Our society experiences not the best times. Gradually ridding of the euphoria, brought by the proclamation of a really democratic course as the Orange revolution’s result, we focused on destruction and rejecting of old values. Changes, happening in our life, have either produced new requirements for journalists.

The proclaimed democratic transformations, absence of political pressure, freedom of speech opened large opportunities for pressmen. It seems today that journalism is turning from the muted servant of authorities into a mediator between officials and people, a mirror that objectively reflects our reality. But is it true indeed?

The profession of journalist remains one of the most dangerous in Ukraine

Recent news monitoring shows that the profession of journalist in Ukraine (as it was before) remains one of the most dangerous. This fact was confirmed by Ukrainian parliament’s ombudsman on human rights Nina Karpachova in her annual report. She marked that journalists in Ukraine perished more frequent than in countries which suffer from war conflicts. During the last 10 years, according to Karpachova, 38 pressmen were killed in Ukraine. She stated that beatings, blackmailing and intimidations of journalists became a mass phenomenon.

Therefore, there is a discussion in Ukraine on whether it is needed to provide the mass media workers with a state guard and how it might affect on such a terrible situation. In obedience to the current Ukrainian legislation, deputies, governmental officials, judges and first persons of the state have a right to request a state guard. Suggestion for spreading this practice on journalists, in opinion of lawyers, is hardly to be viable. However, many experts positively estimate a strengthening of criminal responsibility for impeding of journalists’ professional activity to be included in a bill. At the same time, it was marked that, unfortunately, even stronger legislative protection of the Ukrainian journalists’ rights on the European level will not rescue them from arbitrary law enforcement.

Some facts from “press freedom barometer”

Ukrainian journalists mostly enjoyed peace during the last several months. Experts registered only two serious attacks among other offenses, currently considered by local prosecutors who might rule to start criminal proceedings under Article 171 (impediment to practice journalistic profession). The long-lasting struggle of Lviv-based newspaper Ratusha’s editor-in-chief Mykola Savelyev, illegally fired by the Lviv city council, is finally over too. The journalist got back his job as a court found the session of the city council, when he had been fired, as illegitimate.

The second incident as follows: Donetsk district prosecutor instituted criminal proceedings against Hennadiy Kalishchuk, director of the Donetsk regional sports complex “Olimpiysky”, suspected of attacking Igor Tkachenko, reporter of the “Ukrinform” news agency. The criminal proceedings were instituted under Article 125, part 2, of the Criminal Code (light bodily blows, inflicted deliberately, which caused short-term health problems or temporary loss of capacity to work).

Ukrainian journalists change their views strikingly

In our country the line between politics and journalism is very vague. So, no wonder, that some journalists become politicians (however, it never works the other way round in our country). There is some logic about it – the journalistic profession is public, one has to get skills, necessary for a politician too: articulate speaking skills, good looks, being able to persuade people and work with information.

At the same time, people who used to be journalists and now are politicians, still change their profession. Obviously, it changes their priorities dramatically. For instance, once upon a time there lived principle Ukrainian journalist Hanna Herman, who worked on the radio “Liberty” and published a great number of rather critical, and sometimes even oppositional, materials, condemned any politicians intervening in journalism. Then she became Mr. Yanukovych’s spokesperson (former Ukrainian prime-minister) and sometimes told journalists what questions they should not ask him. Having been elected to Ukraine’s parliament, Hanna Herman got down to law-making and it was quite logical for her to draft a bill on mass media. But the content of the bill seems to have been written for politicians, not for journalists, because journalists will have to inform the public on performance of political parties, represented in parliament, as this information is socially important.

That’s why everybody wonders why former journalist Herman ignored the fact that pressmen have a right to decide what information they want to cover. Undoubtedly that it is the key assignment of a professional journalist to be an independent mediator between the government and society.

Hey! Let’s become a journalist – it is so easy

It can be said that such phenomenon as public journalism is also exists in Ukraine. There are enough cases, when news initially appeared on the personal web-pages (mainly, on blogs) subsequently were noticed by other mass media or got a momentum for its investigation by professional journalists. It means that journalistic investigation was conducted by eminent online editions to circulate its results for wide audience.

Here is a concrete example. Once a known Ukrainian advocate Tetyana Montyan sharply criticized on her blog a bill on hut tax created by Mr. Tsushko, a deputy for Ukrainian Socialist party. He read, admitted that criticism was just and proposed cooperation. Finally, the bill was rewritten.

But some threats of the public journalism development in Ukraine can be already traced. Unfortunately, every state (and Ukraine is not exception) is trying somehow to keep under control all information printed in the Internet. A website www.livejournal.com is very popular among Ukrainian internet-users. An American company, the owner of this service, has recently made agreement with the Russian firm (which is related to the Russian high authorities and has a doubtful provenance). The result of this deal was a transfer of management by live journal’s “Cyrillic sector” to abovementioned suspicious company.

This sector includes Ukrainian audience, even those who write only in Ukrainian. And the first disgraceful consequence of this event is unexpected disappearance of the Ukrainian patriotic organizations’ page (http://unso-obolon.livejournal.com is still inaccessible). A conclusion from this story is the only one – even our country’s public journalists suffer from censorship and impossibility to use their inalienable right for freedom of speech. It is exactly that objectively reflects our sad reality…