The future is in identity media

Interview Christoph Jumpelt, DW

Belsat, the only independent Belarusian language television station, is celebrating its 15th anniversary in extraordinary times.

Since the beginning, we had no doubts that launching a television program for viewers living in post-Soviet Belarus was the right thing to do, but we were initially uncertain about the effectiveness of our project. However, the events that followed have more than validated our idea. Massive protests after Alyaksandr Lukashenka falsified the results of the last election, two years ago, followed by a brutal suppression of those protests, definitely demonstrated the justification for our channel’s existence. As members of the public in Belarus were becoming increasingly active that summer, we observed that more and more people turned to Belsat for news and information. When the protests started spreading, our audience swelled to millions of people. This year, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine served as another test. It proved that Belsat television was relevant for more than just Belarus, a relatively small nation of 8 to 9 million people; our channel’s popularity extends beyond Belarus, to Ukraine and Russia as well. Coverage is always tailored to a specific type of audience and we at Belsat know the post-Soviet audience very well.

Belsat has always targeted the Belarusian market, which was met with enormous resistance from the Minsk government. Lukashenka bluntly stated that this project was stupid and useless. Given the current conditions of state-mandated terror in Belarus, is operating an independent Belarusian television station possible at all?

We started with satellite broadcasting, then we launched our website, and finally we branched out to an increasing number of social media networks. We have developed an extensive system for distributing our content and reaching out to our viewers. When you look at the number of views of our videos and the number of unique users of our YouTube channels, Belsat’s success becomes clearer. In sum, about a million and a half people have subscribed to our channels and several million unique users have visited our channels. I believe that we provide the most complete and comprehensive coverage.

Due to the increasingly harsh persecution of independent journalists, our capacity to produce our own video reports in Belarus is quite limited. When we were starting, we recorded programs using large professional cameras. Nowadays, in many cases, small high-end smart phones or tablets substitute for these large cameras; and they can covertly transmit content to our studios via mobile internet connections. We also rely on archival footage and short videos which our viewers submit to us online.

Before the truth puts on its shoes, the lie will manage to run around the world.

The situation in Belarus is no longer on top of international news, due to the war south of the border. What is your opinion on the level of awareness from outside of the countries of the former Soviet Bloc?

This war has confirmed the assessment that served as one of the founding premises of our television station. Namely, that there is no such thing as a separate Belarusian issue. Indeed, the problem with Belarus is only one of a host of issues stemming from the broadly defined foreign policy of the

Russian Federation, which is an imperial, and, as we can see now, a criminal power. For the Belarusians and the Ukrainians, the current developments are just another episode in the long history of Russia’s imperial ambitions. A mantra about the need for stability in the region and the need for guarantors of that stability is repeated many times in different political circles. Now it turns out that it is impossible to secure this region’s stability in a way that was previously envisaged.

There is the myth about the Belarusian people’s support for Alyaksandr Lukashenka. Back in 2010, Lukashenka may have had a chance to win elections without breaking the law, but, according to our research from that period, his margin of victory would have been very slim even then, even 12 years ago. The next blow to his popularity occurred in 2017 and the Western media almost failed to notice it. That year, many Belarusians protested a government tax imposed on the unemployed. Lukashenka was under the impression that people who did not work in Belarus were, in fact, making money in Poland or Russia, so he wanted to squeeze the money out of Belarusian citizens working elsewhere. It turned out that the people were desperate because there really was no work in the provincial areas of the country. Lukashenka had no clue about the actual level of unemployment in his own country, which just emphasized how the post-Soviet Belarusian elite was increasingly detached from reality.

How would you describe Belsat’s current impact on the discussion in the Belarusian civil society?

