Тhe Mass Media's Ability to Inform the Public about Prisoner Problems

The paper explores the issue of Russian media coverage of prisoners’ problems. The theme of present investigation is the mass media’s ability to inform the public about prisoners' problems. It is topical as nowadays many countries are trying to involve the minorities and social outcasts, prisoners included, into the society. As well as in autumn 2014 online media «Mediazona» was founded in Russia. It specializes in the coverage of the issue of the penal system, including the question of life conditions in prison. The novelty of the research is determined by the original empirical basis. For the first time the views of journalists and professionals working with the penal system on the Russian media have been collected and analyzed. The objective of the project proposal is to figure out whether the Russian media inform efficiently the public about the problems of inmates and disadvantages of the penal system. The hypothesis: the modern Russian media inform the public about prisoners’ problems inefficiently. To investigate the problem the methodology used contains expert interviews, content analysis and the analysis of juridical documents. For the content-analysis the main socio-political media — "Novaya Gazeta", "Rossiyskaya Gazeta”, “Channel One” and “TV-Rain”: exclusively, the publications of their news for July-December 2015. To conclude, the investigation shows that Russian socio-political media inform the public about prisoners’ problems inadequately. Journalists do not know a lot of their problems and cannot represent it fully.