What happened to RBC TV? The media reported the departure of the RBC TV channel team. What's really going on? “Our government, with rare exceptions, are people who bring harm to the country.”

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Yesterday, editor-in-chief Elizaveta Osetinskaya left the largest Russian media holding RBC, Chief Editor newspaper Roman Badanin and chief editor of the news agency Maxim Solyus. The network was overwhelmed by a storm: hundreds of posts on social networks, thousands of comments - some talk about economic reasons, others see political reasons in this. Everyone agrees on only one thing: RBC was the last of the Mohicans, a stronghold of independent and high-quality Russian journalism.

How do such processes occur? There is a media owner and, let’s say, he hired a cool editor-in-chief and a team to create high-quality media.

Any media outlet that specializes in socio-political topics and has an adequate editorial team will definitely write about corruption in the highest echelons of power. Simply because this is the most socially important topic that exists now. He will dig about Putin’s family, about corruption in government contracts, write about the Panama Papers, write about the real opposition, put it on the air and on the pages of the publication.

People are interested in all this, but there are few places where you can read about it, because the field has been cleared. And now the media begins to grow, its audience, authority and market price. The staff is increasing, the editorial office is expanding, and journalists are writing better and better, more and more, digging deeper and deeper.

Then they come to the owner and say that they need to stop with this matter. The owner sends those who came to the f***.

In a country with a healthy society, this would all end there. All over the world, authorities are dissatisfied with the actions of journalists and hate their investigations. This is a natural relationship between the authorities and journalists. But the authorities cannot influence them: it is prohibited by law, the courts and government agencies monitor it, and it is not accepted by society.

But not with us. Our laws, courts and government agencies ensure that the media writes what is needed. Since we have KGB crooks in power, but still not bandits, they don’t come to adequate media with baseball bats. But some other processes begin.

Suddenly, criminal cases are opened against the owners or managers, the media come with searches, printing houses refuse to print copies, cable operators suddenly refuse to cooperate for purely economic reasons, the owner of the premises demands to move out immediately. All this happens, of course, completely independently of the political will of the KGB swindlers, who report that there is no pressure on the media, but here we have a dispute between economic entities.

No one is closing RBC. Now they will find a compromise editor-in-chief with a reputation as a ghoul (note to Prokhorov - Lesha Vorobyov is just looking for a job, he was in such a role at Kommersant-FM, a decent person in the position of editor-in-chief after the defeat), and he will even publish some kind of investigation, and many will say that everything is not so bad.

Those who have somewhere to go will leave, of course. Two people for Medusa, two for Kommersant and one for Rain. For every one who leaves, there will be three who remain; they will work, say that everything is not so bad, and be offended when someone talks about RBC in the past.

But they too will gradually leave, many will leave in six months with a compromise editor-in-chief (he always comes for a short time). And it’s clear where they will go - TASS, RIA, VGTRK. There are actually many more jobs for journalists now than five years ago.

This is my cart.

There is exactly one thing that surprises me about the RBC story: why they started to be crushed only now. I predicted this development of events to Molibog more than a year and a half ago, when the new editorial staff’s commitment to complete and categorical fearlessness, in the spirit of the original Vedomosti, became obvious to anyone, even the most outside and distant observer. Today in Russia no one will tolerate this, they will disperse you, I told Molibog, having read another report of those that could not appear in any Kommersant or in any Gazeta.Ru at that time due to understandable self-censorship restrictions. I will not give Nikolay’s answer here, since the conversation was private. But I also shared my concerns with the readers of this LiveJournal, and this was in October 2014.

RBC was destroyed in a hurry. They did not wait for the sale of the holding, stimulated by searches and criminal cases. The last straw seemed to be the message that a special enterprise for breeding oysters was being organized opposite “Putin’s palace” in Gelendzhik. Although they had more serious investigations - about the personal affairs of Putin, his daughters and his friends.

