Either positive coverage or none at all

Censorship policy over recent months has been aimed largely at creating a positive image of the government. Monitoring for August 2010

1.  Table 1: The number of items of a socio-political nature which showed signs of having been commissioned (censorship)

 As in July, the “leading” threesome is made up of the First National TV Channel, State-owned, and therefore funded by the taxpayer, Inter, owned by the media magnate and Head of the Security Service [SBU], Valery Khoroshkovsky, and ICTV.

Telekritika notes that the same trends apply also in the fact that these three channels very often cover events linked with the government and extremely similar features with identical infringements of standards (39 such cases in August).

This suggests that they are coordinating the channels at the commissioning of representatives of bodies of power. As in previous months, confirmation of this is seen in the fact that they normally also avoid the same issues or parts of them.

In August the overall amount of commissioned material on virtually all channels rose considerably which may be due to more socio-political activity following the holiday season. Despite this, the amount on STB did not rise, and even fell slightly. The channel is continuing to fairly successfully counter external pressure. There was, however, a disproportionately great increase in the amount of commissioned material on 1 + 1 and Channel 5. It is possible that external pressure increased on the management of those channels.

Table 2: The number of commissioned (censored) pieces of material

NB The total amount does not necessarily tally with the figures in Table 1 since some material can follow both lines at the same time.

August confirmed yet another trend, this being that censorship policy has been aimed largely over recent months at creating a positive image of the government which is “successfully and determinedly bringing order to the country”.  Despite an overall increase in the amount of commissioned material, the number of negative references to the opposition actually decreased.  Actions and statements by the opposition, as well as any protests by different groups of the population are largely simply ignored. The censors have clearly rejected their previous policy of producing negative material about the opposition. Now negative comment about the opposition appears almost in passing in the actively cited statements of the leading figures in the country – the President, Prime Minister, ministers, members of the ruling coalition, etc. ,

The negativity usually boils down to the refrain that the “new government has inherited a bad legacy from its predecessors.”, “the new government has to rectify the mistakes and crimes of the previous government”. Or there are accusations without balance aimed at grain raiders, journalists and other “enemies of the government”.

A traditional means of imitating government activity is seen in the standard skimpy reports on various types of meetings, councils, etc.

Table 3 The number of short reports providing an imitation of government activity

A large number of features with biased selection of facts and opinions serve either to “justify” government decisions, or “excuse” government failures. Most guilty of this are the First National Channel, Inter and ICTV.

Table 4  The number of features aimed at justifying “the correctness” of government decisions or excusing government failures 

There was a sharp increase in the number of commissioned items regarding various successes by enforcement bodies – the SBU [Security Service], MIA, Prosecutor General’s Office, customs and excise and tax police. None of these features has any right to be in a news report. At very least the journalists should have not relied only on fairly abstract “information” from the press services or management, but prepared comprehensive material, including asking those accused, their lawyers, etc. More often than not, journalists do none of this.

The censors are clearly trying to overcome the negative image which enforcement bodies have gained recently through their systematic assault on the press, political opponents of the regime and their business, crushing of protest and the latest cases of killing and violence committed by enforcement officers.

Table 5: The number of short (incomplete and unbalanced) reports on enforcement body success

Table 8:  The types of infringements committed to carry out a political commission (censorship)

(A is for August, J for July)

2. Information of public importance avoided by the channels

Political commissioning continues to be exercised to a large extent by avoiding issues or aspects of them, including alternative points of view, expert assessments, specific facts or background where this is inconvenient for the government.

Table 9: The number of topics, views, facts or backgrounds avoided

Table 10: The number of protest actions; bans on such protests as well as the action of the police in blocking them and detaining their participants, which received no coverage

The certain reduction does not reflect any greater will to give coverage to such protests – there were simply less of them in August.

The list of protests avoided by all channels is still daunting.

Table 11 The number of times channels said nothing on issues linked with infringements of freedom of speech.

It can be seen that the number of times such issues were avoided has risen sharply, as have the number of incidents linked with the assault on freedom of speech. Only Channel 5 and STB occasionally report such events.

This means that a large part of the population never hear of them at all.  (the list given includes a large number of the themes of reports published here under freedom of speech, for example, the court case over frequencies, pressure on the opposition Crimean channel Chornomorska, the disappearance of journalist Vasyl Klymentyev, and others.

Table 12  The number of items of information linked with the deterioration in social standards for the public or specific groups avoided (increase in prices, in the retirement age, etc)

Table 13 Number of items of information about the government’s encroachments on business avoided

The monitoring is carried out as part of a project of the Internews Network “U-Meida” on journalist standards. It is being carried out jointly by Telekritika and the Institute for Mass Information.

Abridged from the full report at http://telekritika.ua/medialiteracy/2010-08-12/54988