Что значит быть журналистом?

Кто-то может позавидовать журналистам. «Когда твое имя появляется в СМИ, тебя охватывает чувство гордости», - признал один французский журналист с большим стажем. Но эта профессия может нести с собой и разочарования: то другой репортер перехватит твой материал, то тебе откажут в интервью, то срывается мероприятие, ради которого ты прождал много часов. Одна польская журналистка отметила другую трудность: «Никогда не знаешь, когда тебе придется работать, а когда будет выходной. Иногда из-за этого страдает личная жизнь. И ритм работы может повредить семейным отношениям». Бывший журналист, работавший в Советском Союзе, рассказал о постигшем его разочаровании: «Я столько сил вложил в материал, а его так и не опубликовали».

Журналистка, пишущая для спортивной рубрики самой большой газеты в Нидерландах, поделилась: «Меня часто обвиняют в невежестве. Некоторые читатели злятся, а поскольку в спорте эмоции часто выходят из-под контроля, меня даже грозились убить».

Почему же журналисты остаются верными своей профессии? Некоторые, конечно, ради денег, но не все. Один французский журналист сказал, что он просто людит писать. А журналистка из Мексики заметила: «По крайней мере ты делишься с людьми тем, что они должны узнать». В Японии главный редактор одной из газет сказал: «Я счастлив, когда удается помочь людям или когда восстанавливается справедливость».

Activity 10. Read the article, discuss it and render.

Journalists under fire

On March 8, 2002, business reporter Natalya Skryl, 29, was assaulted outside the apartment building where she lived in the southwestern city of Taganrog. Skryl was struck a dozen times a blunt object and died shortly afterwards. To this day no one has been charged with her death.

Skryl worked as an investigative reporter for a local newspaper, Nashe Vremya. At the time of her death, she was investigating, among other stories, the struggle for control of Tagmet, one of the Russia’s biggest metallurgical plants.

The day before she was killed, Skryl told her colleague that she was going to meet a source to get some exclusive, secret information about the ongoing machinations over Tagmet, and hinted she would write something sensational. According to her fellow journalists, Skryl’s reporting had become more prying and analytical all round a couple of months before her death.

Skryl’s case is not the only unsolved murder of a journalist in Russia. According to the latest report of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) there have been at least12 unsolved murders of journalists in Russia since President Putin assumed power in 2000. CPJ research has found that Russia now ranks as one of the five most dangerous countries in the world for journalists to work in.

Perhaps most striking is the fact that journalists in Russia are not being killed while reporting on the scene, but just for their intention to write or investigate a story.

“Russia hasn’t changed much”, Igor Yakovenko, head of the Union of Russian Journalists says. “When the communist censorship disappeared, the other types of censorship became effective: censorship by Kalashnikov, judicial censorship and tax increases.

The Union of Russian Journalists has done its own investigations into unsolved murders of Russian journalists. Russian officialdom has responded indifferently to the problem. As Yakovenko points out, this is symptomatic of a larger problem: the government’s callous indifference to the lives of ordinary citizens.

“We still don’t know who is responsible for the sinking of the submarine Kursk as well as for the Nord-Ost or Beslan hostage-taking”, Yakovenko says. “ Russian law enforcement agencies and courts are very ineffective”.

In the case of Skryl, local police and prosecutors inspected the crime scene, her office, and interrogated young men from her neighborhood.

“The day after the murder, the police brought several young men, of Natasha’s age, to the police station”, said the victim’s mother. “And the policemen beat them, trying to make them confess to participating in the crime. The mothers of these boys then called me to tell me that it was my fault that their children were beaten up.”

In the beginning the prosecutors claimed the murder was a case of hooliganism, then they insisted it had been a robbery, but neither money not jewelry were stolen, only reporter’s notes. In the end, the investigators finally agreed with Skryl’s colleagues, who suggested that this was a contract killing because the journalist knew about damaging information about an ownership battle connected with the Tagmet plant.

Nevertheless, the prosecutors did not seek any evidence for a constant killing. They did not even question Skryl’s colleagues. Having found no suspect, local prosecutors halted the investigation.

“They don’t do anything, because it is much easier to stop investigating on the grounds of the absence of any suspects than to admit that this was a contract killing and search for the masterminds and executors,” said G.Bochkaryev, of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations.

More than two years have passed since the murder, yet no one has been charged. Both Skryl’s family and her colleagues requested information on the progress of the investigation at the local prosecutor’s office, but there was no answer.

The Glasnost Defense Foundation, a non-governmental organization that protects the rights of journalists, also requested information and wrote protest letters to the Prosecutor General’s Office, but this did not yield any results. CPJ sent another request to the Prosecutor General’s Office in August. It is still waiting for a response.

Maria Yulikova

The Moscow times.

Activity 11. Read the article, render it and discuss the most controversial issues.