ROUGH DRAFT: Is it the medium or the message? (08/22/99)

ROUGH DRAFT

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

Is it the medium or the message?

In the United States the buzz that we have been hearing in the press about the 2000 presidential elections is about money, and how George "Double-ya" Bush has most of it. Of course, money matters in Ukraine as well, but for the leading candidates, and especially for the re-election team of President Leonid Kuchma, winning the October presidential elections comes down to political control, Soviet-style.

Historically, candidates in the U.S. who manage to put together a solid grassroots organization and a strong media campaign have had a good shot at winning. In Ukraine there are those who are trying to run their campaigns in the Western mode.

But, as with most things in Ukraine, a country helplessly dangling between its Soviet past and its Western inclinations, democratic electoral traditions are being twisted by old Soviet practices, and that means attempts to control every facet of the election process.

Leading the pack in early political polls is President Kuchma, whose ratings have dramatically risen since he began his campaign. He is considered to have a strong campaign team in place along with superb media connections.

Some Westerners may draw a historical parallel to the political machinations of Tamany Hall or the campaign tactics employed by Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, but the strategies employed by the Kuchma campaign team most obviously recall the Soviet philosophy that everything must be controlled from the center, a practice that most Ukrainian political leaders remember first-hand.

The Kuchma administration, which many simply consider to be a huge brokering and underwriting organization for the financial clans and oligarchies that increasingly have dominated this country since independence, has long realized that it can tweak and nudge popular opinion by controlling the mass media, at times in a heavy-handed and blatant manner. That, after all, is what the Soviet propaganda machine did so well before glasnost and the Internet era caused its collapse.

The Kuchma campaign team's television strategy, which has been nurtured for years, is not a series of slick ads to promote the president, but an effort to dominate or maintain influence over major newspapers and television networks.

Not surprisingly, Ukrainian Television News, the government channel's news program, has increasingly focused on the president and less on other politicians, particularly those who are considered a threat to Mr. Kuchma's re-election ambitions.

Stories on Mr. Kuchma's day lead the evening news - sometimes three and four in succession. Rarely are the other candidates mentioned, if at all.

Some here say it is only a matter of time before the weather forecast will come replete with Mr. Kuchma's face superimposed on the sun.

Even the Western-owned and well-watched Studio 1+1 television station, which stubbornly maintains that it is independent of political influence, has to some degree caved into presidential pressure.

Several months ago the station began airing a Sunday evening news program called "EpiCenter," in which journalists grill popular political figures.

People connected to Studio 1+1 say that the program was instituted as a bone thrown to the Kuchma administration to keep the administration's claws off the station's back. Will Mr. Kuchma ever agree to participate in an "EpiCenter program" and risk the open onslaught of possibly embarrassing question from frothing journalists? Hardly, is the common viewpoint. Instead, other politicians are subjected to grueling questions. However, since most of them get very little coverage on television, they agree to be grilled just to get some airtime.

The program's moderator does not hide the fact that he has a soft spot for the Kuchma administration. In a July 8 story in the Kyiv Post he explained the degree of his allegiance to Mr. Kuchma.

"I won't work against the president, that is 100 percent certain. But I won't collaborate with him either," explained Viacheslav Pikhovshek.

In the print media, newspaper editors regularly buckle to demands put to them by Kuchma campaign workers to run positive articles on the government's accomplishments. Any fool knows that a professional future could be at stake. There are precedents aplenty.

Some tactics of the Kuchma government - for example, the closure of several leading newspapers that stridently criticized certain officials - have been almost as overt as those used by its Soviet cousins in an earlier time. The result: today many journalists and most newspapers are timid in their criticism of the government.

In the western Ukraine city of Ternopil, privately owned newspapers extol the accomplishments of the incumbent and give little coverage of other presidential contenders. Not surprisingly, observers in the city say President Kuchma is slowly gaining more and more support there.

It is possible that this government doesn't even consider the open spaces of the Internet outside its bounds. There have been reports in the Ukrainian and Russian press that the Security Service of Ukraine is ready to force Internet providers to utilize a black box that will allow the law enforcement agency to monitor communications on the information superhighway.

To be fair, Mr. Kuchma is not the only presidential aspirant that has developed his own version of a political media campaign.

Verkhovna Rada Chairman Oleksander Tkachenko, known for his desire for "Slavic unity" and the ability to twist a phrase à la Yogi Berra, has said that his political team will keep tabs on what was written about him, and that appropriate actions will be taken after he wins.

Even as the other candidates set their sights on Mr. Kuchma and his policies, it is hardly a stretch to expect that the sitting president, with all the political control he has at his disposal, will get to keep his office for five more years

It should come as no surprise when the Ukrainian electorate, told for more than seven decades what to think and for whom to vote, passively heeds the message that the mass media - which Mr. Kuchma is persuasively, if unethically and maybe even illegally influencing - has presented.

The victory, however, may give his pro-left and Communist opponents, whom much of the electorate again supports in protest against President Kuchma's inability to raise the country from its economic slumber, pause to ponder: Is it the medium or the message that counts in this country?

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