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Journalists demand dialogue with the government on Georgy Gongadze’s commemoration day

Journalists demand dialogue with the government on Georgy Gongadze’s commemoration day
Article by: Iryna Stelmakh
Translated by: Mariya Shcherbinina

On September 16, journalists in Kyiv and regions traditionally commemorated Georgy Gongadze and other journalists who died doing their professional duties for the fourteenth year in a row. However, media workers claim nothing has changed since Gongadze’s death, and call 2014 the most tragic year for Ukrainian journalism – during the ATO, 7 journalists have been killed and over 70 have been held hostage. In times of extreme hardship for the media, the government should offer a hand and engage with profiling laws, media experts ask. 

On Tuesday, starting the very morning, a banner with the inscription, Georgy, we have not forgotten emerged on the bridge between October Palace and Maidan Nezalezhnosti. In the evening, journalists came to the stella in Maidan to traditionally commemorate the fallen journalists with a mourning march and a candlelight vigil. This year the list includes seven more journalists.

“Throughout the eight months of 2014, 265 journalists were beaten. As of now, over 70 journalists have been held hostage on occupied territories, in both Crimea and in the East of Ukraine, and 7 journalists were killed. We documented also 120 instances of censure, 90% of which had to do with switching off Ukrainian TV channels or blocking the issue of Ukrainian media,” says executive director of the Mass Information Institute Oksana Romaniuk.

The reasons for the lack of protection for journalists in Ukraine is the lack of a systematic dialogue with the government. International journalist for Hromadske.TV Natalia Humeniuk, who is a frequent guest in the combat zone in the east, notes that the blame for this lies on state bodies, especially military ones, which frequently provide unverified information.

“It is not normal when our colleagues, who went to report on the events in the east, have to refute data produced by state government. I can say that significant exaggeration or lack of information verification on part of the Defense Ministry representatives and other official structure also significantly undermines their authority in the eyes of foreign journalists, who cannot trust those they should,” says Humeniuk.

As such, the investigation of Georgy Gongadze’s murder, just like the investigation of all crimes against journalists, is the government’s foremost task, if it wants to encourage the development of freedom of speech in Ukraine, say the media workers. This is why the journalists from Stop Censure! made a special address to the President, the Head of the MIA and the Prosecutor General.

“In Ukraine there are no platforms, within which we could meet and publicly raise these issues. We have not yet heard the position of the newly-elected President regarding freedom of speech, the investigation of attacks on journalists and social television. Therefore, I would like to address Petro Poroshenko, Prosecutor General Vitaly Yarema, Internal Minister Arsen Avakov, and ask them to begin systematic dialogue with the journalist community, begin active work not only on the investigations, but media reforms, which would protect the rights of Ukrainian citizens to information,” calls Oksana Romaniuk.

The media reforms journalists demand have to do with the creation of social broadcasting, the privatization of printed media, transparent media property and the liquidation of the National Committee for Social Morality. The media community relies on the journalists that decided to run in the parliamentary elections for their demands to be met.

Translated by: Mariya Shcherbinina
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    Economist Edward Lucas Attacks Russia's RT and Sputnik for "manufacturing lies" and those working there as "freaks and propagandists"

    Feature by BBC Monitoring on 9 February

    Russian state media have hit back strongly at British journalist Edward Lucas after he criticized them at the recent Munich Security Conference and suggested that journalists working for them should be ostracized. One top TV presenter went as far as to brand Lucas a "village idiot".

    At a panel discussion at the annual Munich Security Conference on 6 February, Lucas, a senior editor at The Economist and author of The New Cold War, accused the Kremlin's international media operations, RT (formerly known as Russia Today) and Sputnik (rebranded successor to the Voice of Russia) of "manufacturing lies".

    He said the people working for them were "freaks and propagandists", who should be the target of a campaign of ostracism, according to records of the discussion published by RT and Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.[1]

    "If anyone puts a CV on my desk and on that CV I see they worked for RT or Sputnik or one of these things, that CV is going into the bin," Lucas said. He added that people in the West were wrong to see working for the Kremlin's international media as a "first stage on the career ladder". "It's not, it's the last stage," he told the Munich conference.

