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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert
24 November, 1998 - 00:00


"BATTLEFIELD CONCEPT": DO JOURNALISTS HELP UNDERSTAND WHAT'S GOING
ON?

Larysa IVSHYNA:

In a democratic society the media's financial dependence has a different
character. This dependence is indirect, using a certain system of instruments,
and so on. No events are hushed up, and the general principle can be summed
up, "Facts are irrefutable, commentaries arbitrary." Here interpretation
is not even the point. Some of the media do not seem to notice whole walks
of life, and facts surface where and when necessary to certain quarters.
Now the absence of true news is a serious breach of the law of professionalism,
a symptom that journalism is degrading as such. Granting that a poor country
cannot afford a true democracy, one must not sit and wait for someone to
change things.

  Serhiy
MAKEYEV, National Academy of Sciences Institute of Sociology:

The crux of the matter is the relationships between the two social institutions:
power and the media. Our power is democratic by nature in that it is elected
by the people. As for the authorities' conduct and approach, different
views can be argued and examples cited. In this sense the Ukrainian media
is more democratic than the echelons of power. However, this lack of democracy
at the top is something the media has to reckon with. Personally, I am
hard put to answer questions arising from that aspect. What is democratic
media? What is objectivity? Does this mean that all political forces should
be given equal time on the air or newspaper room, offering this as a battlefield,
saying, "Here, now you can fight it out among yourselves?" But any battle
will inevitably lessen democracy, the more so that our media is currently
affected by political interests and the need to keep the audiences large
and growing. I think that remaining democratic while being torn between
these interests is the media's main problem.

Volodymyr NECHAYEVSKY:

I think that narrowing or expanding democracy would be premature. How
can one narrow or expand something that simply does not exist. The Communist
Party lost control of this society in 1990 and money has not gained it
yet. One could regard this as a form of democracy in the absence of other
factors influencing this society. I agree that the media, especially the
part not under government control, faced with the choice of having a position
and being read by the masses, will resist political influence as best it
can. We all know that by taking any politician's side a newspaper or television
starts playing Russian roulette with its audience: it will start losing
it once such affiliation or bias becomes obvious. That was why I started
by emphasizing objectivism and objectivity, for this is the only road to
make the media economically effective.

Oleksandr RODNIANSKY:

I think that the media should stay as impersonal as possible. Let's
face it: national television is now as much a player in the commercial
game as any other channel, except that it is in a better position. In order
to survive, we must satisfy the interests of millions. The time when we
could manage this by having two, three, or a dozen happy viewers is long
past.

This is especially urgent now, considering that our October promotion
budget turned out 40% that of September. I'll be frank with you: we are
on the verge of catastrophe and I am afraid that quite a few other channels
are in a similar condition But I'm also afraid of various ideologies. For
example, the one stated by Mr. Kniazhytsky - I mean the conflicting interests
of those wishing to earn something and take it out of Ukraine and those
wishing to earn money and invest it in Ukraine. How is one to tell them
apart? Personally, I see no difference between our business structures.

Besides, I do not consider them influential in Ukraine. The Russian
crisis dispersed the myth about the Russian oligarchs' political might.
None of their Ukrainian counterparts has even claimed such status, for
here they are not power players but rather intermediaries between power
and business.

Besides, in response to Mr. Kniazhytsky's remark, I think that buying
up and changing the policies of such "nongovernment" channels as 1+1 and
Inter would be very difficult. Yes, theoretically it is possible, but there
is an even greater likelihood of a certain political group doing this to
national television, and not having to pay a cent for the trouble. Especially
now that the RRT Concern may well become part of a single government structure.
Commercial channels may find themselves in a situation in which they will
have to turn to a body being part of national television, asking it to
set its price for broadcasting their programs. RRT is a monopoly, and all
nongovernment channels can now be destroyed by raising their broadcasting
costs. And neither do I like the concept of "political actors." They can
be replaced, so long as the show goes on, so long as there are different
opinions and the media can voice them. Let the actors fight and we journalists
will keep our distance, this is not our life, we are not actors. Moreover,
our business depends on our ability not to get involved with certain "actors."
On the other hand, we are responsible for keeping this country in the democratic
vein. This is precisely what I meant when talking about balance. It was
another way to refer to the "battlefield" concept.

