Global Voices » Aleks Tapinsh

Latvia: Concerns Over the Future of the Largest Daily, Free Press

Aleks Tapinsh — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:35:06 +0000

With the ownership of the largest daily newspaper, Diena [LV], in question, many journalists in Latvia fear business interests and political influence would rule the news coverage ahead of the October parliamentary elections.

“Who is behind Diena,” read last week’s front page headline of the newsweekly Ir. “One year after a change in ownership there appeared a shadow of the oligarchs and a question: Does Latvia still have a free press?”

“The situation is very, very sad, because elections are coming,” a former Diena journalist Gunta Sloga told Swedish radio (SWE). “Many people will not be able to get objective information before the vote, and especially problematic it becomes for those who live in the countryside and do not have an access to the Internet.”

Sloga and a few others had quit the newspaper in 2009 over lack of transparency in the sale from the Swedish company Bonnier. The new owners installed a new manager, who lasted there almost a year. Meanwhile, the owners said the newspaper would maintain its professional integrity. Tralmaks unexpectedly quit in July, bringing the issue of integrity back into the light. The owners appointed Sergejs Ancupovs, the former press secretary for the former prime minister, Valdis Birkavs, as well as a leader of a think-tank connected to certain political parties, to run the newspaper.

On July 20, journalist Kārlis Streips wrote [LV] on his Politika.lv blog:

I'm in deep mourning for Diena. When the first professional journalists departed, I wrote that Diena would still be my newspaper. Now, I don't have a newspaper in Latvia any more. For professional reasons, I'll continue to subscribe, but it'll be all.

In a video [LV] posted on the Diena newspaper’s web site, Ancupovs declined to answer questions about who approached him for this job.

“You know, we won’t be doing that kind of investigation,” he said, after explaining that the Diena newspaper will continue to maintain its objectivity and will not be a subject to political influence.

“Let’s assume that I have fallen from Mars,” he said, calling two journalists who interviewed him, “girls.”

Ancupovs said in a radio interview that the newspaper has always had a political influence. And it will continue to do so.

Jānis Buholcs writes [LV] that the recent change in Diena leadership means it is no longer necessary to hide under the pretense of being above the political influence. Buholcs responds to Ancupovs:

Media controlled by politicians is not the same as media that have their own political sympathies, which those openly espouse. The system of Putin and Berlusconi is not the same as an op-ed in a newspaper.

Pods.lv wonders [LV] if the newspaper's purchase was “the most expensive election campaign”:

If we are to believe information that Diena and Dienas Bizness were paid for 7 million lats (US$13 million), then that's a very expensive toy.

Let's assume that the goal is to influence the election results with the help from these two media outlets and after that liquidate them both. I think it would be too expensive for an election campaign.

On the other hand, considering the amounts of money the plotters could get in many different public bids and purchase requests, then 7 million is nothing but small change.

Latvia: Freedom of Speech Controversy

Aleks Tapinsh — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 23:08:58 +0000

Prominent Latvians are outraged over the detention of a university lecturer at a seaside town of Ventspils by the security police. The economic crisis, a bank bailout, and the launched talks with the International Monetary Fund served as a backdrop for the arrest of Dmitrijs Smirnovs. During a discussion at a provincial newspaper Ventas Balss, Smirnovs said:

The only thing that I can recommend is: first of all, do not save money in banks; second of all, do not save money in lats because right now it is very dangerous.

Historian Gustavs Strenga writes (LV):

In the end, because of this thoughtless act of the security police (SP), Latvian state and society suffered. The society can no longer feel safe about the freedom of speech, but the state's loss is its degraded image. You just have to read the foreign press. Austrian Der Standart writes (DE) about the arrest of D. Smirnovs, so does Tageszeitung (DE). Both newspapers don't hide their surprise about SP's action to send the expert into jail. Smirnovs' arrest made it clear for the international community - first of all - and our largest partners in the European Union that they are still dealing with a post-communist country where repressive organizations are still ready to act against their own citizens. That is a very dangerous signal. Latvian officials ought to understand it and at least attempt cosmetic changes inside the SP, at least to fire the head of the SP Janis Reiniks to show that SP won't continue to act this way against its own citizens.

Latvian journalists wrote an open letter (LV) to authorities, voicing their concern for the freedom of speech:

We ask the Latvian government to announce clearly that it supports guarantees of the freedom of speech that are included in the Constitution of the Republic of Latvia and international agreements on human rights.

We turn to the European Union institutions on human rights and democratic governments in Europe and elsewhere in the world as well as non-governmental organizations that protect freedom of speech so that they would strongly remind the Latvian government that it is its duty to respect the freedom of speech.

Following an account in the Wall Street Journal about Latvia's Unpalatable Choice, the head of the Latvian Central Bank Ilmars Rimsevics came out against the action of the security police for the first time only on December 3.

Free Speech Emergency in Latvia, a blog set up by Latvian journalist Juris Kaža, cites the bank chief:

Logically, the detention of these two people in connection with spreading rumors is, unfortunately, laughable and pathetic, for they were not the true rumor-mongers. The real rumor-mongers are watching this and laughing. The rumor-mongers work with SMS messages, naming specific dates when decisions will be made, even saying what the new lats rate will be. No such person has been detained. I truly feel uncomfortable, seeing how singers and lecturers are detained.

The blogger also adds:

But Rimšēvics also told the media in an earlier statement (that seemed to refer to the Security Police actions) that in other countries, rumor-mongers would be arrested within 15 minutes of expressing their views about the finance system or currency. One can only guess which authoritarian regimes and dictatorships would act this way.