Journalism, Journalists, and the 2010 Presidential Elections

Over­all polit­i­cal cli­mate in the coun­try is well-known: for 16 years the oppo­si­tion as a respect­ed and alter­na­tive source of pow­er has been destroyed. The alter­na­tive dis­course has been mar­gin­al­ized and pushed on the periph­ery of the pub­lic sphere where it was prac­ti­cal­ly invis­i­ble for the most of the pop­u­la­tion. The 2010 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, how­ev­er, changed the pat­tern. Although with­in a lim­it­ed air­time, the alter­na­tive can­di­dates had an access to the state TV and radio chan­nels; gov­ern­ment-run news­pa­pers pub­lished their pro­grams.

On the oth­er hand, the oppor­tu­ni­ty to man­i­fest the oppo­site view attract­ed many jour­nal­ists who for pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al rea­sons were inter­est­ed in report­ing and telling sto­ries about the alter­na­tive can­di­dates. Those sto­ries, inter­views, and news com­posed a sig­nif­i­cant part of the alter­na­tive dis­course. The fol­low­ing is an analy­sis of home-sto­ry inter­views pub­lished in a nation­al, Belaru­sian-lan­guage news­pa­per Nasha Niva.

A close read­ing of the inter­views and some oth­er pub­lished in the news­pa­per texts showed that the dis­course has been devel­oped in a dia­logue with the exist­ing in a Belaru­sian soci­ety pub­lic myths and fears. A sec­ond impor­tant source for the dia­logue became a West­ern cul­ture in gen­er­al, and a polit­i­cal cul­ture of democ­ra­cy, in par­tic­u­lar.

I will start with the results pro­duced by a dia­logue with the West. A good exam­ple is an arti­cle by Pavel Mazei­ka “Padtry­maushy Kas­tu­se­va, Milinke­vich zgurtue natsyianal’nyia sily” (Nasha Niva, Sep­tem­ber 22, 2010) who pro­vides read­ers of Nasha Niva with an expla­na­tion of why Alek­san­dr Milinke­vich, a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of the 2006 elec­tions, decid­ed not to run for the 2010 elec­tions. To jus­ti­fy Milinkevich’s deci­sion, the jour­nal­ist writes: “If Milinke­vich does not run for the elec­tions, it will be very bad. It means that the right-wing Belaru­sian par­ties, nation­al-democ­rats, will not be ade­quate­ly pre­sent­ed” [trans­lat­ed from Belaru­sian into Eng­lish by NK]. And then he con­cludes: “Milinke­vich will be con­sis­tent if he, with all of his nation­al con­scious­ness, with his great inter­na­tion­al cre­den­tials, sup­ports some­body who is absolute­ly inex­pe­ri­enced in pol­i­tics — Rygor Kas­tuseu.” What in this phrase attracts atten­tion is that Belarus looks like as if it was a West­ern coun­try with a well-devel­oped and long-estab­lished demo­c­ra­t­ic tra­di­tion where peo­ple mere­ly have to choose between “the good” and “the bet­ter” if to employ the lan­guage of the social­ist real­ism. From my point of view, such argu­men­ta­tion is a result of a dia­logue with a West­ern polit­i­cal cul­ture. The devel­op­ment of the alter­na­tive dis­course in a dia­logue with a Belaru­sian polit­i­cal con­text would pro­duce oth­er argu­men­ta­tion. The fail­ure to engage with the local – Belaru­sian – con­text con­tributed to the per­cep­tion of the alter­na­tive dis­course as mar­gin­al due to its false­ness and inabil­i­ty to express local and at the same time cen­tral for the coun­try issues.

Anoth­er exam­ple of the same phe­nom­e­non is vocab­u­lary used by some can­di­dates to address the Belaru­sian elec­torate. Thus, can­di­date Yaraslau Ramanchuk men­tions a “demo­graph­ic trend.” There is noth­ing unusu­al in the word “trend” for the Eng­lish-speak­ing world. But in Belarus, where peo­ple usu­al­ly use its exact equiv­a­lent – the word “тенденция” [“ten­dentsi­ia”] – “trend” looks real­ly unnec­es­sary. Its mean­ing, as well as mean­ing of many oth­er words which were unrea­son­ably brought from Eng­lish, remain unclear for many peo­ple in Belarus. For this rea­son, when used in pub­lic speech­es, they make these speech­es inef­fec­tive.

Mean­while, local­ness influ­enced a process of the dis­course for­ma­tion, too. As anoth­er source of a dia­logue, local­ness took form of social myths, fears, and prej­u­dices wide-spread in a Belaru­sian soci­ety and aggres­sive­ly pro­mot­ed by the main state-run news­pa­per Belarus Segod­nia, most­ly in the essays by its edi­tor-in-chief Pavel Yakubovich (Decem­ber 3, 2010). He was very explic­it in artic­u­lat­ing those fears and myths by point­ing that, for instance, can­di­date Yaroslau Ramanchuk can­not teach peo­ple how to raise their chil­dren because he him­self, being 40 years old, does not have a sin­gle child and has nev­er been mar­ried. The lat­ter remark is an undoubt­ed ref­er­ence to a belief in Yaroslau’s non-tra­di­tion­al sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion that a Belaru­sian soci­ety can­not tol­er­ate, espe­cial­ly in regard to a pos­si­ble country’s leader.