    "Journalistic Joe McCarthy"

    Russian state media came back, all guns blazing, with Lucas even getting a whole slot to himself on state channel Rossiya 1's weekly current affairs news roundup Vesti Nedeli.[2]

    Outspoken host Dmitriy Kiselev, who is also director-general of Sputnik's parent company Rossiya Segodnya (which confusingly translates as Russia Today), hurled a whole fistful of epithets at Lucas – "odious British journalist", "hysterical Londoner" and even "village idiot" – while rubbishing his analysis of Russian politics and accusing The Economist of practising censorship.

    RT responded more primly, saying it was "absolutely outraged" by Lucas's "specious attacks", which, it said, were particularly "despicable" as several of its journalists were daily risking their lives to "report on stories nobody else dares to touch".[3]

    Sputnik also had Lucas in its sights, describing him in one article as a "journalistic Joe McCarthy" – a reference to the US senator who instigated a witch-hunt against Communist sympathizers in the 1950s.[4]

    Lucas himself appeared to revel in the backlash, responding to Kiselev in kind.

    "Better than a Pulitzer prize? i get prime-time abuse from vile Kremlin mouthpiece Kiselov," he tweeted.[5]

    He could also take comfort from the support of fellow Twitterati, who suggested he had got under RT's skin.

    US journalist Michael Weiss observed that Lucas had "figured out RT hacks' Achilles heel", while Times columnist Oliver Kamm said he had "badly wounded them".[6][7]

    Writer and Russia watcher Ben Judah also weighed in, saying Lucas had put the wind up RT. "Experts should refuse to appear on RT – or any other? disinformation channel", he added.[8]

    "Misinformation"

    RT and its supporters also entered the fray on Twitter.

    One of its contributors, Robert Bridge, accused Lucas of being "scared to hear another side of the story", while the channel itself suggested his attack on its journalists may have been provoked by recent criticism of The Economist on its show In The Now.[9][10]

    In The Now dismissed as "absurd" a claim by The Economist that Russian state TV "conceals" bad economic news from its viewers. It showed excerpts from top TV bulletins talking about the collapse of the rouble to prove the contrary. It also said that the story of the rouble's woes and the looming recession had been well covered in Russian newspapers. To suggest otherwise, it said, was to promote "misinformation".[11]

    It called its analysis of The Economist's coverage a "tutorial on how to write a propaganda article".

    But RT's criticism of The Economist was itself guilty of omission and distortion.

    For example, it made no mention of the fact that on the day in mid December when the rouble tumbled by some 10 per cent, Rossiya 1 main news had ignored this story altogether.

    Also, it illustrated its claim about the Russian press's economic coverage with screenshots not from leading newspapers but from news agencies and websites, one of them a little known business portal from the Volga republic of Tatarstan.

    The panel discussion at the Munich conference, which also featured NATO commander and US general Philip Breedlove and Norwegian Defence Minister Ine Eriksen Soreide, looked more broadly at the issue of hybrid warfare and the role played in it by different media organizations.

    According to a report by Judy Dempsey on the Carnegie Europe website, the participants said that one of the reasons why RT and its ilk have been able to make such an impact is the cutbacks at top Western international media, such as the BBC World Service and the Voice of America.[12]

    [1] http://rt.com/op-edge/230315-rt-responds-lucas-munich/

    [2] http://vesti7.ru/news?id=45745

    [3] See note 1

    [4] http://sputniknews.com/columnists/20150208/1017973545.html

    [5] https://twitter.com/edwardlucas/status/564531479263600642

    [6] https://twitter.com/michaeldweiss/status/564468359048486912

    [7] https://twitter.com/OliverKamm/status/564408994853572609

    [8] https://twitter.com/b_judah/status/564541740863193091

    [9] https://twitter.com/Robert_Bridge/status/564665181549391873

    [10] https://twitter.com/INTHENOWRT/status/564758039371472896

    [11] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H5X3WYm_3U

    [12] http://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/?fa=58998

    Source: BBC Monitoring research 9 Feb 15

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