The de facto owner of ZIK television channel Petro Dyminskyi has an agreement on “information cooperation” with incumbent President Petro Poroshenko, according to journalist Oleksiy Bratushchak, who quit the channel on Feb. 28 due to alleged bias at the channel.
“This became known to me from various sources: Dyminskyi agreed with Poroshenko’s people about informational cooperation. Dyminskyi himself openly told this to people who visited him abroad,” Bratushchak wrote in his blog on Ukrainska Pravda.
According to Bratushchak, ZIK cooperates with the Presidential Administration of Poroshenko, which results in bias, censorship and news manipulation on the channel.
In a comment to Detector Media news website, Volodymyr Horkovenko, a manager at the Head Department for Information Policy of the Presidential Administration, said he personally doesn’t have any influence on ZIK TV channel, and doesn’t know about any “censor” in the administration.
The Kyiv Post could not reach Svyatoslav Tsegolko, the press secretary of the president, by phone.
ZIK TV channel has denied Bratushchak’s accusations.
“ZIK TV channel denies the allegations of ‘close cooperation’ with the Presidential Administration that came after the broadcast of the program Vox Populi with the deputy head of the National Security and Defense Council Oleh Hladkovskiy,” ZIK said in a statement.
In the broadcast ZIK refers to, Hladkovskiy, a top ally of Poroshenko, answers questions about an investigation by television show Nashi Groshi, in which Hladkovskiy’s son Ihor is accused of playing a leading role in a scheme that embezzled millions of dollars from state defense enterprises.
However, there was no journalist in charge of vetting the questions – they were asked by “callers from the audience.”
Bratushchak claimed that that “interview” was “an absolute manipulation.”
In another ZIK “interview,” Serhiy Semochko, first deputy head of the Foreign Intelligence Service appointed by Poroshenko, talked about Bihus.info investigation about him having acquired expensive real estate in the past four years, his family having Russian passports and frequently visiting Crimea illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.
The “interview” looks like a staged monologue of Semochko, dramatized with music and sharp editing. Semochko is forceful in his statements, while the journalist doesn’t ask tough and original questions.
Bratushchak said he first started seeing signs of Poroshenko’s involvement with the channel in August-September 2018. Then, close Poroshenko allies and public supporters started to make appearances on the channel, which they previously ignored due to instructions from Presidential Administration, Bratushchak said.
The channel then increased positive coverage of Poroshenko, and stopped any harsh criticism of the president. With the start of the presidential election campaign, the channel has started censoring stories about other candidates and negative stories about Poroshenko, Bratushchak claimed.
Journalists have quit ZIK before. In July 2017 two journalists have left the investigative journalism department of the channel due to the “lost fight” for editorial independence. One of them is Daryna Shevchenko, a former journalist of the Kyiv Post.
ZIK television channel as part of ZIK media holding is owned by the wife and daughters of Petro Dyminskyi. Dyminskyi co-owns the Karpaty football club and Continuum, a group of companies that holds the chain of WOG gas stations.
Since Aug. 22, 2017 Dyminskyi lives in an unknown location outside of Ukraine. He is a suspected of committing a fatal car accident that killed a 31-year old woman on Aug. 18, 2017. This is despite the fact that Dyminskyi’s bodyguard took the blame for the accident.
On Dec. 15, 2017 ZIK has reported that Dyminskyi was pressured on behalf of the Presidential Administration to “transfer control over the channel for 3 years.” The management of the channel said that this was the reason why Dyminskyi was issued a suspicion for committing the car accident and threatened with international search warrant.
The majority of Ukrainian media are unprofitable and sponsored by oligarchs financial, industrial or political groups, with only a small segment of the industry trying to survive or become self-sustaining through advertising and subscription revenues alone.
Consequently, the lack of resources leaves many outlets at the mercy of their owners, who often dictate coverage and disregard the principle of editorial independence.
Despite these dire circumstances for journalists, President Poroshenko has said that Ukraine has an “unprecedented level of freedom of speech.” He himself owns TV channel 5, which he said he will sell – an election promise in 2014. However, he refused to sell the channel soon after he was elected president.
