Trial and Tribulation at NTV

The bad news about Vladimir Putin’s first year in power is that he has shown a consistent desire to curb independent media. The more reassuring news is that he is making a hash of it — so far, at least. Over the past year the full force of the Russian state has been concentrated on Media-Most, the owner of NTV, the one independent TV station with a near-nationwide reach. It has been raided dozens of times, founder Vladimir Gusinsky is in Spain fighting extradition and other executives have fled the country. Judges have consistently ruled against NTV — or quickly changed their minds if they ruled in favor of the company. Last week should have seen the coup de grace for NTV. As legislators assembled for the President’s annual message to the two houses of parliament, Gazprom, the state-controlled natural resources monopoly and a major NTV shareholder, dismissed the network’s top management.

But brilliant footwork by NTV staffers — and mismanagement by the government — turned what should have been a quick victory for Putin into a p.r. disaster. The journalists declared the Gazprom meeting illegal, refused to recognize the new man- agement and ran news bulletins and discussions devoted to its plight. Gazprom’s choices for the top NTV jobs, Alfred Kokh and the U.S.-born Boris Jordan, infuriated even some of NTV’s enemies among communist and nationalist politicians. Gennady Seleznev, speaker of the lower house who until now has tried to keep in Putin’s graces, described the two as “sort of swindlers.” The normally diplomatic Mikhail Gorbachev announced his full support for the journalists.

Adding to Putin’s embarrassment, a senior lawyer handling the attack on NTV publicly broke ranks with Gazprom. Anatoly Blinov, a board member of Gazprom-Media, the subsidiary that is spearheading the operation against NTV, announced his resignation and cast doubt on the legitimacy of Gazprom’s firing of the NTV managers, predicting ominously that, if the network was taken over by court-appointed bailiffs, its transmitter would somehow be damaged in the confusion.

The journalists are playing for time in hopes that U.S. TV magnate Ted Turner, who has signed a preliminary agreement to buy most of Gusinsky’s shares, will give them protection. Whether the Kremlin will agree to the share purchase is another matter.

The assault on NTV provoked an unexpected outpouring of support from academics, liberal politicians and NTV’s natural constituency, the new middle class. They argue that NTV’s demise would give the state nearly total control over the electronic media — the main way people receive their news. And it would also be a dangerous signal to regional leaders that they are free to crack down on irritating local media.

NTV is not itself a saintly organization. Founder Gusinsky has used TV to settle personal scores with his enemies. In 1996, NTV’s stridently partisan coverage played a major role in winning re-election for Boris Yeltsin. When Putin ran for President last year, Gusinsky failed to play ball: the network’s sympathy for opposition leader Grigory Yavlinsky was obvious and its criticism of the growing quagmire in Chechnya increasingly harsh. Four days after Putin’s inauguration NTV’s offices were raided by masked, armed security operatives and tax police.

The Kremlin has insisted all year that the moves against NTV are purely financial: the company is sloppily run and foundering under debts. So are many companies in Russia, but none has been given the Media-Most treatment. The real motives are a combination of personal animosity and political philosophy. In private, presidential staffers admit, Putin has described Gusinsky as his personal enemy, and he clearly views criticism of himself or the state as close to treasonous. Despite last week’s fiasco, he still has the power to eviscerate NTV. The way he has gone about it, however, is a perfect example of the strange combination of vindictiveness and clumsiness that has marked his first year as President.