Media in Europe Katie Hanney, Shamaria Massenburg, Megan Mihelich, Emma Patty and Mason Rettele

However, due to the government’s ability to censor media and punish those who defied him, the famine was largely kept hushed within the USSR. In her book, “Red Famine,” Anne Applebaum spoke to the need for journalists to attain state permission to reside in and file their articles from Russia, often having to bargain “with foreign ministry censors over which words they could use.” She wrote, “in that atmosphere few correspondents were inclined to write about the famine, although all of them knew about it.”

Still, news of the famine got out. Rhea Clyman famously wrote 44 stories for the Toronto Telegram covering the event. In her article, “Starvation Stalks the Land,” pulled by Radio Canada International, Clyman wrote, “Thousands of peasants will die of starvation this winter. The collective farms have produced less than a third of the estimated crop. The large State farms have failed utterly,” she continued, “the peasants are being massacred.” Clyman was later expelled from the USSR.

Still, Soviet Union members craved more freedom. In 1968, Czech leader Alexander Dubček promised “socialism with a human face.” These were reforms that ended media censorship and ushered in a “period of artistic renaissance in film, literature and theatre,” according to the Wilson Center.

This era was eventually toppled by “the roar of the transport planes that were bringing tanks” and “bodies all over the cobblestone streets.” according to the Washington Post. On August 21, troops from Warsaw Pact countries invaded Czechoslovakia, effectively quashing reforms made by Dubček.

Still, through the 60s and 70s, under Leonid Brezhnev, cracks continued to develop.

Samizdat refers to the underground production and distribution of information and a wide range of censored material within Russia between the 1950s and a portion of the 1980s according to “Slavic Review”. With limited access to materials, samizdat was most frequently made with privately owned typewriters, and copies were created with carbon paper and tissue paper according to “Slavic Review”. Many other ways allowed for the spread of information like smuggling from other countries and creating copies or simply by word-of-mouth.

This information was then passed on to person to person, particularly within secret networks of like-minded people and close acquaintances, according to The Encyclopedia of World Problems & Human Potential. According to “Slavic Review,” the goal of samizdat was to reveal and spread the truth which was lacking within communist countries and their propaganda.

X-Ray Music

Samizdat was also created and passed around through x-ray phonograph records, according to the BBC. The banned music created on x-rays allowed for disguise for sale on street corners. In the 2010s, a musician of the name Stephen Coates, came across an x-ray record at a flea market in St. Petersburg, Russia. Coates took it home, and realized the piece of history he came across after reading the book “X-Ray Audio: The Strange Story of Soviet Music on the Bone,” according to NPR. A BBC podcast called “Between the Ears” by Bone Music tells the story of Coates and more about the x-ray audio and Soviet bootleggers.

A Victim of Censorship

Russian poet and author Boris Pasternak was a victim of communist censorship. His novel “Doctor Zhivago” was smuggled out of the Soviet Union and published, according to The Nobel Prize. His book was banned and Pasternak was forced to decline his Nobel Prize in 1958, although after communism, “Doctor Zhivago” was added to Russia’s school curriculum, according to The Nobel Prize.

The Freedom in Media

According to Guiding Principles, media freedom relates to freedom from censorship, arbitrary attack, free access to important information, and a voice in the media. During the soviet union, Iron Curtain countries were rampant with media propaganda, and the spread of disinformation. This included, but was not limited to-- state-owned tv shows, newspapers, radio, and more. Subsequently, a lot of information being spread in the Iron Curtain countries was extremely biased, and at times inaccurate. Similarly, Journalists were being censored from reporting on what was really happening. According to Guiding Principles, “state-owned media is controlled and funded by the state (taxpayers) and may be more or less focused on the public good, but can also serve as a mouthpiece for the government.” Furthermore, most of the principles during this time were founded under the framework of communism, which caused a lot of party-owned media. This demonstrated a lot of party propaganda in the media.

There are many forms of propaganda, and ways that freedom in the media was suppressed. For example, In August of 1990, “the first press-freedom law went into effect in the Soviet Union today, guaranteeing broad rights for journalists and potential publishers,” according to LA Times.

According to Guides.gov, “the Gorbachev era in the Soviet Union saw the publication of thousands of independent newspapers and periodicals. These dealt with previously sensitive topics such as politics, religion, sex, the market economy, and the occult, among others.”

Similarly, there was a rise of the new press with the beginning soviet union. According to Guides.gov, there were approximately two thousand independent newspapers and journals being published in the U.S.S.R.

