There is a lot of sanctimonious caterwauling going on in the EU quarters about the state control of the Russian press. I won't stick up for those guys, they definitely have a lot of things to work on. I only get fascinated, time and time again, by the Eurocrats' total inability (or is it rather a consciously perfected craft) to see the log in their own eye.
Take Italy, one of the founding members of the European Unions and, as President Putin aptly noted, the original inventors of the Mafia. The situation in the Italian mass media uncannily resembles that in Russia.
A zip through Italian TV channels reveals a barrage of brainless quiz and talk shows full of scantily clad beauties, dubbed second-grade American dramas and scores of vaguely scripted programmes where spiffily dressed gentlemen ruminate on a variety of insipid subjects like countryside architecture or historic cuff links. In other words, about the most mindless and shallowest spectrum of broadcasting in Europe. That is, if you don't count Russia as a European nation. Modern Russian TV's multitudinous channels offers a good example of commercially highly viable mass idiotization, quite a turn from the Soviet "high culture to the masses" policy.
Nearly all media outlets in both countries are owned by the big brass of local capitalism. The orange-tanned Signor Berlusconi, world's 90th richest man who has been in and out of power for the second decade, controls 3 out of 7 national channels and the majority of newspapers. The only difference between the so-called free 90's and dubbed as semi-totalitarian present days in Russia is that the media changed ownership from one clique of oligarchs to another.
In both countries, a sinister string of unresolved killings of prominent journalists goes decades back, almost a national institution.
Unfortunately, both countries seem to have opted for the abortive concept of political system where the state, dreading any kind of change, aggressively rejects any kind of criticism for the sake of preserving the (quite cozy for those in power) status quo at all costs. This model of voluntary rigidity has proven fatal for scores of countries throughout the millennia of human history, for, as we should have learnt from history, the only permanent thing is the permanence of change.
To sum it all up, the EU has a simliar kind of totalitarian opinion control in their backyard but somehow prefers to find pleasure in slagging off those "barbarians from the East". The call it "projection" in psychology, don't they?
For an interesting read check out Mark Mardell's blog about the freedom of press in Italy.
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