POLITICAL NEWS: "HOLDINGS" CORRESPONDING WITH OLIGARCHS

L. I.: The idea of folding up democracy does not sound so irrelevant
and immaterial, considering that the executive has developed an economic
situation in which the media's independence has become practically impossible.

  Volodymyr
SALAMATOV, Ukrainian Society for the Study of Conflicts:

The issue is not so much the technical and professional details. The
media operates with facts and concepts of what is actually happening. My
question is whether the media has its own working concepts. Quite a number
of journalists have informed me that they don't. In the absence of such
concepts there is no use discussing the media's being prepared to operate
at this new stage of social development, because the media is simply responding
to a given situation. By the way, the same problem is faced by the state.
For example, when we studied how much officials at various levels were
aware of the national interests, most had a hard time defining them and
basically attributed them to issues that had to be resolved there and then.
Nothing has actually changed over the past four years.

As a TV viewer, I cannot name a single channel with a deep-going comprehensive
concept. Our channels do not help people live or understand certain events
better. Now the most popular approach is discussing who is backing whom.

L. I.: Knowing who is backing who is not as important as what
is being done by a given channel or periodical, for this is precisely what
can best characterize the one backing it. I was out of Kyiv not so long,
I was unable to use different sources of information and discovered I couldn't
figure out what was happening watching news programs. Whole sectors of
public life are ignored there.

O. R.: Practically all news releases, regardless of their professional
level, address politically affiliated people.

Valentyn PUSTOVOIT, The Day:

I would not share the enthusiasm of those believing in the impossibility
of a comeback of authoritarianism. The difference between the latter and
democracy is in the methods of influencing the public opinion. Take the
recent Cabinet's squeezing out budget debts at the Ukraine Palace or the
Civil Defense "field training."

I think that their economic futility was realized by the one who organized
them, because this was none other than the administrative-command system
in action again, and our economy is no longer command-administrative. Essentially,
this was unrestrained pandering and the results are obvious: the Social
Monitoring Center says that the Premier's ratings have risen somewhat.
Or an example of bullying the press: the situation with Kievskie Vedomosti
and the criminal prosecution of the Pravda Ukrainy editor.

Of course, any political team, including the government, has the right
to influence the press so it gives broader coverage to that team's social
development model. Of course, the government has an advantage here. In
this sense the difference between authoritarianism and democracy is whether
the government acts in accordance with the laws, no matter how imperfect,
or does as it pleases. Of course, a law providing for suing the media and
claiming damages without determining their ceiling, even for top-level
bureaucrats, is a powerful means of influencing the press. Regardless of
what we think of the Interior Minister and his lawsuit against Kievskie
Vedomosti, we all must admit that the whole affair was kept within
the limits of current legislation. But not so the arrest of Pravda
Editor Oleksandr Horobets. I will not say whether or not he is guilty,
for that's the prerogative of the court. However, one cannot but note that
he was arrested on charges of attempted rape.

From what I know, arresting a man under such circumstances is possible
only when caught red-handed, not on the strength of a statement made several
days later.

I think that as the presidential campaign gets closer and the economic
crisis worsens, those in power will be exposed to an even stronger temptation
to get even with the media. After all, it is much easier to close down
an opposition newspaper than overcome a crisis.

DAMAGE FROM JOURNALISTS' TRADE KEPT TO A MINIMUM

Finally, the round table went through a kind of blitz summary.

V. N.: What happened to Oleksandr Horobets could have happened
to anyone, in any truly democratic country, so I don't think this fact
is worth capitalizing upon, just as I do not think that this arrest allows
for any far-reaching conclusions about our getting back to authoritarianism.

