Supervisory journalism

A monitoring journalist can act as:

• public defender, providing citizens with the necessary information by which they can prevent abuse of power
• a representative of society, raising important topics and asking sensitive questions to representatives of various governmental and non-governmental organizations ^[3]

To perform these functions, a journalist must be objective and independent of those in power. Due to its remoteness from power and role, controlling journalism is often called the fourth power ^[4] or is designated in the context of this term. ^[5] The monitoring journalists are focused on a wide range of topics: “scandals involving public figures, financial violations, political corruption , enrichment in the public service and other abuses”. ^[6]

Fact Checking

Fact check is a check of statistics and other facts in documents, texts of speeches and publications for compliance with reality. ^[7] In the United States, Europe and Latin America, there are a number of organizations and portals involved in verifying the facts voiced by politicians and public figures. Among them are Factcheck.org, Politifact.com, FactCheckEU.org, Factcheck.kz, Fact Checket of The Washington post newspaper, etc. Some of these portals control not only the government, but also the media.

Investigative Journalism

A journalistic investigation is a comprehensive review, study of a problem, issue, event, conducted by one journalist, or journalistic group. ^[8] The investigation combines elements of several genres and involves working with various sources and documents. The work of a journalist investigating an incident is akin to the activities of a private detective, since its foundation is the search for textures that interested individuals and / or organizations have hidden from society ^[9] . One of the most famous examples of a successful journalistic investigation is the Watergate scandal . Thanks to the revelations of The Washington Post journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward , US President Richard Nixon was forced to resign without waiting for impeachment.

Interviews

Since independence from the government and objectivity are the two main conditions for the existence of controlling journalism ^[10] , in Russia it got its start only in the era of publicity . Media free of Soviet censorship and controlling journalism as a genre began to develop. The main focus was journalistic investigations . On television, the information-analytical program “Vzglyad” appeared . According to one of its employees, Vladislav Flyarkovsky, the creators and authors of the program were distinguished by the desire to "stick your nose into everything incomprehensible and unknown, to unearth what has not yet been excavated." ^[11] “600 seconds” with Alexander Nevzorov became another popular acutely social program. In 1990, Yulian Semenov created the newspaper “Top Secret” , where he worked, later becoming the chief editor, Artem Borovik , whose name was awarded the prize for the best investigative journalism . ^[12] At that time, other controlling journalists such as Alexander Khinshtein , Larisa Yudina , and Evgeny Dodolev also became famous ^[11] .

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, private capital came into journalism, giving rise to alternative media to the state. In this period, from the beginning to the mid-90s, which coincided with the first Chechen war , controlling journalism came to the fore: TV channels openly condemned the government, showed stories that refuted the official point of view. In the course of the war, even the state VGTRK opposed it even more. ^[13] Dmitry Kholodov , Vyacheslav Izmailov , Dmitry Baranets wrote about the hostilities in Chechnya and related problems and abuses. ^[eleven]

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Anna Politkovskaya , who criticized the actions of the authorities ^[14] and investigated the crimes of the Second Chechen War, became the most prominent representative of supervisory journalism in Russia. ^[15] . At present, controlling journalism practically does not exist in traditional media: see #criticism Channel One releases the program Man and Law with Alexei Pimanov , however, it cannot be assigned to the genre of controlling journalism due to the state affiliation of the channel. At the same time, on the Internet, especially in the blogosphere, this genre continues to live. Alexey Navalny’s blog and a number of his anti-corruption projects are widely known, in which he published documents and materials related to violations and abuses of officials.

Interviews as a direction of controlling journalism developed in Russia in parallel with investigations, often being an integral part of them. However, now on Russian television there are several copyright programs based on this area. Among them, Posner with Vladimir Pozner , considered the best Russian interviewer ^[16] , Postscript with Alexei Pushkov . However, there is a problem of the distance of such programs from the government, since they are issued by state-owned channels.

Fact check in Russia is underdeveloped. At the moment, only the Slon.ru publication has a heading “Speech Testing”, under which it is engaged in fact-checking, studying the speeches of leading Russian politicians for errors and inconsistencies.

The concept of supervisory journalism is criticized for a number of reasons. In recent years, the genre of controlling journalism has lost popularity among journalists. Many of them prefer in their materials "to convey the existing situation, rather than trying to radically change it." ^[5] During the Iraq war in 2003, many American journalists admitted that, in their opinion, “criticizing the administration’s actions is not their task”. ^{[17] The} big issue is the issue of media independence. In a market economy, it is very difficult to achieve real editorial independence , since there is censorship imposed by the owner of the media. Thus, controlling journalists in one or another media may be limited in their efforts to achieve the truth for society by the interests of those who hire them to work ^[18] . This problem is especially acute in Russia, where there is a strong concentration of major media in the hands of the state and pro-government companies and the resulting dependence on the government. ^[nineteen]

Journalism has its own principles. There is only one principle: telling the truth. Second: keep in check your own likes and dislikes. Well and the third: to be objective. In today's Russia, these three things are extremely difficult because there is no fourth power. And there is one power again.

- Vladimir Pozner , Open Lecture ^[18]

Public media , funded directly by society, are truly independent both from the government and from capital, but in Russia they are extremely underdeveloped.

In addition to restricting the independence of journalists from outside, there is the problem of self-censorship. Journalists compromise with the authorities so as not to lose their jobs, and try to “not write anything extra, because they understand that there may be consequences”. ^[20]

Finally, in Russia the issue of the safety of professionals involved in monitoring journalism is an acute issue. Many journalists died in the line of duty or as a result of contract killings. See List of Journalists Killed in Russia

• Nieman Watchdog [1]
• FactCheck.org [2]
• Slon.ru - Speech Testing [3]