OREANDA-NEWS.  January 25, 2012. Dmitry Medvedev marked Russian Students Day by discussing current national political, social and economic development issues with students from the Faculty of Journalism of Lomonosov Moscow State University.

Mr Medvedev last met with students from the Moscow State University faculty of journalism and representatives of youth organisations on October 20, 2011. 

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PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA DMITRY MEDVEDEV: Hello everyone,

I congratulate all of our students most sincerely on St Tatyana’s Day – the day that students all around Russia, including at Moscow State University of course, celebrate as Students Day. Today is a special day.

Seeing as my last visit to you raised some mixed emotions, I thought it proper to come here again and congratulate you on St Tatyana’s Day and at the same time give you the chance to ask your various questions.

But before giving you the floor for questions, let me just say a few words first about the profession that you have chosen to study for. Journalism is certainly a very interesting profession. If I were younger now and decided to go and study, I am not sure whether I would enter the law faculty or some other faculty, but I certainly have no doubt that you have chosen a very interesting future profession. I say this not for the sake of compliment, not to try to please and tell you how wonderful or otherwise you all are. I started to develop a real interest in journalism when the new media started to emerge. Of course, I read and watched the traditional media, and still do, but the internet era has brought great change not just to the mass media environment but to life in general. You know yourselves the effect these changes have had, and in some ways we perhaps have yet to fully understand or at least fully analyse their influence.   

I say this because aside from the questions on our political and economic life, our country’s future, our various state institutions, and quite simply all of the various problems and interesting issues I am sure you will raise, I’d very much like us to talk, too, about the development of mass media. I am a lawyer, as you know, and though I do not overestimate the importance of laws and the legislative environment, I still think much depends on them nonetheless, and I think that the law on the mass media currently in force has turned out to be a remarkable success. It sometimes gets reproached with being too idealistic and never changing.

But the thing is, when a particular law does not change over the course of decades it is a sign that it actually works quite well. Usually, whenever proposed new amendments to the law on mass media get brought to me, I ask the media community what it thinks and the answer is always that it is better to leave things as they are. I would be interested to hear your views on whether or not we should make any changes to the law on mass media.

The other subject I would like to discuss with you is the development of the new media. They are the subject of much discussion now, but at the same time, we see that they lack a solid foundation on which to base their work. This is a problem all around the world. To be frank, I have raised this issue on a number of occasions at meetings with my G8 and G20 colleagues, but oddly enough, I was probably the only person with an interest. Perhaps because this issue really does interest me. So, if you want to discuss this question too, I think this would be useful, not just for today’s discussion, but for the future too. This is because the kind of legal regulation we might eventually develop will play a big part in shaping your future work and have a big effect quite simply on the atmosphere in our country, its democratic spirit, and on the situation today and tomorrow. I will stop here for now.

Once again, I congratulate you on today’s holiday. Now let’s talk and let you put the questions you perhaps did not get the chance to ask last time.