In response to these and oth­er prej­u­dices, fears, and myths the alter­na­tive dis­course built itself up. The most clear­ly the result of this can be seen on the pages of Nasha Niva in home-sto­ries inter­views accom­pa­nied by the can­di­dates’ pho­tos. The very choice of the genre, a home-sto­ry inter­view, employed by jour­nal­ists to tell the elec­torate about the alter­na­tive can­di­dates, can be seen as a result of a dia­logue with one of the most pow­er­ful social myths. The essence of the myth is illus­trat­ed by the phrase from a book Sluchain­uy Pres­i­dent (Ran­dom Pres­i­dent) by Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists Pavel Sheremet and Svet­lana Kalink­i­na. Look­ing for fac­tors that facil­i­tat­ed the elec­tion of Lukashenko in 1994, the jour­nal­ists claim: “The secret was entire­ly sim­ple: he could speak with peo­ple in the lan­guage they could under­stand.” The ref­er­ence to the lan­guage can be also under­stood as a metaphor of Lukashenko’s close­ness to com­mon Belaru­sians. For a long time the Belaru­sian oppo­si­tion has made fun of him and labeled peo­ple who vot­ed for him, as Ele­na Gapo­va points, “crazy babushkas” and “une­d­u­cat­ed province.” With time pass­ing, Lukashenko’s alleged prox­im­i­ty to ordi­nary Belaru­sians became per­ceived as one of the pow­er­ful fac­tors that help him to hold pow­er. It is pos­si­ble to sug­gest that the genre of home-sto­ry inter­views was employed by the jour­nal­ists from Nasha Niva in order to show close­ness of the alter­na­tive can­di­dates to peo­ple. The genre itself facil­i­tates this task due to its “genet­ic” pre­dis­po­si­tion to reveal a “true” per­son­al­i­ty of the inter­vie­wee.

But the most vivid results of the dia­logue are journalist’s texts and the pho­tos they made. Can­di­date Vladimir Nek­li­ayev, for instance, is pre­sent­ed play­ing gui­tar, exer­cis­ing with a hula hoop, drink­ing tea with his wife, and pet­ting his cat (http://nn.by/?c=ar&i=43890). There is anoth­er sto­ry behind his obses­sive focus on the cat: in one of his on-line inter­views Nek­li­ayev admit­ted that the boy who bru­tal­ly killed a cat and whom he described in his nov­el is actu­al­ly the author him­self. The pub­lic reac­tion to this con­fes­sion was so strong that Nek­li­ayev had to sign the “dec­la­ra­tion” with the cat that hap­pi­ly lives in a Nekliayev’s apart­ment and upload the video show­ing the act of sign­ing to YouTube.

Can­di­date from the Belaru­sian Chris­t­ian-Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty Vital’ Rimasheus­ki on pho­tos lifts a dumb­bell and demon­strates his affec­tion to his daugh­ter and deter­mi­na­tion to fam­i­ly val­ues (http://nn.by/?c=ar&i=42597). It should be noticed that in 2009 there was a sex-scan­dal relat­ed to one of the party’s region­al lead­ers. The case of his alleged involve­ment with pros­ti­tutes was dis­cussed in the mass media. Although the scan­dal was not direct­ly relat­ed to Vital’ Rima­shevs­ki, party’s rep­u­ta­tion was com­pro­mised. Thus, one of the lead­ing non-gov­ern­ment news­pa­pers, Bel­gaze­ta, pub­lished an inter­view and com­men­tary about the case with the fol­low­ing sub­ti­tle: “A sex-scan­dal with Chris­t­ian democ­rats” (http://belgazeta.by/20091207.48/320104881/)

Can­di­date from the Belaru­sian Pop­u­lar Front, Rygor Kas­tuseu, shows his affec­tion to the Belaru­sian vil­lage where he was born and treats the jour­nal­ists with mush­rooms from the local for­est and apples from his gar­den (http://nn.by/?c=ar&i=43316). Final­ly, can­di­date Yaraslau Ramanchuk com­bat­ing the myth men­tioned ear­li­er reads “Kama Sutra” with a female-jour­nal­ist while the jour­nal­ist reports on her­self com­fort­ing on Ramanchuk’s king-size bed (http://nn.by/?c=ar&i=42188).

These sto­ries could have been per­ceived as the banal PR tech­niques employed to coun­ter­act the social myths and prej­u­dices. But there is one aspect which passed unno­ticed. The restored “pub­lic­ness” of the alter­na­tive dis­course cre­at­ed a sit­u­a­tion when each (or almost each) can­di­date was per­ceived by the elec­torate as a pos­si­ble future pres­i­dent, regard­less of what the can­di­dates them­selves said about their chances to win. But what is more, the elec­torate made sense of the home-sto­ry inter­views, as well as oth­er arti­cles about the alter­na­tive can­di­dates, in the com­par­i­son with what and how the gov­ern­ment-run news­pa­pers, first of all Belarus Segod­nia, pub­lished about the cur­rent  pres­i­dent. In Belarus Segod­nia, for instance, he nev­er was showed in a pri­vate life envi­ron­ment, doing some­thing what com­mon Belaru­sians usu­al­ly do. On the con­trary, Alek­san­dr Lukashenko was always depict­ed in a per­fect­ly-fit­ted suit among the lead­ers of oth­er coun­tries (http://sb.by/post/109519/). And it is per­fect­ly under­stand­able because such pre­sen­ta­tion direct­ly respond­ed anoth­er pow­er­ful social myth which pos­tu­lates that there is no oth­er per­son in Belarus who has abil­i­ty and expe­ri­ence to gov­ern the coun­try.

To con­clude, it can be argued that the main electorate’s expec­ta­tion from the alter­na­tive can­di­dates was to demon­strate their abil­i­ty to replace the cur­rent pres­i­dent. While the restored “pub­lic­ness” of the dis­course made this expec­ta­tion even stronger, the dis­course itself failed to meet it. In a process of for­ma­tion, the dis­course not only did not improve the sta­tus of alter­na­tive can­di­dates, but wors­en the sit­u­a­tion and mar­gin­al­ized them even more.