| A group of influential lawmakers announced Thursday
that it has drafted a new mass media law that aims to discourage
the government from owning media outlets and introduce a European-style
concept of public media.
The liberal bill, which should go for a first reading in the
State Duma this fall, was written by Mikhail Fedotov, one of the
authors of the much-praised yet outdated 1991 Law on Mass Media.
"The fact that Fedotov is an author of the draft is already
a certain credential," said Deputy Duma Speaker Irina Khakamada,
who is also a leader of the Union of Right Forces, or SPS. "That
means that the draft does not strive to limit media liberties."
One of the bill's backers, Russia's Regions Deputy Boris Reznik,
said that deputies from across the Duma's political spectrum had
agreed to support the bill. They included Khakamada, Boris Nadezhdin
of SPS, Mikhail Zadornov of Yabloko, Communists Alexander Kravets
and Tatyana Astrakhankina and deputies from Fatherland-All Russia,
People's Deputy and Russia's Regions.
Fedotov, a lawyer and a secretary at the Union of Journalists
of Russia, is one of the three men who wrote the first glasnost-era
Soviet and then Russian law on mass media. The legislation freed
the press from official censorship and has acquired an almost
holy status among Russian liberals and free speech advocates,
who tend to see any attempt to amend it as a government-sponsored
assault on free speech. At the same time, since the high-profile
media conflicts of the past years, advocates of the law have come
to accept that a new law is needed to include realities such as
private media owners and Internet publications that did not exist
in the early 1990s.
Fedotov said his draft, which is posted on the Union of Journalists'
web site (www.ruj.ru), would create a buffer between the state-owned
media and their government owners. The state would not be able
to partially own a media outlet as it currently does with ORT.
Also, advertising would be limited in state-owned media.
Internet sites would be able to register as mass media, but
on a strictly voluntary basis.
Lawmakers said the draft, which was written two years ago, was
submitted to the State Duma on June 20, just two days after President
Vladimir Putin met with a group of top media executives. He conceded
that the mass media law contradicted newer laws and urged the
executives to draft legislation to build up a "civilized
media business."
"Since [Putin] expressed the political will, we decided
to submit this bill," Reznik said.
Khakamada said she thought enough support could be drummed up
in the Duma to pass the legislation.
She noted that the deputies had changed tactics by presenting
Fedotov's bill before the Kremlin announced a draft of its own.
"Otherwise they will switch on the [Duma] voting machine,
and it will be hard to do anything," she said.
It was not clear Thursday how the Press Ministry and other relevant
government agencies would react to the deputies' move. Deputy
Press Minister Mikhail Seslavinsky, who is in charge of the ministry's
relations with parliament, could not be reached, and other officials
refused to comment.
Reznik said the ministry had absorbed much of Fedotov's draft
into its own version of a media bill and was displeased that the
lawmakers had released their bill first.
Khakamada warned that the bill faced a "big battle"
in the Duma.
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