This draft law has been approved by Parliament on January 13th, as well as a supportive act, which upgraded media legislation. These changes are essential and are the subjects of recent analysis. Let’s look at the particular benefits of 20-year-old independent journalism in Ukraine, which is surviving the crisis.
Media circles tried to update media legislation over the past 6 years, starting from when Victor Yushchenko became president. The law “On Information” has been updated with a ban on censorship, intrusion and obstruction of journalists’ professional activities. Other laws were changed to take off the responsibility from journalists due to their opinions, as well as to set up a ban on suing journalists for money, for moral compensation.
1. Monopolies and the State are obligated to share information The new acts have broadened the range of state institutions, which will respond to queries about public information. Among them are local authorities, local councils, state universities and the like. Also, the law stipulates that business monopolies are to share information about their prices for goods and services, as previously they were not obligated to do so.
2. Updated confidentiality procedures Legislative changes regulate that the authorities cannot determine by their own which information has a limited access or is confidential. Only the law regulates these limits due to national and civil security reasons, human rights protection, etc. Information on budget spending, state and communal ownership, tax declarations of high level state servants and their close relatives cannot be confidential.
The journalists’ right to share the publicly important information is protected by law, if society’s right to know such details is more urgent than the potential damage from its sharing.
3. Interviews should not be approved by the interviewee For the past several years, the Ukrainian media has been working in the way that both journalists and interviewees had copyrights to the interviews. So, the interviewee had the right to approve their statements before publishing. As a result, the interviewee often retracts important public information.
4. All journalists’ rights brought under one law Earlier, journalistic rights in Ukraine were regulated by several particular laws like in print media, news agencies and broadcasting companies. So, journalists from the press and agencies had more rights than their colleagues from broadcasting media. Now it has been finally unified under the law “On Access to Public Information.”
5. Simplified access to state structures and media events Journalists also made successful steps towards simplifying procedures of accessing state institutions and their open events. Now they can be easily registered with state authorities. And if they were not granted permission, they at least have the right to be present at open state events.
6. Accreditation for foreign journalists canceled In the Soviet times, when the Ukrainian Republic of the USSR was kept behind the “iron curtain”, foreign journalists had very limited access to work here – they had to ask Moscow for press accreditation. Independent Ukraine has since never canceled such a practice, leaving the opportunity to influence information that flowed abroad.
The first (and the last, I hope) international scandal about such a practice erupted in April 2010, when the Security Service of Ukraine questioned Konrad Schuller, a journalist from the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung about his accreditation. He was surprised why the past Ukrainian authorities had never been concerned with his accreditation, but only in April 2010 they did. The “Law On Access to Public Information” stops this practice towards foreign media representatives.
7. Changes in the responsibility for personal opinions The new law secures the current rule that no one can be sued for their personal opinions, except for humiliation, damaging reputation, violating human rights, etc. People have the right to present their own position in the media, where they are criticized.
8. Shorter terms for responding to queries Starting now, state authorities are obligated to normally respond to queries within 5 days instead of 30, as it was previously. Exceptions for an immediate response within 48 hours set up only in cases of emergencies. Twenty days for a reply could be taken by the state body in cases of the extensive search and analysis of the requested information.
9. Obligation to share public information online Some experts call the new chapter on the obligation to share the public information in the Web, as a revolutionary one. It may decrease the predicted amount of queries.
Conclusion
Both acts will be enacted in three months after the President’s approval and publishing.
The whole new legislative model will enact in six months while the government approves and implement the needed changes, because it takes quite long time to implement reforms in 520 state authority structures plus about 22,000 local governing bodies. In the meantime, members of the EBA in Ukraine stressed at the recent meeting with the EU Commissioner Stefan Füle that there is poor enforcement of Ukrainian legislation, which often leads to problems in practice.
Viktor Kovalenko is a public relations and communications professional. You can read his blog entries at http://viktorkovalenko.blogspot.com/
