The sway of certain politicians over the Ukrainian media increased during 2017, with powerful new players entering the market and wealthy owners of TV and radio stations increasing their influence, according to a new report.
The report, published by the Institute of Mass Information and Reporters Without Borders media watchdogs on Sept. 28, details the latest changes in media ownership in Ukraine.
Private owners continue to dominate the media market in Ukraine in 2017, with a couple of newcomers joined the media ownership club, reads the report.
In August, former Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Inna Avakova, the wife of the current Ukraine’s Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, bought 30 and 40 percent of the shares respectively in Goldberry LLC, the company that owns Ukraine’s Espresso TV channel. The channel started broadcasting during EuroMaidan Revolution in 2013, transmitting live coverage of the mass public protests in Kyiv.
“You can’t say there’s been a regrouping of the sphere of influence … in Espresso’s case, as Avakova and Yatsenyuk are basically allies of the previous owner Mykola Knyazhitskiy,” Maksym Ratushniy, a lawyer at the Institute of Mass Information who worked on the updated report, told the Kyiv Post on Sept. 29.
Knyazhitskiy is also a lawmaker of People’s Front Party, as are Avakov and Yatsenyuk.
The other TV channel, Pryamiy, previously called the Tonis TV channel, is another matter, Ratushniy said.
Tonis was a large audience share, but it was more of an entertainment TV channel. Pryamiy, in contrast, positions itself as a news channel.
“If it keeps its large audience over the next year, it could become a new powerful political channel and stand on the same stage as 1+1 TV channel and 112,” Ratushniy added.
“Although officially Volodymyr Makeenko (ex-Party of Regions member) bought Tonis and renamed it in Pryamiy in March, numerous reports connect this channel to President Petro Poroshenko’s sphere of influence,” Ratushniy said.
IMI executive director Oksana Romaniuk said in the report that despite the names of media owners mostly being well-known, the corporate structures behind often remain hidden, masked by offshore holdings and murky business schemes.
“This lack of transparency contributes to a situation in which the Ukrainian mass media’s editorial policies remain dependent on their owners’ interests,” she said.
This year the 1+1 TV channel, well-known to be owned by Privat Group owner and oligarch Ihor Kolomoiskiy, slightly changed its ownership structure by transferring the corporate rights of five offshore companies that control the channel’s foreign owner, 1+1 Production. The rights were transferred from Kolomoyskiy to a group of individuals who each own less than 10 percent of the TV and radio company, reads the report.
Kolomoyskiy remained the majority owner, with a stake of 29 percent.
Read the full report here.
