Media take on color in Orange Ukraine
By Vakhtang Kipiani Posted Jul 1 2005
Photo/Vakhtang Kipiani
Ukrainians march in support of President Viktor Yuskchenko and for a better environment for the media.
Following Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, which installed Western-oriented President Viktor Yushchenko, the country’s media and government began to cooperate in the process of establishing a free-speech environment.
During the last 10 years, the Ukrainian government had a justifiable label of being the enemy of the press. It forced censorship, persecution and killing of journalists. All popular non-governmental media was under the control of President Leonid Kuchma. He dictated to the media how to cover the news. Media organizations received letters (called “temniki”) that contained the secret instructions for the coverage. The government influenced the media at the ownership level — several families and business groups. Among the most famous of them were the so-called “donez’ka” business group, which included the representatives of the industrial eastern part of the country. The group was associated with the name of Rinat Akhmetov, the business-group of Viktor Medvedchuk (the head of president’s administration in 2004) and Gryhoriy Surkis (the president of popular football club Dinamo), and President Kuchma’s son-in-law Viktor
Pinchuk’s team, dubbed the “clan-group,” that owns the four national TV channels.
Kuchma and his ministers ignored the requests of the international community to allow the media to work independently and to investigate the numerous journalists’ murders.
In last fall’s elections, the oligarch-owned media, encouraged by the corrupt former government, fought against the democratic forces by spreading letters that said, “They are liars,” referring to the pro-Western candidate and his team. Influential television channels and newspapers signed the letters. Viktor Yushchenko’s team could not count the charges because of its limited media. His team worked with Channel 5, a rather unpopular station that has limited broadcasting capabilities. After recent revolutions in Serbia and Georgia, the opposition realized Ukraine would support them in the struggle for a “better tomorrow.” Some viewers of Channel 5 say that live shows from the Kyiv Independence Square, where the Orange Revolution started, helped to unite the opposition supporters all over the country, and minimized the lies of oligarch-owned media outlets. Orange, Yushchenko’s campaign color, brought success to the revolution and victory for democratic forces.
Yushchenko’s administration, feeling that they are Ukraine’s hope, started to work enthusiastically. In his inauguration speech, President Yushchenko said, “We will hear each other, because we will have freedom of speech and independent media.” Yushchenko underlined that establishing a transparent media environment and changing clan-based media ownership were the top priorities for his administration. The new government also guaranteed not to interfere in media activity, to enforce media laws and to provide fair and transparent “rules of the game.”
Yevhen Glybovytsky, host of Channel 5, says all the journalists hold the “Orange power” to high standards and expect the promises of the new government to come true. “During these months with new power, we, journalists, lived in the conditions of chaotic freedom. It’s hard to predict what can happen: media might continue being free or we might have the same situation as in the past of total government control,” Glybovytsky underlined.
The first 100 days of Viktor Yushchenko’s presidency have already brought positive results. The last report of the Media Institute, the local affiliate of the worldwide organization Reporters Without Borders, says that in February and March, government-society relationships improved.
“No journalist was imprisoned, threaten or killed. No one was beaten or scared. No one felt pressure from the government authorities. No journalist was accused in the court by a politician,” the report underlines.
These signs of improvement, the attitude of journalists in the newsrooms and Ukrainian sociological studies prove that Ukrainian journalists are now seeing fundamental changes in media-government relationships.
Yushchenko promised he would help investigate the cases of the murdered journalists Georgiy Gongadze, Ihor Alexandrov and Taras Protsuk. As soon as he became president, Yushchenko replaced leaders of the security department and appointed people who should be responsible for these investigations. The new president was encouraged by international organizations such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Press Institute to reform the media and investigate the murders of journalists.
The new government is trying to rectify the mistakes of the old regime.
