EUROPE NEWS JULY 7, 2010
Where Spies Go Undercovered
Russian Media's Subdued Approach Contrasts With Splash in U.S. and Europe
By GREGORY L. WHITE
MOSCOW—The case of 11 people accused of infiltrating the U.S. as deep-cover spies for Russia has made a news splash in America and Britain since they were arrested over a week ago. But in Russia's largely state-controlled media, the story is mostly relegated to the back pages—when it appears at all.
The contrast highlights a quandary the espionage scandal has created for the Kremlin, which has invested heavily in a "reset" in U.S.-Russia relations under President Barack Obama. A strong reaction could endanger the warming trend between the two countries—and raise uncomfortable questions about whether the Kremlin was right to trust Washington.
"For a long time, the state channels had portrayed America as the enemy. Then after America was shown as a friend, suddenly she turns around and plays this nasty trick," said Marianna Maximovskaya, host of a weekly news program on RENTV, a privately owned channel whose news coverage is less tightly controlled than that of big national networks. "The authorities didn't understand what to do."
On Russia's main national state-run television channels, the spy story led broadcasts only on the first day the news broke. The reports, delivered in a neutral manner, focused on official statements from Russia and the U.S. As both the Kremlin and the White House played down any impact from the scandal on relations, it faded from newscasts in Russia. The reports that did run adopted the ironic tone set by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who joked about the cloak-and-dagger nature of the accusations in a meeting with former President Bill Clinton.
"Americans Don't Understand Who the FBI Has Caught," was the July 1 headline in the official Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper on a story about reports in the U.S. that questioned whether the accused spies had obtained any sensitive information.
By the weekend, state-controlled Russian media had moved on. Reports that some of the accused spies had confessed were brief and delivered late in newscasts. None of the weekend analytical programs that review the week's major news on the state-controlled networks mentioned the spy scandal.
While tabloids in the U.S. and U.K. have been transfixed with salacious details of the glamorous life of Anna Chapman, one of the accused, only a few Russian outlets have followed those stories. Tvoi Den, one of Russia's raciest tabloids, ran semi-nude photos of Ms. Chapman but quoted a friend of the accused spy threatening to "punch in the face" Ms. Chapman's British ex-husband for releasing the pictures.
Despite the drop in coverage, interest in the spy scandal remains high in Russia, according to Yandex, the country's largest Internet search engine. Queries related to the spy scandal and Ms. Chapman remain among the most popular, ranking alongside those about the World Cup soccer matches, a Yandex spokeswoman said. Internet media, largely relying on translations of reports from the U.S. and U.K., continue to cover the spy case.
Coming just days after President Dmitry Medvedev's first state visit to the U.S., the timing of the spy arrests has raised hackles in Moscow. "These things don't happen by accident," said Alexei Pushkov, a foreign-policy specialist and television host. "It will have a certain sobering effect."
The sometimes-comic details of the alleged spies' work, combined with suggestions that information they're accused of collecting could have been found on the Internet, are hardly flattering for Russia's intelligence services, which have been lavished with Kremlin praise and funding.
Russian analysts and journalists note that the Kremlin focuses its informal control over news coverage on outlets with substantial reach inside Russia—primarily the big national networks and newspapers. Media with lesser reach domestically tend to have greater freedom.
"I can't say on TV that the [Foreign Intelligence Service] is rotten down to the roots," said Mikhail Leontiev, host of a weekly show on the main state channel, noting that he did raise that issue in his magazine, Odnako, which has a much smaller audience.
One Russian state-run network has stayed with the story: Russia Today, the Kremlin's English-language news channel mainly distributed outside Russia. "Ever since the first reports....this has been the top story on RT," Margarita Simonyan, Russia Today's editor-in-chief, said in an email. "More than 250,000 people have watched RT videos about the spy scandal on YouTube," she said.
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