EDITORIAL: Assault on the media and Ukraine's future (03/14/04)

EDITORIAL

Assault on the media and Ukraine's future

"Whenever people are well-informed they can be trusted with their own government."

- Thomas Jefferson

We needn't remind our readers that this year, 2004, is a critical year for Ukraine as in October the country's voters are to elect a president. That, of course, is why the pressure on Ukraine's media - as well as outside sources of information that target Ukraine's citizens - has been ratcheted up.

Pressure on the news media, unfortunately, is nothing new in Ukraine. First came the "temnyky" - the almost polite (in retrospect) directives of what should be covered on the news and how. These first appeared in the second half of 2001 as the political atmosphere heated up in advance of the parliamentary elections of 2002. The temnyky worked quite well along with so-called "administrative resources" - the materials and power at the disposal of the authorities, whether it was finances, or manpower, or physical accommodations, to guarantee that the authorities' chosen candidates received special consideration, while those in disfavor would find it difficult to campaign and get their message across to the electorate.

Next came the more overt pressure to cover the news as the Kuchma regime and its supporters want it to be covered. Such pressure was exerted by various entities, such as state tax authorities, and by such means as tax audits, freezing of bank accounts, confiscations of newspapers' print runs, license revocations and libel suits, as well as that old stand-by, outright harassment and intimidation of journalists.

Now Ukraine has entered a period during which the media outlets that do not toe the Kuchma administration's line are simply shut down. Brazen is perhaps the best description of this approach. It's a quick and simple solution that yields immediate results. That's what happened most recently when Ukrainian authorities seized the transmission equipment of Radio Kontynent, forcing it off the air - and along with it the broadcasts of the BBC, Deutsche Welle, Voice of America and Radio Liberty, independent sources of information on which the regime's pressure had no influence. Radio Kontynent, it should be noted, had already been under the watchful eyes of authorities due to its pro-opposition stance. Its decision to carry the broadcasts of Radio Liberty, freshly pushed off the air at Radio Dovira, thanks to new management that supports the Kuchma machine, seemed to be the last straw.

To be sure, on top of all this there are also the murders of journalists under strange circumstances by unknown assailants - cases that never seem to get solved, as well as the growing number of deaths via vehicular accidents that seem to strike most often at those less than favorably disposed toward the regime. The most recent victim of such an accident (or not) was Yurii Chechyk of Yuta Radio, who was on his way from Poltava for talks with Radio Liberty executives concerning affiliation opportunities.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with one of our freelancers in Ukraine, the director of Radio Kontynent, Serhii Sholokh, said of the authorities: "They planned to lock me up in jail, and 'convince' me while I was locked up to cooperate with them." Of Mr. Chechyk's death, he said: "The regime needed a sacrificial victim, in order to frighten other directors from contacting [Radio] Liberty." (It must be noted that Mr. Sholokh was speaking from an undisclosed location as he has fled Ukraine.) As for the West's reactions to the latest examples of the Kuchma administration's assault on press freedoms, Mr. Sholokh underscored: "The reaction of the West so far is correct, however, the West must demand real actions from Ukraine, and not limit themselves to declarations. The regime long ago began ignoring all declarations, because not once were there any real sanctions."

Clearly, then, without strong and unambiguous reaction from the West, the Kuchma regime will simply continue its efforts to ensure that the people of Ukraine are not well-informed and, therefore, are not able to make the right decisions regarding the kind of government and leaders they want to lead Ukraine.

| Home Page |