For example, the investigation of Georgiy Gongadze’s murder still attracts international attention. This editor of the Internet publication “Ukrayinska Pravda” (Ukraine’s Truth) was kidnapped Sept. 16, 2000. A few days later, he was found beheaded in a forest near Kyiv. In the last four years, this case was not well-investigated because of the possibility that people from high political ranks, including the ex-president Leonid Kuchma, were involved in the murder. The investigation was stopped several times, and the results of the body examination were falsified. As a result, the body of Georgiy Gongadze has not yet been buried, and currently, new investigators are re-examining the case.
From January to March, the group of investigators tried to find Gongadze’s murderers. Three suspects have already been imprisoned, but others are still at large. Viktor Yushchenko announced March 1 that Gongadze’s case is solved. But all the materials have not been given to the court yet, and the details have not been released.Georgiy Gongadze’s widow, Myroslava, who is a political refuge of Kuchma’s regime and lives in Washington, D.C., came to Kyiv in April to give evidence to the police and was informed of the investigation process. The president and the general prosecutor promised that the case would come to court very soon.
The International Federation of Journalists in Belgium, the Institute of Mass Communication in Ukraine, the National Union of Journalists in England and Ireland and the Foundation of Georgiy Gongadze in the U.S. are currently doing their own investigations. They say this case is troublesome and they seek examination of tapes of ex-president Kuchma’s conversations that are connected to the murder. They say that without these tapes the investigation will reach a dead end.
The next case under investigation is the murder of Ihor Alexandrov, a television reporter with TOR. He was killed in June 2001. The journalist aired several stories on the cooperation between some representatives of local police and criminal authorities. First, the investigators believed they had found the killer: Yuriy Vereduk, an unemployed alcoholic, who confirmed in court that he had killed the journalist. Somehow, the prisoner was released but died soon after. Recently, the Minister of Domestic Affairs, Lutsenko, announced to the press that Vereduk was actually murdered and that three policemen were accused of poisoning him. This confirms the version of the investigations that “people in epaulets” ordered the murders of both Alexandrov and Vereduk. The investigators say the real murderers are Dmytro and Olexander Rybaki, two brothers who were members of a local criminal group.
The third investigation concerns Taras Protsuk, a television videographer with Reuters. A Ukrainian citizen, he was killed in Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel in April 2003. As the investigators explained, an American soldier shot him, mistakenly thinking that the light from his camera was a weapon. The American government declined to pay compensation to Taras’ family and believed the soldier was just doing his job. Under pressure from the Ukrainian journalists’ organization, President Yushchenko ordered diplomatic services of Ukraine in the U.S. to renew the negotiations between American and Ukrainian officials about the death.
The censorship situation in Ukraine is changing, but troubles still exist. Some reporters of one of the largest channels, Inter, were not allowed to enter the first meeting of the new Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko with other ministers. Earlier, the journalists did not receive accreditation to report the visit of President Yushchenko to Strasburg. After this was reported in the press, journalists were able to do their job without any obstacles.
The first three months of the “Orange power” have proved that the new government and media are cooperating. The government represents democratic examples, doesn’t react to criticism with censorship letters and doesn’t limit the work of the media. The media in turn report the events in good balance. The broadcasting companies try to increase the number of discussion programs and television channels and invite the representatives of the new government as well as opposition leaders to appear on their programs.
Ukrainian journalists say they don’t want the censorship pressure, different kinds of threats and, especially, deaths of journalists to be a constant threat again. Oksana Denysova, correspondent for a news program in the National Radio Company of Ukraine comments: “I felt the total freedom working for a state medium just three days after the revolution. There is no direct pressure on the journalists, but our managers don’t welcome the criticism of the new government. They work to make sure our assumptions of the Orange power are favorable.”
Developing independent media is a complicated task, and Ukrainian journalists try to be optimistic, though no one knows for sure what the results of Yushchenko’s presidency will be. Volodymyr Mostovy, editor-in-chief of the weekly newspaper Weekly Mirror, says, “…the journalists should look critically on the activity of the new government.”