ANALYSIS: The cold war over media freedom (09/12/04)

ANALYSIS

The cold war over media freedom

by Roman Kupchinsky
RFE/RL Media Matters

As the October 31 presidential election in Ukraine draws closer, the state of media freedom in the country is becoming the object of intense international scrutiny. Delegations of former U.S. administration officials and congressmen, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and European human rights groups have visited Ukraine on fact-finding missions, reminding Ukrainians that their hopes of acceptance by the West are linked not only to granting the legal right of free expression, but to its regular, unimpeded implementation.

One of the first to arrive in Kyiv carrying a message on media freedom was former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. The Ukrainian Weekly reported on June 13 that Dr. Brzezinski on May 14 told students at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy: "Ukrainians, last but not least, must protect freedom of the press and subordinate political life to the rule of law, both of which are essential components of democratic society."

Soon afterwards, the Vienna-based International Helsinki Federation dispatched a mission to Ukraine to prepare a report on media freedom. The Associated Press on August 5 reported that the federation had issued its report and found that: "Coverage in state-controlled media is heavily biased in favor of [Prime Minister Viktor] Yanukovych, who is seeking the presidency with the backing of current President Leonid Kuchma. ... "The state-owned television channels 'routinely convey negative portrayals' of the leading opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, and newspapers often publish 'strongly propagandistic' materials in favor of Yanukovych."

The most detailed and authoritative report describing the situation surrounding the Ukrainian media was made public on June 8. That day the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) distributed a special assessment of the visit to Ukraine by OSCE representative on freedom of the media, former Hungarian dissident Miklos Haraszti.

The OSCE, which currently has an election-monitoring team in Kyiv, has a long record of monitoring previous elections in Ukraine and, therefore, is well versed in the means used in the past to manipulate public opinion.

Despite past Ukrainian violations, the current OSCE assessment presented a balanced picture of the media in the country:

"Overall, media pluralism is present in Ukraine. The mere quantity of media outlets is impressive. Different views are represented; politicians of all ranks are regularly criticized in the media. A lively discussion of public issues - alas, not exactly a dialogue - is taking place.

"The general legal framework in the media field is considered satisfactory by independent experts from both inside and outside the country. In some instances, recent media-related lawmaking in Ukraine was even more forward-looking than relevant legislation in older democracies."

Having established that a pluralistic media exists in the country, the report went on to specific issues, and this is where many questionable practices tend to be found.

"Although, in general, political pluralism does exist in the media in Ukraine, where it seems to be least developed is in the broadcast media, specifically on television. So even as private television broadcasting exists at the national and local level, the government's position is prevalent on the most popular channels that also have the largest area reach," the report noted.

The OSCE report had this to say about Ukrainian television: "The one view dominating the airwaves is that of the government. "The problem seems to stem from three main causes: 1. an ownership structure that is closely connected to, or influenced by, the current government; 2. temnyky [guidelines on coverage issued by the government], which play an important role in homogenizing the coverage of public issues; and 3. an institutional framework of frequency allocation and licensing that allows for favoritism."

The OSCE report gave a breakdown of TV coverage of political news by the major Ukrainian television stations. This showed that on UT-1, the largest and most influential station, some 95 percent of political events were presented from the pro-government point of view and less than 5 percent of airtime was devoted to diverging views. The other large stations, ICTV and Inter, followed suit.

Despite these public admonitions by the OSCE and the Helsinki Federation, the Ukrainian leadership continued to control media coverage of the campaign.

As the campaign went into its fourth week, the BBC reported on August 5 that: "Coverage ... of the presidential election campaign (July 26-August 1) by Ukraine's three most-watched TV channels continued to be heavily biased in favor of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. "State-owned UT-1, and the private Inter and 1+1 channels (all of whose news coverage is widely believed to be strongly influenced by the presidential administration) gave uniformly positive coverage to the activity of Mr. Yanukovych's government and to his election campaign, while devoting much attention to negative stories about his main rival, Our Ukraine leader Viktor Yushchenko."