I think that we have contributed to an extremely important cause—namely, to ensuring that ultimately Alyaksandr Lukashenka did not order his army to join Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. This was not an act of good will on his part, but rather he was afraid of how the people of Belarus would react should he decide to send the Belarusian armed forces to war. It appears that this shift in public opinion has resulted from the presence of free media of which we certainly were a part in recent 15 years. In addition, the ideal of pacifism, which is an important characteristic of the Belarusian population, has also played a role in these developments. One of Lukashenka’s main slogans that resonated with the people was: “Maybe our country is not too affluent, but our situation is stable and at least we are not at war.” We should remember that even today the Belarusian people continue to experience World War II trauma that is incomparable to any Western country. Putin can use his imperial slogans to pull wool over the eyes of people on the other side of the Ural Mountains, those who sign up to fight in Ukraine on military contracts, or their parents, who have been raised on state television for decades. In contrast, Russia’s imperialism is hardly inspiring to the Belarusians, who are unlikely to be motivated to risk their lives or murder other people in pursuit of Putin’s goals.

Agnieszka Romaszewska-Guzy is the founder and director of Belsat TV, the only independent television channel broadcasting in Belarusian from itsstudios in Poland.

Belsat has aimed to counteract Russian propaganda in particular ever since Russia’s annexation of Crimea. What are the main issues?

Looking at what is happening now in the East, one has to agree with Alexei Navalny’s opinion that Russia’s disinformation campaign, in misrepresenting news and facts, constitutes yet another crime in a series of many war crimes committed by that country. Civilized people have no language that would be insulting enough to describe Russian propaganda. It is not even propaganda anymore. Even the word “disinformation” seems too weak to describe it. It is an absolute lie—a narrative that is the complete opposite of actual reality. Unfortunately, that deliberate perversion of the truth was poorly understood in the West until recently. In order to counteract this onslaught of lies, we must reject and denounce the lies, but we also have to tell the real story. This has been the fundamental mission for us, ever since we started Belsat. Russian disinformation dominates in Belarus, and it still dominates large swaths of the wider territories of the former Soviet Union. It reaches Belarus directly through Russian television channels and, simultaneously, it is repeated word for word, or redistributed in slightly different forms, by the media controlled by Lukashenka.

I think that our audience believes our narrative is true and cohesive. We do not comment on the lies. Saying something that is true is much more than merely negating this gigantic lie that is propagated by the Kremlin’s propaganda machine. People talk about pro-Russian trolls, but, in reality, we are dealing with an entire mythical world invented by our enemies. In order to appeal to our audience, we must also address issues that concern the audience in a real and honest way and gain their trust.

Traditional media, whose role is merely to convey news and information, will no longer suffice. The future is in identity media, built around the values that attract a faithful audience and surrounded by tools for social interaction. We have been able to accomplish this amazingly well in Belarus. Now it turns out that our narrative is so strong that it has spread even beyond the territory of Belarus. Belsat has viewers in Russia and Russian-speaking eastern parts of Ukraine. Some of our programs are now produced in Russian for the residents of those regions. Our work is difficult, we can say that without a doubt, but it is certainly more rewarding than working for the Russian or Belarusian propagandists. We do not have to conjure any fake reality. Our only real task is to come up with ways to “package” the truth to make it sufficiently attractive and competitive because, as the old adage goes, “before the truth puts on its shoes, the lie will manage to run around the world.”

Not long ago, distinguishing between a truth and a lie was mainly the domain of moralists. I have heard more than once that in politics there are no such concepts as the truth, falsehood, or morality, because only interests matter. Or, that everyone lies and the only difference between people is the extent to which they lie. However, as we look at the war in Ukraine, we know that values still exist, and they still pertain to completely material, non-esoteric issues. Good and evil, truth and falsehood, are real. The media needs to find themselves on the side of light in this epic battle.

Belsat started as a satellite channel as part of Telewizja Polska, aimed at viewers in Belarus, initiated by journalist Agnieszka Romaszewska-Guzy. The channel was designed in response to the demand expressed in Belarusian democratic circles for a television channel independent of the Minsk authorities. Belsat’s stated mission is ensuring that Belarusians have access to independent news on the situation in their country. In Belarus, the network is officially blocked by the authorities, but is being watched regularly by a large percentage of the adult population nevertheless.