News in briefs

Russian MPs are queuing up to be interviewed by the world's first stripping newsreader.

BEN ARIS reports from Moscow

BRINGING the news to the Russian people can be a bit scary.

President Vladimir Putin recently began a crackdown on press freedom with the arrest of media mogul Vladimir Gusinsky. But one small Moscow TV station is defying the Kremlin and bringing its viewers the naked truth about what is really happening in Russia. Literally.

Just before midnight on Saturday, Svetlana Pesotskaya introduces the week's news on Golaya Pravda, or Naked Truth, on the independent channel M1. "Hello, welcome to M1 news," she purrs. "So you want to know what happened this week?

"This week in the Duma, arch-oligarch and one of Russia's richest men quit his position as parliamentary deputy, saying he doesn't want to be party to President Putin's increasingly authoritarian rule," says Svetlana, undoing the buttons of her blouse, exposing a white lacy bra.

"He is the first deputy to leave his post before his term expired." She snaps her bra from under her shirt as the graphic on the back wall flips to the next item, culture.

"Cut," shouts the director, and Svetlana sniffs heavily through one nostril and then the other. It has been pouring with rain in Moscow for the past three weeks and she has caught a cold.

What started as a joke has become a smash hit, and each week's show has a different theme. This week it is a phone-in. Last week, Svetlana read the news while dancing a tango. But one thing remains the same. By the time she gets to the sports report, Svetlana is all but naked.

"If you watch other stations they all have the same news," says Sergei Moskvin, M1's director. "What we do is the same news but with a touch of the absurd."

Svetlana agrees. "I don't think it is that shocking or vulgar. I don't have a complex about taking off my clothes. It is not a striptease. It is just a job."

Born in a small village near Dniepropetrovsk, the Ukrainian town where the SS22 intercontinental nuclear missiles are made, Svetlana, 25, came to Moscow to study acting. In Soviet days, a good acting degree was a passport into the state theatre and guaranteed work for life. These days, the theatres are still there but most are broke and jobs are hard to find. After graduating in 1996, Svetlana struggled until she won an open competition earlier this year for the Golaya Pravda job.

"My mother was brought up in communist times and is a traditional Soviet woman.

When I told her what I was doing she was shocked," says Svetlana. "She told me that if you take your clothes off, only your husband should see. But after she came to see me in Moscow and saw the show on TV she changed her mind and is very proud of me."

Nevertheless, she got into a big fight with her boyfriend at the time, a Russian businessman, who made her choose between her career and him.

She chose the career.

And it is going well. The first show was aired at the end of last month and already politicians are beating down the door to be interviewed. One of the people Svetlana interviewed recently was Duma deputy Anatoly Botkeyev, member of a senior parliamentary committee.

Botkeyev was unfazed when Svetlana slipped off her jewellery while asking her first question about reform of the legal system.

"The problems are very complicated," Botkeyev began. And without missing a beat he began to unbuckle his watch.

The discussion moved on to sport, and the poor performance of Russia's football team, by which time Svetlana had slipped off her blouse.

Botkeyev matched her stroke for stroke, slowly taking off his tie and unbuttoning his shirt, all the time delivering a deadpan monologue on why the national side had been having such a hard time.

Only in Russia's rough-and-ready democracy can you persuade serious politicians to talk to topless interviewers.

Among those who have invited the Golaya Pravda team to their Duma offices are Alexander Saliyi, a communist deputy and specialist in election fraud.

He, like all other guests, was happy to answer serious political questions posed by a topless and busty interviewer, although Saliyi says he got into trouble with his wife afterwards.

BY Russian standards, M1 is a small station, reaching about 15 million people in the Moscow region. In Soviet times, M1 was the communist movie channel, showing tales of heroic tractor drivers bringing in record amounts of corn and Russian working men toiling to overcome the Nazi peril.

When Moskvin took over running the station a year ago he cast about for a new direction. He wants to create a station that mirrors the editorial policy of Moscow's leading tabloid newspaper, the Moskovsky Komsomolets: serious news with an element of entertainment to capture the public's imagination.

At first, he hired professional strippers to present the weather at the end of Golaya Pravda but, after the first show, the station was swamped with applications from ordinary women who wanted to take part. Now a different bare-chested amateur presents the weather every week - and if she is popular enough, she is promoted to political interviews.

"People ask me why I didn't pick the most beautiful girl [to read the news], but that is not what the man in the street has. It is not real," says Moskvin.

The station has been growing by leaps and bounds. A year ago, it had only three cameras but today Moskvin sits in a plush office furnished with canary yellow leather sofas, and work on the second modern studio is being completed. The money comes from commercials, product placement and a cut from a home-shopping channel.

"You liked my report on transport?" asks Svetlana, stroking her headset.

"You want more? All right then."

By now her blouse is open, showing off the white bikini tan lines, and the desk has been turned so that the audience can see her long stock-inged legs.

"This week the Moscow state company for municipal transport raised prices," she says, seductively running a finger through her hair and stretching her legs out provocatively.

"The fare for a ride on the metro has been raised from one rouble to three, and the price for a monthly pass ..."

Svetlana pauses and leans forward into the camera, batting her long lashes and running a hand over her breasts, " ... has been raised to 160 roubles."

Copyright 2000
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