Guilty or not guilty?

The mass media is a kind of link between society and the authorities, which transmits signals from one “river bank” to the other. Society makes certain demands, and the authorities supply information on whether these demands have been met or ignored. In reality, however, the role of journalism is more than just being a link. On Journalists’ Day, June 6, The Day asked a number of experts whether journalism in Ukraine is to blame for the political crisis raging in the country and what Ukrainian journalism lacks on the whole.

Yurii MAKAROV, host of the program Double Proof:

“It is very difficult to single out the responsibility of a particular profession for the political crisis because, in principle, everybody is to blame, including journalism. After the Orange revolution, Ukrainian political journalism at best, in its finest manifestation — one that cannot be bought or sold and which acts at its own discretion — has been engaged in humdrum coverage of low-profile events and chess moves instead of searching for new ideas and priorities or spotlighting politicians and political forces that offer these concepts to society.

“In other words, instead of clarifying the picture of the world, most journalists have been muddying the waters. It seems to me that the exultation from our suddenly acquired freedom was a bit infantile, and the way this freedom was put to use was equally childish. Journalism failed to present itself as the fourth estate and a kind of force. Unfortunately, this applies to everyone, even the most esteemed and well-known journalists whom I personally love and respect.

“Ukrainian journalism lacks erudition and its own mind. Risky as this may sound, most of my colleagues are ignoramuses. They don’t read books and are largely indifferent to the world. It is banal and hilarious to try to prove that it is better to be educated than uneducated. My colleagues are so ignorant in the sphere in which they work that those who deal with politics do not know who Francis Fukuyama is, and those who deal with culture do not know who Da Vinci is. At best, they know about Da Vinci from Dan Brown’s bestseller. Without knowledge, it is very difficult to be a distinct personality, and this makes it impossible to communicate with other personalities.”

Yevhen HOLOVAKHA, political scientist and deputy director, Institute of Sociology, National Academy of Sciences:

“With due account of the original sin, we are all to blame for what is going on in Ukraine today. And since journalism is considered the most ancient profession, it has the most direct bearing on the original sin. It would be unfair to blame journalists for that which politicians are responsible for. Our journalism still plays a secondary role in political battles because most of the media belong to various political forces. Journalists are dancing to the tune of those who created this political situation. On the other hand, journalists could take on some responsibility. Unfortunately, our society or, to be more exact, the basic elements of a civil society, is too differentiated on the basis of color. In general, the intellectual elite, to which I think journalists also belong, should take an independent stand and side only with the truth. Unfortunately, this is rather difficult to do in our society.

“There are some very underdeveloped kinds of journalism in Ukraine, and this greatly affects society’s development. One of them is investigative journalism. On the other hand, commentary and spot reporting are quite well developed. But we do not have what should be the most viable instrument of journalism. As for blaming journalists for what is going on, media people are failing to seize opportunities to investigate the root causes of the current events. Today this is the most acute problem of our journalism.”

Taras VOZNIAK, editor-in-chief of the journal Yi:

“While in the past the state was the main vector for the mass media of Ukraine and the entire Soviet space, which dictated behavior and the angle of covering one event or another, once independence came many people began to think that the private owner would become a panacea for journalistic partisanship. But very soon it became clear that the private owner has two interests. It turns out that heHehe is not only interested in deriving a certain profit, which is normal in a market economy, but he also strives, without being a pure businessman, to supplement his financial resources with political clout. As a result, purely business projects turned into political ones and began to serve one oligarch or another.

“As time went by, these oligarchs grouped together into oligarchic groups, now called parties. Ukraine thus witnessed the new enslavement of journalists as such, so they still have to look before they leap. This in turn makes journalists biased and tendentious in today’s post-Soviet conditions.

“But the problem can be solved in one way or another. Our neighbors have already shown us how to do this. For example, the information market in Poland and the Czech Republic has accepted foreign capital, which is most of all interested in deriving profits from the media and does not usually interfere into the country’s domestic political life. For instance, in Poland most of the media belong to large international corporations: Scandinavian, French, German, etc. There are examples like this in Ukraine. To tell the truth, these corporations do not always put out high-quality products: as a rule, they are gutter, or lowbrow, press publications.

“Today Ukraine is truly in a crisis, for which journalists can also be blamed to a certain extent. Employed by the media, which are owned by certain political groups, one way or another they are forced to defend the interests of the political force that owns this media. Journalists usually look at the problem like this: this is my job, and I am supposed to work in the context of my publication. But by now we should have gradually gotten out of this because readers are not so primitive and short-sighted that they are incapable of seeing that one TV channel works for these people and another for those. People are tired of this and are looking for a more or less balanced and unbiased approach, and an analysis of the actual political situation. Yet we persist in serving our owners, who are still not aware that a truly unbiased channel will bring in significantly more profits than one that serves the interests of a certain circle of people.