Alternatively, the birth of Radio Free Europe is an organization that distributed uncensored broadcasts, and news to sources, according to Radio Free Europe. However, Poland had a war on Radio Free Europe, because Poland wanted to control how citizens perceived the press during their fight with Germany. This included the spread of fabricated stories and threats to Germany. According to USHHM.org, at one point Poland claimed that Germans were cutting off the hands of Belarusian children. These lies, as well as others, abetted the media propaganda that took place in Eastern Europe during the cold war.

The “collective interest,” of Eastern Europe was founded under principles made by the communist party, according to The Constitutional Rights Foundation, Due to this, many Eastern European governments widely suppressed the free press, and freedom of speech, in other words, journalism. For example, Belarusian journalists were being threatened with media tactics by Russian President Lukashenko, according to cpj.org.

The collectivization and the rise of National Socialism in Germany caused a shift in goals connecting kolhozes and defense institutions to telephone networks was the new priority. According to Open Edition Journals. Subsequently, making telephones a public tool, that was being used for private reasons.

What does this mean for journalists? The type of fear this type of propaganda creates has resulted in journalists, self-censoring their work to the best degree that they can, whilst still attempting to report the news. This is a complicated situation to be in. Although the article by Carnegie was published in 2009, many of the things happening to journalists, and in the media--are still true today according to Carnegie, Over a decade ago the media was being strongly curtailed by the state not promoting any political competition or government accountability. This can be extremely detrimental to the public, because the things they were hearing about neighboring countries may have been true, but it was exaggerated and did not reflect the actions of Vladimir Putin, or Lenin for that matter. Many things were being hidden from the public, and a lot of the time Russian citizens did not even realize the propaganda that they were being fed, because all of their news sources essentially reported on the same thing.

Misinformation usually stems from the production of disinformation. According to the University of Michigan Library, misinformation is defined as wrong information that is accidentally spread, unknowing that it is incorrect. A simple example is a retweet. Disinformation, however, is intentionally created to persuade the public or confuse the truth. Governments in a corrupt media climate can employ this disinformation machine to sway the general public.

According to Reporters without Borders, other former-Soviet countries have dishonest media networks. Kazakhstan’s media is a pro-government propaganda machine. Their government controls information in every way they can: preventing coverage of events, censoring journalists, paying private organizations to spread propaganda, and controlling who owns the media outlets. Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan are undergoing the exact same thing. Their press freedoms are nonexistent as the state runs the media. Disinformation spread by the government is prominent in many of these post-Soviet countries, making it difficult for their citizens to receive honest information without an ulterior motive.

What is Press Freedom?

Press Freedom is the ability for journalists to produce and disseminate news that is in the public eye without threats to their physical and emotional wellbeing, according to Reporters Without Borders. There is a dramatic difference between the press freedom in countries across the globe making journalism look different depending on where you are in the world. For example, in Russia the press is heavily controlled by the government so any media that is coming through to citizens is censored by the government before it goes public. In turn, the news channels that are run by the government often broadcast inaccurate news that aligns more with the agenda of the country leaders. This leaves journalists who intend to do their job with integrity in a position where going against the country’s agenda could leave them at risk of their job and in some circumstances, their life. Journalists who are under these circumstances are in parts of the world with a lack of press freedom.

A country who exhibits great press freedom is Norway. Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs released a strategy for promoting freedom of expression. The strategy emphasizes the need for there to be freedom of the press in order to obtain a functioning democracy. The country invites its citizens to have access to all information so that they may form opinions and be influenced by social development. In doing this, Norway has developed an environment where press freedom is essential in achieving the goals it has as a country.

The Press Freedom Index from RSF is measured using five indicators that reflect press freedom. These indicators include: political context, legal framework, economic context, sociocultural context, and safety. These five categories are scored through a series of questions specific to each category. For instance, the first category; political context is evaluated by whether the independent media is supported and respected by the government or if the media receives pressure from government leaders. The index also looks at how well the media is holding the country leaders accountable for their actions. The second category is the legal framework; this category concerns the point in which journalists can report until they receive censorship or restrictions on their press freedom. The third category to evaluate from is the economic context of the country. This includes the allocation of government subsidies to favored news channels along with economic constraints linked to government policies, non-state actors, and media. The fourth category is socio-cultural context in the country. This evaluates the social and cultural constraints on journalists that currently stand. The fifth and final category is safety, to score safety the index uses accounts of bodily harm, psychological and emotional distress, and professional harm to journalists in each country.