#21 | November 6-19, 1997  

by Abram Kalashnikov

Forget about the Mir Space Station. There's a new gangbang underway in the Western press community.

Moscow's British and American reporters have discovered the poor. God knows what precipitated it-maybe it's pent-up guilt, or the Thanksgiving spirit, or, more likely, George Soros's gift of $500 million to Russia. Whatever the cause, Moscow's poor in the last few weeks have been diving for cover, as chauffered newspaper reporters zoom around the city in the hopes of discovering them first.

From an editor's point of view, the poor, in general, do not make good newspaper copy-unless they're hacking each other to pieces or dying of exotic epidemics. Publishers know that, historically, more people read Madame Bovary than Bleak House, and that the chapters in Crime and Punishment that tend to grow dog-eared almost never involve the Marmeladovs.

Basically, the poor are a bummer. They dress badly. Their teeth tend to be brownish. You don't get to interview them while flying around in a private helicopter. And as for their touching mid-interview offer to share their last foul scraps with you over tea, well, you'd rather wait and grab some Mexican once you've filed.

Nonetheless, reporters, particularly foreign reporters, feel an obligation to do a "Gosh, isn't that sad" story about the poor once a year or so. Since most reporters tend to think that they are doing somebody a favor when they give them publicity, these stories are the functional equivalent of a yearly donation to charity, only in literary, non-edible form.

Stories about Russia's poor tend to share several characteristics. They are 1) There are a lot of poor people 2) Services have been cut, making their lives worse 3) Russia's rich are greedy and don't give to charity, and 4) Thank God for the Red Cross.

There is one more common denominator in these stories. Westerners never appear as the bad guy. On the contrary, most of these "Gosh, isn't it sad" stories tend to be told through the eyes of some plaintive western aid worker, who inevitably demonstrates that Russians, unlike Americans, have yet to acquire the instinct for giving necessary to keep a humane democracy afloat. Rob Reynolds of the Microsoft/NBC news service, in a story about a children's shelter, gives a typical Western account of the aid situation:

"The Russian government contributes only a tiny fraction of the money the shelter needs. It's barely scraping by now on charitable donations, mostly from Western corporations-like Chevron and McDonald's-that are active in Russia."

Brings a tear to your eye, doesn't it? Now if only those darned Russians would let Chevron buy more drilling sites-then their kids would have all the food they want. Reynolds's passage about the Russian government's failure to pay for services is no less of a tearjerker. And put together with a recent Newsday editorial, it's downright tragic:

"The question, then, is: If Soros' donation makes so much sense, why is the U.S. government contributing less to Russia's transition-only $95 million a year-than a single businessman, even an extremely wealthy businessman?"

Newsday chides the U.S. for not donating more. Reynolds chides the Russian government for donating too little. Neither seems aware that U.S. aid money usually goes not to humanitarian causes, but to market reform. That includes budget reform. Which means, in the end, that U.S. government aid is usually directly tied to a loss of Russian state-funded services.

"Aid" is a funny term. When the West wants to show that Russia is doing the hard work of laying off inefficient workers and scaling back its bloated budget, it points to the Western "aid" effort as one of the key reasons those reforms are going through. But when thousands of children starve and use leaves for toilet paper because the budget has been slashed, the Western press chides the Russian government for ignoring its people, and simultaneously lauds the generosity of western taxpayers for providing needed "aid." I mean, you can't have it both ways, folks.

Mainstream press reporting about the poor has lately begun to read like extended Benetton ads-prolonged maudlin snapshots of "real" life, but separated from any explanation of the subject that might make the reader less comfortable about buying the product. After all, it's much easier to get a poor person to look thin for the camera than it is to make the unpleasant connection between one person's misfortune and your own good fortune.

For instance: one of the big reasons so many Russians are poor is that so many businesses, both state and private, have consistently failed to pay salaries. "Gosh, isn't it sad" stories seldom mention this, but if they do, they certainly never mention that the failure to pay salaries is one of the big reasons inflation is so low in this country. And how many times have we heard Western reporters praise the low inflation rate, which clearly benefits foreign business, as evidence that Russia is "maturing" as a capitalist society?

Here's another example. Last week Business Week ran a piece by Patricia Kranz, "edited by Sandra Dallas" (was Kranz's original text so badly written that they felt obliged to stick that bizarre, insulting, and cumbersome set of training wheels on the byline?), about Kranz's experiences riding in the "Downside Up" charity bicycle race. It was a nice bit of p.r. for the cause both of Down's Syndrome children and Business Week (which made sure Kranz included the magazine's contribution in her article), and aside for the usual bit about how greedy Russia's rich are ("Sophisticated Russians can be too caught up in making money to give to charity"), there was nothing peculiarly reprehensible about it.

Of course, there were a few lines that were simply absurd: "And wealthy New Russians," Kranz wrote, "are reluctant to alert the mafia that that they have excess cash." That makes sense. I suppose that's why they go to such lengths to avoid driving BMWs and MercedesÉ But these are honest mistakes. Worse, however, was a passage designed to show that some Russian corporations are beginning to show an interest in charity:

"Aeroflot donated $40,000 worth of tickets to bring 34 foreign doctors and anesthesiologist to Russia for Operation Smile. They performed operations on children with cleft lips or palates."

The passage was published just after a Moskovsky Komosmolets article which demonstrated that for the last two years, Aeroflot has not paid any taxes to the Russian government, keeping its profits hidden in Swiss shell companies. If the Russian government had had that money, it might have been able to cure Down's Syndrome, for all we know. But Business Week wouldn't want to draw any unpleasant conclusions about the results of privatization, particularly if one were to suggest that Russians got a lot more out of Aeroflot before private businessmen got their hands on it.

When reading the news, one should always bear in mind that reporters are, above all, attracted to stories that are "sexy." Murder. Corruption. Transfer of Power. These things make the pulse race. The poor aren't accommodating; they just depress you. So when journalists start paying attention to them, look for a reason. If the text doesn't bear out a true urge toward sacrifice and understanding, look for other motives. Like making American readers feel better that they at least have teeth. Now there's a cause any editor knows is worth giving to...