People are Watching

As Yana Moiseyenkova makes clear in this issue, the authorities have laid siege to The Day along with a number of other media outlets around the country. The issue here is not the editorial support of many (but by no means all) of these papers of Yevhen Marchuk's presidential candidacy; the issue is their right to support him or any other candidate they see fit, a right that is an inalienable part of freedom of the press. In other words, the Constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the press is being openly trampled on by the officially designated guarantor of the Constitution. Everything possible is being done to have the incumbent face in the runoff a hard leftist whose negatives are so high that most people would rather vote for Mickey Mouse. This means creating the impression that Yevhen Marchuk is saying and doing nothing by means of a strict ban from the officially controlled media. Readers of this paper know that he is saying and doing things (decide for yourselves what you think of it), but, with our press run of around 50,000 in a country of almost 50 million, most people in Ukraine do not read us. Banning candidates from access to the media most capable of reaching people makes a mockery of free elections.

What is poorly understood here is that freedom of the press also exists in an inverse relationship to the ease with which public officials can sue a newspaper for libel. Internal Affairs Minister Kravchenko's court victory over Kievskie Vedomosti some months ago shows that under Ukrainian law John Peter Zenger, whose 1735 trial established the freedom of the press in what would become the United States, would have lost.

We are doing the best we can to survive this siege, and we appreciate the fact that the outside world is watching and speaking out. We will continue to keep you up to date to the best of our abilities. Thank God that people are watching.