I wouldn’t like to start with the banal thesis statement that who has information – owns the world, but still it comes to my mind before the governmental elections. Here the quality and quantity of information become extremely important. It’s impossible to orientate in programs of political parties, candidates, and the course of elections without television, periodicals, Internet. Thus, if correct orientation will be impossible, the expression of people’s will is going to be distorted and instead of the development, the society will get only stagnation. And it will be the same what we have today.
That’s why one of the most important social needs for today is a development of the legislation, which would fully take into account the European experience in this area.
Can we say that it was really taken into account when considering recently adopted by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine the Law “On Elections of the People’s Deputies of Ukraine” and the section on the informational support of the electoral process in particular. Maybe we can, but only at the first quick look. Because in a generally fair standard of securing equal possibilities of parties and candidates for receiving broadcasting time and print space for campaigning we can find statements not enough corresponding to the European practice.
For example, a permission of courts to stop issuing printed publications or terminating the validity of a license of the organization in case of single or repeated gross violation of the Law. Regulation is clearly draconian, although legal penalties act only till the end of the election process. Moreover, “gross violation” may be interpreted in any way, because legislators haven’t taken care of its concretization.
Moreover, “gross violation” may be interpreted in any way, because legislators haven’t taken care of its concretization.
A shortage of concretization of strict regulations – is an Achilles' heel of Ukrainian legislation. Let’s recall at least notorious "value judgments". According to the previous Law “On Information”, on public expression of value judgments no one could be called to account. According to the new Law, if a person considers that expressed in the press or on TV opinions and thoughts humiliate her/his honor and reputation – he or she can exercise a right of reply in the media. And of course, there is no list of judgments which may be considered as value in the new Law “On Information”.
Meanwhile, the European Court of Human Rights provided that politicians and authorities should tolerate following judgments: lower-class opportunist; amoral; without dignity; standpoints similar to the Nazi; idiot; governor has no shame, no conscience; clownish candidate. And it’s right, because western journalists know the framework beyond which they can’t go without being punished. Here, this framework it totally up to a judge.
In Ukraine the framework is up to a judge.
The similar situation is with the other statement of the current Law “On Elections of the People’s Deputies” concerning slanderous information. In previous Law “On Elections of the People’s Deputies” was a prohibition to spread obviously false or slanderous information about a party – a subject of the electoral process or a candidate for a deputy. Nevertheless, in the Article 74 (9) of the current Law this statement is in a somewhat different wording: “It's forbidden to spread obviously false or slanderous information about a party – a subject of the electoral process or a candidate for a deputy, false or slanderous nature of which is determined by the court.”
As though nobody knows how the concept of “slander” is explained by Ukrainian courts. Thus, the right of a journalist for the freedom of speech is a blank space. The European Court of Human Rights had repeatedly drawn attention of our honored legislators to this issue, but there is no obvious reaction.
The developers of a new Law also ignored a proposition which can be often heard in media: as long as mass media are divided into municipal and private for a long time, it’s worth to find different approaches to them. Because it seems that private mass media can’t fully use rights provided by the editorial independence.
Try to show this independence if you have prescription: to give objective, unbiased, balanced, reliable, complete and accurate information. We may safely say that the newly adopted Law “On Elections of the People’s Deputies” intrudes the editorial policy of media. And we need for it very significant reasons, more significant than elections to the Verkhovna Rada, what is even by the Soviet definition is nothing else but a “triumph” of democracy.
A few words in regard to the “objective information” to which authors of the Law oblige journalists. In fact, a word “objective”, according to explanatory dictionaries is the one beyond the human consciousness, independent of it. We may understand it as impartial, unbiased presentation of the material.
However, the requirement of impartiality in the Article 66 (2) of this Law is right after the requirement of objectivity, so “objectivity” in this context seems to be redundant.
The requirement of impartiality in the Article 66 (2) of this Law is right after the requirement of objectivity, so “objectivity” in this context seems to be redundant.
This so called objectivity, to which persistently appeal politicians, government officials of all ranks and legislators, has became to journalists something like a red cloth to a bull. Maybe somebody would disagree with me, but I’ll dare to say that it would be unnatural for a journalist to be totally objective. There is a person between registered candidates, which moral and professional qualities, so to say, clearly falls short of the level, desired for the people's deputy. A journalist is aware of this, and his status obliges to share the information with readers or listeners.
All right, legislators may say: it can be shared, but with no signs of subjectivism. In this case, I’d gladly propose legislators to give an example and create model material of objectivity in their understanding. Nevertheless, want you or not, but certain subjective notes will be anyway visible in the material, a tone of a narration if this is TV program or some ironic words if it’s a newspaper's article.