By early August, U.S. officials began to urge the Ukrainian leadership to play by the rules. The AP reported on August 5 that a senior U.S. administration official, asking not to be identified, told reporters that media coverage of the Ukrainian campaign "has been decidedly tilted in favor of government loyalists." The unnamed official was quoted as further declaring "Ukrainian leaders are mistaken if they believe the United States will ease pressure on the country because of the more than 1,500 Ukrainian troops participating in the multinational force in Iraq."

The first official Ukrainian response to these charges came from the chief of the presidential administration, Viktor Medvedchuk, in an article for the newspaper 2000 on August 13, in which he outlined his views on freedom of the press and replied to his country's critics.

"The more I try to analyze the political processes in our country, the more difficult it is for me to renounce my view that during the past few years freedom of the press has become a weapon in the battle of the opposition with the current government," he wrote. "Furthermore, freedom of expression is both a shield and a club at the same time. One can use freedom of the press as a weapon against one's enemies at the same time it can be used to hide behind, let us say, from criminal prosecution. The point being that it is useful: you broke the law and the government is guilty."

Mr. Medvedchuk then provided his interpretation of the tactics used by critics of media freedom in Ukraine: "The universal condemnations of Ukraine are part of the usual repertoire of some western organizations and are built along a standard scheme: some event (either fictional or at times real) is magnified to unbelievable proportions and on this basis conclusions are drawn that 'democracy and freedom of the press are missing.' "

"At the same time the details of the event in question and its underlying factors do not enter into their analysis," he added.

By the end of the article Mr. Medvedchuk explained what he saw as the real threat. "In the West there exist numerous so-called human rights funds and organizations that like to hand out left and right their evaluations and ratings, including about Ukraine. Needless to say, these 'findings' are then distributed by interested political circles. For example, in the Ukrainian information sphere the 'analytical materials' of Freedom House are regularly distributed."

"In its report published in April 2004, this organization presented its annual ratings of democracy and press freedoms. Ukraine once again found itself on the black list. These findings were then massively circulated with unbridled joy in the opposition's media which one might be led to believe exists in underground conditions," he wrote.

"The question is not even related to the fact that the president of such a well-known human rights organization as Freedom House is the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, James Woolsey, the nature of whose former job hardly qualifies him to be a defender of human rights (imagine if the former head of the KGB were to head a similar human rights organization) - the question is about the objectivity of its findings. These are questioned even in the West," Mr. Medvedchuk argued.

Mr. Medvedchuk's rhetoric, which was remarkably reminiscent of Cold War-era Soviet rebuttals to Western charges of censorship and lack of press freedom, signaled that influential decision-makers in the Ukrainian presidential administration do not intend to let Western critics influence their behavior. His dark hint that the opposition is hiding behind "freedom of the press" slogans to shield itself from criminal prosecution, is a worrying one and might signal that official Kyiv is contemplating more dramatic measures to ensure that its candidate is elected.

Earlier this year a number of prominent Ukrainian and Russian government figures issued statements questioning the role that Western non-governmental organizations play in their countries, at the same time hinting that these NGOs, many of which are involved in media freedom issues, might harbor subversive intents. This line of reasoning was followed up on July 26 when Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters in Crimea during a Ukrainian-Russian summit that "the intelligence networks of our Western partners are trying in every way to hamper our movement toward each other."

Mr. Putin's reference to Western intelligence agencies manipulating domestic politics was repeated in a more roundabout manner in Medvedchuk's article by his claim that "so-called" Western human rights funds headed by former CIA chiefs were channeling their findings to the opposition press as part of some sinister disinformation operation.

The West has relatively little leverage with which to force Ukrainian leaders to adopt modern democratic standards in media practices. The Ukrainian leadership knows this weakness and is confident that it enjoys the full support of the Russian government in what appears to be a restoration of Soviet-era media controls. When taking into account that media watchdog organizations concluded that the Russian media were highly biased in Mr. Putin's favor during the Russian presidential elections in March, it should come as no surprise if President Putin refrains from criticizing Ukrainian media practices during these elections - in which both Russia and the West have much at stake.

Roman Kupchinsky, a Prague-based analyst, is a contributor to RFE/RL Newsline.

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