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  • Alexander Burakou: Some Receive President’s Awards, and Some — Only Fines

    25-30-year-olds are taking the lead in newsrooms and management of media outlets.  They are  the people of different mind frame. Their values and ideas are different from those of the generation who created the independent media of modern Belarus.

    Journalist Alexander Burakou discusses the generation gap and why those the fighters for the freedom of speech of the 1990s have lost.

    Alexander Burakou

    — Belarus’ has been inde­pen­dence near­ly as long as it’s been ruled by an author­i­tar­i­an leader. There groups with dif­fer­ent mind frames in the coun­try: those who know Sovi­et Belarus, those, who remem­ber Belarus with­out Lukashen­ka and those, who’s always had Lukashen­ka as the leader of the coun­try. They all are very dif­fer­ent.

    Think­ing about jour­nal­ists, it is impor­tant to remem­ber the peo­ple who made a con­scious deci­sion to leave the state-run media in the mid-1990s and start­ed new media. They had a moral choice to make: either you remain part of the sys­tem and get bonus­es, or you choose a pro-demo­c­ra­t­ic camp and your future is unpre­dictable.

    What does work in state-run media mean now and then? This is min­i­mum pres­sure, perks and priv­i­leges, legal hol­i­days and bonus­es, and an oppor­tu­ni­ty to get cheap mort­gage loans.  And many decid­ed there was no point in «hav­ing an atti­tude», with a cushy job and good salary, social ben­e­fits, and an oppor­tu­ni­ty to retire from the same job (unlike free­lancers). Flirt­ing with the author­i­ties is usu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial.

    How­ev­er, there were peo­ple of moral fiber who left for the pri­vate sec­tor.  And their lives have turned out dif­fer­ent­ly. Some have suc­ceed­ed in writ­ing and run­ning a busi­ness, and some have not. They are for­got­ten by the new gen­er­a­tion.

    The dis­cus­sion at BAJ con­fer­ence on the prospects of free­lance jour­nal­ism in Belarus showed that for­eign col­leagues need to now more about the real­i­ty of Belarus. For exam­ple, they are think­ing of state-run and pri­vate media, while the jour­nal­ists in their mind are demo­c­ra­t­ic and.. demo­c­ra­t­ic. It is impos­si­ble to imag­ine a sit­u­a­tion in devel­oped coun­tries, where a jour­nal­ist of some media may be called «dis­loy­al» and bul­lied at a nation­al lev­el.

    They bring their expe­ri­ence to our real­i­ty, and fail to under­stand the whole dra­ma.

    Of course, the peo­ple who remained in the state-owned media are close­ly watch­ing the fate of their col­leagues from the oth­er camp and under­stand every­thing per­fect­ly well. What do they see? The burn­ing sense of jus­tice leads to per­se­cu­tion by police, KGB search­es, unex­pect­ed let­ters from tax inspec­torates, and fines. No leg to stand on. Only on the sense of pro­fes­sion­al­ism and moral­i­ty. The hon­est peo­ple of mid-1990s now look as «losers» to their unscrupu­lous peers.

    This is what I want­ed to explain to the for­eign col­leagues work­ing with Belarus. Per­se­cu­tion of free­lancers is now espe­cial­ly ram­pant in Belarus. This is espe­cial­ly true of those who work for Bel­sat. But who starts to work for this chan­nel? To be hon­est, the vast major­i­ty of reporters are the peo­ple who came to the pro­fes­sion from civic activism, just after short cours­es. They are young peo­ple who have learned to report news only in the Pol­ish TV sys­tem, and have seen no alter­na­tives.

    Alexander Burakou speaks during a freelance journalism conference

    Alexan­der Burak­ou speaks dur­ing a free­lance jour­nal­ism con­fer­ence

    How­ev­er, we used to have Belaruskaya Mal­adziozh­naya radio, and some wor­thy TV shows on the Belaru­sian TV of the ear­li­er kind. They were run by pro­fes­sion­als whose names are still remem­bered in Min­sk. And where did they go, why not use their expe­ri­ence? Mean­while, they were the ones who once made the moral choice we are talk­ing about. Young free­lancers have a more cyn­i­cal view of life, they just do not care about the events of 20 years ago.

    — The lives of a jour­nal­ist or a social activist in Min­sk and in the regions are dif­fer­ent. How does it feel, to be in the lime­light all the time?

