Finley BrightonFreedom of Press & The BBC World Service
Introduction by Suchir Salhan
Conducting independent Journalism in a warzone, civil-war or a time of conflict is one of the central pillars of democracy. Freedom of Press has been celebrated in the recent Pulitzer Awards, with Palestinian journalists receive Pulitzer ‘special citation’ for coverage of Gaza war. Staff from The New York Times were awarded a Pulitzer for their “wide-ranging and revelatory coverage” of Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel, the intelligence failures by Israel, and the country’s response in Gaza.
However, journalists putting their careers, or worse their livelihoods at risk, to hold institutions, regimes and politicians to account face among the most severe occupational hazards.
After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia introduced a new censorship law. Anyone criticising the war could be prosecuted.
The World Service, which comprises coverage in nearly 40 languages, is chiefly funded by the UK Licence Fee with additional grant funding of £104.4mn from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. However, its funding is under review in 2025.
“We cannot keep asking UK Licence Fee payers to invest in (the World Service) when we face cuts to UK services. We will need to discuss a long-term funding solution for the World Service that comes from central government budgets,” said BBC Director General, Tim Davie, in a speech delivered in March 2024.
This comes as BBC Russian correspondent, Ilya Barabanov, was labelled in April 2024 a “foreign agent”, accused of “spreading false information” and opposing the war. “I’m calling a war, a war, and for that I could be easily jailed,” says Nina Nazarova, a correspondent for BBC Russian, which has moved its Moscow team to Latvia.
For the inaugural event in Per Capita’s affiliated Media & Journalism Society, we invited News Editor for the BBC World Service and the Chief Editor for the BBC Russian Service, Famil Ismailov, to Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge during Lent 2024. The event was jointly hosted with The Wilberforce Society.
Ismailov spoke about the challenges facing independent Russophone media during a time of war and the challenges of Freedom of Press in Russia and beyond. Originally from Baku, he began his career working in Soviet newspapers, before working as one of the first independent journalists in Azerbaijan. After briefly working in the US Embassy, Ismailov began his career in the BBC in 1994 in BBC News Russia, where he also frequently contributes to the BBC World Service podcast The Explanation, and Outside Source.
Ismailov speaks, before his address, about how the BBC Russian Service has expanded its coverage, in the aftermath of the war; how the team of journalists who have relocated have adapted; and how the service has recently made a shift to SubStack to include English translations of its Russian language reporting.
The War in Ukraine is “not just about rockets and shells, it is also an information war”.
Reporting by Finley Brighton.
The War in Ukraine is “not just about rockets and shells, it is also an information war”, Famil described. The information war is “taken straight out of the Soviet military doctrine”. A doctrine that disappeared at the end of the 1980s.
In answering more questions, Ismailov went on to talk about the media more broadly and spoke very positively about the BBC. This included the corporation’s role in representing the conflict in Gaza.
“They were the last journalists in Gaza”. It is “incredibly complicated” to represent the conflict and “we cannot satisfy everyone he said”.
“Balance” is essential, he said, “a constant check and recheck of editorial balance” is done. The best type of journalism on the conflict is that which highlights “human connection”, such as a “story of Israeli and Palestinian fathers who both lost their sons in the conflict.” After the event, students could be heard leaving and discussing this point, and what a balanced media approach might mean in a situation like the one unfolding in Palestine.
When he trained as a journalist in the 1980s, Ismailov reflected on the fact that male students had to study “military interpreting and special propaganda”. Journalists were taught how to work for the “party line, for the state”. “Media was seen as a servant of the state”.
This changed with the end of the Soviet Union. “Things seemed much better, and more interesting. Independent journalism was growing, and media outlets became very solid”.
“At some point that all collapsed, the state under Mr Putin realised you they still needed the media as a servant”.
The day that Russia invaded Ukraine “changed the history of Europe” in this way, as well as many others.
The Russian “media machine” had been growing in strength for a while before Ukraine though. At the time of the 2016 American election “Russian sponsored Facebook posts reached 126 million Americans alone”, showing the already expanding power of the Russian state-sponsored press.
There were people employed by the Internet Research Agency – a Russian media company with links to Yevgeny Prigozhin of the Wagner Group – whose job was to be “internet trolls”. They created a “complete oblivion of Russian swear words” under certain posts.Social media companies and states “did nothing” to deal with the threat this posed.
Censorship in Russia
As well as the Russian information war abroad, Isamilov spoke about the impact of censorship within Russia.
“Without any announcement BBC Russia was blocked” in Russia in 2022 as Russia invaded Ukraine. “State TV was massively strengthened” at the expense of other forms of media”.
Journalists were stripped of their visas, and some found themselves being held “hostage” as “the definition of foreign agent was gradually widened in scope” to remove as many critics of the government as possible.
Ismailov “absolutely believe[s] they have a file on each of us”. When asked about his own safety by a student though, Ismailov noted that the Russian state “sees the BBC as a part of the government”, meaning they are less likely to be directly targeted with violence.
The media became run like a tight ship, Ismailov said. “Lieutenant General Konashenkov is the chief military spokesperson so everything he says in true. Even if he lies, it’s still true”.
“Any lie that supports the Russian state can be true […] black is white, war is peace”.
State TV was so “controlled that people just switched off” and turned to “YouTube and similar content as well as using VPNs” (software that enables users to access websites operating abroad).
YouTube and Telegram Messenger are not blocked. But there have been localised switch offs from the internet that deny people access to even them. “Facebook is now an extremist place […] Instagram and Twitter [X] are too slow”.
“It’s mostly young people using VPNs” though, and the BBC’s Russian service has suffered as a result. There are now 4.3 million weekly users of BBC Russian service, before the war there were over 20 million. It is unclear how many of the current viewers are from within Russia, using a VPN.
And yet Ismailov stressed how the service has been persistently trying to produce independent journalism in Russian for the 4.3 million people still accessing. “We speak to people who actually live there”. But “we are not fighting an information war. We are journalists” – the service does not wish to engage in the battle for dominance over opinion but just publishes “balanced” news articles for Russians to read.
Attacks on social media are “done so people don’t find us. But they still do”.
In light of the closed media landscape. people asked Ismailov about what he thought about how Russians were feeling about the war. He noted that those willing to fight varied by place.
“The poorer provinces have many more people on the front line”. “Because you get paid, you have a career, and your family will get paid when you die […] it’s better to die on the frontline than here through drinking” he said was the attitude in places like Siberia.
Introduction by Suchir Salhan, reporting by Finley Brighton. Images shared by Per Capita’s Asha Kaur Birdi and Ashley Seto from The Wilberforce Society (Law, Trinity College Cambridge). With thanks to Gonville & Caius College.
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