This was the wording with which the channel cut its cooperation with its Public Council, which lasted for just three months.
It seems that it wasn’t an accident that the word “censorship” crawled into the explanation. It’s pretty obvious that public councils have no power tools for imposing censorship.
But considering that it was a top representative of the authorities – Serhiy Lyovochkin, head of President Viktor Yanukovych’s administration – who became a new co-owner of the channel, the word “censorship” in Inter’s official statement is much easier to explain. In Ukraine, people don’t buy TV channels for business reasons, but we will get back to that later.
The actual history of cooperation between public experts and Inter TV is much longer than three months. It started last summer with a discussion with former owner of the channel Valeriy Khoroshkovsky, who at the time was first deputy prime minister for European integration, with a discussion on social responsibility of the media business, especially when their owners are politicians and government officials.
As a result of this discussion, Inter volunteered to join an independent monitoring of TV channels during the election campaign. At the time, only billionaire Victor Pinchuk’s group agreed that there was a need to provide equal access of various political forces to the media. Inter, which actually showed the best results in the course of the monitoring that followed, saw value in continuing cooperation with public experts.
One of the reasons behind continuing cooperation with Inter for experts of various domestic and international non-government organizations was the simple fact that, while the nation has no public television, it’s important to provide the society with objective and balanced news, educational programs, information about Europe and the world. This is largely missing on TV, where programs like “Wife Swap” and “Dad in Charge” prevail. They really affect the perception of reality by the majority of the country’s population.
As a result, news on Inter reached a balance described by the president of the Academy of Ukrainian Press, Valeriy Ivanov, who conducted the monitoring, as “on the par with European standards of broadcasting.” Also, the first-ever live show was launched, where debate was not going around the issue of who is to blame, but was meant to answer the question what can be done about it. It was hosted by the authoritative TV anchor Anna Bezulyk.
These results were achieved because the channel’s management listened to the recommendations of experts. And while the channel’s general viewership figures were going down, the channel’s news remained the stable leader of ratings, indicating that the viewers want to see the REAL news, the news covering those problems they face every day, not the high life-type coverage of the activities of some of the top officials.
But the problem is that real news about real problems is out of grace with the officials. The channel was actively criticized by Prime Minister Mykola Azarov for covering hot social and political issues. And the tax inspectors suddenly decided to check up on multiple subdivisions of Inter.
As a result, Inter was sold to Dmytro Firtash. Later, it turned out that 20 percent of the channel is owned by Lyovochkin.
Then, changes happened with lightning-fast speed.
On Feb. 1, Khoroshkovsky signed an agreement to sell the channel.
On Feb. 14, a full change of management took place.
On Feb. 20, Bezulyk’s talk show Spravedlyvist (Justice) was closed down, but promotion boards continued to advertise it for another week.
On Feb. 22, after hosting a live but staged dialogue between the president and the nation, Savik Shuster moved to take Bazulyk’s spot on Inter.
The channel’s new management explained that it was necessary to improve the channel’s viewership figures, and wrote to the Public Council that the channel recorded “an increase in trust of behalf of viewers,” which reflected in high ratings of Shuster’s show. This statement is controversial, however, because the shows hosted by Shuster on Inter have not showed any breakthroughs in viewership ratings.
For example, the analysis of 1996 murder case of member of parliament Yevhen Shcherban in the context of Yulia Tymoshenko’s case in Bezulyk’s Spravedlyvist show (the third and last one she hosted) had a viewership rating of 6 percent.
The rating was high despite an open boycott of the show by the authorities (none of them showed up), and despite direct competition with Shuster, who at the time was hosting a show on Channel 1. Today, Shuster’s talk show on Inter has no competition, lasts longer (which typically allows to improve viewership figures), but it’s not helping to significantly improve his rating.
The Inter adventure was taking place on the background of other notable events in the media sector. One of the most significant is the steady and unprecedented push of oppositional TVi channel from the air. The other trend on TV is an increasing “tabloidization” of the news. Following news on 1+1 TV channels, which pay most attention to scandalous social issues, including crime and accidents, the news on STB abruptly turned in the same direction.
The control of authorities over the news on the state channel has become ever more noticeable, driving virtually any mention of the opposition from the TV channel, according to the Academy of Ukrainian Press monitoring. The transformation of Inter channel simply completed the picture: TV is now fully controlled by the authorities through owners, managers and even TV hosts, who get the themes of the programs approved, as well as their guests and even questions.
But the cleansing will not stop there. The Internet is next.
The authorities are not yet risking to venture into regulating the sector, but they’re doing their best to discredit it. Emails of famous journalists and politicians are being hacked, someone sends spam messages on behalf of politicians, and one of the leading news agencies UNIAN was pulled into a dirty story that involved publication of fake news about leaders of the opposition.
As a result, instead of investigating who created the false news, how they were released and who was insisting on their publication, the agency moves to the brink of being closed down by its owner. We’re not talking about sale, we’re talking about destruction.
These are all significant risks for the Internet new community, where the main asset is trust to information and the source. Top that up with salaried commentators, not-so-independent experts who spin the messages they’re paid for, and fake news, and it’s clear that trust will continue to erode.
Once again, all this demonstrates that there is no such thing as media business in Ukraine. Media only exist as an instrument of influence. A used instrument can be thrown out or sold if someone can still use it for themselves. And yes, they use it for themselves, not for business or public interest. What public interest is served by media owners Firtash, Lyovochkin, Igor Kolomoyskiy (1+1 Group) and Rinat Akhmetov (Ukraina TV channel)? Why are they investing tens and hundreds of millions into their channels, all of which have been loss-making since 2008?
Because media complement other businesses in the country where independent courts do not exist, where laws are used selectively, and where all decisions are taken in a single power institution.
The battles that have been waging on all media fronts are very telling. All of these cases demonstrate that independent media, objective journalists who value their reputation are scary for the authorities and people around them. The media remain in the center of focus of those in power and are considered a valuable resource before the 2015 presidential election. The media are also moving closer to the Russian scenario, where Potyomkin villages of small independent media remain, but the mass audience of voters is removed from the possibility of knowing the reality and having to think about it.
Here, operation “cleansing” is entering its peak.
Viktoria Siumar is executive director of the Institute for Mass Information in Kyiv.
