“Evening Kyiv” is preparing to sign an editorial agreement with Chernovetsky

The Kyiv City State Administration [KCSA] wants to come to an agreement with the municipal newspaper “Vechirny Kyiv” [“Evening Kyiv”] about mutual interaction and cooperation.

The move to draw up and sign an agreement between the KCSA and the newspaper was initiated by the Chair of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Freedom of Speech and Information Andriy Shevchenko who was present at their meeting.

The sides agreed to draw up the text of an agreement by 15 November and to sign it on Wednesday at the session of the Kyiv Council’s Committee on Culture and Information Policy.

Denis Bass, Deputy Head of the KCSA said that the agreement must contain the principles for the newspaper’s work, its cooperation with the Kyiv City State Administration and the non-interference of the latter in editorial policy.

He thought it possible that an analogous agreement might be signed with other municipal media outlets.

At the same time he asserted that he was not aware of any cases of censorship from the Administration on “Evening Kyiv”.

“I don’t know of any cases of pressure, if there were such, we’re prepared to look at them but I have not seen any documentary evidence”.

However the acting chief editor of the newspaper Ludmila Vorobyova stated that the censorship was carried out through telephone calls.

In response, Bass said that the KCSA would continue to work with all media outlets, including commercial ones, on conditions of transparency.

He named the approval of new rules of accreditation for journalists of all media outlets for coverage of the work of the KCSA the first step towards this.

He also noted that each year from the city’s budget up to 30 million UH is set aside for maintaining municipal media outlets, including 4 million for “Evening Kyiv”. 

At the same time he pointed out that the newspaper’s rating constituted only 4% on the media market, and was sold in only 2% of the retail outlets for press distribution in Kyiv. He considered that the newspaper was not a competitive venture.

In her turn, Vorobyova said that the newspaper could not be competitive if it was only able to present a position which satisfied the Kyiv City State Administration.

With regard to this, the head of the Kyiv Council’s Committee on Culture and Information Policy Oleksandr Prohnimak suggested that the staff of “Evening Kyiv” draw up a strategy for the newspaper and promised that nobody would be dismissed.

As reported already, “Evening Kyiv” had accused the Kyiv City State Administration of censorship.