Transition Period

On April 30 Freedom House in New York published its Freedom of the Press 2003: A Global Survey of Media Independence , stating that press freedom suffered notable worldwide deterioration in 2002, due in part to political and armed conflicts and increased government- backed restrictions on independent media outlets. Among the most serious developments were major setbacks for press freedom in Russia, Ukraine, and Venezuela. The report explains, “Ukraine’s rating declined from Partly Free to Not Free because of state censorship of television broadcasts, continued harassment and disruption of independent media, and the failure of the authorities to adequately investigate attacks against journalists. Freedom of the press declined under the continued weight of political pressure and government censorship. Article 34 of the constitution, and a 1991 law on print media, guarantee freedom of expression and the press, but journalists do not enjoy these rights in practice. Official influence and de facto censorship are widespread. The European Institute for Media reported that coverage at the state broadcaster UT- 1 clearly favored the ruling party during the March 2002 parliamentary campaign. Opposition media outlets face various forms of harassment, including obstructive tax audits, safety inspections, and selective enforcement of media regulations. Libel ceased to be a criminal offense in 2001; however, politically motivated civil suits are common. Journalists frequently experience physical assaults, death threats, and murder as a result of their work. In March 2002, Reporters Sans Frontieres noted that 10 journalists have died under suspicious circumstances in the past four years, while another 41 have suffered serious injury from attacks. The well-publicized murder of journalist Heorhy Gongadze also remains unsolved. Although print and broadcast media are largely in private hands, the state maintains control over the central printing and distributing centers.”

The annual report on status of press freedom in over 150 countries by the International Secretariat of Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontieres), Paris, says about Ukraine, “Despite government promises to the Council of Europe, press freedom declined in 2002, with political censorship, physical attacks on journalists and failure to punish crimes against them. Physical violence against journalists steadily increased during 2002, especially in the provinces. No investigations into killings or disappearances of journalists were completed and top government officials implicated in such crimes continued to enjoy total impunity. Reform of the legal system, to make it independent of the government, was not completed either. Violations of the right to inform the public increased during the campaign for the 31 March parliamentary elections. The Council of Europe and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) deplored the unbalanced media coverage of party platforms.” Both, which make disturbing reading, are brought to you courtesy of “The Ukraine Report,” No. 38, available on the Internet at ArtUkraine.com@starpower.net.

Of course, it is an exaggeration to state that the Ukrainian press is not even partially free. Otherwise, some of my own columns would not have been published, and nobody has threatened me or otherwise made my life difficult because of what I write. Still, the number of dead, assaulted, and threatened journalists has grown, and this problem goes to the core of Ukraine’s officially enunciated European choice. Moreover, the cause of a free, democratic, European Ukraine has no greater friend than Adrian Karatnyckyj, the president of Freedom House and my personal friend for twenty years or so. I can only imagine the sorrow and pain with which he signed off on the reclassification of Ukraine from “partly free” to “not free” as the only way to express concern over a situation that has clearly gotten worse and about which no person of good conscience can be silent.

What is the root of the problem, and what can be done? The harsh truth of the matter is that everywhere and always politics will inevitably attract people who love power for its own sake and will do everything they possibly can to protect that power just as, say, law enforcement will attract sadists, because enforcement can provide a socially acceptable way of indulging one’s sadism, or clerical celibacy will attract men whose carnal interest runs more toward boys than girls. These problems cannot be eliminated in this inherently imperfect world; they will be with us always, as Jesus of Nazareth once said of the poor. The problem is what we do about such chronic pathologies that we know that we can never cure.

With politicians, of course, we can vote against those who do things that we dislike, but most people will never have a chance to know their elected representatives well enough to know who is capable of precisely what skullduggery. And many will always be baser than we can ever know. The problem is less on of how we guard against them than how we stop them from doing what is bad for everybody except, perhaps, for them personally.

First, one must look at the levers exercised by a given politician to defend his or her interests against the people’s right to know what a knave he is. In modern American history, we have the late President Nixon, who had his list of enemies, unsuccessfully tried to enlist the Internal Revenue Service and FBI for political ends, and in 1971 formed a group of so-called plumbers to plug leaks of information that he found inconvenient and perform other illegal activities, for which abuses of office he was forced out of the presidency less than a year after being reelected in a landslide in 1972.

My beloved United States, for all its painfully obvious faults and current behavior once described by another knave in power, a Mr. Stalin I think, as being dizzy from success, has been on the whole successful in dealing with the abuses of power by at least the worst knaves who always have and always will seek it. This might well even be one of the reasons why America today can afford the intoxication that could well give it a headache in the not too distant future. Here those levers are so visible that the temnyky now made public knowledge have clout that they otherwise would not — a tax auditor or a regulatory body deciding that some broadcast frequency might better go to someone better connected than those who backed the wrong candidate in the last election, even crimes of violence committed in an environment where criminal investigations can always be stopped by those in a position to put the quietus on what might adversely affect their interests — because of a system where one is almost forced to break the rules somewhere and everybody is in theory guilty of something. The transition from that particular inheritance of the corrupt society that was the Soviet Union will require time, what seems an almost infinite number of steps, and constant pressure on all those knaves in power from within and without. Perhaps that is why what Ukraine and other postcommunist countries are going through is called a transition period. That transition will take time and unceasing effort by all of us who want Ukraine to go where it supposedly wants to be.