Ukrainian media reforms: One step forward, two steps back

Photo: Kai Mörk (CC) commons.wikimedia.org

Language dichotomy

The situation differed for digital media, but not for the better. Larysa Ivshyna, the editor-in-chief of The Day (Den) newspaper, spoke about this recently. She cites the example of the newspaper Kievskie Vedomosti: “We published our paper in Russian, but managed to make it very patriotic. I understood that sometimes you don’t have to be stubborn to succeed … in Kyiv and further east you could speak in Russian, you had to speak Russian, in order to promote Ukrainian opinions.”

The Day, which has been published since the late 1990s, has three language versions: Ukrainian, Russian and English. It is an obvious example of the language dichotomy in the Ukrainian media. Therefore, many top-managers and owners used both languages and didn’t see anything wrong with it. In 2010 at a media conference at Cherkasy University, Vasyl Lizanchuk, a media researcher from Lviv, said that the media space was constructed as if two-thirds or more of society were Russian-speaking people when in fact, based on the 2001 census, just over two-thirds of the Ukrainian population identity Ukrainian as their native language.

This is important when trying to understand what happened in Ukraine in 2014 and beyond. Russia used the presence of its own (state-affiliated) media to form a hostile attitude towards Kyiv in some areas. Language was one of the tactics used to open the door for an aggressor into Ukrainian souls. Of course, it was not only language that unlocked those souls. It was also the sense of helplessness in the face of a stronger power, or the lack of quality information. What does this lack of quality actually mean? 1) A dependence on the owner, meaning the impossibility of an unbiased media position; 2) the direct and indirect administrative leverages applied by the government; 3) the plugola phenomenon (plugging certain products for personal gain) and crypto-advertising eating the media from inside; 4) unqualified staff; and 5) honest media being unprepared to fight against aggressive fake news campaigns conducted by opposition media.

Ironically, the most unconstrained era for the Ukrainian media was at the beginning of the 1990s, when the phantom of censorship ceased to exist. New private media sources were created as business projects. However by the end of the 1990s, when Leonid Kuchma started pondering his re-election, both the state and the owners began to make the media more instrumental. As Volodymyr Bardov, a journalism lecturer, stated at the aforementioned conference in Cherkasy, the period was “characterised by the media simultaneously developing both as a profitable business and as a tool of influence. This transformed into what political preferences the owners of the companies and TV channels possessed. Sometimes this had a negative impact on the financial component of the Ukrainian TV space.”

Most of the Ukrainian media companies do not have a written editorial policy. It exists in the minds of the managers and is orally transmitted as “whom we cover and in which way” and “whom we don’t mention at all”. This made journalist solidarity impossible for a long time. Those who disagreed were shown the door. The National Union of the Journalists of Ukraine (NSJU), which existed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, has not fulfilled its duties in protecting journalist rights because the local structures never conducted such work. The NSJU likes to mention it has over 19,000 members, but the membership is nominal and is not a tool for understanding your rights and obligations. That is why, after the Orange Revolution, an alternative Independent Media Trade Union of Ukraine emerged. The goal of the new trade union was to protect journalists’ independence and impartiality. It still exists but it is hard to say if it fulfils these goals.

Tools of influence

According to the research conducted by the NGO Institute of Mass Information together with the German office of Reporters without Borders, up to three-fourths of the major media outlets are concentrated in the hands of five oligarchs. The owners use their outlets mainly to promote their own political views. The smaller media outlets are owned by smaller business people but the same problem persists, just on a smaller scale. However, a smaller media outlet is easier to abandon if it does not succeed in achieving expected election results. In Odesa alone, there are over 40 TV channels registered, with 28 of them actually functioning. Many media outlets emerge just before elections and cease to exist afterwards. However, they remain on the registry which consists of over 4,000 titles of print media. In reality, as of August 2017, this figure is 3,221 publications, as estimated by the Central Institute of Bibliography of Ukraine. In order to understand how an owner can influence the media, one can take a look at Morska Gazeta (Marine Newspaper) from Odesa, owned by Serhiy Kivalov, a former head of the Electoral Commission of Ukraine. We can read his opinions of his puppet Marine Party on every page. Obviously such publications do not have to worry about earning money to survive by means of advertising and publishing.

