In the second and third parts of our piece, we discussed the main areas of Ukrainian journalism. Namely, television and online journalism.
These parts can be read here and here.
In the following parts, prominent correspondents will discuss niche areas of journalism: business journalism, which grew in Ukraine alongside the development of the private sector and began examining economic processes from the ground up, and investigative journalism, which flourished amid the transition economy and post-Soviet bureaucratic system, gaining momentum through numerous corruption investigations.
Investigative journalism is an extraordinary field of Ukrainian journalism that emerged less than 15 years ago but has managed to develop into a genuine mainstream of the Ukrainian press.
Over the past decade, investigative journalism has grown rapidly alongside Ukrainian society and gained increasing influence.
While the first investigations were more naive, along the lines of “here, we will show you what is behind this fence – this is an expensive house that does not correspond to the owner’s income,” investigators now work with complex databases and enlist the expertise of financial and legal professionals. The subjects of their work – corrupt officials – have also become more sophisticated and now conceal their schemes in more elaborate ways.
Since this type of journalism has never been welcomed by any Ukrainian government, few were willing to finance it. That is why the field actively attracted foreign funding in the form of grants, while corrupt officials constantly accused investigative journalists of being “Western agents.”
However, this could not slow the investigators’ progress or success – society has always been eager to watch and read investigations into all Ukrainian presidents, while new progressive systems for tracking government procurement online, such as Prozorro, were implemented partly thanks to investigative journalists.
Anna Babinets, one of the first investigative journalists in Ukraine, an author of a report on President Petro Poroshenko’s “Panama offshore accounts,” and the founder and editor of one of Ukraine’s first investigative websites, Slidstvo.Info, tells the story of the path investigative journalism has taken over the past 15 years.
H2:: “People saw that this was OUR MONEY”
She says that the first materials that we would now describe as investigative journalism were exposés. The goal was to find and publish information that someone was trying to hide, primarily officials and public servants, and information that was of public interest.
“I remember that in 2005 there was probably the first piece that, in my opinion, had the characteristics of a classic political investigation. It was a story written by Serhii Leshchenko, called The Son of God. It was about the son of then-President Viktor Yushchenko. Serhii Leshchenko found and published receipts and photographs of him with an expensive car. It was a BMW, very fashionable at the time. And restaurant bills with very expensive champagne. The bill was for a very large amount. It was an attempt to show how the president’s son lived, which did not correspond to the life of an average Ukrainian. It became quite a scandalous story because Yushchenko then lashed out at journalist Serhii Leshchenko, who was working for Ukrainska Pravda at the time.”
Babinets says the innovation at the time was that there had previously been no public record of the lives of politicians elected by the people – their personal lives and the lives of their families.
“Then it began to take shape when they found the president’s son and serious discussions began about the accountability of officials. And then, in my opinion, it was already emerging as the genre in which we mostly see it today. This was the first investigation, in my opinion, into the oversight of political figures, where attention is focused on their personal, state, and public affairs,” Babinets argues.
Very soon, investigators also became interested in government procurement – Ukraine’s eternal “disease.” Inflated prices, the creation of noncompetitive conditions tailored to “insider” companies, and opaque tenders had been a problem for Ukraine and a source of enrichment for officials for decades. It is no surprise that this sphere became a gold mine for young journalists.
“The end of 2008-09, 2010 – that was when Nashi Hroshi was created – the first publication that systematically monitored procurement. There was actually the State Procurement Bulletin, a publication like that. And you could extract very interesting information from it. One of the first was an investigation into the gas rigs in the Black Sea, the so-called ‘Boiko rigs,’ which also changed certain perceptions among journalists about government spending. At the time, people saw tenders in the Bulletin after the fact, once they had already taken place. Now this has been transformed into the Prozorro system, where you can simply sit at a computer, see, and find everything online while the tender is taking place, and see who is inflating prices, what the level of competition is, and so on,” Babinets says.
