STB Television Analyst Maryana Chorna Dies

After Ukraine became independent Maryana Chorna worked for the Lviv newspaper Post-Postup (Post-Advance) which was very popular in the early 1990s. In the winter of 1996, she accepted a job with STB. Last fall she was in charge of the channel's news desk and headed the analytical department. She was among the authors of the Shadow Sector project with its sharp Ukrainian business corruption exposОs. And the last several months were spent working on the giant project on the coming elections, while preparing material for the "Right of Choice" program

Says Mykola KNIAZHYTSKY, member of the National Television and Radio Council:

"Maryana was a complicated person with a difficult fate and quite talented. She was an excellent analyst. She was expansive, with a quick temper, and she had problems dealing with people, yet her colleagues appreciated her professionalism; her talent was all too obvious. Several days before her death she told her colleagues and me personally that she was receiving threatening phone calls. She was advised to find another job. Actually, lucrative offers were made, and major political figures identified who would like to have her on their teams. I think that the tragic outcome was caused by all these factors, most importantly by her desire to put her capabilities to the best use and being unable to do so in this country."

Marharyta TRUBACHOVA, "Vikna" television news program journalist:

"She often said recently that someone was bullying her. In February, while she was away, someone broke into her apartment and turned everything upside down, apparently looking for something. Her pet, a cocker spaniel, was viciously beaten and left on the balcony, in biting frost, obviously because the dog was a nuisance as the apartment was searched. No one knows who did it. Last Wednesday we sat on a bench near the STB studios, and she said that a major politician's team offered her a job, but that she would have to quit STB if she wanted it. And she should, or else they said they would have 'no alternative but break your neck.' I don't know what happened afterward. Maryana was religious and suicide is a terrible sin. We were all shocked to hear about her death."

Unfortunately, not all who knew Maryana Chorna outside STB agreed to an interview with The Day. At press time only Lavrenty Malazoniya, a television producer currently associated with Hryhory Surkis, told The Day that, knowing Maryana as he did, he tended to believe that the tragedy is explained by her character and personal problems. Yet he did not sound very convincing: "I know that Maryana was working on an elections project before she died, but I don't think that her tragic end has anything to do with politics." In any case, it is safe to assume that what happened to Maryana Chorna is to some or other degree the result of the pressure being sustained by STB. Suffice it to recall Oleksandr Deineka's murder (still unsolved), the assault on managing director Dmytro Dakhno, and the attempts to cut off the channel's satellite transmission. In addition, word has spread that there is a contract out for STB Chairman of the Board Volodymyr Syvkovych.

Maryana Chorna was buried in Lviv, beside her mother who passed away last year.