“Another problem is that many inexperienced journalists are trying to pass profound judgments that pretend to be analyses of the nature of the political situation. But in reality these journalists appear feeble and helpless, and so they try to overcome their inadequacy with a certain amount of bravado and impoliteness. They seem to be asking very tough and thorny questions, which are expected to make them look courageous. But this does not happen. To overcome this, newspaper editors and TV channel managers should be more selective in assigning an interview with a serious politician to an otherwise nice girl or boy who will be asking childish questions, because this discredits the very medium of information. Naturally, this does not mean that young people should be deprived of the opportunity to interview experienced politicians, who have cut their teeth on misinforming and pulling the wool over the eyes of the public. Nevertheless, there should be a more serious attitude to this.

“In addition to what I have already said, I would like to note that one of the greatest problems of today’s journalism is the lack of serious training. It is much easier to write a 50-page analytical treatise than an article for The Financial Times, which will professionally express an idea and make a precise and unbiased analysis in just 150 lines. And this needs to be taught.

“Incidentally, the current political crisis is fertile ground for journalists because, by all accounts, all the sides in the conflict are a little white and a little black; there is no sharp contrast here, and there are a lot of opportunities for singling out the nuances of this confrontation. On the other hand, the pivotal subject of the state, i.e., ordinary people, is staying out of this crisis, or confrontation, among the industrial-financial conglomerates. So journalists should fully expose the alienation of those disputants from the actual situation in the state. The country goes on living and developing on its own and has quite radically distanced itself from the problems of the people who reside in Kyiv’s luxury villas.

“It is not always easy to put all this across to society. So if it is difficult to get into print or appear in the partisan mass media, then there are effective Internet publications that allow contributors to air all kinds of views. If you say something ‘wrong’ on a TV channel even one time, you can lose your job. The same goes for a newspaper. But the Internet is much freer, and defending one’s independent position makes it possible to spread freedom and objectivity of expression to other mass media.

“In general, the Internet may be an information medium for the journalistic community rather than for the ordinary reader or viewer. Working on the same level, we can form the right atmosphere of covering an event no less effectively. Journalists who use the media for themselves will be the mediators, disseminators, and antennas of an overall vision of events. In most cases, this kind of work is unpaid, but it can amount to doing a certain civil duty on the part of the writing community, which can and knows how to form its thoughts and is better informed than the Ukrainian grassroots. And by writing one or two articles and adding a few essential touches to the overall picture, they will be doing a useful thing. Even one ironic phrase can change the general atmosphere of how a certain public event is interpreted. It is not obligatory to pay for one phrase, but even one phrase can destroy a political leader or, on the contrary, elevate him.

“I’d like to add one more thing: the current conflict and the current days in general are not a time for journalists — not only for them but the people on the whole. Whereas in the 1990s one word from a journalist could heighten or relieve tensions in society, now journalists are doing a hard and thankless job. Politics has gone into an invisible sphere. When everything is being done at night for some reason, and two or three guys are making some incomprehensible deals in an atmosphere in which there is not even a hint of publicity, the journalist remains an odd man out.

“Suppose a journalist stood all night long outside the door of the Presidential Secretariat only to hear ‘Well, we’ve made some deals here but we’re not going to tell you about them,’ then what can this journalist comment on? (But he must make some comments!) This kind of vicious political system could not have emerged, say, in Poland (because society itself would not have allowed this), but for some reason all this is catching on in Ukraine. Can journalists put up with this? If so, then what kind of civil society are we talking about?”

Olha HERASYMIUK , journalist and Member of Parliament, 5th convocation (Our Ukraine faction):

“Yes, I think journalists bear quite a sizable share of blame for this crisis. We are to blame at least for the public mood. We accepted freedom of speech in quite an original way, considering it to be freedom to say whatever you please. Our journalistic community has gotten a lot younger, which is good on the one hand, but, on the other, young journalists have begun to think that there was nothing before them. They have no role models, no school, and sometimes no moral code that was being shaped for years. Yes, the previous generation worked under a different ideological system, but it was possible to use that experience by removing the chaff of communist ideology.

“As a result, freedom of speech rang out unexpectedly. The erstwhile ideological ‘guidelines’ have now given way to economic factors. And this is also a test for journalists. Many are simply afraid of losing their jobs. We are now seeing cases of journalists forced to submit their resignations because they did not obey the boss. All this has created quite a complicated situation in our media community.

“But coming back to the heart of the matter, the main thing is that we were not able to map out the task for journalists in these new times. The task is to build the kind of country that we need: a democratic and European one. But we rushed to destroy everything — with a lot of joy at that. I picture it roughly like this: in chasing a fly, we wrecked an entire house.

“What else does our profession lack? Definitely education — a good, professional education. Another problem is the low cultural level. I am not making a sweeping generalization here: there are some exceptions. There are people like this. I believe that their very presence in the media community gives us hope that they will be able to disseminate their knowledge, skills, and professionalism. And those who want to will learn these lessons.”