EDITORIAL: Kuchma flunks Democracy 101 (04/16/00)

EDITORIAL

Kuchma flunks Democracy 101

At the core of all attempts to suppress and manipulate press freedom is the desire to consolidate, centralize and maintain power, more often than not at the expense of others. Democracy, of course, is about changing and distributing power. Press freedom has always been an effective measure of democracy, and there can be no effective distribution of power without the free flow of information. Unfortunately, press freedom in Ukraine recently received another failing grade. The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, the organization that placed President Leonid Kuchma on its list of Top Ten Enemies of the Press in May 1999, issued its annual press freedom country reports on March 22.

"Over the past several years," begins the Ukraine country report for January through December 1999, "Ukrainian press freedom has deteriorated to such an extent that Ukraine, unlike even neighboring Belarus, now lacks any genuinely independent major news media. From a barrage of violent assaults in 1996-1997 to relentless bureaucratic pressures and lawsuits aimed at bankrupting them, media outlets have been forced into the arms of political patrons in order to survive. In contrast to Russia's powerful media tycoons, however, nearly all Ukraine's media magnates lack the power and will to resist President Leonid Kuchma's heavy hand."

Emma Gray, CPJ's Europe Program Director, testified at a Helsinki Commission hearing held in Washington on April 4 that "The number of journalists killed is the most dramatic barometer of press freedom. Less headline-grabbing forms of attack which the CPJ records are: legal action, including fines and imprisonment; threats or physical attacks on journalists or news facilities; censorship; and harassment, which includes denying journalists access to information, denying them visas to travel for their work, or confiscating or damaging their materials."

Indeed, President Kuchma, who is identified in the CPJ report as the primary force behind suppression of media freedom in Ukraine, does not use much physical force to intimidate, threaten, harass, jail, kill or arrest journalists, though there is some of that. Instead he has already perfected the preferred method of the 21st century to suppress media freedom - administrative suppression - such as conducting tax audits that take months, freezing bank accounts, closing down media offices for alleged violations of the building and fire codes, developing restrictive advertising "regulations" that don't allow for economic independence. Official censorship does not exist; however, journalists are "encouraged" to ask only certain questions at press conferences, while editors receive "suggestions" about topics to cover.

President Kuchma's suppression has not been dramatic, but it has been consistent: the number of media outlets operating today are well below half of the number that existed even five years ago. Though many could not survive the economic turmoil in today's Ukraine, even well-financed media outlets owned by or supporting Kuchma's opponents were ground down - Gravis, Nova Mova, Kievskie Viedomosti, Silski Visti and STB are just a few that come to mind.

Except for the papers supported by the Communists, few newspapers and almost no broadcast media exist that openly question and criticize the policies of the president and his government on a consistent basis, debate the problems in the country, demand accountability from public figures. What little independent print media exists is accessible only to a small number of people in Ukraine, mostly the elite in large cities. The vast majority of Ukraine's citizen's rely on state television and radio, accessible even in remote villages, but controlled by the Kuchma government.

The giddy openness in the media that appeared in the first few years of independence has disappeared. Instead of encouraging the media to be used as an open public forum, President Kuchma has forced the media to regress almost to the position it held during the Soviet period: simply serve those in power.

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