Отчеты членов клуба о проектах и поездках

Отчет о tv-программе "Прямая речь"

Russia – Siberia. TV debates project starts up in Novosibirsk.

 “Dem Club” (Novosibirsk), a non-governmental organization and the principal promoter of the Debates program in Siberia has organized in cooperation with the Novosibirsk State Television (NST) the first in Russia TV show based on the Parliamentary Debates educational technology. On December, 4, the first issue of a political talk-show “Pryamaya rech” (“The Direct Speech”) has been broadcasted in the prime time of a leading Novosibirsk TV channel, NST, which can be seen by about 2.5 mln viewers.

The uniqueness of this project is the fact that the local legislative and executive authorities and Novosibirsk university students take part in the TV debates as equal partners. Seven university students and seven deputies of the Novosibirsk City Council form the improvised TV parliament with the “Pro” et “Contra” competing groups. So, the Novosibirsk students either introduce their own bills related to the problem discussed (as the “Pro” team) or criticize the actual bills proposed by deputies (as the “Contra” group). This debates are made in one-to-one brief format with the active participation of the audience (so-called Public Debates format). The panel of judges consisting of the independent experts finally announces the winning party.

The first topic to discuss was the proposal of Vladimir Kuznetsov, the head of the youth policy committee of the Novosibirsk City Council, concerning the problem of restriction of alcohol consumption by youth. His opponent Konstantin Ponomarev, a “DemClub” member, was quite convincing in his critiques of that proposal. But the experts panel considered Vladimir Kuznetsov as the winner in that round. But youth gained the revenge immediately. Andrey Andreychenko, debater from Novosibirsk State University, crushed the position of Vassily Dmitriev, a deputy of the Novosibirsk Regional Council, after the latter had proposed the project of the volunteers fighting squads for resisting the criminality.

The project draws obvious attention from of the society. The TV debates are unfortunately infrequent for the media space of Russia, so the political talk-show in the Parliamentary Debates format become the event in social and political life of Novosibirsk.

P.S. The “Pryamaya rech” project was planned and realized by the initiative group of “Dem Club” non-commercial organization with a valuable help of Novosibirsk City Council, Novosibirsk State Television and Novosibirsk Regional Council. Also, we would thank the Public Foundation “National Debate Center” and “Khabar” TV channel (Kazakhstan) for their “The City of Future” TV project, which inspired us for making a debates-based  talkshow on the Novosibirsk television.