The 2002 kidnapping and murder of Georgiy Gongadze, the co-founder of the Ukrainska Pravda website, by representatives of the interior ministry became a symbol of the state’s relations with the media. The authorities tried to impose pressure on the media both before and after the murder. As Ivshyna pointed out, pro-government oligarchs tried to buy media outlets or stifle them. This practice still exists in some regions. Online media, however, became a window for free speech and the government tried to prevent its development with Gongadze’s murder. This failed and resulted in the creation of the protest movement called “Ukraine without Kuchma” and the international isolation of the president. As a result, the government attacked TV media. State television did not have much influence (it has less than 1.5 per cent of the nation’s total viewership) because of its total pro-governmental nature, but private channels pushed forward a procedure called the temnyky, that would ensure that news content would conform to government wishes. On a daily basis, instructions from the authorities were sent to media editors and producers. Journalists considered it a resurgence of political censorship and united to fight against it. In 2002 nearly 500 journalists signed a protest document opposing political censorship.

Many journalists started leaving the pro-governmental TV channels. This process ended with the so-called journalist revolution right before the Orange Revolution. During the time of Viktor Yushchenko, free speech improved in Ukraine, but it was corrupted with plugola – paid articles and news reports. By the time Yanukovych came to power in 2010, he was literally buying media coverage. Journalists that were employed with media publications like Korrespondent or Forbes Ukraine began leaving in droves.

After the victory of the Revolution of Dignity in February 2014, relations between the media and the government became less tense. But as media expert Natalia Ligachova notes, similar agreements to not criticise the head of state, Petro Poroshenko, are present among the major TV channels. Additionally, money is invested into new media projects that favour Poroshenko. However, smaller TV channels are still critical. Local governments behave in a quite conservative way, not allowing local newspapers to gain private ownership or editorial ownership, despite the introduction of a new law on the denationalisation of the media. Each year local governments have increased spending on the coverage of activities of local councils and administrations, which in fact looks like state advertorials.

Paid promotion

It is important to mention the legislative basis of the Ukrainian media law. If we compare it with the media laws of other Eastern Partnership countries it might seem that Ukraine lags behind in terms of legislation. According to the Media Freedom Index, Ukraine ranked below among similar countries – with Moldova, Georgia and Armenia ahead of it. However, a well-written law is not always implemented. The civil society in Ukraine has managed to push for the adoption of a still functioning law regarding access to public information during the Yanukovych period. It might not be as effective as laws in other post-Soviet states, but it is certainly a breakthrough for Ukraine. The law on quotas for broadcasting in the Ukrainian language on radio and TV was also adopted. It also introduced smaller quotas for regional media and other outlets that represent national minorities, such as Crimean Tatars or Hungarians. Finally, the process of creating public broadcasting has finally been launched.

However, the Ukrainian media space is still characterised by the “plugola” phenomenon – which came from Russia at the beginning of 2000s. Plugola, from the word “plugging”, is a form of promoting a product, service or narrative for personal gain without informing the audience. Plugola also appears in the form of TV reports and radio news stories dedicated to a certain politician, political party or product. Sometimes politicians pay for their name to be mentioned in news reports. Paid participation of politicians in political talk shows has the highest price. Secret contracts are signed for a certain term, a year or six months, and valued at sums of almost a million dollars.

Plugola is one of the types of media income hidden from taxation. Some editors, such as Mykola Savelyev from the Lviv city newspaper Ratusha, openly declared that it would not be able to survive without paid articles. In fact, plugola fits the media outlet in the same way it fits those who depend on it in order to win the hearts of voters. This practice often irritates subscribers. I heard an elderly person in the Kherson region say that he was going to cancel his subscription to the Kherson newspaper Noviy Den because he sees the same politicians on the same pages of every issue. People also get irritated by the amount of plugola on television. It is almost impossible to clamp down on plugola as it must be proven in court, and only a small compensation will be rewarded. Therefore, NGOs try to expose the inefficiencies and harms of the practice. Unfortunately, most members of parliament are involved in plugola so it is unlikely to disappear anytime soon.

