In Budapest, anti-Western posters against European Commission President Ursula von de Leyen hang on every street corner. We see the same in the smallest villages. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban with his so-called ill-liberal democracy – an official term – is now Vladimir Putin’s strongest supporter in the EU and NATO. There is now a bill from the Russian Ministry of the Interior that foreigners in Russia must submit a “declaration of loyalty” to Russia. If the proposal is adopted and also applied to foreign journalists, they will have to respect Russian domestic and foreign policy. It could mean that news has to close its office in Moscow, because such a demand could mean a violation of news’s social mission. As early as May 2000, the Moscow newspaper Vlast or Makten publicized the newly appointed Vladimir Putin’s plan to force critical mass media into obedience. In Budapest, Orban followed the recipe. Should the Russian authorities from now on demand declarations of loyalty from foreign media such as news in order to allow the broadcaster to retain its accreditation in Moscow, this would be incompatible with news’s mandate to agree to such a thing. But news has been out in rough weather before in Moscow. news’s first correspondent in Moscow was later TV director Tor Strand. He opened the broadcaster’s office there just days after the Soviet Union led the invasion of Czechoslovakia on 20 August 1968. So it can be safely said that news has experienced cold times before in the shadow of the Kremlin’s walls. On April 6, 1984, I myself was declared to be a recruitment agent for the CIA in the weekend supplement of the government organ Izvestija. If it goes so far as to demand a declaration of loyalty from current news correspondent Gro Holm in order to continue to be accredited, it will be unprecedented in Norwegian press history. Such a possible Russian plan to curtail the freedom of the Western press in Moscow is of general interest in Norwegian society. The strain on news’s mandated social mission, which is enshrined in the Broadcasting Act, could perhaps be compared to a German demand for a declaration of loyalty to the totalitarian regime in Berlin in 1938. On the other hand, there will be a tangible loss regardless if news were to be forced to declare Moscow as listening post. When Bjartmar Gjerde was head of broadcasting, there was a discussion about whether news should close the broadcasting office in Beijing due to violations of human rights. “If broadcasting boycotts China, it is Norway and not China that will be isolated!”, the broadcasting manager stated at the time. If the Putin regime goes so far as to demand political loyalty in exchange for accreditation in Moscow, it will obviously be considered to close news’s Moscow office from the Norwegian side. It is all the more important to think about whether it is possible to avoid something so dramatic after a continuous news presence of 55 ½ years in Moscow. A respectable method of covering a censored society exists. Firstly, own source apparatus means listening to provide background for the social analysis. The death of Leonid Brezhnev in November 1982 was an example of this. The lights in all the office windows at the KGB on the night he breathed his last gave those of us driving around there a clear idea that KGB chief Yuri Andropov was taking over. In a society that was under heavy censorship at the time, one had to read enormous amounts of professional articles in Russian in Moscow’s flora of professional journals, in order to discover what was moving by currents critical of the regime among e.g. prominent authors. This is how news discovered in 1982 that the answer to Hemingway in Moscow, Yuri Nagibin, broke with the regime. It became the TV program “I kulturens bakgater” by Stein-Roger Bull and me as a correspondent in Moscow. So even under strong censorship it was possible to convey valuable developments in Russian society. But running news’s Moscow office with a pen held by Putin’s hand is going quite a bit further. Internet sources naturally make it more open in Russia than in the old days. But the time may be approaching when it will have to be considered whether, for example, Norwegian National Broadcasting will have to put the hook on the door in Moscow. Alternatively, whether there are working methods that, despite dramatic, principled political tightening, make it possible to serve Norwegian society with information about Russia, which we Norwegians benefit more from than the Russians on Putin’s side. The stay itself as well as good Russian language skills are two necessary prerequisites for a Norwegian correspondent in Moscow. But is this a sufficient condition? I do not envy my friend and former colleague Gro Holm the job she now has to do. Current Russia correspondent for news Gro Holm together with former correspondent Hans-Wilhelm Steinfeld. Photo: private
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The Kremlin can demand news’s loyalty – Statement
