Journalist Maria Skorodilko reveals secrets of Russian propagandist TV channel Lifenews.
“First and foremost, let’s dot the i’s: I sent my CV to Lifenews by choice, I just wanted to know why a whole truckload of Muscovites had worked for the company for several months, but no one managed to get a toehold there. As for me, they did not fire me – after getting to know about its traps and pitfalls, I voluntarily quit the job.
All facts below were my own experience; the article does not contain any pseudojournalistic rumors. I tell you about what I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears, about what I was participating in under cover. I just wanted to understand where our journalism had been rolling into over the recent years.
Audition
Lifenews always needs journalists, no matter how good or bad they are. No one cares about the performance of worker bees in the newsroom in size of a domestic millionare’s private soccer field.
Perhaps that is why there is an endless flow of people who come to and leave the family company owned by the Gabrelyanovs. You hear from each and every in any journalistic coterie: “I was there. Thank God, I quickly scrammed!” I can guess why Lifenews old-timers (they are often defectors from state-controlled Channel 1 or liberal Echo of Moscow who were fired for whatever reason), or the so-called channel leadership like to hold auditions – they really need people meeting certain psychological and ‘creative’ criteria.
Firstly, you get a test job – i.e. to put a provocative question (‘Why don’t you wash your socks?’ or ‘Why are you having a shitty hairstyle today?’) to a passenger or worker of the Moscow Metro and film the ‘interview’ by a mobile phone. Given that it is forbidden to film in the subway, such ‘reporters’ often land up in police stations.
But the potential employer makes no bones about it – neither should you, if you dream of working for Lifenews.
I will not tell you how I performed this task. I went into the second round – each applicant for ‘the best job in the world’ was tested for psychological compatibility with (sic!) the production editor, not staff members. I had not seen the reason for it until I started working with the ‘king of news’ of the entire Lifenews. Further details will be provided below.
In my opinion, all these test tasks were aimed at knocking in your head and heart that it is a job for chosen ones, that Life never employs any Tom, Dick or Harry.
The fact is that they employ all, they are bound to – they are in need for staff, But no one actually knows whether ‘creative tasks’ were successful. It’s a secret. Frankly speaking, during two weeks of my work a HR manager was dogging my footsteps and asking to bring all the necessary the documents as soon as possible so that they could give me a permanency. Despite the fact that I did not have a work record book and tax number,they were ready to employ me. The main thing was to to do everything quickly. And the fact that I miserably failed all the tests (just fore the sake of my experiment), did not matter. All that matters is your work.
Work
The jokes about Lifenews reporters who happen to be on the scene before an event happens have gone viral on the Russian-language Internet.
Of course, we know that these stories are not only rumours and anecdotes. Behind them all there is the Lifenews CEO’s being kept informed of everything going on in the country. It’s just a daily agenda which Gabrelyanov is reported every day – and that’s that.
Informers, usually security service officers of different ranks who are well-paid for informing Lifenews chief editor of all that is currently happening in the country, i. terrorist attacks, floods, deaths, serious illness of VIP-persons.
And this is legal! Other Russian media have no quarrel against them – each media outlet has its own format.
It is no accident that against the order from above Lifenews has recently introduced a new slogan – ‘The First King Of Breaking News’. This means that other media can wait a bit, because Life is the first in the line for legal information sharing. And no one is offended, other media do use information provided by Life and create their own content. Of course, this difference concerns only breaking news.
In practice, the interval between Life’s publishing ‘breaking news’ and similar articles by other media is usually around 10 minutes, but it shows that that the competitors also queue up for information provided by ‘sources’ – like an ordinary person in McDonald’s.
The role of their so-called network of correspondents in every corner of the world is overestimated. Of course, everyone stand the opportunity of sending a video of an incident or situation they have witnessed. But during my time in Lifenews – and I worked 16 hours a day – we got only a few stories from viewers, mainly from pensioners who asked to still a drunkard or from spin doctors inviting to ‘attend the exhibition of a young artist’.
Lifenews correspondents often waste their time in smoking rooms and yammer: “When will there be some work?” But the truth is that they are given a task only when there is such order from above.
I wonder why Lifenews bosses turn a blind eye on their staff overage. Indeed, stringers’ services are cheaper. Moreover, they can even leave their work unpaid! I witnessed this many many times – a regional reporter received nothing but promises. Insulted stringers will hardly reach out Moscow-based powerful media bosses and settle a score with them– thus, Lifenews can keep calm and remove their surnames from a database.
Maria Skorodilko for belsat.eu