So that's basically expected. Of course, there are still a few - two or three - living islands left in the dead swamp of the Russian media. You shouldn't rely on their prospects. The rotten swamp slurry will close over them in the foreseeable future.

According to RBC. It’s very bad that European-representative, professional media are closing. But even more disgusting is the situation with how the public reacts to this. Regardless of what could potentially be written about the state of Russian society today, and especially about its prospects, the sane citizen understands the absolute hopelessness of the current (Putin) political situation and life within it.

Therefore, fixation on external informational reasons, as significant ones, is also meaningless.

Closing borders, closing newspapers - everything that is called - white noise for white zombies.

We are in a situation of absolute political stagnation, hopeless staticity.

What can break it? Only another, independent, independent force that arose and exists outside and apart from the imposed construct, including the information one.

During Putin's rule, the Russian media market has lost many publications and entire journalistic teams: all major media either came under state control and became weapons of propaganda, or ended up in the hands of obedient businessmen who impose restrictions on the publication of materials critical of the government. RBC looked like an exception against this background.

****, first they destroyed Lenta, now they are finishing off the last decent news site - RBC. Freaks - no words. Totalitarianism is on the march.

There is no politics in the RBC crackdown.

Russian athletes do not dope.

Russian television is truthful.

Chechnya is a model of democracy.

The broken handle of a UAZ Patriot does not indicate its poor quality.

Navalny is linked to ISIS.

That’s not why critic Kadyrov’s house burned down in Chechnya.

Storing all Runet traffic for 3 years is needed to combat terrorism, and not to spy on citizens.

Hostels and mini-hotels are closing because there are many complaints from residents of the houses.

Damn, what a pity that RBC seems to have been “sorted out.” It was one of the few companies capable of voicing more than just the official point of view. But anyway, thanks to them. They did a great job.

Back to the past?

The "Time" program on all channels?

Is this what we all want?

The ruthless old days were somehow more honest. The destruction of magazines or theaters was preceded by resolutions of the Central Committee with claims and accusations. Now, the unwanted ones are dispersed so as not to leave traces, and those giving orders are given the opportunity to feign ignorance and make vile promises to sort it out.

RBC yesterday: The ruble collapsed against the dollar

RBC tomorrow: The ruble has risen sharply against the tenge

The only indicator of the success and professionalism of modern Russian media is acceleration. If they don’t accelerate, it means that somewhere they haven’t turned it up enough, they haven’t worked it out enough, they haven’t pushed it enough.

I have a friend - Sveta Reiter, first a special correspondent for Lenta, then RBC. This is already the second acceleration in her career - it is difficult to come up with a more worthy journalistic biography in the current miserable time.

I still really want to live to see the time when it is not they who will disperse us, but we who will disperse them.

When you don’t know what to put - “Super” or “I sympathize.” Still "Super", because it was great story, this is not the dispersal of NTV, when there was only darkness ahead, this is the moment when “they destroyed you, but you still won, because they already lost.”

Shares of the RBC holding jumped 7% on Friday evening on the news that a number of top managers left the company.

On the Moscow Exchange, by 17:00, RBC shares rose to 6 rubles per share (+6.9%), the trading volume amounted to 3.469 million rubles.

As reported on Friday CEO RBC Nikolay Molibog, RBC editor-in-chief Elizaveta Osetinskaya, editor-in-chief of the RBC news agency Roman Badanin and editor-in-chief of the newspaper Maxim Solyus are leaving the holding.

Of course, the “opposition public” has its own opinion on this matter. Ever since the information appeared in Gazeta.ru that Mikhail Prokhorov plans to sell the media holding, there has been talk about pressure on “independent media” represented by RBC. They say that now the “men in gray” have come for them. The turmoil only intensified when it became known about investigative actions against individuals and companies apparently associated with RBC. And now - a loud dismissal. Which, of course, will already become a reason to talk about “links of the damn chain.”

In reality, as often happens, everything is much more prosaic than “the struggle of free media against totalitarianism and censorship.”