Hundreds of investigations into unfair distribution of funds, inflated procurement costs, overpayments, failed contracts, and so on, along with tens of thousands of corruption cases exposed locally and in Kyiv, did not lead to mass “landings” (imprisonments) of officials, but they at least forced some of them out of office, reduced the “margin” on tenders and, ultimately, helped bring about the introduction of a transparent procurement system. Most importantly, this changed the mindset of Ukrainians – from a Soviet-style paternalistic outlook to a democratic and participatory one.
“All these post-Soviet attitudes were in our minds – that somewhere far away there is some kind of budget, while here we are, and we have our own story. As if it were something disconnected from us. Some money operated by some people, as if these were two different worlds – how we live here and how they live there – and they were not connected. And now it seems to me that when people started writing about this, everything changed. Some people joined civic organizations that not only informed journalists, but also tried to do something about it, to help change legislation and appeal to international partners. It is also important that people saw that this was OUR MONEY, and that our money was being spent in this way. Obviously, it was not in people’s interests… As a result, we have a society and civic organizations that monitor not only the process of distributing money, but also the process of selecting people for certain positions and how competitions are conducted,” the journalist says.
H2:: “In any case, someone will be uncomfortable with our publications”
Babinets herself began working in investigative journalism in the late 2000s, but the real breakthrough – both for her and her colleagues – came during the rule of dictator-president Viktor Yanukovych, thanks to one of the opposition channels, TVi. Several other prominent investigative journalists also emerged from there, including Denys Bihus and Nataliya Sedletska. They now head their own major investigative projects.
“I did an investigation into Klyuyev, for example, the then deputy prime minister, and it was difficult to get it through. They did not want to broadcast it, and ultimately they never did. In 2012, we decided to create our own investigative organization. And in 2012, when we created this entire tool, Yanukovych was at the height of his power. It was an independent media outlet with two people. At that point, there was no funding – we simply went out to do our work. It was probably a somewhat naive step on our part, but we wanted to do honest journalism, with certain names and skills. And we created Slidstvo.Info. It was a website; we published on our own site and in larger media outlets, but in 2013 we joined Public Broadcasting. We covered all the events of the Revolution of Dignity, from the Maidan, from Crimea just before the annexation, and then, essentially, when Yanukovych fled, we worked in Mezhyhirya on the Yanukovych-leaks documents and made a series of exposés about the government that had fled,” Babinets recalls.
“And from 2014, we began producing the weekly investigative program ‘Slidstvo.Info,’ where, essentially, by 2014-15, investigative journalists in Ukraine had reached a certain level, had become a kind of school, established this field, and other programs and projects began to emerge, including Schemes and, for a time, ‘Nashi Hroshi with Denys Bihus.’” she says.
The most important question for investigative journalism is how to tell the truth without harming your country through these publications. After all, at all times, supporters of any government have accused anti-corruption activists of precisely this – that their exposés during the war, which has continued since 2014, could harm the state. Babinets, who herself conducted investigations into Petro Poroshenko (president from 2014-19), gives an unequivocal answer.
“Because we learned from this experience quite quickly and, in fact, developed investigations that changed the course of events.”
“I did a story about Poroshenko’s offshore accounts in 2016. It was part of the Panama Papers, from which all the scandalous stories emerged. I was also accused, as was Slidstvo.Info, of supposedly working for the Kremlin, and that because of us we were not accepted, that we did not join the association agreement with the EU…So when you bring some information to light, of course they will accuse you of being the reason for something, rather than blaming the people who created the offshore account and did whatever they did, who would not want it to become public, but instead blaming the person who brought it to light. And this culture of accepting investigations and responding to investigations is still developing in our country, and, of course, it is not fully developed. Of course, we have to think about it, but if that is all we think about, nothing will ever be published. Because in any case, someone will be uncomfortable with it, someone will be harmed by it.” Babinets says.