Journalists blame Yanukovych and media owners for censorship
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The results of surveys carried out by the Democratic Initiatives Foundation and Razumkov Centre on the eve of Journalist Day make grim reading – both for those in power, and all concerned with freedom of speech in Ukraine.
A representative survey of 2010 respondents from throughout the country found that only three social institutions are largely trusted: the Church (the balance trust – distrust was + 50%); the media (+ 25%); the armed forces (+11 %); while civic organizations had a slightly higher balance in favour of trust (3%).
All others had a negative balance:
| Don’t trust at all | Mostly don’t trust | Mostly trust | Totally trust | Hard to say |
The President | 45, 0 | 23, 9 | 19, 3 | 6, 5 | 5, 3 |
The Verkhovna Rada | 45, 1 | 31, 7 | 14, 7 | 1, 6 | 6, 9 |
The Cabinet of Ministers | 44, 1 | 26, 9 | 19, 3 | 3, 0 | 6, 6 |
The Armed Forces | 18, 3 | 18, 9 | 40, 4 | 8, 2 | 14, 2 |
The Police | 39, 8 | 30, 2 | 19, 5 | 3, 2 | 7, 3 |
The Security Service | 28, 0 | 20, 5 | 29, 8 | 4, 6 | 17, 1 |
The local authorities | 22, 8 | 24, 5 | 36, 0 | 6, 3 | 10, 3 |
The courts | 44, 9 | 27, 4 | 13, 2 | 2, 7 | 11, 9 |
The Constitutional Court | 36, 6 | 22, 5 | 17, 0 | 4, 0 | 20, 0 |
Prosecutor’s Office | 38, 4 | 25, 1 | 16, 2 | 4, 4 | 15, 8 |
The Church | 9, 3 | 10, 6 | 38, 4 | 31, 7 | 10, 0 |
The media | 12, 6 | 21, 2 | 48, 0 | 10, 3 | 7, 9 |
Russian media | 20, 3 | 25, 7 | 27, 3 | 5, 8 | 20, 8 |
Civic organizations | 14, 2 | 21, 4 | 33, 0 | 5, 4 | 26, 0 |
Political parties | 32, 1 | 37, 1 | 15, 6 | 2, 0 | 13, 3 |
Banks | 37, 0 | 30, 3 | 19, 9 | 3, 0 | 9, 8 |
Given the monitoring reports which have found almost all national TV channels to muffle or distort information, and in many cases to be biased heavily in favour of the current regime, it is worth noting that 90.5 % of those surveyed named Ukrainian television one of three main sources of information about political events. Russian television was named by 22.7% and 28, 9% mentioned the radio.
Survey of journalists:
52 journalists were surveyed in all: 30 in Kyiv and 22 in other regions.
Compared with 2012, the assessment of the situation with freedom of speech had worsened: it was rated at 3.8 on a scale of one to ten as against 4.5 in 2012.
Previous years:
2005 7
2007-2009 5.9
2010 3.6
2011 3.7
Journalists said that it is only officially that there is no censorship,
They blame President Yanukovych and his Administration for this, as well as media owners.
They were asked to assess the follow on a scale from 1 to 5 with 5 being very good.
| Average mark |
Legislative safeguards for freedom of speech and media independence | 3, 3 |
Absence of censorship | 2, 5 |
Lack of repression and physical violence against the media and journalists | 2, 6 |
Absence of the use of criminal methods (killings, disappearance of journalists, etc) to control the mediaІ | 3, 0 |
Access of journalists to sources of information held by the authorities and state institutions | 2, 6 |
Absence of obstructions to journalists when carrying out their work | 2, 5 |
Possibility for the media and journalists to defend their rights in court | 2, 2 |
Effectiveness of civic journalist organizations | 2, 8 |
Independence of the media from pressure by the authorities and state institutions | 2, 6 |
Independence of the media from political pressure | 2, 4 |
Independence of the media from levers of economic pressure | 1, 8 |
Independence for journalists from owner pressure in doing their work | 1, 7 |
Media economic autonomy | 1, 6 |
Understanding by the authorities and political parties of the importance of the media’s mission in society | 1, 9 |
Transparency of media ownership | 1, 9 |
Observance by journalists of professional standards | 2, 8 |
Demand in society for free independent media | 3, 4 |