The Best Defense is a Strong Offense

I just returned from a wonderful holiday back in Boston and while going through my Google Reader, I kept seeing indignant blog posts about the latest controversy in the Russia-Watcher blogosphere concerning GQ magazine and the Conde Naste’s corporate lawyers apparently killing a story about Putin and the apartment bombing 10 years ago in Moscow. No surprise there. Every week there’s another brouhaha of some sort or another concerning Russia.

What caught my eye was that the NPR correspondent, David Folkenflik, who broke the story “Why ‘GQ’ Doesn’t Want Russians To Read Its Story” was a highschool classmate of mine at Phillips Exeter Academy. So I decided to dig a little deeper.

After reading David’s piece, three thoughts come to mind:

First, David’s reporting on the Scott Anderson story and Jerry S. Birenz’s, a Conde Naste corporate lawyer, efforts to bury the story implicate the publisher not the Kremlin. Sure there is the insinuation that Conde Naste ordered the American issue of GQ not to be distributed in Russia because it feared the possible repercussions should the story upset the Kremlin. While it is true that journalists in Russia have been murdered due to things they have written, there still remains no proof that the Kremlin, and in particular, Putin had a hand in any of the murders.

I know that many of you in the West believe that Putin is guilty but what you may believe, based on what you have read, is a far cry from actually having proof. The reality is that Russia is still dangerous place when you cross powerful people. There are many powerful people in Russia and most of them are not in the Kremlin, which leads to my second thought.

Namely, the primary source for Scott Anderson’s story is the former KGB (FSB) agent, Mikhail Trepashkin. As Matt Taibi points out, “Trepashkin has ties to gazillionaire mob creature Boris Berezovsky….”

Well now, this one fact sheds a whole new light on the story. In almost every unsolved case of murder of a Russian journalist, one name always seems to pop up. There is nobody better at the Western “perception management” game then Berezovsky. Mr. Berezovsky has successfully spent the past ten years proactively shaping Western opinion and the result is that Putin has been painted in a very unfavorable light amongst Western Russia Watchers. Unfortunately, the Kremlin has been either unable or unwilling to engage in this PR game.

However, and this is my third thought, this story presents a great opportunity for the Kremlin to go on the offensive and disprove one of the major allegations against it. Specifically, there is a belief in the West that the Kremlin is authoritarian and will not tolerate any unfavorable treatment of itself in the Russian press. While I would admit that Putin is a bit touchy and certainly not very patient when criticism comes his way, I would argue that the Russian press is much more free and robust than you may know.

It should be pointed out that nothing in this GQ story would be news or unknown to any educated Russian living in Russia today. Somehow there is this idea that Russians live in a media vacuum. Nothing could be further than the truth. First of all, the fact that a couple of the state-controlled Russian TV channels don’t report  much in the way of dissenting opinion is a non-sequitur. How many Americans only receive their news from ABC, NBC, or CBS? Not many is the answer. The same holds true for Russians. All educated Russians have access to the internet and read news from many sources both inside and outside of Russia.

Therefore, by acknowledging this GQ story the Kremlin loses little. However, the Kremlin could gain a lot by publicly condemning Conde Naste’s decision to censor the story in Russia. Were I advising the Kremlin on this controversy, I would suggest that the Kremlin spokesperson release a statement to the effect that while the allegations in the story have no basis in fact that the story itself should be run in GQ magazine. The spokesperson should go on to talk about the tragedy and the investigation that followed. The spokesperson then should mention that the primary source for the article is a disgruntled KGB agent who still holds a grudge against the Kremlin. Lastly, the spokesperson should say that it has spoken with the management of the Russian edition of GQ and told them that they are free to run the story as they see fit.

In this era of the internet, social media, and very short news cycles, the best way to handle bad news is to confront it directly and pro-actively. For too long the Kremlin has let others frame the issues and portray it in a negative light. There is no reason why this misguided policy should continue given its lousy track record. This controversy surrounding the GQ story would be a great place to start.

UPDATE: Sean’s Russia Blog examines the facts behind the Conde Nast screw-up and arrives at a similar conclusion. See Sean’s blog post here.

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Tagged as: David Folkenflik, kremlin, russia, Vladimir Putin