Andriy Bohdan, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s all-powerful chief of staff, is the one to watch. He may pose a threat to democracy.
After presidential office sources leaked false information to journalists that he had resigned, Bohdan mocked journalists at a luxury resort in western Ukraine’s Truskavets, where newly elected lawmakers from Zelensky’s party were taking crash courses in economics and governance.
Bohdan said his team doesn’t need journalists to communicate with society.
“Classic journalists got used to perceiving themselves as the society,” Bohdan said in a video comment to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. “But as our election campaign has proved we communicate with society without mediators, without journalists.”
Zelensky and his team ran a masterful election campaign, winning the presidency and parliament. They regularly communicated with supporters through Facebook, Instagram and Telegram channels, leaving traditional politicians in the dust with their billboard and TV advertisements.
But that hardly makes journalists irrelevant. The Zelensky path to success only underscores the power of social media in political success, much like U. S. President Donald J. Trump’s tweets to his supporters. This is the age of politician as entertainer.
The divisive and degraded public discourse is all the more reason for journalism. While Zelensky ran a great campaign, it would have gained no traction had his defeated rival, ex-President Petro Poroshenko, not been so unpopular. Journalism that exposed Poroshenko’s lies, hypocrisy and possible corruption justifiably contributed to the public distrust that denied him re-election.
Democracy is not possible without journalism, particularly the scrappy, watchdog type that investigates, exposes and speaks truth to power.
We like historian Timothy Snyder’s description of journalists as “heroes of our times.” Said Snyder: “Freedom depends upon factuality. Freedom depends upon reporters. You cannot be a free person if all you do is accept the things that people tell you that you want to hear.”
Bohdan and the Zelensky administration, for that matter, can ignore journalists all they want. They do so at their peril. Journalists are not going to ignore them, their actions or their associations. The public has a right to know the truth — not what Bohdan thinks we should know.
