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MISHAL HUSAIN: It seems so ironic, given the fact that was a totalitarian state, in many ways.
ANN COOPER: Right. But remember, those were the years in which that totalitarian state collapsed. All of those things were falling apart, and one result was that people had greater and greater freedom to speak out. And the press, in particular, had greater freedom.
MISHAL HUSAIN: Is that what we saw when the Chernobyl nuclear disaster happened? Many people saw that as a landmark, in terms of what we knew about Russia, because foreign journalists were allowed in. There was a sense of that glasnost -- openness at that time. Before we found out about Chernobyl.
ANN COOPER: You know, if you went back and looked at that now, it wouldn't look quite so open because there was this period when there was silence. The initial Soviet reaction seemed to be the typical reaction. "Let's not talk about it. Let's not reveal what's going on." But then there was a bit of an opening up, which, at that time, was extraordinary. But if you looked back on it now, it would look like they were still trying to deny that something happened. And that they opened up only under great pressure and rather slowly. But, you know, 10, 15 years earlier, they wouldn't have opened up at all. They would have just stonewalled. It was a very, very closed society. And if they didn't want to talk about something, they simply didn't do that.
MISHAL HUSAIN: And if something on that scale happened today, how do you think the authorities would deal with it? How much openness would they allow now?
ANN COOPER: Well, let's look at about a year and a half ago, the hostage taking at the theater in Moscow -- when Chechen rebels took several hundred hostages and held them for several days, and then the authorities moved in. They used a gas to overcome the rebels. But dozens of the hostages died as well. There was a fair amount of good coverage of that incident. Good coverage meaning: trying to get at what really happened. And to question the authorities: "What sort of gas did you use? How did you come to that decision? How do you live with the fact that you killed quite a few people using that gas?" And the Kremlin didn't like that questioning. They really did not. They wanted people to just focus on, "Well, it's over, we got through that, and there were some consequences, but let's move on." Shortly after that was when the Kremlin made its last move against NTV, which was the last independent national broadcaster. And, you know, NTV was brought under even greater Kremlin control. And, certainly, the perception is that this was punishment for NTV's aggressive coverage of that hostage crisis.
MISHAL HUSAIN: Why, then, do you think we are seeing this shift? This shift towards greater restrictions. Is it a sign of the times? Is it a different mood or is this a deliberate government policy?
ANN COOPER: Well, President Putin has been in power for over four years now, and we've seen a gradual, but very significant, retrenching in terms of press freedom -- at the local level and very much at the national level. And it does seem quite deliberate. Putin seems to be a leader who does not tolerate criticism very well. You know, he doesn't understand that in his role as the elected leader of the country, he needs to be able to stand up to that criticism. People have the right to ask questions about how he's leading the country. They have the right to ask questions about how the hostage crisis was ended in Moscow. Could the authorities have acted in a different way that wouldn't have cost so many lives? They have the right to know as voters. And the press has that right to raise those questions, and to analyze what happened. But Putin doesn't seem willing to withstand that kind of scrutiny and criticism.
MISHAL HUSAIN: What he said directly to newspaper editors is that, "This is a really difficult time for Russia, and I need your support." He's saying, "I need your support to get economic reforms through. That's what's important. Be on my side."
ANN COOPER: Well, you know, that's what leaders all over the world say when they want to restrict the press. Because they don't want to be criticized. You know, it's an uncomfortable thing to be running a country and see yourself criticized in the press. But that's part of the bargain if you're going to stand for democratic election. The people chose you, they have a right to oversee your performance, and they have a right to decide whether you should continue in office. Do they like what you're doing? Do they like the fact that you're waging war in their name in Chechnya, for example, as Putin's Kremlin is doing at this point.
MISHAL HUSAIN: What, then, do you make of many of the opinion polls that we see out of Russia, which basically seem to show us that Russians don't really care about that. They just re-elected Vladimir Putin with a huge majority. One poll, recently done by Newsweek, found 57 percent approval for the restoration of censorship.
