Slidstvo is an OCCRP partner organization and they, like us, are used to criticism of our investigative work often because we anger powerful people.
But this criticism is unusual. As professional journalists, we don’t object to criticism and even our public to debate the issues we raise. However, in this case, we see this more as interference with independent journalism.
The documentary told the story of President Petro Poroshenko’s registration of offshore companies to move his candy businesses to the British Virgin Islands.
The companies were registered during the most destructive part of the war, during what is known as the Ilovaisk Kettle. Slidstvo made an editorial decision to tell the story in the context of the war.
Recently they were brought in front of the Media Council to defend themselves against ethical violations of professional journalism standards. On April 11, the International Renaissance Foundation published a statement saying: “They resorted to the position of uncritical self-justification without any hint of recognition of their violation of journalistic standards, namely the manipulation of the facts. The authors of the investigation do not recognize that the connection between the president’s offshore company and the Ilovaisk tragedy is artificial; they have no evidence of the “Roshen” assets being moved to the offshore area, nor the evidence that offshore company was created precisely to avoid sales taxes.’
OCCRP objects to the Media Council proceedings and the IRF statement for a few reasons.
The core issue is whether reporters manipulated facts. There has been no question about the basic facts in this story. No one, not even Poroshenko and his representatives, have said any fact Slidstvo presented was factually wrong and it’s clear some of their statements are wrong. There has been no issue of fairness in terms of getting a response from Poroshenko and presenting that fairly. The issue boils down to the presentation of the story and the context of what was happening during the war and the degree to which journalists can draw conclusions.
There is no question that Poroshenko did register his offshore during the worst days of the war. IRF and the Media Council are saying that this factual presentation was somehow ethically wrong because there was no connection (no causal relationship) between the registration and the tragedy.
OCCRP’s belief is that this decision by Slidstvo was a journalistic decision about presentation, context and narrative. At no point did Slidstvo say there was a causal relationship and Poroshenko registered his company because the war was going bad. At no point did they manipulate factual information to make it no longer factual.
They did conclude, based on the comments by experts, that assets were being moved to avoid taxes.
A reader might see the two as related. And the degree of relationship may appear overstated in the intensity of the documentary. However, these are journalism presentation decision and not ethical issues. To leave out the war completely from the context would also be wrong. Nor so we know that there isn’t a causal relationship. Poroshenko might have acted out the fear of losing his candy business.
Should journalists draw conclusions?
While this is not a regular practice with most investigative reporters, it is sometimes done.
In our story we quoted experts that tax avoidance WAS the ONLY reason to set up an offshore trust, while Panama Papers indiciate that Poroshenko’s offshore comany was to receive “proceeds from business trade” of Roshen. It is not how we would have handled it but it’s also not unethical if their information was based on evidence.
In the end, we are left with a story that is not ethically wrong but there can be legitimate debate about how it was presented and the conclusions it drew. Reasonable people could argue with the decisions of the journalists and say they story may have been better served presented differently. In the end, we are just arguing about the quality of the story and not the ethics of the journalists. There is no evidence that reporters acted maliciously.
Journalists should not be judged on these issues by a Media Council. The Media Council has no right to address these issues given that there are far worse offenses occurring on a daily basis.
However, the story was also not popular politically. Our fear is that the ethical criticism is also based on the political criticism and that is far more dangerous and damaging to civil society. The journalism ethics commission said the same thing.
Slidstvo may or may not have done a bad job depending on your viewpoint. If you come to the conclusion this was a poorly done story, it still does not mean they are violating ethical standards. Every journalist has the right to be forgiven for a bad story.
In general, Slidstvo’s track record has been one of doing some of the very best work in Ukraine. If the Media Council tries to drag every journalist who does a story they don’t like before them, they will freeze freedom of speech and become an impediment to civil society. It will also destroy the credibility of the organization and journalists will simply ignore them as irrelevant.
We suggest a different solution. We suggest Slidstvo or some appropriate media host a debate. The Media Council should cancel its decision it has yet to make. The IRF statement should be removed from the website. You should all convene on TV and debate this issue. That will help the public more than having three organizations whose intentions are good fight among each other.
Drew Sullivan is editor of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and Paul Radu is the excecutive director of OCCRP.
