How the media lie. Migrant street cleaners in Kronstadt

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

"My District", July 22

"Novaya Gazeta", August 2

A resident of Kronstadt, August 2

Good afternoon, colleagues.

As you may have guessed, we will talk about Russian janitors in Kronstadt. Around this story, many copies have already been broken, the topic continues to be accompanied by all sorts of ridiculous insinuations and the efforts of the press have already grown into a scandal of a national scale.

As a reminder, since July of this year, the Administration of the Kronstadt District of St. Petersburg began replacing foreign janitors with Russian ones. This initiative has received the support of local residents and conscientious observers. However, some media outlets have unleashed an openly Russophobic information campaign. Allegedly, the Russians work poorly, the local residents are unhappy and ask to return the migrant workers back, and the local officials are xenophobes and Great Russian chauvinists.

In Kronstadt, today there are more than 190 janitorial rates, at the moment, as the Administration said, it remains to replace 25 migrants with local residents. That is, the myth that "Russians do not want to work" is crumbling before our eyes. This caused a pronounced discontent among a certain public, which resulted in clearly ordered reports of a number of media outlets. Here, admire:

Piter.tv: "Residents of Kronstadt are asking to return the janitors-guest workers. An experiment with Russian janitors failed miserably in Kronstadt."

"Komsomolskaya Pravda": "Residents of Kronstadt: Local janitors crawl half asleep, the migrants even worked."

"New Newspaper". "Purely Russian. A daring experiment may end in failure." Here NG cites the enchanting (obviously embellished by the newspaper) opinion of a certain head of LLC "Bona" Vladimir Didyk: ""

"My district": "Residents of Kronstadt are asking to return them the Uzbek janitors." Quote: "".

By the way, let me remind you that recently we also personally encountered the specifics of the editorial policy of this publication. In an article about the migration situation in St. Petersburg, the MR correspondent said that the temporary detention center for migrants was empty. A few days later we went there and found out that the center was overcrowded. "My District" refused to write about this, although we asked.

", - says the political scientist Pavel Svyatenkov. -".

Malicious delirium and slander are easily refuted by communication with the Kronstadt people, as well as reading comments under the same media reports and on the forums.

By the way, the prosecutor's office has already issued a refutation: "".

In order to personally understand the situation, we decided to visit Kronstadt and talk to local residents and officials. Kirill Smirnov, press secretary of the head of the Kronstadt region Terenty Meshcheryakov (unfortunately, he was absent on the day of our visit on August 2) stated that in the Russian city the priority in providing jobs should be for local residents and blamed the above media (in particular, "My District") in bias and unprofessionalism.

We walked along the streets of Kronstadt (we were also on Flotskaya Street, where "My District" found amateurs of guest workers) and found out that the Kronstadt residents are satisfied with the initiative of the Administration and the work of Russian janitors.