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in the West, it is usually exercised through contract allocation and seems to
be initiated mainly by the advertisers themselves, not volunteered by media
organizations.
In Russia, the search for zakaz stories is usually reciprocal: media organizations
need money and various organizations need to be publicized more effectively
than by explicit commercials. If a firm can organize an event that looks news-
worthy, it is very likely that its aim to have the story aired will be satisfied. What
is more, if a firm is considered rich enough to pay, then it is quite unlikely that it
will get on the air without paying, even if its event meets journalistic criteria of
newsworthiness. A reporter told me how once shortly before Christmas he was
trying to make an entertaining story about a famous craftsman who worked at a
factory for New Year tree decorations. The director of the factory said he would
permit it only if the whole enterprise could be advertised in the story. The news
editor, in turn, demanded payment for zakaz; the director refused, and the story
was killed.
The amount of payment varies greatly from Moscow to the regions, from tele-
vision to newspapers, and from ‘retail’ to ‘wholesale’. Media organizations often
have elaborate tariff systems for such services. Some fraction of the proceeds is
usually given to the journalist who produces the story. Rank-and-file journalists
generally do not like to produce such stories and try to avoid them, but open
refusal is rare, since persistence may end in dismissal.
High production costs also force media organizations to go one step further –
to hand over production to advertisers (thus openly stretching the process
of media production beyond the journalistic community). For example, in
St Petersburg, a computer trading firm produces an information and entertain-
ment programme about computers – and, concurrently, about itself. In Moscow,
one of the leading universities makes a game show for high school students, and
the winners are accepted at the university without taking entrance exams. Both
the jury and the anchor of the show are university professors.
However, trying to maximize control over production, media producers are not
always willing to participate in such collaboration. A typical tactic of resistance –
which has not always been successful – is to change or combine different sponsors/
advertisers on which a media organization is dependent (Fossato and Kachkaeva,
1998; Belin, 1997). When it comes to negotiations, a frequent tactic is rhetoric of
presenting ‘objectivity’ as a commodity that can be exchanged for high ratings
and that therefore should be favoured by economic actors.

State influences without the ‘state’

A second group of strategies of external influence is exercised by state execu-
tives and legislators, including elected bodies, the administration, the police,
state-owned education and medical care organizations, in short, everyone who
has access to deficit public resources. These resources give power to solve pri-
vate problems when used outside the prescribed way of implementation.
Although all those actors belong to the state institutionally, ‘the state’ cannot be