Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1950. SOVIET JOURNALISM

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 70, Issue 119, 4 March 1950, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1950. SOVIET JOURNALISM

Sensationalism and scandal are totally foreign to the Soviet press as is “society news” pr any reporting on the personal lives of the great and near-great, writes Edmund Stevens.in a review of journalism in Russia in the “Christian Science Monitor.” Mr Stevens gives some very illuminating facts in the course of his story, and shows how vastly different life is in the Soviet Union, as compared with the democracies. Tass, the official news agency, maintains, in addition to its, extensive foreign news service, a monopoly on domestic news and provides the entire provincial press with ready-made editorials and feature articles. Local editors as a rule prefer to use this certified prefabricated material rather than take editorial risks on their own. This has 'resulted in standardisation and an almost total fade-out of local news and colour, It is almost impossible to learn what is happening, say, in Tbilisi or Ashkhabad by reading the local papers from those places. Practically everything in them duplicates what previously appeared in the Moscow newspapers. The most noteworthy of these is undoubtedly “Pravda,” frequently quoted in the cable hews. It is the official organ of the Communist Party, and so sets the model for all Soviet journalism. It consists of four pages* each of six columns, and places world news on the back page. The front page is devoted mainly to letters and messages to Mr Stalm from groups of workers or collective farmers pledging themselves to increase output. Column six on this page has been set aside for news of Socialist construction in the “brotherly” countries. . This move, it is stated, has been widely copied by other Soviet newspapers. While “Pravda ’ acts as the mouthpiece of the party, it„is left to a “Literary Gazette” to hand out any non-official news, hence it specialises in attacks on outside nations. In other words it serves as an outlet for materials whose dubious authenticity might embarrass the Government or party organs. The only papers that have managed to retain a shred of individual journalism are the Soviet Union’s two evening papers, “Evening Moscow” and “Evening Leningrad.” In them the reader surfeited with ideology may sometimes relax over a story about the animal world or a rapturous description of scenic beauty along the Volga. Little wonder then that the Russian people know nothing of what is going on outside their country, and they know perhaps less 'concerning | their own country.