It is one of the most iconoclastic places in Moscow. A having dinner American style in the shadow of a huge statue of Lenin. For decades, it was also the meeting place for Canadian journalists based in the Russian capital. A very inclusive club of which Fred Weir was the implicit president, the dean.
Posted at 8:00 a.m.
A dean who opened his arms and his contact book to me when I was a budding journalist in Russia in the late 1990s.
“I still go there, to the Starlite Diner, out of nostalgia, but it’s a long way from the days when we had parties there. There are hardly any Canadian journalists left in Russia. I’m a little lonely,” says the man who arrived in Moscow in 1986. In the midst of perestroika. While Mikhail Gorbachev liberalized the communist regime. He has seen a lot of water flow in the Volga since.
Of course, recent decisions by the Kremlin explain the – hopefully temporary – disappearance of Canadian journalists in the Russian capital. Like many foreign media, CBC and Radio-Canada have pulled their reporters out of the country and are operating with a reduced bureau since the adoption of a censorship law that makes journalists liable to 15 years in prison if they publish “false information” (read: contrary to Kremlin propaganda) about what Russia calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Add to that that Russia is one of the countries that mistreat their journalists the most.
Last year, even before the war-related tightening, Russia came in at 150and rank out of 189 countries for the dismal state of press freedom in the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranking. There is no doubt that the country has tumbled in this list.
Despite what RSF calls the “stifling climate for independent voices”, Fred Weir decided to persist and sign. He complies with the rules in force without having the impression of distorting his work. “I would be a very poor writer if I were not able to say what I have to say by circumventing these rules,” laughs the man who, for 20 years, has put his pen to the service of the Christian Science Monitor, a American media.
He was previously a correspondent for The Canadian Press, wrote for the Hindustan Times, The Independent of London and the South China Morning Posthaving made its debut in the Soviet Union in a communist newspaper, the Canadian Tribune. “I come from a communist family. I am a baby with red diapers,” he explains today. He married a Russian, Maria, at the very beginning of his stay.
PHOTO FROM TWITTER ACCOUNT @FREDWEIR3
Fred Weir, Canadian journalist living in Moscow
A slow attrition
According to the veteran reporter, it is not only the limits on freedom of the press that have an impact on the quality of information that comes to us from Russia. Over the years, long before the passage of censorship laws in February, he witnessed the shrinking of international coverage of Russia in general and Canadian journalism in particular.
In the early 2000s, during the rise of Vladimir Putin, there were eight permanent Canadian correspondents in the Russian capital, including those of the Toronto Starof Globe and Mail and CTV. They have all since left. The Canadian Press, former employer of Fred Weir, has also closed its Moscow office.
What happened ? Both a revenue crisis in the media which has had a direct impact on foreign correspondent positions, but also a certain geopolitical disinterest in the country. The number of stories emanating from Russia has melted, notes Fred Weir.
“Today, most articles on Russia are written abroad and cite sources that are abroad, not Russian sources,” he laments.
The result is a fairly distorted picture of Russia and the situation there. “If I had received $1 for each article from a foreign media that explains that Russia has been going to ruin for 20 years, I would be rich,” he says ironically.
These days, he doesn’t see a country on the brink of economic collapse, as most commentators in London or New York suggest, but rather a country teeming with life.
“It’s shocking how normal life is right now. In Moscow, everything is open, cafes are overflowing. The ruble is stronger than before the start of the war,” says Fred Weir. Wicked contrasts with popular belief.
Russia does nothing to help its cause so that its reality is better portrayed in the foreign media. In addition to liberticidal laws, the country grants few or no visas to journalists who want to go there (I know something about that!). And it makes life very difficult for those who are there, like Fred Weir.
“I have to renew my journalistic accreditation every three months. It’s a bureaucratic nightmare. And although I have a permanent Russian residence, without my accreditation, it is impossible for me to work. »
Even after 40 years in a country that is as much his own as Canada.