Do not watch Russian television!

Millions of people think about this thing every day: if there were no murders, catastrophes, plundering, acts of terrorism, then what would our television show? This is like a disease, like never-ending bad luck. TV producers do this in order not to leave you quiet during their programs. That’s why there is a saying: one death – this is grief, millions of deaths – this is statistics.

Negative, negative, and once again negative programs and news are on all channels all day long. For example, a soldier escaped form his military unit. Well, this happens in all armies of the world, but they talk so much about Russian soliders that it makes your head spin. TV hosts will inevitably say that a solder ran away with a gun and that it was a Kalashnikov. And if there was someone killed, then they would say that a person was killed with a Makarov or Stechkin. So, it just so happens that the designers of Russian weapons somewhat assist in all those crimes.

Every day and every hour you hear the news that there was an act of terrorism, or an air crash. Planes or helicopters fall and crash as if they have a schedule for that, while floods and gas explosions happen every now and then. A couple of short reports about President Putin, a scandal in the State Duma; that’s seems to be it. No more news for today, thank you for watching! The life of a huge country, people’s problems, and discoveries; everything is somewhere in the deep background, as always. It is provincial, local television companies that report on the fact that it's harvesting. We know such a small amount of what we should know about our country.

At first, it was Radio Liberty that was delivering all that negative stuff to Russia from Munich (needless to mention that this radio is backed up by the American Congress). Russian fugitive dissidents in Munich would create jokes; one joke cost $50, and it would be aired on the radio. Now, it is the Russian "democratic" mass media outlets taking care of business. Their major information source is the press-service of the Russian EMERCOM.

Sometimes there is nothing good for journalists to dwell on. Then, they simply make it all up. In other words, they drag on for days and even weeks taling about something that is not a piece of news anymore. They have such a passion! The need to savour a piece of news as long as possible. It took them ten days (!) to talk about the death of the Krasnoyarsk regional governor Alexander Lebed. To be honest, this is a mediocre thing to happen. A top regional official decided to have fun on Saturday and to have a look at the Sayany mountains from above, how they build a ski run. Governors don’t fly alone; they have a wide range of lower officials and journalists, of course. The pilots were ordered to fly despite the awful weather.

As we can see, there was nothing heroic about Lebed’s death. Of course, we are sorry for him, but what's the point of making global sorrow out of it? It was the major event on the day of the crash, indeed; it was horrible grief for Alexander Lebed’s relatives. Then, there was the nextday – how the body was carried from the regional town of Yermakovskoye to Krasnoyarsk (the center of the region). Then, there were three days of sorrow on the part of inconsolable Krasnoyarsk residents. Then, TV journalists were racking their brains on where to bury the body. They said that it would be good to bury Lebed in the town of Novocherkassk, as this is the place where the general came from. However, then, they made it Moscow, and then there were three more days again to report on how the body was carried to Moscow in a valuable casket. Oh my God, will there be any end to it?

It was over after the tenth day. It was not sorrow, and it was not atribute to Lebed. This was a show for all of us, the people. This was a show that did not display a face or eyes filled with real sorrow.

Why is this all for? Why are they fond of horrible news instead of talking about good news? Why would every television camera turn to film a demonstration of drunkards in Minsk against Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko, but no one would even cares to say anything about huge demonstrations in Belgrade in support of Milosevic?

This is meant to show us "real" horror: we are supposed to forget about our miserable living and our meager incomes; this is like a prevention to stop us from going out in the streets and protesting against the life that they force us to live.

Andrey Cherkasov PRAVDA.Ru Volgograd

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov