ANALYSIS: Kuchma and the media looking to 2004 "with fear" (02/01/04)

ANALYSIS

Kuchma and the media looking to 2004 "with fear"

by Jan Maksymiuk
RFE/RL Media Matters

In her annual report to the Verkhovna Rada in April 2003, Ombudswoman Nina Karpachova told lawmakers that journalism remains among the most dangerous professions in Ukraine, with 36 media employees having been killed over the past decade.

Sadly, 2003 added three more names to this grim statistic: Volodymyr Yefremov, Volodymyr Kucheryav, and Volodymyr Karachevtsev. Mr. Yefremov died in a suspicious car crash; Mr. Kucheryav was reportedly shot to death by a close acquaintance and business partner; and Mr. Karachevtsev was found hanged in his home. All three deaths have left many unanswered questions.

Another Ukrainian-born journalist - Reuters camera operator Taras Protsyuk - was killed in Baghdad in April 2003 when the hotel where he was staying was shelled by a U.S. tank.

The Mass Information Institute (known by its Ukrainian acronym, as IMI), a Kyiv-based NGO studying Ukraine's media, reported recently some statistical data relating to violations of freedom of speech in the country during the year 2003 (http://www.imi.org.ua).

According to the IMI, 42 Ukrainian journalists were attacked or otherwise intimidated in 2003 (the relevant figure in 2002 was 23). Moreover, 38 Ukrainian media outlets told the IMI that they or their employees were subject to political, economic, or "indirect" pressure by authorities last year (30 media outlets complained about this in 2002). "Indirect pressure - something that is very difficult to prove unambiguously [in court] - remains the primary method for putting into the yoke those very few [media outlets] that have not yet stood under the banner of the party of power," the IMI concluded. "Numerous reports from the provinces testify to the fact that it is problematic [for the media] not only to support the opposition ... but also to avoid working for the official authorities."

As before, defamation suits against media outlets and journalists, with demands of high financial compensations "for libel, inflicting moral and material harm or damage to business reputation" of claimants, were a fairly common occurrence in Ukraine (46 suits in 2003, compared to 38 in 2002). "The only positive fact was that none of the defamation suits [in 2003] has led, as it happened earlier, to the closure of a media outlet," the IMI commented.

The use of "temnyky" (the word refers to so-called "themes of the week" suggested by officials) is one of the most alarming methods of state interference in the media sphere in Ukraine. Temnyky are unsigned secret instructions that are regularly sent by the presidential administration to major state-controlled and private media outlets (primarily television and radio channels) to tell journalists on what issues they are to report during a particular week and in what manner.

The temnyky issue became public in the second half of 2002, when Verkhovna Rada Freedom of Speech and Information Committee Chairman Mykola Tomenko revealed their existence and they became a subject of parliamentary debate. "In fact, television news coverage in Ukraine is made by remote control," journalist Andriy Shevchenko told the Verkhovna Rada in December 2002. "Someone else, not journalists, edits news programs, shoots and disseminates videos, writes texts and selects comments by governors, which are subsequently sent to all channels. Let us admit honestly: instead of news coverage, Ukraine gets lies. Because every half-truth is a lie, and there should be no illusions about that."

According to a report released by the U.S.-based NGO Freedom House in October 2003 on the media situation in Ukraine in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election, the practice of issuing temnyky has not abated since it was exposed. An indirect confirmation of this practice was a weeklong study of news programs on Ukraine's five major television channels - UT-1, 1+1, Inter, STB, and Novyi Kanal - conducted in November by the Ukrainian NGO Academy of Ukrainian Press (AUP). The AUP confirmed "a tendency among leading television channels to present a single agenda for daily news broadcasts and a highly similar interpretation of political events," Interfax reported on December 5, 2003.

The case of slain Internet journalist Heorhii Gongadze is an important litmus test for the Ukrainian authorities' intention to deal fairly with grave allegations implicating former and present top-ranking Ukrainian officials, including President Leonid Kuchma. The Gongadze case certainly appears to have been a political murder carried out to stifle one of the government's fiercest critics in the media. Mr. Gongadze's headless corpse was found near Kyiv in November 2000.

The same month, Socialist Party leader Oleksander Moroz made public a tape allegedly made by former presidential security officer Mykola Melnychenko in Mr. Kuchma's office, on which the Ukrainian president appears to urge some state officials to get rid of Mr. Gongadze. No apparent progress has been made in unraveling the mystery of this murder.

In September, former Procurator General Sviatoslav Piskun announced that his colleagues had concluded their investigations of several high-profile criminal cases, including the Mr. Gongadze murder. Mr. Piskun said prosecutors had placed three suspects in the Gongadze case on a search list, but declined to reveal their names. Within months, President Kuchma fired Mr. Piskun, charging him with misusing budgetary funds and taking advantage of his position for personal gain. The new top prosecutor, Hennadiu Vasiliev, said Mr. Piskun's announcement was unfounded. Investigators, Mr. Vasiliev said, have not solved the Gongadze case and have no suspects.

The state-controlled media in Ukraine - primarily Ukrainian Television and Ukrainian Radio - play a dominant role in terms of propagandistic influence on the public. Thus, the situation closely resembles the one in Belarus. However, in contrast to Belarus, Ukraine also has a significant private-media market, which includes not only newspapers, but also influential television and radio channels. As a result, it is possible to say that there is some pluralism in the media sphere in Ukraine.

This pluralism, however, does not mean that the Ukrainian public is well-served in terms of the objectivity and impartiality of reporting. Many studies of the Ukrainian media have found that media outlets are extremely partisan in their reporting, particularly during election campaigns, and routinely provide positive coverage of the political allies of media owners while simultaneously smearing their opponents.

There have been no essential changes in the ownership of major media outlets in Ukraine last year. Most influential private radio, television channels, and newspapers are owned or controlled by oligarchs and oligarchic clans supporting the government and/or President Kuchma.

Such a situation certainly handicaps the Ukrainian opposition - Our Ukraine, the Socialist Party, and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc - in this year's presidential campaign, as none of these three forces is known to wield influence with any significant television or radio station.

On the other hand, a presidential candidate or candidates from the party of power will likely enjoy massive support not only from the state-controlled Ukrainian Television and Ukrainian Radio, but also from the oligarchic television channels: STB, Novyi Kanal, ICTV (controlled by Mr. Kuchma's son-in-law, Viktor Pinchuk); Inter, TET, Enter (Viktor Medvedchuk, Hryhoriy Surkis); 1+1 (Oleksander Volkov).

No one should expect that there will be equal conditions for all presidential candidates to transmit their electoral message to voters. "I'm looking to next year with fear. Everybody agrees that the [2004] election will be the scariest and dirtiest ever," Mr. Kuchma told journalists in December 2003.

There is not the slightest doubt that the Ukrainian media will make an enormous contribution to substantiating President Kuchma's apprehension.

Jan Maksymiuk is the Belarus, Ukraine and Poland specialist on the staff of RFE/RL Newsline.

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