According to a statement made by the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications, the turmoil within and around the media holding should be linked not to politics, but to purely economic reasons. According to Deputy Minister of Communications and Mass Communications Alexei Volin, “the owner of RBC had every reason to be dissatisfied with the activities of the management of his company for many years.”

Following the leadership, other employees began to leave - for example, editor Peter Mironenko: “Like an official announcement. I will remain working at RBC until June 30, and after that I will quit. Everything will be fine!".

The dismissals were preceded by a chain of events during which public pressure was exerted on RBC. The most recent of them is an inspection by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Molibog in a fraud case, which was reported by Rambler News Service on May 11.

From an interview with Elizaveta Osetinskaya, now former chief editor of RBC:

“It seems to me that we already have something to present, and I would formulate it this way: we have filled RBC with new meanings that were not here before. These are new genres, sections (business, economics, politics), research. In the newspaper, we simultaneously changed the format, design, process... The newspaper began to look cool, and the website - modern. But it's not just about design. Behind this was a huge reform - the unification of all editorial offices into one, not legally, but organizationally.

This does not happen, but at the same time we launched a new “admin panel” (content management system - Slon) - this is the environment in which the united editorial team works and, one might say, lives. We previously had five of them, and we realized that we could not release a new site on them. Developers and editorial people worked hard to get it all going. And I myself perceive it as a miracle that it all “flies.”

The team of the RBC TV channel will quit following the managing director Elmar Murtazaev, Meduza, citing sources in the holding. The day before, Vedomosti reported that managing director Elmar Murtazaev would leave the channel. " New Newspaper"with reference to sources, reported that key employees were going on paid leave until October. There has not been a single resignation letter yet, a source close to the channel’s management told Dozhd. This was confirmed by some employees who are mentioned in Meduza’s publication.

According to Meduza, general producer Alexander Bogomolov and product director Igor Sadreev will leave RBC. The publication's source also reported that the head of the information service Alfiya Zivere, correspondents Roman Super and Rodion Chepel will leave the channel. Presenter Stanislav Kucher is also thinking about leaving, a source in the holding told the publication.

The creative producer of the TV channel, Alexander Urzhanov, confirmed his plans to quit. “We had a general strategy for the development of the channel, and without him [Murtazaev] it would be difficult to continue to implement it,” he said.

ABOUT possible care Vedomosti newspaper sources also spoke to parts of the RBC team the day before.

Dozhd's source, close to the management of the RBC TV channel, said that there is currently no resignation letter. According to the interlocutor, employees who work on several programs, including Zivere, Super, Cepel and Elena Tofaniuk, went on vacation. Urzhanov and Sadreev did not go on vacation and continue to work at the TV channel - none of them wrote a statement, the source clarified.

Urzhanov himself wrote on their Facebook page that journalists are discussing formats for further cooperation with the TV channel.

Bogomolov, in a conversation with Dozhd, said that he is now on vacation. “So I’m definitely not leaving in the next month,” he said. Zivere only confirmed that she was going on vacation.

Earlier, Vedomosti, citing two employees of the holding and a source familiar with the owners of the holding, said that the managing director of the RBC TV channel, Elmar Murtazaev, will leave the company. This information was confirmed to Dozhd by a source close to the channel’s management.

However, later the general director of the RBC holding, Nikolai Molibog, in a conversation with Vedomosti, said that Murtazaev several months ago announced his desire to leave journalism. “But we agreed to postpone this departure until the completion of the sale of RBC. Now we have returned to this issue, but there is no final decision, it will be in the coming weeks,” he said.

In mid-June, the head of the Unified Social Tax, Grigory Berezkin, of the RBC media holding. Since July 2010, a controlling stake in RBC belonged to Mikhail Prokhorov's ONEXIM group.

