In an attempt to provide Ukrainians with free access to news reports prior to the March parliamentary elections, International Renaissance Foundation recently donated $52,000 to two Ukrainian Internet and wire-based news agencies, Interfax Ukraine (interfax. kiev.ua) and UNIAN (unian.net).
“The goal of this project is to provide free access to up-to-date and objective information on the elections to all Ukrainians,” said Yevhen Bystrytsky, IRF’s executive director. “We also hope this funding will help these media channels remain independent of influential political groups during the election process.”
The reports will be published in Ukrainian, Russian and English on the agencies’ Web sites or sent to subscribers by e-mail or fax.
Most Ukrainians cannot afford the $100-plus monthly subscription for each of the two news wires. With much of the country’s mass media controlled by wealthy businessmen with close ties to the government, Ukrainians often get news that is biased or serves a political purpose, media observers said.
Free access to the two wire services should help fill the objectivity gap.
“I praise this decision and believe it is an important development,” said Natalia Lihachova, editor of Telekritika (telekritika.kiev.ua), a Ukrainian media watchdog. “It should improve access to information in Ukraine’s regions, primarily by giving regional journalists more access to information and by giving citizens with access to the Internet more information.”
Inna Bezghynska, Interfax-Ukraine’s
| Yevhen Bystrytsky |
acting director, said the project has attracted considerable interest since it was launched two weeks ago.
“People are calling and thanking us for the services,” Bezghyynska said.
Interfax has already registered more than 300,000 subscribers for the free service. Most people opt to receive reports by e-mail rather than by fax.
Interfax has not yet launched its Internet site dedicated to the parliamentary elections (elections. kiev.ua), but expects to do so shortly, Bezghynska said.
The Renaissance Foundation project will be effective, even though less than 5 percent of Ukraine’s population has access to the Internet, Bezghynska said. She said the principal users of the reports will be print journalists.
Oleksandr Kharchenko, executive editor of the UNIAN news agency, said almost all the news organizations that subscribe to his service have signed up for the reports.
“As part of the project, we are required to provide the reports to a minimum of 300 media organizations,” Kharchenko said. “More than 300 have already signed up for our reports since we launched in October.”
Most of the subscribers are media organizations that will either reprint or air the information. This will help objective information reach less-informed Ukrainians living outside Kyiv, Kharchenko said.
Few individual subscribers, however, have signed up for the new service, he said.
The Renaissance Foundation is a non-profit organization funded by billionaire and open-society advocate George Soros.
Roman Olearchyk can be reached at [email protected].
