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gfloyd · Posted: Sun Apr 22, 2007 6:48 pm Post subject: 50% of news must be "good news"

New management at Russia’s largest independent radio news network, have decreed that from now on at least 50% of the reports about Russia must be “positive.”

They have been given examples of what is "positive"

“When we talk of death, violence or poverty, for example, this is not positive,” said one editor at the station who did not want to be identified for fear of retribution. “If the stock market is up, that is positive. The weather can also be positive.”

The station’s news report on Thursday noted the 75th anniversary of the opening of the Moscow metro. It closed with an upbeat item on how Russian trains are introducing a six-person sleeping compartment, instead of the usual four.

Already, listeners are grumbling about the “positive news” policy.

“I want fresh morning broadcasts and not to fall asleep,” one listener, who signed a posting on the station’s Web site as Sergei from Vladivostok, complained. “Maybe you’ve tortured RNS’s audience enough? There are just a few of us left. Down with the boring nonintellectual broadcasts!”

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Russia seems to be descending into a dictatorship again.
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iwarburton · Joined: 08 Dec 2006 Posts: 2133 Location: Northumberland

Radio 3 did a 'positive' news bulletin about once a month in the 1970s.

Needless to say, it didn't last.

Ian.

Rachel · Guest

I think it's human nature to sub-consciously gloat over the stories and the people in the bad news; it's a way of measuring how well you are doing and how lucky you are.. it's their bad news that makes us happy with our lot ... tis the same with soaps ... full of doom, gloom and misery, to keep the masses happy ... when there is a bit of positive news , it's rarely a human story, usually it's about a cat, a duck or a couple of escaped pigs causing havoc in a high street. If it were good news all the time, well: we'd all get depressed cos nothing good ever happens to us, does it.

gfloyd · Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 11:56 am Post subject:

Cherskiy · Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2007 2:55 pm Post subject:

Sounds like they're going back to the good old days of Pravda, where ferry boat disasters on the Volga involving hundreds of fatalities were relegated to a two-line paragraph on page 15 yet news of the first potato harvest in the Ukraine was splashed over the front page.... Rolling Eyes

....or Radio Moscow during the brief reigns of Andropov and Chernenko in power, both of whom spent most of their time as Party Chairmen in hospital (a facsimile of Chernenko's signature was used on important documents during most of his tenure,as he was too sick to read or sign papers), yet to hear the news reports, they were always fighting fit!
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