Truth As a Unit of Cynicism

November 15, marked as the Media Day in Ukraine, coincided with the end of the elections but inspired somewhat different sentiments in the nonresidents. Most Ukrainian journalists I talked to and invited for a drink by their foreign colleagues offered polite congratulations and were careful not to touch any sore spot. There was only one exception. A Polish female journalist mockingly greeted me on the Day of Agitator and Propagandist (as this date had been known under the Soviets). A well-aimed fling, which I appreciated and said so.

That same day I happened to get hold of a reference source of the International Federation of Journalists. It dealt with media coverage of election campaigns. Leafing through wise foreign recommendations on how we can get free in Ukraine, I spotted a description of the 1992 elections in Kenya. It read that considerable amounts were spent on bribes for journalists. Several were exposed and had to quit journalism. Instead, they received media consultant jobs in politicians’ offices.

How wrong are all those thinking that there is a similar situation in Ukraine! In reality, this country has gone far ahead of Kenya where one finds a lot of readers, despite 30% illiteracy.” It has, because no one is paying to bribe journalists and violations of professional ethics mark not several journalists but a whole stratum. As for getting consulting jobs with politicians, it is mostly done of necessity. And not because the smoke-filled room of an ordinary periodical is more intellectually refined than that of an ordinary political office, or because the atmosphere in the corridors of power is different compared to the corridors of an editorial office. They get these jobs simply because they have no alternative.

So nobody is bribing anybody. Why bother bribing journalists if you can buy the media once and for all? Then the staff will know what to do. In fact, the situation with the Ukrainian media has become so abnormal that our Russian colleagues on big nongovernmental channels, considered qualified enough by their editors to address one-seventh of the planet, when telling their audiences about what is happening in Ukraine, pose questions quite amusing to their Ukrainian counterparts — e.g., “How much can an ordinary journalist make in an election campaign?” Such questions, however, are evidence that the situation in Russia is different, and that it will be some time before we have the same here. Among the Russian oligarchs acting as principal donors to the media are individuals fond of the existing regime and ones that hate it. And there is the third category, ones investing in the media they way they would invest in any other business. They do not treat the media the way a pimp does one of his whores.

We lack this third category of investors in Ukraine, because we are still to form Ukrainian media capital that will not set the political task of earning, rather than “squeezing out and mastering.” Incidentally, today’s television crisis is caused, among other things, by the fact that they were quite generous with funds on all government-controlled channels. Hence, now many complain about the millions run up in debts. Moreover, some in high media offices may well find themselves in custody.

And yet the elections showed not only the media’s economic crisis. After all, it is an ordinary problem here which will somehow be solved sooner or later. The elections also showed that journalists are losing their identity as a corporate whole, let alone professional ethics. Throughout the campaign, journalists and their even more spoiled variety, editors, constantly tripped over one another, argued with each other on newspaper pages, and, when meeting face to face, the most corrupt ones accused others of corruption.

Journalists could not picture themselves as a separate group and secure their class interests contrary to those of politicians, the class of businessmen, etc. Journalists did not unite, becoming an easy prey for political pimps, thus discrediting themselves in the first place. Theirs is like the mine sweeper’s profession where one can make only one fatal mistake. Getting back their positions, restoring authority, will take long years of hard work.

Accordingly, the editors of periodicals wishing to have a future will not touch the word politics with a ten foot pole. The desperately hopeless situation called Ukrainian journalism points to the need to reorient the media toward an altogether different audience, because newspapers, radio, and television programs made for groups or separate persons will never be trusted the way stories meant for people in general are. We are stepping into a period to be dominated by social journalism. Unfortunately, perceiving the philosophy the of media’s existence took the past presidential campaign, a less than pleasant process. One is left to hope that the child of Ukrainian journalism, after burning a finger on a hot iron, will learn its lesson. Otherwise, the International Federation of Journalists will another example to cite in addition to Kenya, one in the heart of Europe.