Low competence

According to research ordered by the NGO Telekrytyka (known today as Detector Media) and conducted by Oksana Piddubna, training in journalism can be obtained in 39 higher educational schools (as of the 2015/2016 academic year). However, the quality of education is low. Thirty-one of these schools are public, eight are private and two offer postgraduate programmes (the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and Ukrainian Catholic University). These two universities produce the best-skilled journalists only admitting those with an undergraduate degree or those who already work in journalism. Graduates from the other schools are less skilled and do not have to speak a foreign language. They often do not learn how to work with texts and do not need to have any knowledge of modern practices. In a local group of 20 journalists I recently spoke with during a regional training programme, only three or four had a journalism degree.

This is one of the reasons why outsiders gain top positions in media outlets. Many of them come from Russia, and others come from Poland, Belarus and Israel. But for many media, the ideological views of the guest managers and screen stars were important. For example, the management of Inter TV channel included those who are connected to Russia’s FSB (secret police) or individuals like Maria Stolyarova, the editor of Inter’s informational service, who was deported from Ukraine after her direct links to separatists in Donbas were confirmed. Thankfully, at the moment, Ukrainian journalism is trying to grow its own cadre.

At the same time, there is a low level of experts commenting in media. In February this year a conference took place in Kyiv where representatives of the relevant faculties and media organisations tried to understand the obstacles to creating quality content. The problems mentioned include a lack of individuals ready to comment on anything ranging from economics to culture, the placement of journalists promoted by politicians who think about the politician’s political interests rather than expert credibility, and journalists drifting from one role to another.

In this situation, the blame lies on both sides. On the one hand, editorial departments demonstrate professional negligence by not checking a journalist’s competency and by not enabling him or her to present their reporting in the most appropriate manner. Additionally, a poorly informed journalist might be invited to discredit a certain issue, while the TV channel prepares another uninformed journalist who can dispute it – meaning, there is a demand for weak experts! This often happens in the “manipulative media”. From the expert side, the problem is that many of them still have a Soviet way of thinking. Such experts may insult a journalist for not understanding some concepts or terms. Many experts are not charismatic enough or able to explain the essence of a complex issue in a few sentences.

Guzhva-style

It is commonly believed that fake news in Ukraine was born with the advent of social media and has later been reaffirmed by traditional media. This is mostly true, but not entirely. Ukrainian society is quite critical of the media and does not want to trust every word they say. The freedom of “corruption pluralism” (an expression coined by Ligachova) refers to ownership of the media by some oligarch who has a different opinion on state matters. This leads to a situation when the Ukrainian news consumer has a choice to select information, even if it may be distorted. Therefore, a blatant lie is not always accepted by the Ukrainian public.

Manipulations, on the other hand, are a different story. There was a special name invented for this by Larysa Voloshyna: “Guzhva-style”. What does Guzhva-style mean? Voloshyna defines it as: “The Oops-news – which uses a real fact as the basis for a story but distorts it beyond recognition. After it is debunked, the editorial department says ‘Oops!’ and apologises, providing a clarification. But at that point, it doesn’t matter. The deed is done. The hostile narratives have reached Ukrainians.” She adds, “Another way of reality distortion is the deliberate invention of non-existent problems. The third hybrid mechanism to influence consciousness is presenting different points of view.” Therefore, in order to identify manipulations, you must have a good understanding of how manipulations in the media work. Distorting Ukrainian words and placing them in the Russian-language context adds to the emotions.

This leads to the question of what direction Ukrainian media should take in order to develop. Besides the mainstream media direction, described above, which plays the main role in providing information for Ukrainians, a new type of journalism has emerged. This is civil journalism, which received a fresh impulse after the 2013/2014 revolution. This journalism uses Facebook as a platform and is crowdfunded by the audience, sponsors or funders. It is especially effective at the regional level. The examples of independent and unbiased coverage will influence mainstream journalists.

However, reforming other areas of life in Ukraine is also necessary, primarily the independence of the judiciary, so that media owners will not be afraid and can develop their own business models. Without this, Ukraine will remain at the stage of corrupt pluralism.

Translated by Anna Chornous

Roman Kabachiy is a Ukrainian historian and journalist.

Ukraine, Ukrainian media