How Will Society Counteract the Police Syndrome?

Oddly enough, this program did not trigger an adequate reaction either in the media or society. For, in pursuit of compromising materials, journalist Yuri Nesterenko and the Dossier film crew violated the most important human right, that of privacy. Only the former Procurator-General Oleh Lytvak said from the Verkhovna Rada rostrum that "any items of objective information should only be gleaned by an investigator or a journalist alike only under the law. And sanctions to use operative technical devices should be obtained in courts, not simply by the wish or consent of a journalist."

No less piquant in the candid camera operation was the fact that those sequences came up on the "Good night, Ukraine!" television show, and among the hosts was also Serhiy Naboka, who suffered much in Brezhnev's time from the arm-twisting methods of our valiant law-enforcement (he did several years in prison camps for participation in the Ukrainian Helsinki Group).

"This material, included in our program as a scoop, was an absolutely unexpected thing for me," says Mr. Naboka, "Seeing it on the monitor, I felt how strongly it stank. But, since the program was being broadcast live, I was not very attentive. Then I re-watched the program on purpose and saw it was a shame. The next day I raised one hell of a scandal at UT-1 in this connection. This Dossier was to have gone on the air again on Thursday, but it was canceled, maybe, because of my protests. The Dossier may only show outside our program, if at all."

Also supporting a negative assessment of the candid camera method is leading Ukrainian television journalist Natalia Kondratiuk. She added:

"There are no journalists in Ukraine who know how to use hidden-camera filming to advantage. In this country such footage is only used to launder compromising materials through TV by some 'appropriate' people against their opponents. To watch people with a hidden camera is the job of the security services, but never journalists. Journalists have to do it openly. The more so in that nobody hampered them from so doing in the program. In general, that was a frame-up film. The deputy filmed by a hidden camera in no way concealed his entering the Hromada office. He was going to the office of his party to greet a colleague. But the viewer was offered a different angle: it is not a journalist who breaks the law, but a deputy who hides himself, so there is something secret and illegal in the actions of the one under observation. Thus, the journalist knowingly distorted facts, shaping the impression he wanted. This is no longer journalism, this is the oldest profession."

Frankly speaking, somewhat surprising is the reaction to such methods from Ihor Lubchenko, chairman of the Union of Journalists of Ukraine, a respected figure and editor who suffered much from bureaucratic arbitrariness. However, he gave rather a melancholic answer to The Day's question:

"Filming deputies? If they cannot be arrested without Verkhovna Rada consent, they can be filmed only with the Prosecutor General's sanction, and only then if a criminal case has been opened. And the filming should be done only by a police operative, not a journalist!

"This is a matter for our debate and thought. Thank you for telling me this. We should hold a round table or a conference on this at the Union of Journalists."

It would seem the Union of Journalists should be the first to take a most active part in condemning unlawful actions by media people. For the first thing it should do is work out a code of professional ethics and take a clear-cut stand in defending them among the journalists of independent Ukraine.

Let us also recall that Dossier comes out within the framework of the Era channel cofounded by Andriy Derkach, which was confirmed by Era editor-in-chief Vitaly Lukianenko in an interview with our newspaper. No doubt, the use in the program of both hidden-camera filming and police operative footage looks even more ambiguous in this case. Will the program use the archives of the KGB-SBU, which Mr. Derkach's father heads?

The theme took an interesting twist in a direct talk with program author Yuri Nesterenko. He began to assure us that there was no hidden filming at all! After the camera started filming Deputy Omelich, the reporter told the latter about this, and Omelich allegedly did not mind. This is in a glaring contradiction to what the same Nesterenko said during the broadcast where he not only admitted the fact of hidden filming but also presented it as kind of heroism.