On the background of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the relations of the fellow journalist specifically are not affected. Anyway, in an interview with Aravot.am, the journalists of both countries assure that war is a war, campaign is a campaign, but the partnership has its own place. Journalist of the Ukrainian biggest “Inter” TV company, Olexy Pshemisky, at the same time, noted that many of their colleagues go beyond the circles of ethical journalism. Despite the geopolitical choice and the posture, the journalists encounter mainly the same problems both in Russia and Ukraine. Basically, the journalists are complaining about restrictions on freedom of expression.
Although, according to our interlocutor, there are positive changes in Ukraine on this in the last year and a half. “It is not comparable to the situation, which we had a year ago. Now, we can easily criticize the government, which was prohibited to the majority of the media.” According to the Ukrainian journalist, not it is a big problem to get a permission from the appropriate authorities to cover the hostilities, it has become a complex bureaucratic process. The majority of Ukrainian media is also dissatisfied with the work of the institute of spokesman, who can call press conferences and organizing interviews for making their desired information public, but for explanations, the journalists themselves to “catch” the officials.
In the recent year, the number of the TV companies has been increased in Ukraine. Olexy Pshemisky explained on this, “Now, we have a diversity of TV companies, the so-called major channels that have a large audience; opposition channels that do not have a large audience, and as it is used to call in the post-Soviet countries, oligarchs private channels.” The media servicing the opposition in Ukraine are mainly online, there are also Internet Television successful projects. According to Olexy Pshemisky, there is no censorship among the internet media, but their audience is not also particularly big.
The Ukrainian journalist also assured that there was no enmity between them and the Russian colleagues, but he also noted, “Certainly, we have a lot of colleagues who did not behave themselves within the ethical boundaries. Of course, the situation was a conflicting one, but, anyway, the unethical journalism is unacceptable.”
Russian “Vedomosti” newspaper journalist, Anastasia Kornya, in an interview with us, told that the intimidations to the Russian mass media are almost the same as in other countries. They particularly are associated with the restrictions of freedom of the press. The journalist told that under these restrictions, the media often are not writing that a 12-year-old girl jumped from the window and died, but are writing that a 12-year-old girl committed what is forbidden to speak about by the provision of a law to report information about the adolescents. The pressure against the media is carried out differently in Russia: administrative leverages and fines. According to the journalist, the sizes of the penalty are quite high. The pressure against the media is also the fact that according to the new law passed in Russia, an alien owner cannot own more that 30 percent of the share of given media, and as a result, the “Forbes” was sold to a Russian owner.
We were curious to know whether there is opposition called media in general. The journalist laughed and replied that there is no opposition in Russia to have opposition media. However, Anastasia listed the names of several independent media, such as “Vedomosti”, “Dozhd” TV companies. In the end, the Russian journalists said, “Of course, the government media have to deal with a campaigning, as they are exposed to such a policy, but as I have already mentioned, there are also balanced media”.
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
