On Tuesday, 27 August 2019, at 09:30, a final press conference and a round table on the results of monitoring of media coverage of the Presidential and Parliamentary elections in Ukraine was held by the coalition of the civil society organisations consisting of “The Commission on Journalism Ethics”, “Human Rights Platform”, “Ukrainian Media and Communications Institute” and “StopFake” with the support of the Council of Europe projects*.
The results of the monitoring show that Parliamentary pre-election campaign followed and became the continuation of the Presidential pre-election campaign both with regard to campaign approaches and methods of interaction with media used by the main political contestants and adherence to professional ethics and standards.
“Most monitored media continued practicing “djynsa” (paid materials) and promoting political forces that have close connections to media owners (specifically, it was vividly visible on TV Channels), continued not complying with basic standards and violating electoral legislation. Considering that self-regulation does not work in this sphere, I believe, it is high time to introduce liability for violation of electoral legislation”, Diana Dutsyk, media expert, executive director of the CSO “Ukrainian Media and Communications Institute” said.
Media lawyer, executive director of the CSO “Human Rights Platform”, Oleksandr Burmahin mentioned that the Parliamentary pre-election campaign echoed the Presidential pre-election campaign with regard to legal framework and practices of the media regulator. The legal framework was not changed in the part of campaigning and informing of the voters.
“The National Council recorded hundreds of violations, but neither it issued a protocol on administrative offense, nor initiated a process of issuance of warnings to perpetrators. It limited its role to observing the violations and to TV Channels' awareness-raising (by sending notifications about violations). Not surprisingly, some TV Channels turned into open platforms of political campaigning favoring their political patrons during the Parliamentary race. Violations became more impudent and blatant”, media lawyer said.
Without a sound revision of the legal framework and practice of the regulator in this field, one should not expect positive changes in this part of the electoral process in the future.
Coordinator of the media monitoring Yelyzaveta Kuzmenko mentioned that media coverage of activities of women and men politicians, particularly during elections, influences public perception of candidates and voting respectively. The 2019 Parliamentary pre-election campaign was mainly male dominated.
“For the entire period, only 238 news segments on 10 national TV Channels contained opinions from women, as opposed to 1403 news segments in which men were presented. Findings of the online media monitoring are largely the same – gender imbalance was also identified there. In particular, eight online media represented women's opinion only in 9 per cent of their news reports, whereas 91 per cent of the news items featured male speakers”, Yelyzaveta Kuzmenko pointed out.
Journalists should cover the activities and programs of the candidates to the fullest extent possible regardless of their sex and ensure equal and unbiased attitude towards them.
The Head of the CSO “The Commission on Journalism Ethics” Andriy Kulykov informed that the there were 150 cases of violations of the Code of Ethics of the Ukrainian Jounralist identified in monitored media. Those violations were transmitted in a form of complaints to the Commission on Journalism Ethics, a self-regulatory body for journalists and editorial offices, for further consideration and assessment of the compliance with the requirements of the Code of Ethics of the Ukrainian Jounralist during media coverage of the Parliamentary elections.
“The Commission carefully examined and considered the complaints and issued 8 decisions (5 decisions in the form of a public censure, and 3 decisions in the form of a friendly warning) in respect of such media as TV Channels “1+1”, “NewsOne”, “ICTV”, “STB”, and online media “Obozrevatel”, “Gordonua.com”, “Novoye Vremya”, and “Strana.ua”, Andriy Kulykov said.
Olena Lytvynenko, Deputy Head of the Council of Europe Office in Ukraine, expressed gratitude to the coalition of civil society organisations and the whole monitoring team for their long and professional work, as well as for establishing effective cooperation with the National Council of Television and Radio Broadcasting. She expressed her hope that the final reports on the results of media monitoring, which contain key findings and recommendations for different target groups, will help to improve the media coverage of the election process with regard to both legislation and practice. In addition, she recalled the need to adopt a law on audiovisual services which is Ukraine's commitment to the European Union and the Council of Europe. She also expressed her expectation that the results and conclusions of monitoring would be taken into account during development of respective draft laws and organisation of local elections.
Earlier this year, the coalition conducted the independent monitoring of media coverage of the Presidential elections; respective monitoring reports in Ukrainian and English, as well as monitoring methodology can be found at the web-site of the Commission on Journalism Ethics http://www.cje.org.ua/ua/elections.
* The monitoring was conducted in the period from 14 January to 21 April 2019 and from 22 June to 21 July 2019 by a coalition of the civil society organisations consisting of “The Commission on Journalism Ethics”, “Human Rights Platform”, “Ukrainian Media and Communications Institute” and “StopFake” with the support of the Council of Europe projects “Supporting the transparency, inclusiveness and integrity of electoral practice in Ukraine” and “Strengthening freedom of media, access to information and reinforcing the public broadcasting system in Ukraine”, which are implemented within the framework of the Council of Europe Action Plan for Ukraine 2018 – 2021. Reports in Ukrainian and English, as well as monitoring methodology can be found at the web-site of “The Commission on Journalism Ethics” http://www.cje.org.ua.
