The Media Thaw

By MARTA DYCZOK
December 17, 2004
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB110323736951402615-IRje4NmlaJ3mpyqa3qHbayJm4,00.html

KIEV -- Once again, Ukrainians are preparing to go to the polls to elect a new president. But this time, on Dec. 26, they have something that was lacking in the previous two rounds of voting: a relatively independent media.

Four days into the Orange Revolution, heavy-handed censorship was lifted -- and this suggests that a change of the status quo has already begun. Power brokers are repositioning themselves in response to the protests, renegotiating their relations with society and modifying their international image.

Until recently, most TV stations were reporting that the opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, got seriously ill earlier in the campaign from eating bad sushi, drinking too much cognac or that his facial disfigurement was caused by a herpes virus. After the Orange Revolution, however, all of them broadcast the press conference last week where Viennese doctors from the Rudolfinerhaus Clinic told the world that Mr. Yushchenko had been poisoned with dioxin.


Media manipulation was not only one of the main problems in Ukraine's election. It has also been an obstacle to developing democracy, an open society and a respectable international standing. Yet when falsified presidential election results in November triggered an unexpected, massive reaction -- hundreds of thousands of people poured into the streets -- large numbers of journalists simply refused to report untruthful news any longer. The international community strongly denounced the election falsifications. The strength of the protests made Ukraine's establishment realize that power was shifting and they needed to respond. One thing they did was free up the media to report in a more honest way.

It is no secret that there has been little freedom of speech in Ukraine for some time. After the collapse of Communism, Ukraine's media landscape underwent a radical transformation. State censorship was lifted and ownership was diversified. However, by the late 1990s the oligarchs had established control over the main mass-media outlets in the country. Before that, they had seized the country's main resources and assets through privatization and created a banking system to finance their operations. These three pillars reinforced each other and guaranteed their power, mirroring patterns in Russia and contributing to Ukraine's international isolation.

The respected Ukrainian journalist Iryna Pohorelova described the situation as an attempt to create an "information vacuum," so that people would not know what was really going on and the corrupt establishment could maneuver easily, out of the public eye. Public opinion polls consistently showed low levels of trust towards the mass media, and Ukraine's elites believed that censorship would disempower society and keep it passive.

During the first two rounds of the presidential election campaign this fall, the mass media were used not so much to promote the establishment candidate, Viktor Yanukovych -- but rather to create a distorted image of Mr. Yushchenko. One widely broadcast ad was a cartoon image of U.S. President George W. Bush, dressed in a cowboy outfit, riding a map of Ukraine which was stylized to look like a horse. It used colors and logos from the Yushchenko campaign. But the subsequent Orange Revolution showed that this approach had backfired, and that made power brokers reconsider their media strategy.

These media changes provide a window on the power realignments which are occurring behind the scenes. Ukraine watchers have known for a while that oligarchs in the country are not a monolithic group but rather a cluster of competing clans.

The loosening of censorship four days into the protests was the first clear indicator that the wind had started to shift and that outgoing President Leonid Kuchma no longer fully controlled the levers of power. The rich and powerful have started moving to position themselves well in the face of change. They want to preserve their power in Ukraine and maintain good relations with Russia, but they also want to be open to the world.

Some have wanted change for a while and already put their support behind Mr. Yushchenko. An example is sugar magnate Petro Poroshenko, who began financing the alternative TV station Channel 5 over a year ago. Others, such as Mr. Kuchma's son-in-law, Viktor Pinchuk, who owns three channels -- ICTV, STV and New Channel -- represent the new-generation oligarchs who crave international acceptance and expanded business influence. While thousands were protesting in Kiev, Mr. Pinchuk gave an interview to the New York Times, saying that he, too, visited the crowds.


Donetsk magnate and media owner Rinat Akhmetev's TV station TRK Ukraina continues to be partisan. But rumor has it that he has quietly cut off funds to Mr. Yanukovych's campaign. The really significant change is that Ukraine's most influential channels, 1+1, INTER and state-owned UT1, now report activities of both candidates. One counterbalance to these shifts is that Yanukovych supporters now prefer to watch the Russian channels broadcasting into Ukraine.

The lifting of censorship also suggests that Ukraine's oligarchs are increasingly realizing that old, mid-20th century thinking no longer works in the era of globalization. Despite their best efforts, they were unable to create a complete "information vacuum."

During the entire Orange Revolution the Internet, sometimes called Ukraine's modern samizdat, was humming -- news was getting around. My e-mail box overflowed regularly. Internet usage in Ukraine has increased from 1% of the population to 8% in the last three years and continues to grow rapidly.

To borrow a phrase from futurist Alvin Toffler, Ukraine's elites "collided with the future." They realized that they need to change their attitude towards information and power, since Ukrainians stood up and said a loud, Enough! And there is no putting the genie back in the bottle.

Absolute freedom of speech does not exist anywhere, nor will it exist in Ukraine. However, as Ukrainians head to the polls on Dec. 26, they now have access to fuller and less biased information, which will, it is to be hoped, enable them to make an informed choice for their new president. All of this bodes well for Ukraine.

Ms. Dyczok, associate professor of history and political science at the University of Western Ontario, is the author of "The Grand Alliance and Ukrainian Refugees" (Macmillan, 2000). She has been conducting research on mass media in post-Communist Ukraine for several years.