The View from Dunayev's Desk

A top TV journalist can call it as he sees it, within limits

Just after 6 p.m. and again at 10 p.m. every weekday, crisp white letters on Soviet television screens announce Today in the World, a 15-minute blend of international news and commentary that is one of the most watched shows in the U.S.S.R. Vladimir Dunayev, 51, one of Today's regular hosts, describes the day's events--half smiling here at the absurdity of Western posturing on the Afghanistan question, curling his lip there to show contempt for U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. The commentator is low key but sardonic, a bit like David Brinkley. But Dunayev differs from his U.S. colleagues in one significant respect: he works for the state, which he considers a fine employer. Says he: "The means of information should not be owned by a group of private individuals who happen to be rather rich and could misuse them."

Dunayev, like most senior Soviet journalists, did not receive any formal academic training in his craft. He graduated from Moscow's college-level Institute of International Relations, and began his career at Trud, the daily newspaper of the Central Council of Trade Unions. In eleven years there, he moved up from copy boy to columnist. After two years as a radio commentator in Moscow, Dunayev was sent to London for five years as a broadcast correspondent. He returned home in 1972 to assume his present position with Moscow television.

Dunayev makes an average of $1,500 a month, or about six times the starting salary of a beginning reporter, and he earns every ruble. On days when he is doing Today in the World, Dunayev arrives in his well-appointed office on the north side of Moscow by 10 a.m. and begins reading Western publications. One of his two assistants monitors the major news services ("TASS is rather late sometimes, so I have to rely more on Western agencies," Dunayev says), while the other assistant lines up film, still photographs and other visual material. Dunayev begins by outlining his lead stories, keeping "one or two lively items in reserve, just to cheer people up after telling them what new actions the White House is going to take."

Around 5 p.m., Dunayev rehearses his program on-camera. "If it is good, I use the tape," he says. "If not, I do it live." Then he writes an entirely new script for his 10 p.m. show. "It's hell," he says. "You can't repeat either the first program or the evening news [a half-hour show aired at 9 p.m.]. Ten or 15 years ago, it would have been easy, because you could say, 'The bloody imperialists did such and such.' But now we realize it's not black and white, it's a thousand colors."

Dunayev says that no official reads his scripts before they are broadcast and that nothing is off bounds except military secrets. His commentary, of course, has a decided pro-Soviet tilt, but Dunayev insists that he cleaves to the truth. Says he: "The most important thing is to be objective, not for the sake of objectivity --I am a Communist and believe in my ideals--but because we have to prepare people for the real facts."

If Dunayev's notions seem strange to Westerners, U.S. television news seems equally odd to him. "It is very professional, but a bit pushy, not very civilized," he says. Dunayev covered Leonid Brezhnev's state visit in 1973 and found that U.S. reporters are not as free as they profess. He recalls: "I saw how State Department officials could manipulate journalists at briefings. And if they are given something exclusively, they are on the hook."

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