You're reading: Ukraine media feel the squeeze ahead of election

For Natalia Sokolenko, an award-winning Ukrainian TV reporter, the last straw was when she was taken off covering the national political scene and demoted to reporting road accidents for the commercial news station where she had worked for 10 years.

Her career, she said, had been on a slide since she lobbed a
provocative question at President Viktor Yanukovich and fought
attempts by politicians and businessmen to buy screen time at
her STB channel on the sly.

With a parliamentary election due on Oct. 28, journalists
complain of increased pressure on independent newspapers and key
TV news outlets from the authorities and their allies.

If Yanukovich’s Regions Party and its partners hold on to
their majority as expected, they fear the screws will only
tighten in a country due to preside over the regional security,
development and democracy promotion body, OSCE, from January.

Cases like Sokolenko’s highlight the weak state of the media
in Ukraine half way through Yanukovich’s five years as president
and 20 years after the former Soviet republic won independence.

After six months covering the traffic and highways ‘beat’
37-year-old Sokolenko quit. “I thought of everything I had
achieved. I thought of my youth and my talent. Here I was
covering road accidents. So I left,” she said.

Several weeks on she is still without a job in mainstream
journalism, and has stepped up her campaign for media rights.

TVi, one the few stations which criticises the government,
says the government is putting pressure on cable company
providers which distribute it.

Proposed legislation to make libel a jailable offence has
caused alarm in media circles. A draft law has been dropped
after an outcry, though opposition leaders warn it could return
in another form after the election.

And there is also an enemy within: journalists who censor
their own news items under pressure from politicians or make
gratuitous mention of politicians in them in return for payment.

Politicians and big business groups, media watchdogs say,
are going to ever greater lengths to persuade media executives
to publish paid-for “news” or screen time to massage their
candidates’ image as election day approaches.

Many commentators forsee even greater state control of media
if, as expected, Yanukovich’s Party of the Regions consolidates
its grip on the 450-seat parliament this month.

“I am afraid that after the parliamentary election there
will be a tightening of the screws to purge information space,”
said Iryna Bekeshkina, director of the Democratic Initiative
Foundation think-tank.

Yanukovich’s administration denies this and says he is
committed to preventing any pressure being exerted on the media,
especially in the run-up to the election.

GONGADZE CASE

Media freedom has played a pivotal role in post-Soviet
Ukraine since the murder of opposition journalist Georgiy
Gongadze in 2000 sparked protests which marked a turning point
in former President Leonid Kuchma’s 10-year-rule.

The leadership of the “Orange Revolution” highlighted it in
the fight for power they won in 2005 after street protests and
“Orange” leader Viktor Yushchenko’s presidency brought
unprecedented freedom – often to his own discomfort.

Yushchenko’s clashes with prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko,
his unsuccessful relations with Russia, his personal foibles and
the exotic life-style of his son all became fair game.

All that changed when Yanukovich came to power in 2010.
There are, for instance, now no satirical TV programmes poking
fun at the leadership as they did during the Yushchenko years.

Media criticism of Yanukovich is muted to say the least.

Sokolenko, who won an award for Ukraine’s best TV reporter
in 2009, says her troubles began in July 2011 when at a news
conference given by Yanukovich she alleged that his son, Viktor,
who is a deputy, had proxy votes on his behalf in parliament.

“I asked him why he allowed his son to violate the
constitution like this. He got angry and said that he hoped if I
had children they would be as good as his,” Sokolenko said.

After that, and as she became increasingly involved in
campaigning for press rights, she gradually lost access to
government and presidential briefings – and began the slide down
to the traffic and highways ‘beat’.

As in most other ex-Soviet republics, television is far and
away the main provider of news for the 46 million population,
but there is no independent public TV channel and almost all TV
stations have a wealthy backer.

TVi station saw the writing on the wall when it was raided
by the tax police – a classic harassment tactic in post-Soviet
societies.

The State Tax Service said it had launched a criminal case
against TVi’s chief executive, Mykola Knyazhitsky, saying the
channel had evaded more than 3 million hryvnias ($375,000) in
VAT payments.

Though the tax evasion case was dropped, the station says
local cable companies have come under pressure either to give
TVi up or move it to more expensive packages, putting it beyond
the means of many of its traditional viewers.

The station’s audience has correspondingly slumped from 13
million to 9 million, Knyazhitsky said.

PAID-FOR ‘NEWS’

Yanukovich’s Regions and its allies, backed by wealthy
industrialists and businessmen, face a United Opposition bloc,
including the Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party of jailed former
prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, and the UDAR (Punch) party of
WBC world heavweight boxing champion Vitaly Klitschko.

A big Regions victory, the opposition fears, will lead to a
roll-back of the social and civil liberties gained in the Orange
Revolution.

One feature of the Ukrainian press which never died out even
under Yushchenko’s presidency is the practice of paid-for “news”
– colloquially known in Ukraine as ‘jeansa’ – deriving from the
idea of slipping money into the back pocket of jeans.

Telekrytika, a Ukrainian web-based media watchdog, says as
much as $80,000 will change hands for a leading politician to
ensure a guest appearance on a popular TV show, while a
20-second TV sound-bite in a news bulletin may cost just $200.

“There is a complete frenzy now ahead of the elections.
Deputies are now shamelessly paying not just the journalists but
their managers and the editors above them,” Sokolenko said.

Knyazhitsky of TVi said politicians regularly extended
lucrative offers to get the station to insert a screen-shot or
sound-bite of their candidates into news bulletins.

“They say to us: ‘We’ll place our party’s advertising with
you as long as you feature reports about our politicians.’ This
is common practice on the Ukrainian television market,” he told
Reuters, adding that TVi refused these offers.

STB channel, where Sokolenko worked, was unavailable for
comment on whether it practised ‘jeansa’.

The Internet is more free, but at the same time even more
susceptible to ‘jeansa’ as most bloggers and Web news outlets do
not even pretend to be balanced or neutral.

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Media circles say it is standard practice now for
Yanukovich’s aides to call prominent TV channels to provide
direction on how specific issues should be handled.

Replying to a question from Reuters, Yanukovich’s
administration said the leadership was committed to the
principle of defending the free press against “any pressure or
interference”, though it said the approach to the election could
be marked by “increased emotion” and “provocative actions”.

“The authorities will react sharply to any violations of
freedom of expression,” it said in a statement.

Yanukovich himself regularly speaks out in support of a free
press and in New York last week criticised a draft law presented
by a Regions deputy that would re-criminalise libel.

The deputy, Vitaly Zhuravsky, who sought to make libel
punishable by up to five years in jail, argued it was needed to
secure the integrity of the election.

Ukraine, he said, was following the lead of Russia – though
similar legislation there does not provide for any prison term.

The move raised alarm among journalists who said it would
curb their ability to expose wrong-doing in high places.

“The parliamentary majority is using a law on libel as a
disguise for bringing in a law on censorship,” wrote Vitaly
Sych, editor-in-chief of Korrespondent weekly magazine whose
Sept. 28 issue carried a whited-out cover in protest at what it
said was a move to gag the free press.

Though the proposed law was dropped on Oct. 2, opposition
leaders expect the Regions to resurrect it if the party
strengthens its position in parliament.

Early last month, Yanukovich endured an embarrassing moment
when a dozen Ukrainian journalists stood up and raised
anti-censorship banners as he hailed Ukraine’s march to greater
media freedom at a World Newspaper Congress in Kiev.

Even as he spoke, his security guards ripped banners saying
“Stop censorship” from protesters’ hands.