Dragon of Unfreedom Lives Within Journalists Themselves
Two events closely followed the active Wave of Freedom campaign staged by Lviv journalists.(Within the framework of this action, which was held in Kyiv by the journalists of Lviv’s Ekspres newspaper in early May, a symbolic barricade was erected on Yevropeiska Ploshcha (European Square). With their mouths glued, campaign participants marched down Khreshchatyk wearing gas masks and carrying signs declaring, “Freedom of Speech,” “Speak Out,” etc. —Ed.)
On the one hand, People’s Deputy Oleksandr Lavrynovych proposed including on the parliamentary agenda the issue of setting a limit on libel compensation in lawsuits against the media. On the other, Lviv Oblast Administration has been trying to evict the editorial staff of the newspaper Za vilnu Ukrayinu from its premises.
No doubt, these events will also be covered by our media, in one way or another, just like the Wave of Freedom was. Perhaps in the same way, these reports will also miss the most important points: first, the real factors causing all the problems with freedom of speech in Ukraine, and, secondly, the media’s own view and assessment of these problems (not just the opinions picked to blame someone or something else). To arrive at such a conclusion, it was enough to analyze how the Wave of Freedom was covered by our most popular media, television.
Some of the channels simply ran reports of the action in their news programs, listing campaign participants’ demands to amend legislation regulating legal settlement of media conflicts with government officials. The Visti Production Studio (TET Channel) aired emotional, good-quality coverage, which managed to convey the social nature of and public support for the campaign through romantic performances by Kyiv rock musicians during the action. The Podrobytsi tyzhnia program (Inter) supplemented its coverage with the results of public opinion polls on Ukrainians’ confidence in various media outlets (including foreign and local ones), as well as with the results of a journalist poll on freedom of speech issues published in Zerkalo Nedeli. The program mentioned briefly the problems of media dependence on government bodies and a lack of well- informed journalists, saying that relieving local authorities’ pressure on the media was the action’s principal aim.
During the evening broadcast of Visti (STB), Andriy Tychyna had a discussion with Oleksandr Kryvenko, Editor-in-Chief of PiK magazine, while on the Novy channel, respectively, Andriy Shevchenko posed questions about the campaign objectives to one of its organizers, UNIAN General Director Mykhailo Batih. Batih was the only person who voiced two very important things — first, the financial compensation for serious injuries or even death caused by an industrial accident amounts to 50 non-taxed minimum incomes in Ukraine, while lawsuits against the media for incurred moral damage reach several million hryvnias. Secondly, and most importantly, the Supreme Court of Ukraine’s Resolution No. 4 On Compensation of Moral Damage, effective from March 4, 1995, outlines a mechanism for calculating the compensation amount and fixes its limits. Thus the point at issue is not so much the absence of legislation governing juridical relations between the media and the public (including civil servants), but rather the desire (or, to be more accurate, lack thereof) of our so-called independent courts to act in the interests of the media and society even within the framework of effective legislation. It looks like nothing more important than that was said of the Wave of Freedom campaign on any other channel, for this kind of knowledge could lead an educated audience to search for the real underlying causes for problems with freedom of the press in Ukraine.
There is no point looking into the question of why television and its journalists (as well as their colleagues from most newspapers) stopped short of an in-depth probing into the core of the matter — everyone knows the answer. The issue of our media moguls’ dependence on state authority (and not only local) in a great variety of ways and methods of pressure, dependence of our so-called independent judiciary, the issue of the especially delicate attitude of many high-ranking government officials to reactions, criticism, and objective coverage of events in the media, the issue of actual recourse to state censorship, only at a higher level (not through the so-called literary committees but through many other, more sophisticated methods) are all taboo for Ukrainian TV. So is everything associated with the presence (or absence) of political will among those who can demonstrate this will in our country.
Other things were of more interest, however. First, nobody made an effort to find out why exactly the barricades were built while all expressed their support for the campaign participants — the legislative branch, represented by Oleksandr Zinchenko, Head of the Parliamentary Committee on the Freedom of Expression, members of the government (Viktor Yushchenko himself signed the campaign participants’ demands to Verkhovna Rada, and Ivan Drach, Head of the State Committee on Information Policy, actually took part in the campaign), and the judiciary (Lviv Oblast Court overruled the decision of a district court on the financial penalty to be levied against Ekspres, let alone the Supreme Court decision mentioned).
