During the gathering of heads of information structures of the Russian Armed Forces, a report on which our magazine will publish.1 in the first issue for 1999, the issue of improving the work on reflecting the progress of reforms in the army was repeatedly raised not only in the army media, but also in regional media. That detailed conversation was still somewhat incomplete. Today we continue the topic, giving the floor to the head of the press service-Assistant to the Commander of the Far Eastern Military District for public relations and mass Media, Colonel Sergey VASILIEV. "Russia is great, but there is nowhere to retreat." I often think of these truly immortal words when it comes to, don't be surprised, our daily work. The armed forces are now on the defensive everywhere, and like any defending army, it is especially difficult for them today. This is acutely felt when you pass through dozens of pages of newspaper information and a lot of TV and radio messages every day. What is the essence of the press service of any military district or fleet? Inform the public (especially the army) about events in the country and in the army. But to do this in such a way that our soldiers and officers have the most objective view of the events that are taking place, which is very, very difficult to form with the current information freedom of the mass media. Everyone knows how often the same fact from one TV program to another, from the first radio message to the second, from one publication to the next, with a wave of a seemingly insignificant word, turns from a banal violation of the internal service charter into a crime-a patrimony of the criminal code. However, this problem is more common in the central districts, where there is literally no end of journalists writing on the topics of the army and navy. However, their reference points are mostly all sorts of incidents, scandals, and the like. Unfortunately, today it is not customary to write about the topics of military tr ... Читать далее