  Maryana CHORNA,
director, STB Information and Analysis:

We must not underestimate our audiences. They are not all kids. And
I don't think that the future of democracy in Ukraine depends on who pays
us for treating our viewers and readers with kid's gloves. They determine
precisely how democratic we get by buying newspapers and tuning in certain
channels.

Mykola TOMENKO:

Since the shadow political business prevails over the legitimate one,
all of the media are taken hostage, whether they like it or not. Despite
objective circumstances, there are factors indicating that things could
have been considerably better than they are. I also think it dangerous
for a journalist to determine his "guidelines" abiding by his intuition.
This is even worse than having such guidelines officially declared and
binding on the media.

V. S.: Any stand can be defended by shifting from interests to
values. In terms of interests, we have problems - privatization, finance,
and so on - that are very difficult and dangerous to deal with. Our audiences
want the media to do this. They expect transparency in the structure of
these interests.

M. K.: The media's greatest civic responsibility is to help our
society live through the current stage of breaking interests with minimum
losses.

N. L.: Under the circumstances media-controlling financial-political
groups influence the situation more than media audiences - I mean the electorate.
Perhaps this makes us act as a progressive public force, helping this society
along the road of progress. Obviously, in a civilized country business
interests and the level of progress are closely interconnected.

V. P.: I would like to comment on Mr. Nechayevsky's remark about
the editor's arrest. Another thing that makes democracy distinct from totalitarianism
is how and why a citizen can be arrested. I do not approve of Pravda's
policy, seeing it professionally as unrestrained pandering. What worries
me is that this newspaper was in opposition, and its editor got arrested.

Z. K.: Suppose they had put handcuffs on him made not of steel
but goatskin, would it have been any better?

L. I.: Clearly, what happened had a certain subtext. Everything
calculated on the basis of the subtext. It's called fear.

O. R.: I do not put much trust in statements about what the viewer
wants and what he doesn't. We have always tried to find out precisely this.
The media's responsibility is primarily that of each of its journalists,
and I think we better stop referring to what 50 million viewers wish to
see. Our main responsibility to have the show go on and keep our society
moving forward. I don't know about progress. I mean to the future.

S. M.: Modern mass media cannot be objective, not so much due
to political, financial or professional reasons. The media as a field in
which political forces will meet just to tell the audiences something is
very unlikely. The media cannot afford this; they want to shape this field.
A good example is the "Fifth Corner", a sophisticated structure accommodating
a certain person. And in carrying out this shaping - or designing function
- the media are under no obligation to be objective. Who can know for sure
what audiences really want? They want to be deceived, seduced, and abandoned.

O. R.: And instantly happy.

S. M.: Yes, happy. Feeling happy is much better for them than
knowledge and understanding and the media addresses primarily this need.
It must, otherwise there will be no print run or ratings. Knowing, understanding,
and being surprised is something a minority wants. And this is not an assumption.
This is reality.

Z. K.: I agree that the audiences want to be deceived. Whether
we like it or not, we serve this deceit. We set ourselves an unrealistic
goal: an absolutely democratic society. Now give me a single example. This
goal will never be reached so long as we have polities that are more or
less democratic. It is mythology. I am not against it, but we should not
overestimate ourselves. In today's situation those in power are unable
to organize themselves, let alone the media's legal framework or economic
conditions providing for its independence.

As for drawing the electorate's attention to a certain political leader,
there are two ways: it can be bought or lured using some charismatic program
of reform. Using the first method, the issue of journalistic ethics and
impersonality is quite topical. In the second case, it is all perfectly
normal standard procedure. The media's responsibility is to see to it who
attracts this attention and how. I think this has a most direct bearing
on the next presidential campaign...

Editor's note: The Day intends to carry absolutely all comments
on the above round table account, welcoming new concepts and suggestions
concerning the relationships between power, media, and the people.

PS. The October 22 discussion is continued from The Day, Nos.
40 and 41.


 

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