"Unfortunately, nobody knows where the solid double line is."

July 12, 2016 12:43 PM

RBC recently became the latest of many independent news organization in Russia to face resignations, restrictions and closures due to mounting pressure from authorities. In May, the editor-in-chief was dismissed, reportedly due to political pressure resulting from stories about Putin's inner circle. Two other chief editors and numerous editorial staff left in protest. The replacement chief editors, brought in from state-controlled media outlet TASS, wanted to introduce themselves to the remaining RBC staff. The Q&A with the new bosses started with a simple request: “Everything we discuss here … doesn't go beyond this room and doesn't end up on social media.” Naturally, the whole thing was recorded, and the transcript was posted online.

The RBC journalists tried in vain to ascertain how their reporting might be restricted under the new editorial policy:

RBC journalist: If you fire people for something that wasn't working out, then you probably don't want anymore of those things when you hire new people.  …
[New editor] Elizaveta Golikova: Well, if you drive over the solid double line, they take away your license. Does this [risk] mean you'll stop driving your car, or that you'll start traveling by plane, or maybe in something else?
RBC journalist: Where's the solid double line?
[New editor] Igor Trosnikov: Unfortunately, nobody knows where the solid double line is.
—
RBC journalist: But the question was actually about something else.
Igor Trosnikov: And I answered you: no one knows where the double line is.
RBC journalist: No, it's always moving...
—
Elizaveta Golikova: Guys, let's stick to specific questions, and you'll get specific answers. That way we won't start talking about the double line again, and we can list the specific qualities of good stories.
RBC journalist: Alright, I'll be the idiot here. We've read in the media that the reports that caused us all these problems were, for example, the reports about [Kirill] Shamalov [allegedly the husband of Vladimir Putin's daughter, Katerina] and about Putin's daughter. Do you think these reports crossed the double line? Because for us, as far as I understand it, they didn't cross the double line. These were good, professional reports. According to your understanding, did they cross it or didn't they? 
Igor Trosnikov: I'll be honest with you: I'm not going to answer a question like that. You want too much.

posted by Kabanos (16 comments total)

We've read in the media that the reports that caused us all these problems were, for example, the reports about [Kirill] Shamalov [allegedly the husband of Vladimir Putin's daughter, Katerina] and about Putin's daughter.

I find it intensely weird that one needs to say "allegedly" about whether the daughter of the leader of a country is married, but on the other hand, there's really no reason I should know.
posted by Etrigan at 1:09 PM on July 12, 2016 [2 favorites]

.. but on the other hand, there's really no reason I should know.

If the person she's married to is a politically inactive schoolteacher from Krasnoyarsk, then yeah, sure, it's their private business.

If the person she's married to is the son of the co-owner of a major bank and holds a senior executive position at an oil and gas company in a country whose economy is dependent on energy exports then maybe there is some justification for public interest in what would seem to be her personal life.
posted by Nerd of the North at 1:22 PM on July 12, 2016 [17 favorites]

Since Putin... allegedly uses his close friends and family to launder millions of dollars by making them the heads of shell corporations, that kind of information actually could be used against him.
posted by Kevin Street at 1:23 PM on July 12, 2016 [7 favorites]

I find it intensely weird that one needs to say "allegedly" about whether the daughter of the leader of a country is married

It should maybe have been "allegedly" about whether she's his daughter; Wikipedia says "rumored to be" and e.g. this article says there's no official confirmation and that "... footage from [dancing] competitions, compared with pictures from the university website, helped to establish that Tikhonova was Putin’s daughter."
posted by effbot at 1:31 PM on July 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Private Internet Access, a provider of virtual private network services, has shut down its Russian gateways and won’t do business there any longer, as it believes some of its servers were seized by the government for not following new internet surveillance rules. - PCWorld article, yesterday
posted by ODiV at 1:36 PM on July 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

A truly maddening exchange. Unfortunately, I've heard the similarly worthless exchanges between reporters trying to ask questions and new publishers trying to avoid them in American newsrooms.
posted by mmmleaf at 1:59 PM on July 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

Putin hasn't gone full Stalin yet but it seems like he's determined to make it seem like that is the final destination.

Authoritarian Kleptocracy I guess is what he's going for?
posted by vuron at 4:41 PM on July 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

What's all the emphasis on what RBC has done in the past three years?
posted by maryr at 6:14 PM on July 12, 2016

mentioned many times before, but Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible is a whole (entertaining, terrifying, depressing) book about this.
posted by andrewcooke at 6:56 PM on July 12, 2016

What's all the emphasis on what RBC has done in the past three years?

RBC hasn't always been a shining symbol of independent reporting. For many years, they were considered the market leader in bought articles. All this changed in 2014 when the company hired a number of ex-Russian Forbes employees, including the editor-in-chief Elizaveta Osetinskaya. The new editorial board managed to significantly improve the quality of the published materials and the reputation of the organization. So when they're talking about the work done in the past three years, they really mean the things done under the dismissed editorial board.
posted by daniel_charms at 9:17 PM on July 12, 2016 [8 favorites]

Putin is like Dick Cheney Extra Strength
posted by rhizome at 11:37 PM on July 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Having read that exchange, I wonder if it's more or less ambiguous if you read the original Russian. The current transcript is a mastery of doublethink.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 5:14 AM on July 13, 2016 [2 favorites]

> Unfortunately, I've heard the similarly worthless exchanges between reporters trying to ask questions and new publishers trying to avoid them in American newsrooms.

This is not actually parallel and is a perfect example of derailing a discussion of an interesting phenomenon abroad to something involving the US.
posted by languagehat at 7:52 AM on July 13, 2016 [2 favorites]

You talk about professionalism that many times in your opening thirty seconds? You protest too much.
posted by terretu at 7:54 AM on July 13, 2016

> Having read that exchange, I wonder if it's more or less ambiguous if you read the original Russian.

Here's the original Russian; it seems accurately translated. If there's a particular statement or exchange you're wondering about, I can try to address it.
posted by languagehat at 8:00 AM on July 13, 2016 [1 favorite]

RBC just published a new investigative report about property owned in and around the Presidential Residence in Valdai. Two of the authors named are ex-employees.

Here is the full piece (in Russian).

The article makes mention of both Putin, and his alleged daughter, so ... is this the remaining RBC staff testing the "double line"? Or are the new chief editors allowing this as a sort of damage control after the meeting leak?
posted by Kabanos at 9:45 AM on July 13, 2016