How News Media in Latvia and Russia Cover Each Other's Countries

Hamburg.
The next speaker at ECREA 2010 is Inta Brikše, whose interest is in Latvian and Russian news media’s coverage of each other’s countries. Russia is still seen as a major enemy of Latvia, for historic reasons, so it is interesting to examine how each country is framed by the news media of the other.

The study examined the Websites of three Russian and three Latvian newspapers, as well as of three Latvian newspapers which are published in the Russian language. This content was examined for issues, sources, source types, causes for coverage (events, opinions, …), and levels of neutrality in coverage.

Russian papers covered Latvia especially in the context of sports events, as well as on historical topics; as is apparently common in the Russian tradition, most papers drew on one or no sources in their coverage (with Latvian-language papers slightly ahead of the rest). Latvian-language papers also contained comparatively few opinion pieces, while the Russian-language papers in both countries were more opinion-heavy.

Russian papers drew more on politicians and media agencies and much less on experts, too. This reliance on agency content introduces errors, too – a Russian-language article on Latvian Nazis mistakenly included a picture of Estonian nationalists, for example (Latvia is seen by Russian journalists simply as part of ‘the Baltic states’, it seems).

Unsurprisingly, then, there is greater neutrality in Latvian-language coverage than in Russian-language newspapers in both countries; Russian papers are mainly run as commercial enterprises and do not fulfil a ‘fourth estate’ role as it exists in the Anglo-Saxon tradition. Russian papers in both countries also collaborate with one another and share content; to some extent they are even engaged in making news rather than simply reporting it.

Coverage of Latvia in Russian media is highly partisan – Latvian ‘mistakes’ and problems are frequently highlighted, and facts that are negative for Russia are omitted. In part, this is still a repercussion of Latvia’s secession from the Soviet Union.