No more praises for Russia: Media change focus in Belarus-Russia relations

The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists pub­lished a Mon­i­tor­ing of Pro-Russ­ian Pro­pa­gan­da and Pro-Inte­gra­tion Rhetoric on the state tele­vi­sion of Belarus. Media experts point out a shift of empha­sis and nar­ra­tives in the cov­er­age of Belarus-Rus­sia rela­tions over the last 12 months.

«There was almost no rhetoric about Moscow as our much need­ed ‘big broth­er’. The mes­sage was, there was that large project of inte­gra­tion and we were ready to par­tic­i­pate, but the Rus­sians seemed to be in no hur­ry. Lukashen­ka is pic­tured as the main inte­gra­tor: he is the one show­ing lead­er­ship and is the most hon­est, but he has no luck with part­ners,» says media expert Mak­sim Zhbank­ou.

 «Scan­ning the pro-gov­ern­ment infor­ma­tion flow (where news is not real news, experts are not real experts, devel­op­ments are not real devel­op­ments, and top sto­ries do not make their way to the top, but are assigned as such) made an ambiva­lent impres­sion. On the one hand, there was no fun­da­men­tal change in over­all tone and bal­ance of mean­ings. On the oth­er hand, the over­all pre­sen­ta­tion of nar­ra­tives around the alliance with the East­ern neigh­bor has become marked­ly dif­fer­ent as com­pared to the study last year.  The enthu­si­as­tic rhetoric went into dol­drums.

Reveal­ing­ly, the most emo­tion­al — nonethe­less extreme­ly con­di­tion­al — hap­py speech­es about our beau­ti­ful friend­ship were heard not from Belaru­sian, but from Russ­ian politi­cians and offi­cials (and out­side of Rus­sia, i.e. in Aus­tria and Belarus).  Rus­sia is not praised, but admon­ished and reproached, » the authors of the mon­i­tor­ing point out.

Pre­sent­ing the results of the mon­i­tor­ing, head of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists, Andrei Bas­tunets, not­ed that ONT, NTV-Belarus, and RTR-Belarus are both the most pop­u­lar TV chan­nels (among those includ­ed in the free TV pack­age) and those with the largest amount of Russ­ian-made con­tent.

The share of Russ­ian-made pro­grams in prime time of one of Bel­tel­era­dio­com­pa­ny chan­nels, NTV-Belarus, has remained very high — 74.2%. Fur­ther­more, the air­time of Russ­ian-made pro­grams was even longer — 87% of the prime-time, while Belaru­sian news and socio-polit­i­cal pro­grams were not broad­cast at all.

Five of the eight chan­nels cov­ered by the study had the total time of Russ­ian TV shows shown in prime time sig­nif­i­cant­ly exceed­ing 60% of the air­time.

Pres­ence of some third-coun­try con­tent is insignif­i­cant and secured main­ly with (most­ly US-pro­duced) movies.  Ukrain­ian TV prod­ucts that recent­ly appeared on the Belaru­sian TV, are most­ly of enter­tain­ment nature.

Accord­ing to Andrei Bas­tunets, the inte­gra­tion process was bare­ly men­tioned in the Russ­ian pro­grams broad­cast in Belarus. Mean­while, Belaru­sian TV chan­nels were bub­bling over with news about NATO exer­cis­es in Lithua­nia and inte­gra­tion. Top­ics relat­ed to the Sovi­et past were active­ly used, and pro­tec­tion of the Russ­ian lan­guage was also men­tioned.

«The Ger­mans are in town! My bad! It is the US deploy­ing armor in Lithua­nia!» 

(Belarus 1 news trail, 27.10.2019)

Belaru­sian TV peo­ple are eager­ly using «born in the USSR» nar­ra­tives, refer­ing to the Sovi­et past: gifts for Novem­ber 7 from the gov­ern­ment, mem­o­ries of the good things about the USSR. The nar­ra­tives were exploit­ed so active­ly as we mon­i­tored the media dur­ing the time when Belarus cel­e­brates Novem­ber 7.

The decrease in the degree of inte­gra­tion enthu­si­asm was accom­pa­nied by a shift of focus from a pri­or­i­ty link to Rus­sia itself to post-Sovi­et geopo­lit­i­cal alliances such as the Eurasian Eco­nom­ic Union, and the key role of the Belaru­sian Pres­i­dent in them. With height­en­ing ten­sions between Belarus and Rus­sia in the eco­nom­ic sphere, the «sov­er­eign» rhetoric has become notice­ably tougher.

Curi­ous­ly, the Russ­ian news and fea­ture pro­grams broad­cast by ONT and NTV-Belarus paid much less atten­tion and less time to the top­ic of deep inte­gra­tion with Belarus than Belaru­sian TV pro­grams per se. In fact, they did­n’t men­tion it at all.

Grow­ing crit­i­cism of inte­gra­tion process­es and the behav­ior of the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment (espe­cial­ly towards the end of the mon­i­tor­ing peri­od) did not spare the Belaru­sian TV from the ‘Russ­ian World’ still dom­i­nat­ing at var­i­ous lev­els: from the over­all Rus­sia-cen­tric map of the world to the preva­lence of the Russ­ian enter­tain­ment con­text. Just as a year ago, pro-Russ­ian ide­o­log­i­cal and cul­tur­al atti­tudes were indoc­tri­nat­ed not only at the lev­el of «direct» mes­sages, but also through for­ma­tion of an emo­tion­al and sub­con­scious depen­dence of the TV audi­ence on Russ­ian con­tent.

The authors of the mon­i­tor­ing empha­size that the mea­sures tak­en by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties to pro­tect the coun­try’s infor­ma­tion space still do not seem to be an appro­pri­ate response to the real threats.

The Belaru­sian audi­ence is sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly deliv­ered a pre­dom­i­nant­ly Russ­ian media agen­da and a pro-Krem­lin view of major events in the world (includ­ing from Belarus gov­ern­ment-fund­ed TV). To a less­er extent, this applies to the Belarus-Rus­sia rela­tions per se.

The Belaru­sian author­i­ties and TV pro­duc­ers should give thought to increas­ing the quan­ti­ty of con­tent pro­duced by third coun­tries and increas­ing the share of TV prod­ucts in the Belaru­sian lan­guage (Belarus 3 TV can serve as a suc­cess­ful exam­ple of that). How­ev­er, Mak­sim Zhbank­ou points out, with the lack of polit­i­cal will to build a free cul­tur­al space, the increase in the vol­ume of Belaru­sian pro­pa­gan­da will not affect the sit­u­a­tion sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

Down­load full text HERE (Russ­ian lan­guage)