Journalist Lidia Milchevska, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper ’Za sotsialny zakhyst’, was beaten by strangers. She did not tun to militia since a couple of years ago she already tried to do this in a similar situation, but militia did not help. This is a typical example of how the population trust in law-enforcing organs.

Guards of the chemical plant ’AZOT’ tried to get rid of Valeriy Vorotnik, a journalist of the Cherkassy independent newspaper ’Antenna’, by beating him and breaking his camera. By the way, the civil guards presented themselves as USS officers. V. Vorotnik turned to the prosecutor’s office with the demand to start the criminal case.

The TV company ’ITB’ was closed in Simferopol for the alleged ’anti-state propaganda’ and ’subversion of public morals’.

Journalists of the Lugansk TV company ’Efir-1’ declared that they would stop their hunger strike, which had lasted for 53 days.

For the second time Ukraine is mentioned in the report of ’Reporters without frontiers’ in the list of seven European countries, where journalists were murdered in 2001. The article presents a survey of the report of ’Reporters without frontiers’.

Under an absurd pretext a journalist was bodily thrown from the conference of heads of village councils and agricultural enterprises by the order of the head of the district administration.

The Russian-language newspaper ’Odesskaya obshchaya gazeta’ is blocked by one of the Odessa Internet providers. For the time being, until the problems are solved, the newspaper moved to Russian virtual space.

On 7 December the Sevastopol Media Center held the round table ’The role of journalists in a democratic society’.

All national TV channels refused to cooperate with the party ’Batkivshchina and the block headed by Yu. Timoshenko during the election. In particular, official refusals were given by ’The New Channel’, ’СТБ’, ֵ+1’, ’YT-1’, ’Inter’ and ’ICTV’. Such attitude Timoshenko explains as the direct order of the authorities to exclude all TV and video features about the party and the block headed by her.

During the meeting of the Russian and Ukrainian Presidents in Kharkov youth headquarters of the party ’Batkivshchina’ and the Kharkov organization of the committee ’Za pravdu’ planned to hold an action against President Kuchma. The participants were detained and taken away from the route of Presidents.

The Lugansk TV company ‘Efir-1’, which supported the town mayor, was closed by the local administration using dishonest manipulations.

Meditations about the state of the freedom of speech in Ukraine one year after the cassette scandal.

On 31 October the National Council of Security and Defense (NCSD) considered the measures of improvement of state informational policy and providing informational security of Ukraine.

The public organization ‘Khartia-4’ gathered at the invitation of the Poltava media-club and held a number of actions directed at the support of the Poltava mass media.

Tetiana Chornovil, a young journalist opened in Kyiv a Chechen press center and even attended Grozny to get objective materials. Moscow reprimanded Kyiv and as a result Tetiana and her family began to experience some pressure from the USS.