Editors at Ukraine’s UNIAN news agency say they are being censored and pressured by their superiors to soften news coverage of Ukraine’s political leadership, marking the latest controversy in the nation’s deteriorating free-speech climate since President Viktor Yanukovych took office in 2010.
Six editors at UNIAN wrote an open protest letter to the agency’s top manager Vadym Osadchy, accusing him of allegedly applying pressure to censor and tone down their coverage of Ukraine’s leadership and to accept paid-for stories about other Ukrainian politicians ahead of the Oct. 28 parliamentary elections.
The agency’s management denies the accusations while Ihor Kolomoysky, the Ukrainian billionaire who owns the agency, did not immediately respond to emailed questions.
Osadchy said that under his supervision the agency aims for the highest journalistic standards of fair coverage and accused the protesting staff of being biased themselves.
“Some employees, maintaining confidence in their right to influence the objectivity of the coverage of news, perceived the attempts to make UNIAN’s information products neutral (…) as censorship or practice of speech freedom infringement,” Osadchy told Telekritika, the media watchdog news website, in response to the allegations.
UNIAN editors wrote a joint op-ed describing in detail how the agency’s managers directed political coverage. If the allegations are true, they reveal bias and selective news coverage at one of Ukrainian top news agencies.
UNIAN’s new management arrived in May. Shortly after longtime chief editor Oleksandr Kharchenko was fired for the agency’s poor revenue performance.
“After Osadchy’s appointment (as UNIAN’s general manager), there was a lot of discussion about what not to write about, that there is too much critical coverage,” Kharchenko said, following his firing.
In the last two years Washington-based Freedom House human rights watchdog downgraded Ukraine’s media freedom climate in its ranking from “free” to “partly free.” During that time, a number of other Ukrainian media have undergone management changes and, as a result, shifted from hard-hitting and balanced news coverage to more entertainment and tabloid-like stories. TVi, known for investigative journalism, has been eliminated from some cable television plans or switched to more expensive premium-subscription plans, cutting their audience.
Moreover, most of the nation’s news media outlets are owned by five wealthy men in or close to the government, including Kolomoysky, member of parliament Rinat Akhmetov, Victor Pinchuk, Deputy Prime Minister Valeriy Khoroshkovsky and Economy Minister Petro Poroshenko.
Valentyna Romanenko, one of the UNIAN website editors who co-authored the op-ed alleging censorship, told the Kyiv Post that the misunderstandings with the agency’s new management started when they were appointed, but intensified closer to election day.
Viktoria Siumar, head of Kyiv’s Institute of Mass Information, said that UNIAN’s new management was oriented toward making more profit by the agency by running paid-for-stories. Osadchy denied the allegation and said that with the arrival of the new management at UNIAN, the agency dropped running such stories.
Last week, six UNIAN editors posted several screen shots of emails and instant messenger conversations with Mykola Kondratenko, head of Internet projects at the agency, who allegedly directly told the editors what to cover and how.
They said that a number of news stories in which Yanukovych, his ruling Party of Regions and Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko come out in a bad light were removed from the website, allegedly under management’s directives.
In one of the screenshots, the dialogue on an instant messenger with an editor Kondratenko wrote to “forget about Yanukovych in a negative light at all” and added that “there is hysteria here again – Osadchy got a phone call.” In that discussion he also allegedly threatened to fine people who would not obey by this rule.
Kondratenko did not respond to emailed questions.
The protesting staff at UNIAN says there was a ban on stories about the opposition, particularly news regarding some opposition candidates who ran for parliament in single-mandate constituencies in Kyiv.
“They said they wanted to have all opinions in our news stories, but then everyone could have noticed that there is no second opinion and the news (on the UNIAN website) is not balanced,” said UNIAN’s Romanenko.
Osadchy says there are no bans on storied about opposition politicians and denied any pressure from the authorities to done down their coverage.
The agency’s management fined two editors Hr 200 ($25) each for, as they explain, running a news story about an anti-Yanukovych protest that took place near the Presidential Administration on Oct. 26. According to the agency’s management, the editors were fined because they violated the procedure of approving the story and its headline with a chief editor before running it and has nothing to do with Yanukovych.
Siumar does not think that UNIAN was pressured by the authorities to soften their coverage of the government and the president. “It was self-censorship by managers or owners who were apparently afraid of (provoking) the anger of the country’s political leadership,” she explained.
Romanenko says the staff simply “demands to be able to work normally, that is being unbiased” in its news coverage. She also says their superiors are not discussing anything with them right now. “Probably they just want to wait out until the censorship scandal fades away after some time,” she added, saying she and her colleagues are not sure what to do if the pressure to be pro-government remains.
Kyiv Post staff writer Yuriy Onyshkiv can be reached at [email protected]
