Freedom to Choose Words And the Freedom of Expression

This article is aimed at objectively defining controversies in the relations between the media and the political system, describing trends leading to politicization in the information domain and revealing the true nature of the myths about the interrelationship of journalism and politics.

Separating the media issue from that of politics is a task solving which would help us discover not only effective mechanisms of settling the existing differences but also avoid a speculative shifting of accents in the course of socially significant and politically relevant discussions.

High political dynamism, acting as a centripetal force, drawing in such spheres of public life as journalism, literature, and the humanities. It is an objective and in a way a natural process that can and should be regulated, but resisting which would be useless, even less so by using public-political rather than legal-procedural means.

At present, the journalistic domain is a mirror reflection of the political one, acting synchronically. This trend has a positive effect on the political process, but a negative one on the overall condition of the information sphere where political information is getting to be a predominant factor, compared to all other information. Tasks facing the media receive a speculative status of political importance and are thus blocked in terms of effective solution. It is generally known that by politicizing any given problem it is made even more difficult to solve. Such complication is often aided by journalists wishing to be politicians in the journalist realm and by politicians, for whom problem facts in the information sphere are one of the arguments of political tactics.

There are several reasons why the Ukrainian media are becoming a superstructure on the political platform, repeating its specifics and controversies, and being in a system conflict with it.

First, a decade of democratic transformation in Ukraine has been marked by the development of Ukrainian political parties that are only now turning into a political force capable of discharging informative, mobilizing, and organizing functions. During the period of the political maturation of parties having nationwide status, the media did most of the job in stimulating the conduct of the masses. At present, the political parties constitute quite mature organizational systems; they can “install” media outlets in their strategies or even compete with them in terms of political influence and public confidence.

Second, the general contours of the national media space have taken shape, where every media has its stand, audience, and ratings with all the attendant economic prospects and expansionist ambitions. Another characteristic of the national media genesis is that, given a relative creative, administrative, and infrastructure similarity — also that of the finished information product (with few exceptions) — the only way to have better ratings is an active exploration of political space. This allows use of special political dynamism information effects (e.g., presenting political events mostly in a scandalous context), receiving “noninformation” dividends from being close to or remote from epicenters of political influence.

Third, the replication of political controversies, their thematic and positional interpretation at the media level, as previously mentioned, is encouraged by most influential political forces striving to open a second front to launch a political offensive against their opponents (In the current Ukrainian situation, in addition to the existing foreign political, parliamentary, and “street” front). Controversies in the information realm are used by politicians to expand their information influence by creating situational information alliances, making cadre changes within controlling authorities, as well as openly or latently supporting journalist actions of protest, so as to enlist them in their own political activities.

Put together, all there factors generate a multi-layered competitive situation, with (a) the media competing with political parties, (b) media-political holdings competing between themselves, and (c) various party- affiliated media competing among themselves for political influence.

In this competition the media prove the weaker side sustaining all the loses, having less resources compared to political party machines, yet in the end winning due to larger information opportunities.

Controversies thus mounting, of course, result in conflicts, provoking forceful responses from all sides, creating a vicious circle of problems: — the political parties pressure the media, and the media resist, using all resources available or play along, while all pressure the information consumer suffering from intoxication by negative political information and no longer trusting any parties or politicians (as has been noted by sociologists and journalists); and then such information is used by other politicians and rival parties for propaganda; and everything starts all over again.

Politicians are wrong to assume that the media and political audiences are identical notions; they refuse to admit that most Ukrainian readers and viewers are apolitical, casting their ballots when offered situational advantages; there is no use trying to brainwash these people by force- feeding them political information, for they regard television, newspapers, even the Internet as only another way to relax and enjoy themselves.

Journalists, in turn, build castles in the air, very much like the ideological structures contrived by political forces. They plunge into an exhausting struggle gradually turning into a session of tautology, lashing out at each other, focusing on problems that a priori cannot be solved by printing larger articles on the subject, changing the targets of criticism and its contents with ease contrary to the social importance of the freedom of speech and social protection of journalists, thus often rendering these principles banal or discrediting them.

I will take the liberty of voicing a sociological hypothesis that might sound rather impertinent. Should the existing information burden be eased somewhat, the man in the street might develop more confidence in both journalists and politicians.