    — When I say that we get point­ed at, I mean the regions, first of all. After all, there are more oppor­tu­ni­ties in Min­sk, there is an envi­ron­ment to grow and move.  Take, for exam­ple, the late Vadz­im Arshyn­s­ki, for­mer cam­era­man of the Mahil­iou region­al TV, who I worked for Bel­sat with. In the ear­ly 2000s he was film­ing Lukashenka’s vis­it to a col­lec­tive farm, and at some point the cam­era caught Lukashen­ka with dear horns paint­ed on the wall in the bck­ground. Of course, the footage was not broad­cast, while Vadz­im Arshyn­s­ki, who was one of the fathers of tele­vi­sion in Mahil­iou, lost his job right away. Who else would need a cam­era­man in Mahil­iou? This meant unem­ploy­ment for years to come.  

    — But Lukashen­ka gives awards to jour­nal­ists. That means, mod­ern jour­nal­ists also have a choice to make today, there are dif­fer­ent cri­te­ria for assess­ment of one’s own suc­cess and ensur­ing secu­ri­ty. And in the eyes of their own cir­cle, a per­son will gain suc­cess.

    — This is what we need to explain to the for­eign coun­ter­parts who come here and want to help, or to do some activ­i­ties, in the trendy «part­ner­ship with the author­i­ties and state-run media».

    The sys­tem does not need the peo­ple who are ready to work in the field, some­times knee-deep in mud, and to raise real­ly impor­tant issues. The jour­nal­ists who cov­ered the sit­u­a­tion around the bleached pulp fac­to­ry in Svet­la­horsk, were fined. The state jour­nal­ists do not go there and and do not report on the sit­u­a­tion, even though it is a real prob­lem. This is a clear exam­ple of dif­fer­ent frames of ref­er­ences. In the end of the day, some get fines, and some — awards from the hands of the state leader.

    — What do you expect from the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty?

    — Today’s real­i­ties, unfor­tu­nate­ly, counter-bal­ance the sac­ri­fices that have been put by the old­er gen­er­a­tion on the altar of democ­ra­cy. So many years have passed, the regime is still in pow­er, and the lives of many peo­ple who chose  that path went sour. The old­er gen­er­a­tion of our for­eign coun­ter­parts who worked with Belarus in the 1990s and called to defend fun­da­men­tal demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues, have  retired with­out see­ing any changes in Belarus.

    And now, the new gen­er­a­tion of Euro­peans is look­ing for new approach­es. They say: «Let’s coop­er­ate with the author­i­ties», «How can we help? Let’s do some­thing togeth­er with the jour­nal­ists of state-owned media». Many grant eli­gi­bil­i­ty cri­te­ria require state reg­is­tra­tion or at least some coop­er­a­tion with the state author­i­ties from poten­tial grantees. True sto­ry: Belaru­sian Nation­al Youth Union receives sup­port as an NGO, and these funds ply with­in the state sys­tem.

    And my ques­tion is: isn’t this approach a betray­al of the peo­ple who made a moral choice 20 years ago?

    Today, I can’t say that the col­leagues from our cir­cle are opti­mistic about the future. They feel grow­ing fatigue. If one does not see the results, and they are not 20 any­more, but 35–40, they start ask­ing them­selves, where they are and what they have achieved.

    We are chang­ing, and not for the bet­ter, I am afraid. In Mahil­iou, we held a debate between polit­i­cal activists and jour­nal­ists . The gen­er­a­tion gap became obvi­ous. The old­er gen­er­a­tion treats the pro­fes­sion and all their activ­i­ties as a mis­sion and a true pur­pose. Younger jour­nal­ists per­ceive jour­nal­ism as a busi­ness: if there is good mon­ey, they would endure repres­sion, with no mon­ey, the cloud-built val­ues seem sil­ly. It seems, the old­er gen­er­a­tion, has lost to every­body. To the regime, as it is still here, and the younger gen­er­a­tion, for whom it’s just busi­ness and cold math. 

    ***

    Alexan­der Burak­ou

    In the pro­fes­sion since 1998. He start­ed his career at the Mahil­iou region­al tele­vi­sion, fol­lowed by writ­ing Mahil­iou Week­ly and De Fac­to news­pa­per. Since 2006, he worked at Radio Racy­ja, and then col­lab­o­rat­ed with Bel­sat TV. For the last 8 years, he’s been a reporter of Deutsche Welle in Belarus.

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