“Belarusian media funding is declining, while competition from Russian media is on the rise.” Is there a solution?

Why did the problems arise now?

In pri­vate and pub­lic meet­ings, there is much dis­cus­sion about the neces­si­ty of sus­tain­able fund­ing mod­els. But it’s hard to call the grant sys­tem one. First, unlike the adver­tis­ing mod­el, grant oppor­tu­ni­ties are high­ly diver­si­fied. For instance, last year, there was a grant call, but this year there is none. As a result, the media must often seek out new pro­grams. Sec­ond, only state pro­grams typ­i­cal­ly offer a pub­lic bid for accept­ing appli­ca­tions.

Now there is much talk of for­mal­i­ties and short­com­ings in grant appli­ca­tions. How­ev­er, these projects have exist­ed for years, so the man­agers like­ly have the nec­es­sary expe­ri­ence to pre­pare the appli­ca­tions cor­rect­ly. What’s changed?

“In the first months after the relo­ca­tion, Belarus received sig­nif­i­cant atten­tion from the world. Both short- and long-term sup­port pro­grams were avail­able. That offered some wig­gle-room for sur­vival,” recalls Barys Haret­s­ki, BAJ deputy chair­man.

How­ev­er, after the out­break of a full-scale war in Ukraine, the sit­u­a­tion changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly.

“Some donors consider Belarus to be part of the same package as Russia’s liberal media” 

There is anoth­er impor­tant fac­tor to con­sid­er. Belaru­sian media man­agers are pay­ing more atten­tion to com­pe­ti­tion from neigh­bor­ing media out­lets. These out­lets also com­pete for resources to sup­port inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism.

“The decrease in fund­ing for Belaru­sian media is evi­dent from recent devel­op­ments,” says Barys Haret­s­ki. “This is part­ly due to some donors con­sid­er­ing Belarus to be part of the same pack­age as Rus­si­a’s lib­er­al media. The con­test has strict require­ments, but it does not con­sid­er the local sit­u­a­tion.

For exam­ple, one grant had a con­di­tion that a medi­a’s reach should be at least 1 mil­lion peo­ple. How­ev­er, dis­cussing a coun­try with an offi­cial pop­u­la­tion of 9.3 mil­lion is dif­fer­ent from dis­cussing a state with a pop­u­la­tion of 143 mil­lion. 15 times the dif­fer­ence!”

Con­sid­er­ing audi­ence reach as a per­cent­age rather than quan­ti­ta­tive met­rics is log­i­cal in this case. Oth­er­wise, it can end up like in an old anec­dote about two ath­letes: the Amer­i­can fin­ished sec­ond to last, as report­ed by the USSR radio, while the Sovi­et run­ner trailed slight­ly behind the leader.

Accord­ing to the Belaru­sian Ana­lyt­i­cal Work­shop, 57% of the Belaru­sian pop­u­la­tion trusts inde­pen­dent mass media. Despite the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of jour­nal­ism, Belaru­sians are recep­tive to alter­na­tive sources, accord­ing to soci­ol­o­gists. The regime’s efforts to estab­lish infor­ma­tion hygiene have been titan­ic, but rather unsuc­cess­ful.

The question arises: Can Russian liberal media provide objective and comprehensive coverage of events in Belarus?

The for­mal approach high­lights a con­cern­ing and per­ilous real­i­ty: some donors fail to rec­og­nize our inde­pen­dent media as a dis­tinct enti­ty. Despite numer­ous appeals and the efforts of demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­ers, some indi­vid­u­als refuse to acknowl­edge the dif­fer­ence between Belaru­sians and Rus­sians.

This is exact­ly what Pavel Sviard­lou, edi­tor-in-chief at Euro­ra­dio, said recent­ly:

“Europe is start­ing to adopt the approach con­sid­er­ing ‘media in exile,’ regard­less of their coun­try of ori­gin, such as Belarus or Rus­sia. We are pooled togeth­er and mon­ey is allo­cat­ed for all of us. Eval­u­at­ed by cov­er­age. How­ev­er, it is not appro­pri­ate to com­pare a mil­lion YouTube fol­low­ers of Russ­ian media with a mil­lion fol­low­ers of Belaru­sian media.

Addi­tion­al­ly, Russ­ian media claim to be able to reach out to Belaru­sian fol­low­ers, too. Euro­pean politi­cians are hap­py with this: prob­lem solved.

But can Russ­ian lib­er­al media pro­vide objec­tive and com­pre­hen­sive cov­er­age of events in Belarus? Do they have the resources, the under­stand­ing, and most impor­tant­ly, the desire? Appar­ent­ly not.

The way they pre­sent­ed the lat­est news about the prob­lems of pes­simiza­tion of inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian media in Google search results, to which Media IQ drew atten­tion, is con­cern­ing. Russ­ian media reprint­ed the Finan­cial Times news and shift­ed the focus, dis­tort­ing the infor­ma­tion. Alleged­ly, the restric­tions con­cerned both the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion and Belarus, although this is not true. In the orig­i­nal piece, Rus­sia was not men­tioned at all.

“Some independent media outlets have enough funds to cover one or two months of work”

To objec­tive­ly assess the process­es, we can con­sid­er the num­ber of Russ­ian media projects that emerged after the full-scale inva­sion, such as Astra, Ver­st­ka, Dron, Project, and oth­ers.

