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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

Government-Run Media: Quo Vadis?

15 December, 1998 - 00:00

The House of Labor Unions in Kyiv hosted a round table to discuss
the problems of media denationalization in Ukraine, organized by the Parliament's
Freedom of Speech and Information Committee in collaboration with the National
Democratic Institute (US) and Friedrich Ebert Foundation (Germany).

It started with a little scandal. A letter from People's Deputy Vitaly
Shevchenko was read. He had actually prepared the round table and now refused
to attend it, explaining that originally it had been planned to invite
volunteer organizations, such as the Association of Ukrainian Cities, Ukrainian
Media Club, and the Foundation for the Protection of the Freedom of Speech,
to take part in the round table on an equal footing. However, shortly before
the date the parliamentary committee's leadership took the whole thing
over and reduced the above co-organizers' status to that of "guests." Mr.
Shevchenko believed this would restrict the volunteer organizations' opportunity
to voice their views unreservedly. Volodymyr Alekseyev, member committee
member, told The Day that Vitaly Shevchenko had got out of line
somewhat during the preparations.

This episode, insignificant as it may seem, best reflected the undercurrents
and inner tensions secreted in the outwardly impersonal reports on progress
in media denationalization that were read at the round table.

All those present agreed that both the electronic and print media had
to be taken away from the state and handed over to different structures,
but views on how this transfer was to be made and to what end differed.
Ivan Chyzh, presiding over the table, spoke briefly of numerous legislative
and economic problems arising from the task on hand, adding that out of
3,463 periodicals in Ukraine only 530 were under public and communal ownership
(about 15.5%) and that the rest (85%) had been denationalized. But should
this process tally with that of privatization? He thought that more attention
ought to be paid to the setting up of public media to be sustained by subscribers'
fees, not business structures.

Winfried Schneider-Deters, head of the Ebert Foundation's Ukrainian
Bureau, also stressed that denationalizing the media did not mean merely
placing them in private hands. It also meant placing them under the general
public's control. He was supported by Ihor Lubchenko, head of the Ukrainian
Journalists' Union: "The media must not depend on power structures. It
still often happens that highly placed bureaucrats, while not paying a
cent to the media, demand that we bring the galleys for them to examine
and sign."

Mykola Kniazhytsky, head of the STB Television and Radio Company, noted
that the Ukrainian media are being monopolized  under the guise 
of reform, and that one of the main tasks is to work out antimonopoly restrictions
binding on both government-run and private media.

 

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