Alexander Burakou: Some Receive President’s Awards, and Some — Only Fines

— Belarus’ has been inde­pen­dence near­ly as long as it’s been ruled by an author­i­tar­i­an leader. There groups with dif­fer­ent mind frames in the coun­try: those who know Sovi­et Belarus, those, who remem­ber Belarus with­out Lukashen­ka and those, who’s always had Lukashen­ka as the leader of the coun­try. They all are very dif­fer­ent.

Think­ing about jour­nal­ists, it is impor­tant to remem­ber the peo­ple who made a con­scious deci­sion to leave the state-run media in the mid-1990s and start­ed new media. They had a moral choice to make: either you remain part of the sys­tem and get bonus­es, or you choose a pro-demo­c­ra­t­ic camp and your future is unpre­dictable.

What does work in state-run media mean now and then? This is min­i­mum pres­sure, perks and priv­i­leges, legal hol­i­days and bonus­es, and an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get cheap mort­gage loans.  And many decid­ed there was no point in «hav­ing an atti­tude», with a cushy job and good salary, social ben­e­fits, and an oppor­tu­ni­ty to retire from the same job (unlike free­lancers). Flirt­ing with the author­i­ties is usu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial.

How­ev­er, there were peo­ple of moral fiber who left for the pri­vate sec­tor.  And their lives have turned out dif­fer­ent­ly. Some have suc­ceed­ed in writ­ing and run­ning a busi­ness, and some have not. They are for­got­ten by the new gen­er­a­tion.

The dis­cus­sion at BAJ con­fer­ence on the prospects of free­lance jour­nal­ism in Belarus showed that for­eign col­leagues need to now more about the real­i­ty of Belarus. For exam­ple, they are think­ing of state-run and pri­vate media, while the jour­nal­ists in their mind are demo­c­ra­t­ic and.. demo­c­ra­t­ic. It is impos­si­ble to imag­ine a sit­u­a­tion in devel­oped coun­tries, where a jour­nal­ist of some media may be called «dis­loy­al» and bul­lied at a nation­al lev­el.

They bring their expe­ri­ence to our real­i­ty, and fail to under­stand the whole dra­ma.

Of course, the peo­ple who remained in the state-owned media are close­ly watch­ing the fate of their col­leagues from the oth­er camp and under­stand every­thing per­fect­ly well. What do they see? The burn­ing sense of jus­tice leads to per­se­cu­tion by police, KGB search­es, unex­pect­ed let­ters from tax inspec­torates, and fines. No leg to stand on. Only on the sense of pro­fes­sion­al­ism and moral­i­ty. The hon­est peo­ple of mid-1990s now look as «losers» to their unscrupu­lous peers.

This is what I want­ed to explain to the for­eign col­leagues work­ing with Belarus. Per­se­cu­tion of free­lancers is now espe­cial­ly ram­pant in Belarus. This is espe­cial­ly true of those who work for Bel­sat. But who starts to work for this chan­nel? To be hon­est, the vast major­i­ty of reporters are the peo­ple who came to the pro­fes­sion from civic activism, just after short cours­es. They are young peo­ple who have learned to report news only in the Pol­ish TV sys­tem, and have seen no alter­na­tives.

Alexan­der Burak­ou speaks dur­ing a free­lance jour­nal­ism con­fer­ence

How­ev­er, we used to have Belaruskaya Mal­adziozh­naya radio, and some wor­thy TV shows on the Belaru­sian TV of the ear­li­er kind. They were run by pro­fes­sion­als whose names are still remem­bered in Min­sk. And where did they go, why not use their expe­ri­ence? Mean­while, they were the ones who once made the moral choice we are talk­ing about. Young free­lancers have a more cyn­i­cal view of life, they just do not care about the events of 20 years ago.

— The lives of a jour­nal­ist or a social activist in Min­sk and in the regions are dif­fer­ent. How does it feel, to be in the lime­light all the time?

