December 16, 2016

Experts discuss information warfare, Ukraine and Europe

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KYIV – European journalism faced a number of challenges that drew its attention away from the events in Ukraine. This includes inadequate funding that results in editors’ inability to assign their reporters, Brexit, and Syria, which supersedes the war in Donbas, as well as the world of social media, where false information is spread beyond control, said Andrea Rizzi, international news editor at El Pais, Spain’s leading newspaper.

He spoke during a December 1 discussion at Ukraine Crisis Media Center that took place as a part of sixth Spanish-Ukrainian Forum of Journalism, whose topic was “Public Opinion and Civil Society in Times of Crisis: The Media Narrative.”

“We need to make changes, to invent new journalism able to communicate with the 21st century audience, producing content it requires. We need to learn to attract bigger audiences. We can’t neglect our principles, though,” he said, referring to unverified information.

“This huge propaganda machine owned by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin – absolutely nothing stands against it. There is not a single institution or agency making its own propaganda – for we believe our values are so nice and self-explanatory that they don’t need being propagated; nevertheless, we have to do it,” added Gerardo Bugallo Ottone, ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of Kingdom of Spain to Ukraine.

The information war

Stanislav Yasynskyi, a journalist with 1+1 TV Channel, said he believes that Ukraine is losing the Donbas because of the absence of information and proliferation of propaganda there. “Russia was getting ready for the war with Ukraine in advance. They united all their state media in a mighty consortium, Russia Today, which includes not only journalists, but analysts, information psychology experts… It is an extremely powerful network able to deliver any necessary information all over the world in seconds for huge money. What can we put up against it? Unfortunately, almost nothing,” stated the journalist.

Mr. Yasynskyi noted that Russia was systemically increasing its audience, promoting its content. “The audience in the Donbas does not want to see ‘treason’ and what is happening in Kyiv. They want to compare the prices in the occupied territories with their prices. They watch Russian TV because their propaganda offers stability and hope for a better future, so they trust Putin,” he explained.

He said radio faces the same problems. Army FM radio should broadcast on all frequencies, but it cannot get a license due to the bureaucracy. “This means they broadcast only on frequencies where they reached agreements with commercial radio stations. They treat it as treason in the east,” he emphasized. It would be possible to cover certain areas in the Russian Federation on short-wave frequencies and broadcast in Russian there, Mr. Yasynskyi continued. Moreover, there are enough journalists who serve in Ukraine’s armed forces – they could publish their own newspapers, but they have no printers to publish materials.

Public communications

Mustafa Nayyem, a journalist who is a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, said he believes that Ukrainian officials still have not learned to communicate with society in the proper manner.

“Communication is an official’s duty to explain his steps, anything he is doing. A subordinate must report on his work, his successes and failures, otherwise he will be dismissed. Somehow it doesn’t work this way in the relations between the authorities and society. This treatment of people as trash does not start with beatings on the Maidan; it starts with an unwillingness to explain to the people what we are doing,” Mr. Nayyem commented.

Dmytro Zolotukhin, advisor at Ukraine’s Ministry of Information Policy, said that the state must have a system of strategic communications to present required narrative to its citizens. “What I hear is that we can’t make heroes too heroic, for we have corruption and problems in the army, and it doesn’t help reforms. But everyone should be responsible for their job: the state should take care of strategic communications and introduce its information policy, while the media must protect civic society against propaganda,” explained Mr. Zolotukhin.

Journalists’ safety

Andriy Zhygulin, head of the Main Department of Information Policy of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine, said he believes that protection of professional journalism in Ukraine is returning.

A Council of Europe project on protection of journalists is to start next year. “It envisages cooperation between journalists and law enforcement agencies that should respond appropriately to offenses. Regardless of the National Police reform, investigators still lack an understanding of the proper response to crimes against journalists,” he explained.

According to Mr. Zhygulin, 172 criminal proceedings in which journalists are an affected party were registered this year with the courts, as compared to 1.5 million criminal proceedings over all. At the same time, only 8 percent of such crimes are solved. He also mentioned some positive changes: state censorship was liquidated, the liability for impeding journalistic activity was increased, public TV and radio broadcasting was launched, and the process of denationalizing local print media has started.

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