Changes in the Soviet concept of news - to what extent and why?

Abstract

The Soviet concept of news has undergone some significant changes over the past few years. Theoretically, there has been an emphasis on timeliness, on the inclusiveness of news coverage, on 'public interest' and on a slight differentiation between official views and individual observations in news.

A brief survey of the Soviet media in this study, which includes a content analysis of sampled English-language translations of Pravda, has found that there have been at least five noticeable changes in the operation of the media: (1) more timely releases of news; (2) a tremendously expanded scope of coverage that has included many formerly forbidden topics; (3) a trend toward providing more factual, though still sketchy, information; (4) more human-interest and entertainment stories; and (5) more 'moderately negative' items.

These changes seem to have started with a slight revision of Lenin's doctrine of an agitating, propagandist, educational and organizational press. The Soviet press has recently been assigned a new role - a role of 'an observer of life,' 'a chronicler of the present day' and 'a public opinion accumulator.'

These changes have been attributed to several causes - 'political ex pediency,' 'professional pride' or 'bottom-up' pressure from the audience. This author, however, assumes that the changes in the Soviet concept of news have been caused, primarily, by the modemization process and the accompanying socioeconomic changes.

Over the past few years, noticeable signs of change have emerged in the Soviet concept of news. Even before Mikhail Gorbachev came to the fore, a new type of Soviet journalism, as Dean Mills observed, was coming into being and was moving toward a more objective form of reporting 'with which few American reporters would disagree.'¹ To what extent has the Soviet concept of news changed under Gorbachev? And what has caused the changes? This paper explores these two basic questions.