The deal took place after Prokhorov had problems with RBC in 2016. According to Dozhd, the Kremlin was unhappy with the publication’s publications that related to the family of the head of state and his inner circle. Searches took place in the ONEXIM office, and the media close to the authorities criticized the businessman a lot. According to Gazeta.ru, the entrepreneur received “on top level» instructions to sell the holding. However, then Prokhorov limited himself to changing the leadership - instead of Elizaveta Osetinskaya and Roman Badanin, the holding was headed by Igor Trosnikov and Elizaveta Golikova.

Dozhd's source, close to the negotiations on the sale of RBC, said that the new management of the holding should have made it more loyal. According to him, after the change of leadership of the holding, the Kremlin was dissatisfied with the publication’s policy. Against this background, it became known about Prokhorov’s plans to sell the holding.

Illustration copyright Prokofiev Vyacheslav/TASS Image caption Igor Poletaev at the premiere of the series “Hunting the Devil” in February 2017

NTV presenter Igor Poletaev, who headed the editorial office of the television company's business broadcasting, became managing director of the RBC television channel, taking the place of Elmar Murtazaev, who resigned the day before. The BBC Russian service asked former colleagues what kind of person this was.

RBC employees had not previously mentioned Poletaev as a possible new head of the TV channel. His name was first announced to them on Friday morning.

For Poletaev himself, this is not the first experience of working at RBC: it was here in 2000 that he began his professional career - first in a news agency, and then on a television channel.

“Having immersed myself in the topic during three years of work as a reporter (and then as an editor), I decided to try to realize my old dream - to become a TV news anchor,” says Poletaev’s profile on the NTV website.

“On September 2, 2003, the first live broadcast of RBC-TV took place. It was also my first day on the live broadcast of the information service, which can be described in one word - delight!” - he recalled.

Poletaev began working at NTV in 2006. He came there as a business news anchor and later became one of the presenters of the "Today" news program.

The host of the Dozhd TV channel, Pavel Lobkov, who left NTV in 2011, speaks of Poletaev as an “always correct” and “very neat, tidy” colleague.

“[Poletaev] gave the impression of a broker or bank trader who suddenly went to work on television,” Lobkov said.

According to one of Poletaev’s former colleagues at NTV, he owes his career success in the first years of work to Tatyana Mitkova, who in 2014 became deputy general director and head of the channel’s news broadcasting directorate.

The BBC's interlocutor was skeptical about Poletaev's abilities as a leader. Former presenter of the RBC TV channel Andrei Shilyaev did not agree with this assessment: “Igor Poletaev is an intelligent, experienced person, he has been cooking in the television kitchen for a very long time.”

“The work of a manager is not some special profession or special education, it is a job for a person with common sense,” Shilyaev said.

Shilyaev calls his former colleague “on the one hand a maestro, on the other a mathematician.” "This is the person who can bring a little music, revive the RBC TV channel, which last years was in search,” added the former channel presenter.

NTV editor-in-chief Alexandra Kosterina called Poletaev a professional and wished him success in his position as head of the RBC TV channel.

Who was before Poletaev

It became known the day before that this post had become vacant. On Thursday, Elmar Murtazaev, who worked as managing director of the RBC channel since 2016, announced his resignation. And on Friday, Meduza reported that many of the channel’s leading employees would allegedly leave after him.

So far, no one has written a letter of resignation, several employees of the channel, who wished to remain anonymous, told the BBC Russian Service. We are talking about planned vacations, the RBC press service said.

Employees of the “Stories of the Day” and “Prime Time” programs are going on paid leave until October. “We have indeed slightly increased the planned summer vacations for RBC TV employees,” Nikolai Molibog, general director of the RBC holding, confirmed to Vedomosti.

That part of the TV channel team that came with Murtazaev is going on a long vacation: former chief editor of Forbes.ru Alexander Bogomolov (Murtazaev was previously editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine, ex-employees of the Central Television program on NTV Alexander Urzhanov and Igor Sadreev (both came to RBC at the end of 2016), presenter Stanislav Kucher (has been hosting a special broadcast on RBC since 2017), former editor of the Finance department of the RBC publication Elena Tofanyuk, correspondents Roman Super and Rodion Chepel.

