Two press statements to mark the World Press Freedom Day on May 3 said it all. The president, his press service reported, greeted journalists and spoke of the need for reform and stable development and promised to “facilitate freedom of speech in Ukraine in every possible way”.

It came on the very day when Viktor Yanukovych was named one of the “Enemies of the Press” in the annual anti-award by the Institute for Mass Information and the Kyiv Independent Media Trade Union.

This was over insisting on journalist questions being agreed in advance, and over threats to one particular journalist when he was still leader of the opposition. Judging by reports from his press conferences as a president, as well as initial scandals over accreditation to his events, he still takes no non-orchestrated questions from the floor. So, it seems that real journalists are not a part of the freedom of speech the president plans to facilitate.

In the second instance, Olena Bondarenko, a deputy from the Party of the Regions, now the main party, also gave an address to mark the occasion. The words, at least initially, appear innocuous enough. Who can dispute that “freedom of speech is, first of all, the right to freely express one’s opinion without violating other people’s rights”?

Olena Bondarenko

Other sentiments are less unequivocal. “We see irresponsible statements from politicians, then the irresponsible broadcasting of these statements by irresponsible media outlets. Then we see how this irresponsibility like rust eats into the minds of our citizens and accumulates there in the form of absolutely distorted social attitudes.”

Such sentiments expressed by a politician from the ruling coalition must be viewed in a different light than when they come from a non-aligned media expert. It makes one very uneasy to think that politicians should be deciding which statements would be irresponsible for the journalists to pass on to the public.

Bondarenko also said that a large percentage of the journalists are politically engaged, and says that “at present we have journalism of ideas, journalism of points of view and thought, and not journalism of facts.

It is certainly true that most media outlets are in one way or another controlled by those with pronounced political views. All too often these are reflected in the editorial policy. It would be cheering to see a move from the government towards greater transparency over media ownership, but the government’s actions seem to lead to the opposite: more control over the media and more concentration of ownership in the hands of those in power.

Recent inspections by the State Security Service, which is now headed by the owner of a major media holding have caused concern within Ukraine and abroad, and received mention from Reporters without Borders and in a statement by the European Union.

Also puzzling is Bondarenko’s attempt to dismiss opinion and contrast it with facts. There have been clear signs over the last two months of a watering down of news broadcasts in general, with the news content, especially with regard to controversial issues in Ukraine, leaving a great deal to be desired. In her recent opinion piece “The Russian Variant and its Prospects in Ukraine”, Head of the Institute of Mass Information Victoria Syumar notes a significant drop in expert assessments in the news, and cites the example of the Kharkiv meeting between Presidents Yanukovych and Dmitry Medvedev and the highly controversial agreement effectively allowing the Russian Black Sea Fleet to be positioned in Ukraine till 2042 in exchange for 10 years of concessions on gas prices. The agreement was a bombshell and it remains far from clear what was agreed and why, yet there was very little discussion by analysts in the media.

Syumar writes that “it remains a fact that most Ukrainian media outlets were not able to give a detailed analysis of what the recent moves by the president and government would give the country, drowning in broadcasts of statements by the regime and opposition.”

One of the vital roles played by the media through journalists’ questions and experts’ opinions is to give the chance for the public to critically assess information and decisions taken. That involves hard-hitting questions, analysis, subjective views and discussion. All this was virtually removed from the Russian television and, indeed, the media in general.

On Press Freedom Day, Reporters without Borders published a list of 40 Predators on the press, which included Russia’s Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin-chosen Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov.

If the new Ukrainian authorities seriously wish to facilitate freedom of speech, they need to understand that freedom of the press, like democracy, can be only a hollow edifice when those in power seek to impose its “managed” hybrid.

Halya Coynash is a member of Kharkiv Human Rights Group, www.khpg.org.