President Leads on Televisions and in Lawbreaking
28 September, 00:00
The Day's long-standing preoccupation that, in contravention
of the law On the Election of the President of Ukraine, candidates are
far from having equal opportunities in the media has received clear quantitative
confirmation. The National Television and Radio Council or, to be more
exact, its four members appointed by Parliament, has set up a special group
and monitored three national channels, recording how often and in what
capacity the presidential candidates registered by the Central Electoral
Commission appear on-screen, about which The Day has already reported.
The group watched, from August 18 to September 10, 458 programs and video-recorded
233 segments that contained information on the presidential elections and
the related issues. Moreover, as the National Council members said, they
were uninterested in either the contenders' viewpoints or in the actions
of their election headquarters. The commission only recorded and reported
on television materials. The results speak volume.
In the following table, plus column contains the number
of positive or neutral references, while minus column sums up the critical
stories. Another five candidates — Messrs. Haber, Karmazin, Kononov, Onopenko,
and Rzhavsky — appeared no more than twice each on national channels.
UT-1, UT-2 UT-3 Total
including Era 1+1 Inter
Candidate +* — +* — +* — +* —
1 Kuchma 113 1 36 — 35 — 184 1
2 Tkachenko 9 11 11 6 6 2 26 19
3 Moroz 12 10 7 6 9 3 21 19
4 Marchuk 5 7 1 3 4 4 9 11
5 Symonenko 7 4 5 — 3 1 15 5
6 Oliynyk 3 5 4 — 2 2 9 7
7 Bazyliuk — 2 4 2 — 1 4 4
8 Vitrenko 4 3 1 — 3 — 5 3
9 Kostenko — 1 2 2 3 — 5 3
10 Udovenko 2 — 2 — 3 — 7 —
As we see, one candidate, Leonid Kuchma, is head and
shoulders above the rest. The state-owned channel shows him ten times as
often as any other candidate, including Parliament's Speaker. Moreover,
he, unlike the others, is above criticism. (In the current situation of
this country!). Conversely, the Kaniv Four took most hits. Even the Communist
Petro Symonenko is criticized much less by the national channels, let alone
Hennady Udovenko, who scored not one critical point.
True, the number of appearances on-screen is but the
tip of the iceberg. Someone might challenge me, saying that the current
President as head of state deserves wider media coverage than other contenders.
But a closer analysis shows that many stories featuring Mr. Kuchma contain
a whole bouquet of violations of the election law which states unequivocally
that, for example, informational reports should include no elements of
election campaigning, or that state officials have no right to campaign
for anyone, or that political advertisement (as well as political negative
advertising) should always be presented with an identification notice and
be paid for, etc. Journalists were shown a host of items recorded with
such violations at a press conference in the National Council premises.
Law of Ukraine On the Election UT-1 UT-2 UT-3 Total
of President of Ukraine and including
Central Electoral Commission Era
Regulations
Item 1, Article 33, the Law 9 2 6 17
Item 2, Article 33, the Law 15 2 7 24
Item 6, Article 33, the Law 37 13 12 62
Item 8, part II, the Regulations 16 1 — 17
Item 45, part VII, the Regulations 35 17 10 62
Most violations concern Item 6 of the election law and
Item 45 of the Central Electoral Commission regulation On the Procedure
of Using the Media in the Period of Election Campaign. It declares, ”Inclusion
of campaign materials in favor of presidential candidates in informational
and other television programs is prohibited...” Nevertheless, we see many
times a day advertisements in the form of, say, another show campaigning
for Mr. Kuchma.
National Council member Serhiy Aksenenko, presenting
the data obtained to journalists, noted that the Central Electoral Commission
itself, whose duty is to monitor the observance of its own regulations,
had spurned this monitoring and pretends not to notice the huge number
of violations. In response, commission member Oleksandr Nelha has tried
to challenge the results of monitoring, calling them subjective, but he
clearly lacked well-grounded arguments, especially against People's Deputy
Oleksandr Yeliashkevych who had conducted similar monitoring and got similar
results. This is why the commission member preferred to quietly leave the
press conference, which still shows the degree to which the Commission
is unbiased in this campaign.
Mr. Aksenenko announced that the monitoring data will
be presented to the Supreme Court and will form the basis for court actions
against the television companies seeking penalties up to the withdrawal
of their broadcast licenses.
№36 September 28 1999 «The
Day»
In using our publications, reference to The Day is
mandatory. © "День"
Newspaper output №:
№36, (1999)
