EDITORIAL: A Shackled Media (08/31/97)

EDITORIAL

A Shackled Media

Much has been written in the press about Ukraine's economy, or lack of it, alleged government corruption, alignment with NATO. However, rarely is the state of the medium that gives us information about Ukraine examined. Today the rights of the mass media in Ukraine balance precariously between independence guaranteed by Ukraine's Constitution and the governement's desire to control it.

Serhiy Naboka, first vice-president of the Ukrainian Media Club based in Kyiv, writes in this issue that even with a Constitution that encodes freedom of speech and information in Ukraine, in the last year "there has been an increasing degradation of freedom of the press and information, and an increased influence over it on the part of government structures."

He is correct when he states that it is not overt censorship that stifles freedom of speech in the press in Ukraine, but "a soft, yet persistent form of ideological control over editorial direction." Simply put, it is the art of intimidation that the government is today practicing in Ukraine: write what you want, but be prepared to suffer the consequences.

Mr. Naboka writes of editors being dressed down for criticizing the government, of government subsidies granted to "favored" publications, of legislation that has been used to stifle the press.

At a seminar at Harvard University on the press and Ukraine, held in August, the renowned Canadian broadcast journalist, Viktor Malarek, said he sees the development of privately owned television stations in Ukraine as a plus that can only help develop and ensure a free press in Ukraine. Essentially that is true, but Mr. Malarek may have conditioned his remarks had he read Mr. Naboka's insightful article.

Although privately-held television stations exist in Ukraine, they are, for the most part, owned by people in government or those close to it. In a shrewd move, government officials or their proxies are buying up media outlets in order to be able to dictate editorial content; to control the press, and hence, control news and information that citizens receive, and we all know what that harks back to.

There is also the matter of deaths.

Most recently the editor-in-chief of Vecherniaya Odessa, Boris Derevianenko, was gunned down on his way to work in what is widely acknowledged as a contract murder. Unfortunately, gangland style hits are becoming common in Ukraine. Who does it and why is material for a another entire editorial. What is important to mention here is that the Odesa Mayor's Office is the target of the investigation now being carried out by police officials.

Then there is the death of Petro Shevchenko, a Luhansk correspondent for the popular tabloid Kievskie Viedomosti, who traveled to Kyiv in the spring of this year to collect his pay and was found hanging in an abandoned building near the central train station. The Security Service of Ukraine says Mr. Shevchenko committed suicide. His family and friends say he exhibited no telltale signs for such action. Coincidentally, (or not) he was investigating corruption in the Secret Service ranks of Luhansk at the time of his death.

There are other cases of death, beatings, physical intimidation, phoned threats. Here the point is not that the government is to blame for every one of these acts, or none of them. It is that President Leonid Kuchma's government must make a priority of identifying and bringing to justice those who are perpetrating crimes that are leaving journalists feeling exposed and vulnerable. That would be a good first step towards a show of support for freedom of the press.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has expressed its grave concern about the murder of the Vecherniaya Odessa editor Derevianenko in a letter addressed to President Kuchma, Minister of Intenal Affairs Yurii Kravchenko and other government figures. The organization's executive editor, William A. Orme Jr., states that "the CPJ has become increasingly disturbed at the number of threats, beatings and killings of journalists in Ukraine, most of which have not been thoroughly investigated. It is the responsibility of the local and national governments of Ukraine to guarantee that journalists are able to work without retaliation. Such apparent intimidation indicated by the attacks on Vechernaya Odessa and other Ukrainain newspapers only serves to stifle press freedom, in blatant disregard for Ukraine's international obligations regarding free and safe practice of journalism."

We wholeheartedly agree.

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