The question of media ownership – especially ownership of Ukraine’s television stations, often powerful weapons in the manipulation of public opinion – was one of the great themes of the 2004 presidential campaign. Ukrainians saw how Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych constantly received positive coverage on the nightly news and how his opposition challenger, Viktor Yushchenko, was either ignored or denigrated.
When television stations finally rejected government “temnyky,” or instructions, after the first week of mass demonstrations in November, it was a sign that the Orange Revolution was on its way to success. A media free of government pressure was the straw that broke the back of Ukraine’s ruling clique.
Without a doubt, government influence over and ownership of the mass media represented a threat to Ukrainian democracy. UT-1, the government-owned television station run by the Ukrainian National Television Company, has the largest reach of any station in Ukraine, and was consistently the least objective of any broadcaster during the elections, despite some dubious competition in that regard.
UT-1 consistently disseminated the worst propaganda before and during the fall election campaign. This, combined with the near-monopoly ownership of media outlets by well-connected public officials, led to the degradation of unbiased journalism in Ukraine.
It’s a good thing the monopoly on information was smashed during the Orange Revolution, so now it seems quite odd that there have been renewed calls for further government control of television, namely by creating a public television system for Ukraine. This isn’t just a bad idea, it’s a ridiculous one.
The former head of Novy Kanal Oleksander Tkachenko and other media people are now lobbying the government to extend the financing for public television, the framework for which would be built on the basis of the existing Ukrainian National Television Company (UNTC). It’s ridiculous to think the UNTC, with its high frequencies and technical coverage and its huge staff – indeed its absolutely backward and Soviet-style organization and its ratings hovering below three percent – should be the basis for building anything. The UNTC should instead be liquidated.
Public television is not the answer to Ukraine’s media control problems. Supporters of public TV in Ukraine are using the vocabulary of free press activists – that the government should continue working in the sphere of broadcasting to speak on behalf of all Ukrainians – in trying to rally support for their project. Such supporters of public TV seem not to have learned the lessons of the recent past and, oddly enough, overlooked this obvious fact: public television would remain government-owned, government-controlled.
Public TV advocates use as their main argument that Ukraine has finally declared its democratic and European aspirations and that the new government will clean up and reform the nation’s media. One of the most important indicators of an enlightened media culture, the argument goes, is the existence of public broadcasting in one form or another.
Recently, in fact, the Council of Europe recommended to Ukraine that it establish public radio and TV institutions on par with Britain’s BBC, Germany’s ZDF, France’s TF-2, or with Canada’s CBC. Advocates of public television, which also exists in all the other countries of the former Soviet camp, say Ukrainian society has grown enough that it deserves television that reflects and satisfies the community’s values and interests. But in the divided, poverty-stricken former Soviet republic that Ukraine is, who’s to say which values and interests deserve the most consideration?
By any sober estimation, public television in Ukraine will be well-nigh impossible. Ukrainians are naive if they believe that they can establish a true public broadcaster capable of embodying all of this society’s divergent values and interests. After all, in the last election, fully 44 percent of Ukrainians voted for a man who embodied the values of the old Communist Party: stability, fealty, absolute control.
In the last couple of months, we’ve seen how the social values of people in Donetsk significantly differ from those of people in Lviv. Also, consider how the values and interests of Ukraine’s artists and intellectuals might differ from those of Ukraine’s businessmen. This is a problem that constantly affects public television in the West: at the BBC, at the United States’ Public Broadcasting System, and Canada’s CBC. All are regularly accused of bias by people who disagree with their political positions. In Britain, the BBC is paid for by a tax on all Britons, even those who don’t watch the BBC and dislike it. In Canada, the government has used its influence at the CBC to quash news stories and their reporters or programs that might sully the government’s image. If Ukrainians think they can avoid these sorts of complications, they’re mistaken.
Then there’s the question of financing. In the 2005 budget, Hr 45 million was allocated for state television. Experts say around Hr 120-150 million will be needed to create a viable public broadcaster in Ukraine. That money would be better spent, say, setting up scholarships for students who show promise in the field of journalism than wasted on a public media boondoggle. In any case, public television will have to run commercials in the short-term to help it cover the shortfall in government funding. How would that make public TV any different from commercial TV?
There’s only one good solution for Ukrainian media: keep the government out of it. Let’s not forget the lessons we’ve learned. Media, like any business, should be run by private interests, under the freest conditions possible. Let the government attend to its own business. We don’t need another Pravda.
Jed Sunden is Kyiv Post’s publisher.
