Consolidation of inter-ethnic relations depends on mass media

Supervision over the mass media is the key to friendship between Russia’s ethnic groups – the members of the NCFD Representatives’ Council and other experts came to this conclusion during a meeting in Ingushetia’s permanent mission in Moscow.

Oleg Ageyev, deputy director of the Moscow Inter-regional Development Department, said all reports touching upon inter-ethnic relations can have a great impact on public opinion. Unfortunately, our people are not able to discern the flow of information. The media isn’t always ready to assume responsibility for existing problems and to correct its mistakes. Of course, a lot of newspapers work on improving the level of inter-ethnic relations, but “sensational’ and scandalous information always eclipse such reports on culture or national festivals. So the flow of positive information should be broadened. But unfortunately we have to take the demand into account too. Of course, in some critical moments a balanced and sensible opinion of NCFD representatives can tip the balance and correct a situation that was getting out of hand. We should promote the positive results of Moscow’s cooperation with the Caucasus.

We should use the mass media to improve friendship between the different peoples of Russia. But why didn’t anyone in the media explain clearly why Russia needs the Caucasus and why does the Caucasus need Moscow? Now we have to be satisfied with dubious claims.

Moreover, the most experienced and successful newsmakers don’t make news on ethno-cultural issues, while they are capable of promoting the most insignificant success or to make people interested in the culture of neighboring peoples. Both Moscow and the Caucasus should be more active in creating a positive image of the peoples living in these regions.

Today the main field of fomentation towards inter-ethnic feud is the Internet. Today Moscow alone hosts some 80 Internet-pages that call for violence and provocations. Some sites like this exist in the Caucasus. If you read the materials offered by such pages, you might get the impression that we’re at war. Inexperienced young people are easily falling under this influence and start behaving provocatively towards the authorities and representatives of other ethnicities. Such actions revolt Moscow's residents and guests. We should activate our efforts in counter-acting Internet provocations, because if we lose control, the consequences might be disastrous.

Therefore we should appoint special officers in each permanent mission for monitoring paper and Internet media, and they would send reports to our department each Friday. We’ve already worked out a project that comprises all corrections from your part. It is vital that we monitor these provocative materials to prepare counter-measures. We should also cooperate with the press services of universities, as students are the future of inter-ethnic relations in Russia.

Gadji Makhachev, permanent representative of the Dagestani Republic in Moscow

It seems that the authorities are confused as to what to do with the Caucasus. Some provocateurs say that the Caucasus should be separated from Russia. “Let’s stop feeding the Caucasus!”, they say. And we know the names of these people. And there’s a paragraph in our criminal code that is aimed at dealing with such provocations.  So why isn’t anyone punished? Who benefits from it? It's shocking when papers publish articles, nationalist in their nature, and don’t even try to hide the authors’ names.

Of course, not all papers are under government control today. They publish this nonsense, causing a cheap success. No respected newspaper would publish an open call to inter-ethnic feud, but they can make disguised calls.

We should all participate in the fight against it. For example, anyone can address the prosecutor’s office and file an action. Of course, there is no guarantee that it would be successful, but any paper would think twice before publishing any provocative material ever again. And of course you can’t catch all the fools who want to ‘separate the Caucasus from Russia”.

Everyone who has enough money can create his own media agency, so it would promote his point of view. The state only influences a fraction of the modern media. We should formulate a consistent policy to answer any provocations.

Sultan Khamzaev, coordinator for inter-ethnic and inter-confessional relations of the Moscow department of the “United Russia” party

We’ve been to Dagestan recently and invited newsmakers to come with us. And when this TV channel (I won’t name it for obvious reasons) refused to show this piece in its bulletin, and I asked them why, they said it wasn’t provocative and interesting enough. Can you imagine?! So if we’d gone to Dagestan with some freaks who would create a fight or something like that – then they would show us on the news. The media chases glory and doesn’t care about provoking inter-ethnic conflicts.

Mansur Magomadov, the head of the  Chechen permanent mission’s press service

We need to create a special state bureau to supervise the media, or at least a lawyers' association.  The state should protect the interests of all its peoples and guests.

Alexei Kaimanov, presidential councillor for internal politics

The state can’t assume all functions. We are talking about developing civil society, but if the state assumes all its functions, what would it do? If each and everyone here would file an action against a newspaper that published improper material – it would stop its chief editor from doing such a thing ever again.

You see, it has been a year since we’ve started talking about controlling the blogosphere – but we are still unable to do that. And you propose us to try to control all the Internet and media space – it’s simply impossible! The whole world can’t do that – why do you think we can? Some sites and papers are financed from abroad – how do you propose to deal with them? This is the price of globalization.

But it doesn’t mean that one should just let go of incompetent information – if you see any signs of inter ethnic conflict fomentation you should address the prosecutor’s office. And we should try to promote positive information about our peoples. Dmitry Zhuravlev, the head of the Regional Problems institution Negative information promotes itself while the positive is hard to promote. This unfortunate paradox illustrates how hard our task is.

By VK