Changing Channels: Television and the Struggle for Power in Russia. Rev. and exp. ed. By Ellen Mickiewicz. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999. 372p. $19.95 paper

Jeffrey W. Hahn

American Political Science Review, 2001, vol. 95, issue 2, 503-503

Abstract: nyone who watched Soviet television before 1985, the contrast between then and now could not be more striking. As with all Soviet media, television was centrally controlled and used by the Communist Party to communicate only the information deemed necessary by its leaders. The news was sanitized, dreadfully dull, and politically correct. The collapse of communist rule in Russia opened up space for alternative sources of political information to develop. News content today is certainly more lively and attractively packaged, but the emergence of autonomous, multiple sources of informa- tion has only partially been realized, as Ellen Mickiewicz makes clear. Furthermore, an unfortunate legacy of the Soviet period remains alive in contemporary Russian practice. It is the principal thesis of this remarkably well-informed and readable book that now, as then, television news is a "zero-sum" game: Whoever controls the news, wins. Consequently, control over television news remains the critical mechanism for gaining and holding political power, and it is the consuming goal of those who would do so.

Date: 2001
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