What is the sit­u­a­tion with the Belaru­sian media sphere? BA, the first pri­vate radio sta­tion in the city, lnfa-Kuri­er, the Slut­sk dis­trict edi­tion, Ranak TV chan­nel, and Dze­jaslou lit­er­ary mag­a­zine were closed down. Recent­ly, Reform.by, Plan B, KYKY media out­lets have report­ed prob­lems with fund­ing. The list goes on…

“Some inde­pen­dent media out­lets have enough funds to cov­er one or two months of work,” express­es the gen­er­al con­cern Barys Haret­s­ki.

Com­mon trends in the media indus­try include the atom­iza­tion of media and jour­nal­ists, with many start­ing their own projects. Oth­ers leave the pro­fes­sion for relat­ed fields, such as work­ing in NGOs or social media mar­ket­ing, or oth­er sec­tors, such as IT. Some jour­nal­ists also find work in oth­er juris­dic­tions, such as get­ting a job in the media of their host coun­try. A well-known exam­ple is when Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists opened a new media out­let ded­i­cat­ed to local top­ics in anoth­er coun­try, DigitalBusiness.kz.

Of course, all these are demo­ti­vat­ing process­es that do not ben­e­fit the inde­pen­dent media sphere. Spon­sors are more will­ing to fund Telegram and YouTube chan­nels due to their small team size, low fund­ing require­ments, and wide reach. How­ev­er, these chan­nels rely on tra­di­tion­al media as a source of ver­i­fied and objec­tive infor­ma­tion.

“We will not stop saying that Belarusian independent journalism is worth supporting”

Inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian pub­li­ca­tions are fac­ing an unprece­dent­ed chal­lenge. They are work­ing in exile and can­not gen­er­ate rev­enue inde­pen­dent­ly. Is there a way out?

“How can the media sur­vive?” Barys Haret­s­ki admits this is a dif­fi­cult ques­tion. “Inde­pen­dent media in Belarus used to make mon­ey through adver­tis­ing, but these are not easy times. Many pub­li­ca­tions are now labeled as ‘extrem­ist’ and are there­fore unable to receive sup­port. Com­pa­nies in Belarus are hes­i­tant to engage with these pub­li­ca­tions due to the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of any inter­ac­tion with ‘extrem­ists.’

Some media sites have adver­tise­ments, but they only gen­er­ate a small por­tion of the rev­enue. There’s no way to sur­vive on this mon­ey.

The same goes for finan­cial sup­port from read­ers. That wave of sol­i­dar­i­ty went down after 2020 for obvi­ous rea­sons. The surge of dona­tions will sus­tain Reform.by and Plan B (fol­low­ing their SOS cry) in the short term. How­ev­er, rely­ing sole­ly on short-term solu­tions is not sus­tain­able.”

Inte­grat­ing media projects is believed to be help­ful in times of neces­si­ty. How­ev­er, there are cur­rent­ly no suc­cess­ful exam­ples. A joint project involv­ing Malan­ka Media and Euro­ra­dio has just been announced, but there are no spe­cif­ic out­comes yet.

If jour­nal­ists start mak­ing mon­ey from oth­er ser­vices, such as edu­ca­tion­al ser­vices, it will mean less work for the media.

“This is not an effec­tive approach,” says Barys Haret­s­ki. “Replac­ing a fun­da­men­tal pro­fes­sion­al func­tion is not advis­able. Today, the mass media is not just a busi­ness, but a social mis­sion to deliv­er free and impor­tant infor­ma­tion to Belaru­sian soci­ety.”

Lithua­ni­a’s jour­nal­ists sur­vived abroad dur­ing the Sovi­et era, as we can see from their expe­ri­ence. An ecosys­tem of com­pa­nies and orga­ni­za­tions found­ed by the dias­po­ra in Amer­i­ca and else­where was cre­at­ed. How­ev­er, it takes time for Belaru­sian relo­ca­tors to recov­er from the shock of forced emi­gra­tion, and their pri­or­i­ty is to main­tain their cause.

“The sale of brand­ed items and oth­er meth­ods of mon­e­ti­za­tion do not gen­er­ate suf­fi­cient income to cov­er the month­ly salary of even one employ­ee,” accord­ing to the deputy chair­man of BAJ.

There­fore, inde­pen­dent media can only rely on donor sup­port. If for some rea­son a part­ner reduces sup­port or aban­dons the Belaru­sian top­ic alto­geth­er, it will become even more dif­fi­cult for jour­nal­ists. The last oppor­tu­ni­ty is to draw atten­tion to it in the pub­lic space.

“Belaru­sian media have a longer his­to­ry of suc­cess and more effec­tive work than Russ­ian lib­er­al media. BAJ states this on all pos­si­ble plat­forms, includ­ing offi­cial meet­ings with the EU, joint calls with large foun­da­tions, and con­ver­sa­tions with pri­vate donors,” sum­ma­rizes Barys Haret­s­ki. “For exam­ple, dur­ing the Decem­ber meet­ing of the Euro­pean Par­lia­men­t’s Del­e­ga­tion for rela­tions with Belarus, Andrei Bas­tunets drew the MEPs’ atten­tion to the prob­lems of the mass media. Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism is worth sup­port­ing. We appre­ci­ate every­one who helps us.”

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