To a certain extent, only the President himself saved the face of the press (which, as we know, must be always in opposition, albeit of the most constructive kind, to state authority). The President did not agree with the methods practiced by Lviv journalists (a hunger strike) and followed closely the issue of pressure on the courts (although, as we all know, this kind of pressure is prohibited only for government officials and not to the public, which also includes the press and journalists. For instance, no one prohibited the world community to discuss the issue of whether Pinochet’s case should be heard in a Spanish court).
The point here is not just the possible sanctioning of the action (as the Inter indicated), although no one ever raised the question of the sources of its financing. In principle, it is not too bad if some officials felt a need for supporting the fight for some, albeit tiny, steps towards expanding freedom of the press. A more interesting question then is who needed it and what for. Or perhaps the authorities are so good at taking advantage of the process and benefiting from it, at the same time minimizing the consequences by gaining control over protest movements? Or have the courts proved to be a handy instrument to point somewhere else? Finally, if journalists indeed had always demonstrated at least that kind of solidarity, if they had tried to accomplish so much publicity for any signs of pressure instead of always keeping silent, we would have forced politicians to reckon with us, representatives of the fifth estate, a long time ago. Maybe then they would be dependent on our own, public will, interests, and morals.
I personally have been greatly interested in one dilemma concerning the fight for freedom of the press and speech. To be more accurate, it is a very interesting controversy, which always underlies discussions of these problems with our domestic and foreign colleagues. When our journalists talk about independence of the media, they always first mention economic independence from state authority and investments (Podrobytsi tyzhnia on Inter has recently again cited that as the most important condition). The West is always quoted as an example of such independence the fact that western media outlets exist as business entities and not as political mechanisms; they make a profit and are therefore independent.
For some reason, during my personal meetings with foreign colleagues, I have never heard them talk about their total economic independence and define it as the principal condition for an independent stance. On the contrary, none of the foreign sources I know (Rupert Murdoch being the best known of them), who already a long time ago went through a boom around the idea of uncontrolled (by society or state authority) market competition in the media of their own countries and witnessed for themselves the equal danger of market and state censorship to freedom of speech, talk of the absolute independence of the privately-owned media. All of them acknowledge that such media outlets are dependent on the interests of their founders (including political ones, of whom big owners of big outlets have more than enough), the interests of advertisers and the state interests, which are tightly intertwined in the West with the interests of big capital, multinational corporations, etc. (As a recent example, we can mention the coverage of events in Yugoslavia by the vast majority of the western media.) From the economic point of view, it is the non- profit, non-commercial media that are considered independent in the West. Such media do not run advertisements and are financed by subscription fees, license fees, or the donations of public foundations.
When the question is independence in terms of a political stand, then at issue are, first and foremost, the personal positions of the journalists (publishers), understanding of professionalism as such, as well as professional duty and honor, combined, of course, with the issue of public confidence enjoyed by a certain media outlet depending on the degree of its objectivity. That is, the real issue is the personal ethical position and assessment of a professional actions by the journalistic community, combined, of course, with the issue of public confidence enjoyed by a certain media outlet depending on the degree of its objectivity.
The other day, I again saw evidence of that very approach to the problems of media independence during an interview with Caroline Thompson, Deputy Director of the BBC World Service. Mrs. Thompson spoke about the great importance of a journalist’s reputation in general and to publishers in particular. She also told her Ukrainian colleagues how decisions of a public journalist organization regarding the unethical conduct of any journalist on newspaper pages or on the air are practically mandatory for implementation by everyone who wishes to remain a respected professional. Unwritten ethical rules and common understanding that only following them guarantees journalists independence from the state and protection by public opinion. These very factors in reality enable the western media to keep under control the recurrent wishes of the governments to restrict freedom of the press and speech. And are our complaints of economic dependence, government pressure, and everything else not just a desire to cover up our own laziness, our inability to speak professionally in situations where one cannot do otherwise, our own fear, our silent agreement to live by the laws of a pack of wolves? Why can the journalistic community in England adequately assess the Dorenkos and Lapikuras, and we cannot? Yes, of course, their understanding of the rules of the game and the rules of professional survival has been formed over many centuries. Yes, our slave mentality was also inculcated for many years. But should we not start somewhere with simply saying that the principal danger for freedom of speech is the absence of an ethical law inside ourselves, our lack of professionalism, our understanding of the profession as a trade rather than a mission. And who will help us overcome this dragon if not we ourselves? Of course, journalists’ responsibility does not exempt the state from responsibility. The democratic nature of the state is also tested by, among other things, the kind of relations it encourages between the media and politicians, especially in a situation where the executive does not have any effective restraining counterbalance, as is the case in this country. But perhaps if we all had a different attitude, we would already have a government with a different mentality.