— When I say that we get point­ed at, I mean the regions, first of all. After all, there are more oppor­tu­ni­ties in Min­sk, there is an envi­ron­ment to grow and move.  Take, for exam­ple, the late Vadz­im Arshyn­s­ki, for­mer cam­era­man of the Mahil­iou region­al TV, who I worked for Bel­sat with. In the ear­ly 2000s he was film­ing Lukashenka’s vis­it to a col­lec­tive farm, and at some point the cam­era caught Lukashen­ka with dear horns paint­ed on the wall in the bck­ground. Of course, the footage was not broad­cast, while Vadz­im Arshyn­s­ki, who was one of the fathers of tele­vi­sion in Mahil­iou, lost his job right away. Who else would need a cam­era­man in Mahil­iou? This meant unem­ploy­ment for years to come.  

— But Lukashen­ka gives awards to jour­nal­ists. That means, mod­ern jour­nal­ists also have a choice to make today, there are dif­fer­ent cri­te­ria for assess­ment of one’s own suc­cess and ensur­ing secu­ri­ty. And in the eyes of their own cir­cle, a per­son will gain suc­cess.

— This is what we need to explain to the for­eign coun­ter­parts who come here and want to help, or to do some activ­i­ties, in the trendy «part­ner­ship with the author­i­ties and state-run media».

The sys­tem does not need the peo­ple who are ready to work in the field, some­times knee-deep in mud, and to raise real­ly impor­tant issues. The jour­nal­ists who cov­ered the sit­u­a­tion around the bleached pulp fac­to­ry in Svet­la­horsk, were fined. The state jour­nal­ists do not go there and and do not report on the sit­u­a­tion, even though it is a real prob­lem. This is a clear exam­ple of dif­fer­ent frames of ref­er­ences. In the end of the day, some get fines, and some — awards from the hands of the state leader.

— What do you expect from the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty?

— Today’s real­i­ties, unfor­tu­nate­ly, counter-bal­ance the sac­ri­fices that have been put by the old­er gen­er­a­tion on the altar of democ­ra­cy. So many years have passed, the regime is still in pow­er, and the lives of many peo­ple who chose  that path went sour. The old­er gen­er­a­tion of our for­eign coun­ter­parts who worked with Belarus in the 1990s and called to defend fun­da­men­tal demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues, have  retired with­out see­ing any changes in Belarus.

And now, the new gen­er­a­tion of Euro­peans is look­ing for new approach­es. They say: «Let’s coop­er­ate with the author­i­ties», «How can we help? Let’s do some­thing togeth­er with the jour­nal­ists of state-owned media». Many grant eli­gi­bil­i­ty cri­te­ria require state reg­is­tra­tion or at least some coop­er­a­tion with the state author­i­ties from poten­tial grantees. True sto­ry: Belaru­sian Nation­al Youth Union receives sup­port as an NGO, and these funds ply with­in the state sys­tem.

And my ques­tion is: isn’t this approach a betray­al of the peo­ple who made a moral choice 20 years ago?

Today, I can’t say that the col­leagues from our cir­cle are opti­mistic about the future. They feel grow­ing fatigue. If one does not see the results, and they are not 20 any­more, but 35–40, they start ask­ing them­selves, where they are and what they have achieved.

We are chang­ing, and not for the bet­ter, I am afraid. In Mahil­iou, we held a debate between polit­i­cal activists and jour­nal­ists . The gen­er­a­tion gap became obvi­ous. The old­er gen­er­a­tion treats the pro­fes­sion and all their activ­i­ties as a mis­sion and a true pur­pose. Younger jour­nal­ists per­ceive jour­nal­ism as a busi­ness: if there is good mon­ey, they would endure repres­sion, with no mon­ey, the cloud-built val­ues seem sil­ly. It seems, the old­er gen­er­a­tion, has lost to every­body. To the regime, as it is still here, and the younger gen­er­a­tion, for whom it’s just busi­ness and cold math. 

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Alexan­der Burak­ou

In the pro­fes­sion since 1998. He start­ed his career at the Mahil­iou region­al tele­vi­sion, fol­lowed by writ­ing Mahil­iou Week­ly and De Fac­to news­pa­per. Since 2006, he worked at Radio Racy­ja, and then col­lab­o­rat­ed with Bel­sat TV. For the last 8 years, he’s been a reporter of Deutsche Welle in Belarus.