In reviewing the article "Reports and debates: Television in a post-Soviet union" by Brian McNair, one is forced to confront almost at once the inherent weakness admitted by the author in his very first paragraph: that the delay between writing and publication makes much of the contemporary information anachronistic by the time it reaches public scrutiny. Although ostensibly an overview of both pre- and post-Coup television in the (ex-)Soviet Union, published less than six months ago, "Reports and debates'" primary claim to validity lies in its insight into future developments as affected by the past. Such insight must be seriously questioned when news headlines since Summer 1992 have noted the power struggle between Russian President Boris Yeltsin and the Russian Parliament - while McNair's report blithely states:
...Russian TV was and remains a broadcasting organization bound to a political institution - the Russian Parliament... so Russian TV was from the start allied with Yeltsin and his supporters (314-315).
One is left with an uncomfortable question: Did these developments occur after the article was written, or did the author seriously misinterpret the information he received about contemporary Russian television? An important and troubling caveat must be applied to all of McNair's current observations in light of this discrepancy.
In its overall plan, "Reports and debates" attempts to present post-Soviet Union television development within the context of its historical development. In so doing, the author takes his stand squarely within the Marxist perspective; that is, he assumes that all history is the culmination of evolutionary forces. True, to a certain extent he hedges his bets on this, refusing to take the strict Marxist line that history is inevitable and, therefore, predictable (a sound caution on McNair's part, given his off-the-mark observation on Yeltsin and the Russian Parliament); nevertheless, t...