Only a robot can create a distilled material – yes, lawmakers apparently want to see it distilled – a human with all its emotions, can’t do it. Even if it's extremely cynical person which is working on elections only for money.
In a word, emphasizing objectivity of information about election process is inconsistent with the understanding of the social role of journalism. This emphasis gives a reason for thinking that legislatives would like the best if correspondents didn’t have own position. We have already enough such highly valuable journalists without own opinion on important social phenomena, what for do we need to procreate more and new? - we may ask the authors of the Law “On Elections of People's Deputies”.
However, everything is not so bad. Fortunately, we have indeed fantastical freedom of speech in comparison with the communist times, which is successfully used in Internet blogs and social networks. Authors of the Law have forgotten about this new mass media, or don’t consider them as serious partners in a political dialogue, but the fact remains – for the Internet as a means of communication “everything is possible”. If it’s not forbidden, than it’s allowed. A readability of websites during the election period without a doubt will significantly increase. They will not loose a chance to fully exercise their rights.
And to an end – some memories about one conference on the quality of elections, which was held in Lviv two years ago. Representative conference under the protection of the Council of Europe, Venice Commission, CEC, the Parliamentary Committee on State Building etc. To have an idea of what bothered it’s participants about our topic, I’ll give some fragments of speech.
Ihor Popov, then-current deputy head of the Presidential Secretariat: “We can see constantly rising influence of owners on editorial policy, we expect massive usage of hidden advertising, but how to deal with it - we really don't know. Another problem - is open voter fraud and populism. ...Together with engagement of the mass media, massive paid videos and articles, the fraud and populism can finally confuse voters and cause social upheaval this time.”
Andrii Shevchenko, the People’s deputy of Ukraine: “During last five years approach of the journalism to the election process significantly improved, accumulated enormous experience in journalistic investigations, journalists have learned to be captious to declarations of income, to show politicians discrepancy between their actions and their words, what is a positive sign for the society.”
As we can see, two opinions of prominent representatives of society on the readiness of the country to fair elections are dramatically opposite. The first – is drastically pessimistic, the other – sharply optimistic. Judging from the last elections to the local councils, then these elections gave too many confirmations of alarming predictions of I. Popov to emit optimism. Judging from the attitude of the overwhelming majority of experts, which estimate the Law “On elections…” – pessimism even worsened since that time. Those gained “enormous experience in journalistic investigations” by no means contributed to literal bombarding public with articles on comparative analysis of all five submitted to the Verkhovna Rada bills and showing negative aspects which has mixed proportional-majoritarian electoral system with closed party lists. And become an obstacle for the adoption of the Law.
It’s a shame that forecasts made some years ago concerning quick self-regulation of mass media activity were not confirmed. Under self-regulation is meant the ability of editorial staffs to strictly follow developed by themselves codes and guidelines, or, in other words, certain standards of work. It’s obvious that a high level of self-regulation would allow mass media to work without additional regulation of their activities by electoral law. We could even say a frightening for our legislators thing – their tremendous work before every elections would be unnecessary.
Even more unreal seems to expect help in improving mass media quality, especially during elections, from voters which actively read newspapers, watch television and listen to radio. As long as our electors, so to say, learned how to demand certain information from the editors, and even are ready to organize systematic campaigns aimed at highlighting the most acute points of social life. Some activists of NGOs went even far, asserting that readers-listeners-viewers are head and shoulders above many of the editors in Ukraine, so in some time they will make these mediocre editors follow the world's standards of journalism. Than, thanks to media-educated voters, candidates for “servants of the people” will have to show their real programs and get rid of those odious populism.
Perhaps it will happen in a distant future. But, I must stress, in a distant. Now, society gave no serious signal that would show its will to raise the level of mass media. Moreover, we may give opposite examples, when mass media, moving towards, so to say, the desires of workers on the kitchen, dare to do journalistic investigations and begin to ignore the "authority". Mostly for most editors it ends "deplorably" and the voice of the public does not break beyond the kitchen.
Thus, its worth to say goodbye to the unnecessary idealism and to accept the fact that there will be no professional, well-substantiated political debates aimed at the actual, not proclaimed improvement of people's lives on the next elections. Legislators are at least not ready to such debates, and hoping to get from them better Law is very naive.
Same as hoping that most mass media will finally start practicing PR but not their favorite propaganda. Let’s hope that 29 October 2012 this story won't end and all achievements in the freedom of speech we have today will be multiplied by the other mechanisms of social influence.
Dmytro Karpiak / Civic Network OPORA/ specially for the web-site “How do we choose the Verkhovna Rada?”