To develop the information sphere and media in Ukraine, it is necessary not only to clearly define the subject of public interest, separate the freedom to choose expressions from the freedom of speech, but also to discard the speculative mythology of the relationships between the regime and the media.

At present, the main clause in the journalistic program of so-called creative resistance is being dependent on political-economic sponsors censoring their work. It may be said without exaggeration that such barter relations are only too familiar to both journalists and politicians, they are rules of the genre and are attacked only when relating to someone else’s cases of harassment.

However, this is a fundamental problem in the relations between the media, politics, and the economy. It did not emerge yesterday and it has nothing whatever to do with Ukrainian specifics. Trying to lend it an ethnic coloration will not solve any of the existing problems, it is likely to aggravate them. Patrick Champaign, classic of sociology and mass media, said in the mid-1980s that the history of journalism is that of a freedom that has never been accomplished.

There are numerous examples of this unrealized freedom: NBC is owned by GE; ABC by Walt Disney Co., BBC, and [Moscow] ORT are completely state-controlled; NTV is controlled by Gazprom; and so on.

In Ukraine, one can change one’s affiliation to a party or its leader by affiliating with a volunteer organization issuing a grant of sorts, but this will not change the system and will even damage its prospects. Grants are issued against projects and sooner or later leave the journalists the grim option of staying on the subject, meaning entering a competition and having to play by those very rules they had just vehemently exposed, but which have not changed one bit. Another controversy.

Or take all those themes. After all is said and done, this is an example of how fundamental differences and their causes are clad in political attire, made into hot stories, and proposed to be solved by superficial rather than systemic means. In fact, it a struggle for the right to shape them, shifting names, rather than solving problems of the development and upgrading information products. Today, the ill- famed big themes are described as the biggest problem in the information sphere by those very people who lobbied for their own interests in the previous parliament, ignoring the need for systemic changes; they opposed the intellectual property, CD-licensing, and other bills constituting the foundations of the independence of all those creating information products.

To add food for thought, in addition to political information, there are also culture, art, and science. The shortage of information relating to them is explained not by demand lagging behind supply, but by the fact that producing nonpolitical information requires considerable intellectual exertions and a different approach to the audience, compared to all that easily digestible political fast food.

Enhancing the media’s independence is possible only by raising their workers’ professional level, stabilizing the laws on home turf and securing a profitable output. Politics in itself cannot secure lasting profitability, because it has its own specific ratings and is mostly used as a tool in the competition, a springboard for reaching upper rungs on the career ladder for executives in the journalist field. These upper rungs do not always mean important government posts, but this does not make them less attractive, especially in view of all those career expectations before and after the presidential campaign. From journalism into politics is just a mechanism of the reconversion of capital; if this mechanism falters in some cases and in someone’s CV, it is still no cause for talking about a threat to democracy nationwide.

Today, there are no problems of journalist self-actualization and freedom of expression in Ukraine, there is just the problem of choosing an occupation in a professional environment. Every journalist is free to solve it in his own way.

To make this choice, a journalist must ask himself precisely who he thinks he is — a worker of civil society called upon to translate creative social values, securing the process of cultural socialization and serving the humanitarian needs of the masses, or a tool of some symbolic political struggle. These are two different professions, each with its advantages, shortcomings, consequences and prospects.

How do we overcome the existing conflicts?

First, by further developing the party system with its functionally specialized political media having their own audiences, specifics, and ways to earn a living. Second, by developing the media where competition must not be limited by monotonous channels, similar programs, repertoires, and audiences. Third, by developing the information consumer market through stimulating the infrastructure of information communications, upgrading information products, providing the consumer with a rich assortment of programs and channels. Most importantly, by enacting laws securing a degree of stability (including the stability of political variables) and basic conditions for further evolution (primarily in terms of taxation and other legally established procedures) embracing all participants in the cultural-information process. But this is the topic of a separate discussion and field of legislative endeavor for a politically responsible parliamentary majority.

They say that politics is a dirty business. This is a questionable allegation. Be this as it may, journalism must not adopt political logic and specifics, so as to keep both politics and journalism cleaner and more transparent.