MASS MEDIA

Unfortunately, Ukrainian television failed to advise its viewers on all of the US committee's grievances against Mr. Kuchma warranting the listing. All we watched and heard was that the Americans blamed our President for bad taxation. Yet this alone prompted the President's Press Secretary Oleksandr Martynenko to allege that the US side has a poor knowledge of Ukrainian laws, stressing that taxes are Verkhovna Rada's prerogative. Alas! Even if bad tax policy were all this President had to refute, in the unlikely possibility of defamation proceedings, he would stand little chance posing as Prince Charming. Suffice it to refer to the ill-famed law On the Printed Media (Press) in Ukraine, specifically article 2 stating in black and white that the Cabinet is to determine which editions will receive economic support from the executive and in what amount - and this cannot but involve taxation. If such "support" were to rely on the principle of equal opportunities for all media entities, Mr. Martynenko would not have had to try so hard to pass the buck to the legislature. The sad fact remains that such "government support" appears to be rendered the media pro rata their "loyalty" - and "correct" executive membership, of course. Likewise, the Ukrainian executive pulls all tax authority levers, allowing some of the media to act as they "choose" while bringing the ax down on "dissenters."

Under the circumstances the notion of free press in Ukraine looks ridiculous, mildly speaking, especially considering certain articles carried by certain periodicals. Several weeks ago, Ukraine's most popular tabloid Fakty i kommentarii [Facts and Commentary] came out with a letter strongly reminiscent of the 1937 NKVD period. The author, a certain Andrei Arkhangelsky, blames Fakty for publishing the article titled "Two Young Female Students Felt Disappointed by Male Company and Decided to Find a Different Way to Amuse Themselves - Using Male Rats." Mr. Arkhangelsky, sounding dead serious, warns the "inexperienced" reader that the phenomenon has sinister predecessors, one worse than the next, among them Lenin who decided that the newspapers must be not only "an agitator, but also propagandist and organizer"; as a result, the epistoler continues, "eventually... many of us would learn the truth from late newscasts on Radio Liberty, listening to our radios after closing ourselves in our bathrooms; and we had to read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in bed, under the blanket, using flashlights." Or take Adolf Hitler. He also disliked all those "perverts." He also struggled for the purity of the nation. And so he ordered his fellow human beings massacred by the million (this one is also from the Fakty).

And then Andrei Arkhangelsky penned another article about girls having sex with male rats. Its ratings matched those of television programs showing "blood, mutilated bodies, and ruins" in Yugoslavia or Chechnya. Why not simply forbid Ukrainian television to air such scenes? "You have the right to assess our material," Mr. Arkhangelsky finally deems to admit. "But we are within our rights and obligated to familiarize you with such facts, telling you that things like that really happen." "It is our immediate responsibility," he writes two paragraphs further, "to seek and provide our readership with interesting and important events taking place elsewhere in the world and in Ukraine."

I expect that the reader has already guessed that citing these quotations was the only way to make the reader fully aware of the "wealth" and "elevated spirit" of all such program statements made by our media colleagues. There is the notion of tabloids or yellow journalism known universally in the West. People - millions of them - reading such editions are prepared to digest all kinds of nonsense appearing in print. In a normal society readers are not the only ones aware of the true worth of such periodicals. The publishers know it, too. Now coming out for having articles about perverted sex reduced to special, rather than regular, editions, doing so in the freedom of the press context, referring to Solzhenitsyn, is possible only in a country like Ukraine where totalitarian myths are now replaced by those of petty hucksters aspiring to oligarchic status. By forcing the media to act as bidden, they try to manipulate public opinion, coming up with allegations that, say, woman-rat sex is precisely one such "important and interesting event," something every reader has to know all about. Was it for the sake of such publications and editorial policies that perestroika and glasnost were launched and came to their respective ends? Or human rights campaigns? Well, this might as well be filed away as yet another method of self-preservation, given the most unfavorable status of genuine news showing how this country and its people really live. Perhaps because the current Ukrainian media status is the way we all know it is.

Indeed, "high" ideology and politics have a special aroma, especially when all it amounts to is an ordinary citizen's ordinary desire to have him/herself and his/her family protected against the downpour of obscenity and other dirt that we are now exposed to day in and day out - something never found in any truly civilized country where public opinion and personal rights really mean something. Indeed, those using dish antennas can attest to what is being shown in the West: there are different programs meant for children, teenagers, and adults. Also their newscasts show all those macabre scenes but without the masochistically vivid details we readily have on our home screens.

In fact, the Fakty excerpts mentioned ought to be entered into journalism history textbooks. As a case study in all those ethic and intellectual guidelines being welcomed and upheld by Ukraine's powers that be, seeking not only to manipulate public opinion, but also reduce it to the old Soviet debilitating notion of "the masses."

Now take "Era," as compared to the Golden Era national television awards, currently well down the slope in terms of national channel ratings. Another sure sign. There are no high-rate domestic projects on any of the domestic channels - something commonly attributed to the prevalence of ads and commercials, along with the ever-present financial crisis. However, UT-1 night shows are not likely to bring in especially high dividends, as evidenced by the channel's scarce assortment of regular commercials and low ratings. Which means that all those working out the scenarios have other, far better income sources. What sources? Political advertising in the first place. We all know that it pays extremely well, at least not lower than regular video clips. In addition, here one has an apt opportunity to place the stuff and expect the undemanding audience to swallow it all. Here the benefit opportunities double at least. The smell? Take, for example, People's Deputy Vitaly Zhuravsky hosted by "Era" precisely forty days after Vyacheslav Chornovil's tragic death. This politician has never been known as a special friend or enemy of the deceased, yet he has always somehow appeared at the right time and place - with regard to the right people. And then there was the smell of the commercials that really took the cake! Hryhory Surkis being advertised as the best candidate for Kyiv Mayor on the three channels broadcast nationwide! Here every clean and dirty trick was used to best advantage, including care for all those poor elders having to live on meager nonexistent pensions. And INTER, the United Social Democrats' media bulwark, with its much-advertised May 9 project (of which even the television company people say, off the record of course, that the whole thing is meant to get the surviving war veterans to cast their votes "for us, not the Reds," even though washing this dirty linen in public would be officially referred to as an especially rough commentary by a cynical analyst).

By Natalia LIHACHOVA, The Day