In June, the RBC holding changed its owner - now it belongs to the owner of the ESN group, Grigory Berezkin. He has not yet met with the team and did not tell them about his plans for the development of the TV channel, two employees of the holding told the BBC Russian Service. But it was obvious to Murtazaev and RBC employees that the new owner would not leave the old team on the channel.

Paid leave for three months is a kind of “parachute” for employees, say two employees of the RBC TV channel. Murtazaev has long made it clear to his employees that he will not remain working under the new owner, and that, most likely, the management of the TV channel will change. Until new plans are announced, employees are asked to take leave.

No one has announced any specific plans to change the channel's editorial policy, but employees are confident that television will show less political news.

The team of the RBC TV channel will quit following the managing director Elmar Murtazaev, Meduza, citing sources in the holding. The day before, Vedomosti reported that managing director Elmar Murtazaev would leave the channel. Novaya Gazeta, citing sources, reported that key employees were going on paid leave until October. There has not been a single resignation letter yet, a source close to the channel’s management told Dozhd. This was confirmed by some employees who are mentioned in Meduza’s publication.

According to Meduza, general producer Alexander Bogomolov and product director Igor Sadreev will leave RBC. The publication's source also reported that the head of the information service Alfiya Zivere, correspondents Roman Super and Rodion Chepel will leave the channel. Presenter Stanislav Kucher is also thinking about leaving, a source in the holding told the publication.

The creative producer of the TV channel, Alexander Urzhanov, confirmed his plans to quit. “We had a general strategy for the development of the channel, and without him [Murtazaev] it would be difficult to continue to implement it,” he said.

Vedomosti newspaper sources also spoke about the possible departure of part of the RBC team the day before.

Dozhd's source, close to the management of the RBC TV channel, said that there is currently no resignation letter. According to the interlocutor, employees who work on several programs, including Zivere, Super, Cepel and Elena Tofaniuk, went on vacation. Urzhanov and Sadreev did not go on vacation and continue to work at the TV channel - none of them wrote a statement, the source clarified.

Urzhanov himself wrote on their Facebook page that journalists are discussing formats for further cooperation with the TV channel.

Bogomolov, in a conversation with Dozhd, said that he is now on vacation. “So I’m definitely not leaving in the next month,” he said. Zivere only confirmed that she was going on vacation.

Earlier, Vedomosti, citing two employees of the holding and a source familiar with the owners of the holding, said that the managing director of the RBC TV channel, Elmar Murtazaev, will leave the company. This information was confirmed to Dozhd by a source close to the channel’s management.

However, later the general director of the RBC holding, Nikolai Molibog, in a conversation with Vedomosti, said that Murtazaev several months ago announced his desire to leave journalism. “But we agreed to postpone this departure until the completion of the sale of RBC. Now we have returned to this issue, but there is no final decision, it will be in the coming weeks,” he said.

In mid-June, the head of the Unified Social Tax, Grigory Berezkin, of the RBC media holding. Since July 2010, a controlling stake in RBC belonged to Mikhail Prokhorov's ONEXIM group.

The deal took place after Prokhorov had problems with RBC in 2016. According to Dozhd, the Kremlin was unhappy with the publication’s publications that related to the family of the head of state and his inner circle. Searches took place in the ONEXIM office, and the media close to the authorities criticized the businessman a lot. According to Gazeta.ru, the entrepreneur received instructions “at the highest level” to sell the holding. However, then Prokhorov limited himself to changing the leadership - instead of Elizaveta Osetinskaya and Roman Badanin, the holding was headed by Igor Trosnikov and Elizaveta Golikova.

Dozhd's source, close to the negotiations on the sale of RBC, said that the new management of the holding should have made it more loyal. According to him, after the change of leadership of the holding, the Kremlin was dissatisfied with the publication’s policy. Against this background, it became known about Prokhorov’s plans to sell the holding.