Its previous owner, American Jed Sunden, is the founder and former publisher of the Kyiv Post, which he sold to Mohammad Zahoor in 2009.
The greatest contribution that Sunden has made to the Ukrainian media landscape is his strong and unflinching support for press freedoms, including editorial independence, still a rarity in Ukraine today.
This is why we are heartened that Sunden, in selling off his media assets, is concerned not only with sales price but also with whether the new owner will be a good steward.
Major stories go unreported because of self-censorship.”
– Kyiv Post.
He made the right call in selling the Kyiv Post to someone like Zahoor, who has kept his pledge to support press freedoms and who has invested substantially in the newspaper through the launch of www.kyivpost.ua and other overdue improvements.
If Sunden had sold KP Media to tycoons Rinat Akhmetov, Viktor Pinchuk, Igor Kolomoisky or the tandem of Valeriy Khoroshkovsky/Dmytro Firtash, he would have only exacerbated the concentration of media ownership.
This political oligopoly has not served the nation well in the information sphere.
Major stories go unreported because of self-censorship.
Critical coverage is in short supply.
Some publishers have wielded their financial clubs to squeeze independent journalists into submission.
That’s why the news that Poroshenko bought KP Media is welcome. The former foreign minister owns Channel 5, a rare television station that practices a semblance of independent journalism.
No one has to look further than last month’s shutdown of daily newspaper Gazeta Po-Kievski to see the complicated mess in journalism today. The newspaper was losing money, but so do many others that operate more like vanity projects for their owners than real businesses.
Some publishers have wielded their financial clubs to squeeze independent journalists into submission.”
– Kyiv Post.
So, while owner Igor Kolomoisky claims he shut down the paper because of its financial losses, the billionaire also has a reputation of interfering in the editorial policy of journalists to the point of censorship.
Critics claim Kolomoisky is strong-arming journalists to take a soft line on President Viktor Yanukovych.
If so, he would be like many Soviet-era fossils who believe that whoever is in power should be unquestioningly supported. This is pandering, not journalism.
Ukraine desperately needs a more vibrant marketplace of ideas.
News outlets that depend on their owner’s bank account for survival are in trouble.
We look forward to Poreshenko maintaining Korrespondent’s brand of independent news reporting. We believe, as Sunden does, that editorial independence is not only a sacred principle but also the surest path to financial success.
