- •Vocabulary
- •Investigation
- •Texts for written translation Text 1 Crime and Punishment
- •Text 2 Defiant Khodorkovsky denies all charges
- •Text 3 Ирония судьбы
- •Text 5 Война ведь
- •Text 6 When age is just a number
- •Text 7 Еще раз о правосудии
- •Text 8 Hijacked Jets Destroy Twin Towers and Hit Pentagon
- •Text 9 Трагедия в церкви
- •Text 10 Down with the Death Penalty
- •Texts for sight translation Text 1 Kholodov Appeal Rejected
- •Text 2 Human trafficking and slave trade
- •Text 3 Attorney jailed in Spanish probe
- •Text 4 Too immature for the death penalty?
- •Text 5 An end to killing kids
- •Vocabulary
- •Texts for written translation Text 1 Russian Television in the era of managed media
- •Text 2 The golden years
- •Text 3 The nineties
- •Text 4 Today
- •Text 6 San Francisco center keeps muckraking alive
- •Text 7 The center for investigative reporting
- •Text 8 Новый жанр публицистики
- •Text 9 When Love Backfires
- •Texts for sight translation Text 1 Overview
- •Text 2 To join the elite it’s tv that counts
- •Text 3 Sweden Pushes Ban on Children’s Ads
- •Texts for written translation Text 1 The age of genes
- •Text 2 Heart disease: an alternative to transplant
- •Text 3 Dispute over Stem Cells: a Timeline
- •Text 4 Встречают по уму
- •Text 5 The New Role of Microbes in Bio-Fuel Production
- •Text 6 Scientists Build a Custom Chromosome
- •Text 7 Scientists Revisit Power from Potatoes
- •Text 8 New Earth-Size Planet Found
- •Text 9 Плутон в первом приближении
- •Text 10 Genetically engineered prize fish cause concern
- •Texts for sight translation Text 1
- •Text 2 Briton, Japanese Share Nobel Prize for Medicine
- •Text 3 Google Plans New Solar Mirror Technology
- •References
Vocabulary
censorship
to conduct/carry out/do a poll
respondent/interviewee
freedom of speech
fourth estate
glossy magazine
gutter press
tabloid
scoop
libel/defamation
to receive/get media/press coverage
print run
publicity
publicity campaign
publicity stunt
to steal/hit the headlines/airwaves
on (someone’s) radar screen
to slip under the radar
target audience
anchorman
breaking news
broadcaster
canard/newspaper hoax
feature on
investigative reporting
muckraking
news
analyst
newscaster
paid-for reports
talk show host
advertising
advertisement
to run commercials
billboard
kid-directed advertising
stealth advertising
jingle
endorsement
product placement
to provide live coverage
to broadcast
on/over the airwaves/on air
watchdog
Texts for written translation Text 1 Russian Television in the era of managed media
Television has been through a revolution and back in the last three decades. We get the insight story from veteran TV critic Irina Petrovskaya.
Moscow, 1979: You get home from a tiring day and turn on TV. On one of the four channels is a rather boring class in French; you move on. On another is a Chekhov play filmed for TV. The third is showing a documentary about the agricultural success in the Virgin Lands. You move on again until the fourth channel, where you settle down to watch a football match. At nine o’clock you watch the news on Channel one – Time. The newscasters begin with a description of the “businesslike and productive” meeting between the general secretary of the Communist party and the President of India, followed by a series of reports of excellent harvests, increased industrial output, and the anniversary of an Esteemed Artist of the USSR. There are no crime stories, except for the occasional cautionary tale about a “speculator” who sewed scarves into dresses until he got caught and sentenced to a penal colony. There are no advertisements or flashy graphics. News from the West is bad, as usual: riots, famine, hunger, injustice. You might suspect that things aren’t quite as rosy in the USSR as they are portrayed (if the harvest was so good, why hasn’t there been a single carrot in the stores for the last tree months?), but, then again. Perhaps that’s just Moscow, and elsewhere the carrot situation is under control. In any case, you go back to watching your football game with a reassuring sense that all – or almost all – is right in your world. By midnight, the game and the broadcast day end.
That was Soviet television: total control of information, propaganda of the successes of the Soviet state and the failures of the capitalist world, and rather staid entertainment shows. But it was not all boring, and definitely not unprofessional. TV in the Soviet Union was made by well-trained people with a great deal of talent, expertise and experience – if limited opportunities. Series made then, like “You can’t change the meeting place”, “Seventeen moments in spring” or “The investigation is headed by pros” still get high ratings when shown as reruns. They were masters at the difficult art of filming plays, ballets and concerts for television. And the variety shows were well-produced and performed, if as staid as the Ed Sullivan Show we in the US were watching at the time.
Soviet TV was transmitted through ground wires and then satellite transmission to virtually every home and hamlet in all eleven time zones and 16 republics. In addition to receiving central TV from Moscow, republican channels included local news and productions – and sometimes had more freedom: Armenia had the privilege of showing Western films virtually every weekend (presumably to keep the pot of dissent from boiling over). Holiday variety shows were a treat, as was Easter: to keep people home and away from churches, the stations traditionally broadcast pop concerts or foreign films. And so it was, from year to year.
And then came glasnost. [3]