid of the journalists. Who will be left to create programs of this kind?

Why at least not use these high quality radio programs on the web-site as well, so that the Russian audience can choose whether to listen to it or to read it?

If Internet is more popular than radio, then TV is still the most popular media. It is really does reach every household there. Why does the BBC not to explore the possibilities of translating its TV programs to Russia? When other language services are getting additional funding for the development of their television, why is the Russian service – a service for a huge, unstable, but “developing market” – being discriminated against and destroyed?

Marina Jakobsen, Russian journalist