Nearly three weeks after local TVA channel was forced to suspend its broadcast, a group of 28 deputies from local councils of Chernivtsi Oblast asked the National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting to intervene.
The broadcaster, co-owned by the wife of
opposition lawmaker Andriy Pyshnyy, has been off the air since July 23, when
its equipment was damaged by a fire at the regional TV center. TVA management
says the fire was “selective,” as equipment of other TV channels was not
affected.
The fire occurred on July 23 in the
building of Bukovyna TV center, where four TV channels are based. However, for
some reasons only TVA equipment was damaged. “TVA Employees promptly fulfilled
all requirements of the regulator for the resumption of broadcasting, but local
authorities are blocking all TVA attempts to go on air. More than two weeks
have passed, but the channel still is not broadcasting,” the letter emphasizes.
There were two raider attacks on the channel, deputies added.
On Aug. 2 Chernivtsi Oblast Council
deputies from the Party of Regions appealed to the National Council for
Television and Radio Broadcasting, proposing to announce a competition to TVA’s
frequencies or to give them to the state-owned regional channel, if TVA is not
able to resume broadcasting.
Ownership may be the source of the
channel’s problems. According to Telekritika web-site, a media watchdog, 61 percent
of the channel’s shares belonged to Liudmyla Pyshna, wife of Andriy Pyshnyy, an
opposition lawmaker and Batkivshchyna leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s friend.
Another 24 percent is owned by Media Group City LLC, co-owned by ex-president
of the channel Vasyl Zabrodskiy.
The conflict between two co-owners has lasted
since autumn 2012. On March 1, 2013, the channel’s shareholders decided to fire
Zabrodskiy from his post as CEO, but he did not accept this decision. Zabrodskiy
believes he “was robbed” by Pyshnyy’s family.
TVA journalists, however, believe there’s a
strong political subtext. On Aug. 6 they picketed the building of the National
Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting, asking to renew the channel’s
broadcasting. They also wrote a letter to the EU Ambassador to Ukraine Jan Tombinski, informing him about the conflict situation.
Meanwhile, representatives of the journalist movement Stop
Censorship believe that events at TVA can be described as “censorship and
pressure by local authorities on alternative sources of information.”
Head of the Independent Media Trade Union of Ukraine Yuriy Lukanov
compares the situation to Kharkiv where local channels A/TVK, Fora and TVN were
silenced on technicalities. “Bukovyna’s local authorities
clearly mimic Kharkiv mayor Gennadiy Kernes, under the auspices of whom three
independent TV channels were closed in a couple of years,” Lukanov says.
Kyiv Post
staff writer Kateryna Kapliuk can be reached at [email protected].