ANN COOPER: Well, it certainly seems ironic, doesn't it? I think people went through a very, very turbulent time in the 1990s in Russia. There was a lot of economic chaos, and I think the perception is that under Putin things have stabilized to a large degree in terms of the economy. For many people, life is still not great, they're still not reaping those economic benefits, but at least it's not as chaotic as it was for so much of the 1990s.
MISHAL HUSAIN: But if that's what matters to Russians, then should someone in your position be worrying about things like press freedom?
ANN COOPER: Well, you still need that scrutiny, the watchdog role of the press, in any sort of society that that wants to be democratic. What are you going to do -- say Putin made things pretty stable and so let's just let him lead forever and forever? People need to see how his government is performing. They need to see how local governments are performing. They need to make those choices. They may be reasonably happy right now with the way things are going in the sense that the economic chaos of the past is now past. But on an ongoing basis, they're going to need to see how the Kremlin is performing.
MISHAL HUSAIN: But many of them seem to think they do have all of that information. There was another poll recently that said 75 percent of people think press freedom does exist in Russia today.
ANN COOPER: Well, there is certainly a degree of press freedom. It's nothing like it was, you know, in the darkest days of the Soviet era. But there is less and less freedom. There are fewer and fewer different voices out there being heard in the media. And you have a situation like Togliatti, where you have two very high profile murders, and that tends to silence things. It tends to make people much more reticent to be critical. And, you know, that is simply not healthy for the development of democracy. If you give up your right to criticize, to say, "You know, actually, we don't like the way you're governing," then what are you opening yourself up for?
MISHAL HUSAIN: So what's the reality of the media in Russia, then? What do you see if you turn on the evening news?
ANN COOPER: Well, a lot of people say that increasingly, television resembles the news in the Soviet era. Putin is the focus of so many broadcasts. Who did he meet with today? What did he say when this world leader came calling? You know, that's how the news used to be presented. There could be mayhem and chaos all over the world, but the lead story every night in the Soviet era was what did the Secretary General of the Communist Party do today? What meetings did he have? You didn't even hear what he was saying, usually. Just him shaking hands with lots of people, and greeting them, and smiling in the Kremlin.
MISHAL HUSAIN: And that's not good enough, in your view?
ANN COOPER: Absolutely not. You know, what's really going on? What policies are being carried out? What sorts of decisions are being made? What's happening in Chechnya today? How is the conflict there going? The Kremlin wants people to believe that Chechnya is moving toward democracy. That things are normalized. You know, the few reporters who can get through the Russian military's restrictions and try to report independently in Chechnya paint a rather different picture of life there. That's important to know about.
MISHAL HUSAIN: What do you think when you hear the Russian government's official position? President Putin says he absolutely does defend the press. That it's something that he treasures and will stand up for.
ANN COOPER: Well, I don't think most journalists in Russia believe that. I think that much of the public wouldn't believe that if they really stopped to think about the way the press is treated and the range of voices, range of choices they have in terms of media today in Russia.
MISHAL HUSAIN: What does it tell us, then, about the bigger picture for the country if there are these restrictions on the freedom of the press? And if there's one thing on paper, and something else in practice?
ANN COOPER: Well, it's a pretty depressing scenario, in many places. There is independent media; where it exists, it has often been threatened or cowed into self-censorship. We saw this in many places late last year during the parliamentary elections. New restrictions were put on the press that forbade biased coverage. Well, what did that mean, exactly? And the way the press decided to deal with that was to play it safe and not do very much election coverage, which meant that you as the voter, going to the polls, probably didn't know very much about your choices -- the candidates for office.
MISHAL HUSAIN: Would you say it's as bad, then, as it was in the Communist era, in terms of those controls?
ANN COOPER: No. No. Certainly not as bad as at the height of Soviet power. No, you can't imagine the stranglehold that the Communist Party had on Soviet society for 70 years. It controlled absolutely everything. You know, if you wanted to buck that system, if you wanted to speak your mind, the consequences were very dire. The hard core dissidents ended up in the Gulag. They were in prison camps. They might be put in a psychiatric hospital and treated very, very severely.
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Ann Cooper, Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists
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