I recently watched some early screenings at the Russia Today offices, and they reminded me of a college radio station. On the 6 o’clock news, the presenter started off by looking at the wrong camera. She spoke of riots in Iraq, and the screen showed pictures of a crowd of angry Muslims. The next story was about Iran trying to get nuclear power, and the screen showed the same angry crowd.

Many wonder if the channel will be independent from the Kremlin. I asked Novosti’s head of “image improvement,” Alexander Babinsky, if it would investigate original stories on, say, state corruption, and he replied: “Imagine you hired a defense lawyer, and the first thing he did when you were in court was tell the jury what a monster you were, what a liar, how you only took a bath once a month, etc. You’d be pretty annoyed, wouldn’t you?” On the other hand, says Babinsky, “if we just say how great the government is, then we will only have an audience of two people.” That is the fine line the channel will have to walk—between irritating the Kremlin, and boring its foreign audience.

The channel’s chief editor is 25-year-old former Kremlin pool reporter Margarita Simonian. She says she has the strength to stand up to any Kremlin pressure, but when I asked her to name Putin’s greatest flaw, she paused for a long time, and said, “It’s a huge country.” When I asked her what she meant, the pause was so long and awkward that I felt sorry for her and changed the subject.

It looks from rehearsal screenings that the channel will avoid outright propaganda and pick up Kremlin-critical stories that are in general global circulation. But it remains to be seen whether the Western world is dying to watch “global news from a Russian perspective,” i.e. pictures bought from foreign news agencies, and presented by foreign students. The only reason to watch the channel would be for its original material on Russia. But the Russia stories I’ve seen are banal—a documentary on Buddhist medicine, another on the Old Believer religious sect, and a third on tennis player Anastasia Myskina, shown on a continuous loop throughout the day.

Getting Elites on Board

Although it’s hard to imagine Russia Today finding a large audience, other parts of Novosti’s strategy make more sense, particularly the Valdai Club. This year, the group of 30 foreign experts and non-Moscow-based journalists traveled down the Volga River on a boat. Participants said they were impressed by how balanced the selection of speakers was at the event—it included such harsh critics of the Kremlin as liberal politician Irina Khakamada, as well as Kremlin advisors such as Sergei Markov. Professor Marshall Goldman of Harvard University said, “It was bewildering how open the event was. It seemed to go against everything else that is happening in the country.”

Mironyuk persuaded Kremlin heavyweights to meet the visitors, including Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, chief domestic spin doctor Vladislav Surkov, and Putin himself. “It shows Mironyuk’s clout that she could arrange such a long meeting with Putin,” says David Johnson of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information. The gamble of giving foreigners such access to the usually closed and secretive Kremlin has paid off. Putin in particular handled himself extremely well, fielding tough questions from Russia experts for more than two hours, without notes or advisors. Harvard’s Goldman says, “I was overwhelmed by how in command of his information he was. You have to be impressed by the man. You just have to.”

Other Novosti image-improvement initiatives have also garnered praise, such as cultural events it has organized in London and New York. These days, Putin hardly ever visits the West without being accompanied by a grand Russian art exhibition, often sponsored by Kremlin-friendly oligarchs.

Some dismiss the Novosti initiatives as blatant propaganda. But, in fact, they mirror what many rich countries do to improve cultural and diplomatic relations with the rest of the world. The aberration is not that Russia is trying its hand at public diplomacy, but that it had avoided it for so long. Its communication policy with the West was often inept, even as late as last year, during the Yukos saga and the Orange Revolution, when the Kremlin would too often retreat into stony silence, leaving it to pro-Kremlin foreign businessmen to try to make the case for its actions. British Petroleum, disturbed by the sudden cooling of relations between the EU and Russia, even set up a special department to improve communication between the two.

The general notion of improving Russia’s image in the world is worth applauding. Nonetheless, I think (or at least hope) it’s not the case that Moscow-based correspondents (including yours truly) are somehow prejudiced or grossly ill-informed about Russia. We do, after all, live there. It is a very cold country. It is to some extent run by the KGB. And bears do occasionally roam the streets, at least in the far north. If we give newspaper inches to anti-Kremlin analysts or oligarchs, it is perhaps because they at least are prepared to give us access. It is still, despite Novosti’s best efforts, extremely difficult to get interviews with government ministers or see behind the Kremlin’s 20-foot walls. It’s still almost a national event (at least it is to Russia watchers) when a senior Kremlin figure gives a long interview, as they do perhaps two or three times a year. Surely, if Russia’s image is mainly created by Moscow-based correspondents, it is worth opening up the Kremlin a little more to foreign hacks?

Putin may well succeed in giving the West better vibes about Russia. But there is the danger of a double standard. Even as Novosti slowly opens up the Kremlin to foreign experts and journalists, Russia’s domestic media remain as tightly controlled as ever. Foreign experts and journalists may have been granted a three-hour, uncensored interview with Putin, but no Russian journalists were allowed access. The Kremlin, in other words, pays foreign audiences the respect of being relatively straight with them. When will it pay its domestic audience the same respect?