The director of public relations for Channel One, Igor Burenkov, created a stir Tuesday when he was widely quoted as telling Interfax: "The transition to showing the debates as recorded is due to completely clear and objective reasons."

He cited the country's 11 time zones, and the chance of debaters not showing up for their slots, adding that "live broadcasts have never guaranteed freedom of speech."

Andrei Bystritsky, the deputy head of VGTRK, which broadcasts the Rossia channel, seemed to express a similar policy on Tuesday, though not in so many words, speaking only generally of concern for candidates' convenience. "We are ready to broadcast live," he was quoted by the same Interfax report as saying, "but I'm afraid that party representatives won't agree to come five times to do five tapings" for each time-zone region.

These remarks prompted political and media observers to decry what was perceived as Kremlin pressure on the television stations' leadership as an attempt to constrain the opposition's ability to criticize the ruling elite. State Duma deputies from the Yabloko party drafted a letter to Channel One director Konstantin Ernst and Rossia chief Oleg Dobrodeyev, asking that they reconsider their positions. The letter is to be considered in the Duma on Friday.

If debates are recorded, "you no longer have a debate because anything that's recorded can be edited," Union of Right Forces leader Irina Khakamada was quoted as saying in Wednesday's Gazeta.

"Debates without their spontaneity lose all their interest," Vladimir Pozner, the host of Channel One's "Vremena" program told Novaya Gazeta, comparing recorded debates to cold bliny -- "you can't eat them unless you're really hungry."

The concept of "live-to-tape" is unprecedented for campaign debates in any democratic country, said Yabloko's Sergei Ivanenko, a co-author of the Duma's letter. For Russia, "it doesn't look good." More than that, he said, it's in the stations' own interests to run the debates live since that will attract greater viewer interest.

Perhaps wary of the waves the decisions seemed to be causing, the stations on Thursday seemed to be scrambling to put a different face forward.

"The decision to show the debates as pre-recorded is not final," Channel One's Burenkov told Interfax. "The system of showing the debates on Channel One is now in a state of discussion."

As for Rossia's policy, readers of the Thursday edition of Novaya Gazeta saw Bystritsky quoted at length as saying, "Yes, in fact, Rossia will show the television debates pre-recorded."

But contacted by telephone later in the day, Bystritsky fiercely denied having said this, suggesting that the journalists put words in his mouth to suit their own interests. "I never said that. I never said anything like that. We have intended, intend now and will intend to broadcast the political debates live," he thundered. "That's all. Period."

Bystritsky added that he had complained to the editor at Novaya Gazeta and a correction would be run in the paper's next issue, on Monday.

Irina Gordiyenko, the head of Novaya Gazeta's political department, who had spoken with Bystritsky earlier in the day, confirmed that there would be a correction. But "he didn't deny saying that. The main idea was that he had been mistaken. Judging by everything, [the channel's] internal policy somehow changed."

A spokeswoman for Rossia executive Dobrodeyev insisted that the channel's policy had not changed. "From the beginning we have been ready to broadcast live." The public misunderstanding about that, she said, sprang from a simple misattribution in Gazeta on Tuesday of a statement made by Channel One's Marat Gelman as a quote from Rossia's Sergei Kukhrotin.

On Wednesday, when it was still assumed the debates would be recorded, Central Elections Commission Chairman Alexander Veshnyakov weighed in in favor of live translation. "We are maximally interested in having live pre-election debates on the most pressing current problems," he said, emphasizing that the candidates themselves, not the television stations, would bear responsibility for what is said.

As for the television channels' hasty reversal of position, political observer Andrei Piontkovsky said their task today "is to cleverly try to calm public opinion, and at the same time not promise live debates.

"This will remain the policy until the day before the debates begin and they'll say, look, we've changed our minds. How can you believe someone who says one thing in the morning, and another in the evening?"

TV Center, the third channel that will broadcast debates, has yet to announce a decision one way or the other, and its representatives could not be contacted Thursday.

Setting Up the Debates

While the format of the campaign debates remained cloudy Thursday, their schedule became clearer.

Ilya Mitasov, spokesman for the council supervising the elections, which is matching up candidates for next month's debates, said 20 of the 24 parties that have submitted federal lists to the Central Elections Commission, giving them the right to free air time, had sent in their debate rosters.

These 20 have submitted a line-up of debaters and requested adversaries, though there's no guarantee their wishes will be honored, he said.

Channel One, Rossia and TV Center will broadcast debates daily from Nov. 10 through Dec. 5, two days before the election.

Each party has the right to appear in 12 televised debates, broken down to four appearances on Channel One, three on Rossia and five on TV Center.

Channel One will broadcast two debates between two parties each day. Rossia will broadcast only one debate, but among four parties. TV Center will show two debates; with three parties represented in the morning and two parties in the evening -- "or vice versa," Mitasov said.

No given party is to appear more than one time per day, Mitasov said, with the caveat that all final decisions lie ultimately with each station's management.

Sound complicated? It is.

"We stay up nights working on the schedule, deciding who to match with whom," Mitasov said.

"The door is still open" for the four parties that have yet to submit their requests, he said, but they must do so by Oct. 30, when the supervisory council will meet to approve the final schedule, which will then be confirmed by the Central Elections Commission.

The supervisory council is tasked with implementing Elections-2003, the agreement signed by political and media representatives in August, which is in turn overseen by the Central Elections Commission.

The debates will be structured around seven proposed issues: economic policy, social policy, national security, the fight against crime, foreign policy, government structure and the state of civil society.

See also:

the original at
www.themoscowtimes.com

Elections to the State Duma, 2003

Freedom of Speech and Media Law in Russia

The Moscow Times, October 17, 2003