The last few months have seen a large
number of media resources being bought by people considered close to President Viktor
Yanukovych and his family. On June 17 it was announced that the Ukrainian
Media Holding (UMH) had sold its Focus package (including a weekly of the same name)
to the Ukrainian company Vertex United, owned by two men from Odessa – Boris
Kaufman and Oleksander Granovsky.
But the real bombshell came on Thursday
night, with two announcements on Forbes.ua.
One informed that UMH (the owner of Forbes.ua, as well as Korrespondent
and other publications) had sold the holding to VETEK. The new owner is thus Serhiy
Kurchenko, a young oligarch with a football club, no links tp the media world,
but seemingly plenty with those close to the President, notably Deputy Prime
Minister Serhiy Arbuzov.
The second was effectively a letter of
resignation from Forbes Ukraine Chief Editor Vladimir Fedorin. He writes
that he considers the sale of Forbes Ukraine to be the end of the project as it
has existed. He is convinced the buyer has one or all of the following aims: to
shut journalists up before the presidential elections; to whiten his own
reputation and to use the publication for purposes that have nothing in common
with media business.
Kurchenko’s assurances that he will not be
interfering in editorial policy have been heard too often in recent times to be
convincing.
In February this year, for example, the
Inter Media Holding, including one of the major nationwide channels TV Inter,
was sold to Dmytro Firtash, and Serhiy Lyovochkin, head of the presidential administration.
From back in 2010 TV Inter, owned by Valery Khoroshkovsky, had been up there with state-owned UTV-1 for worst
infringements of journalist standards and muffling of issues unflattering to
those in power. This changed quite significantly after Khoroshkovsky left the
government following the 2012 parliamentary elections. Happily, so far the
Inter buyout by two people loyal to the present regime has not reversed that
progress, media monitoring shows. But the return of Yegor Benkedorf, who
from March 2010 oversaw the transformation of the state-owned UTV-1 into a
propaganda mouthpiece for the regime, doesn’t augur well.
Monitoring
results after just one month under the controversial new ownership of TVi found that the number of
news items shown from opposition points of view had halved.
Arbuzov
was rumoured to have bought out the TV channel Business in March. He is also
believed to now own the publication Vzglyad, though he denies this. His example
alone makes it quite clear why the draft law on transparent media ownership is
for appearance only and will not help to find out who is pulling media strings.
Demoralization
among journalists is palpable, and confidence in reassuring noises about
non-interference minimal. Nor have Ukraine’s present leaders given any grounds
for optimism. Within months of the change in leadership in 2010, most national
television channels had become alarmingly bland, lacking in balance and with a
formidable and ever-increasing list of muffled issues of public importance.
One of
the first casualties was analysis on television programs, together with
presentation of different points of view. TVi was so popular with viewers, and constantly
under fire from the authorities, precisely because it offered more analysis and
hard-hitting journalistic investigations. On the eve of Journalist Day in early
June, a number of Ukrainian NGOs expressed
concern that “all is
being done to purge the media once and for all of isolated centres of
independent thought, information, communication and broadcasting, and to
intimidate journalists.”
It seems
no accident that the latest media buyout involves three socio-political
publications providing analysis, sometimes hard-hitting criticism of those in
power.
Forbes
Inc. which issued a licence to UMH for Forbes Ukraine, has a reputation to
protect and will be watching developments closely. Others should do so as well,
and not just for a month or two. This is not the way you fight democratic
elections.
Halya Coynash is a
member of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.
