It would be strange, of course, for a television observer to coin a phrase like “Citizens, do not watch TV! At any rate, not the news!” But, upon my word, such a wish arises over and over again, for I get convinced daily that all kinds of people on television make fools of us, the proverbial citizens.
What came out on our silver screens right after the festive New Year sleep? UT-1, controlled by the Democratic Union and the Kushnariov-headed party bloc, let loose its referendum campaign. 7 Days, UTN, and Lapikura’s Accent are literally in sheer ecstasy. What is more, they have no scruples about means: from Mr. Kushnariov’s threatening statements (e.g., if anything, we will press for Verkhovna Rada dissolution, etc.) to man-in the-street interviews with tongue-tied passers-by all of whom claim they are burning deep in their hearts to express no confidence in Verkhovna Rada. Use is made of things utterly shameful for the level of the First National Channel — from taunting grammatical errors in legislative documents to the calls of ordinary workmen to dissolve Parliament. How fresh is in people’s memory and how easily revives the inclination to a mindless search for enemies and simple solutions! “I myself never read it, but I know...” (“I’m for a bicameral parliament!” says an “accidental” passerby in Kyiv. “But why?” the correspondent asks. God knows. The interviewee lapses into thought and says: “This is the requirement of time!” Well this would seem an exhaustive argument). And the UTN correspondent in Sumy takes a back-patting attitude toward this proletarian sentiment: “The logic is simple and ironclad, as they put it.” Holy cow! This looks like hammering piles rather than nails. Who cares for competent and professionally-grounded explanations of the necessity of a referendum? Let alone the opinion of those who oppose the referendum. What for? It is clear the electorate will swallow it and not without the assistance of local executive bodies, as the last elections proved. It could happen again.
Our other information monsters, 1+1 and Inter, are far more restrained about the idea of a new national plebiscite. Yet, on January 11 TSN thought it advisable to complete its information on the Parliament’s Referendum Moratorium Law with Hennady Udovenko’s utterance that “the referendum initiative comes from the grassroots” (I wonder if Mr. Volkov will feel offended. Or you should first do something, and rewards will come later?!) Likewise, TSN, obviously having an ardent desire to say as little as possible, reduced the whole matter of the referendum vote (the decision was taken by the constitutional majority of 309 votes) to the idea that the deputies simply do not want to place their destiny in the hands of a “chaotic expression of the people’s will.” To be fair, last Wednesday TSN showed for an instant the political scientist Viktor Pohorilko who told us, for example, that some sort of limited parliamentary practically exists in practice in all countries. This might seem a great victory of professionalism! A short respite in the primitive and monotonous process of pile-hammering. What lies beneath Inter’s more thoughtful comments on VR handling the referendum issue is quite clear: not only is SDPU(o) embittered over the way Viktor Yushchenko formed his Cabinet: this party’s obvious interest in a most rapid liberalization of the energy sector runs counter to the stand of Yuliya Tymoshenko who is now a fervent supporter of tight governmental control over the fuel- and-power complex. However, it is worthy of note that it is this conflict of interests of those standing behind the channels that still allows us, rank-and-file citizens, to get, at least sometimes, more complete information about what is happening.
Nevertheless, arguments against the referendum itself were only given by UTAR News which quoted the sharp comments of political scientist Mykola Tomenko. The referendum is clearly absent from the plans of Ms. Tymoshenko who stands behind this channel and is not going to surrender her parliamentary seat. But UTAR also treated this subject as one-sidedly as the other channels, only from the other side.
The referendum issue is only one of the dozens of examples of how every information and analytical program at each channel substitutes brainwashing for information. They have in fact forgotten such things as commentaries by experts and pundits. Nowhere is mentioned such thing as the completeness, tangibility, and indisputability of facts. Alas, it would also seem that the promised economic reforms must begin with a serious nationwide discussion of the most pressing problems. In reality, even a cursory glance at information and analytical programs shows us that the number of banned topics has even increased. Among these — which is incidentally confirmed by backstage testimonies of the television journalists themselves — such issues as the mechanisms of privatization, the causes of the critical foreign debt (absence of control over the utilization of loans), the energy crisis, the relationship between the banking system and the real economy, etc.
Our television channels are also most directly involved now in the regrouping of forces on the fuel-and-power market and in a transparent scenario in which new, and no longer needed, victors are being done away with by the hands of new kamikazes (or “caliphs for an hour,” if you like). The three-day-long footage of the so-called “informing” of Ukrainian citizens about new vice-premier Tymoshenko’s negotiations in Moscow is quite telling. Thus, if a totally ignorant viewer had been watching news about this on the UTAR and Inter channels, he would hardly have understood that the same events were being covered. However, in the course of three days only two Kyiv channels, STB and The New Channel, dared to unveil differences in the assessment of the Moscow talks by Ms. Tymoshenko herself and Russian sources. The latter did not confirm the Tymoshenko- quoted amounts of debt owed by the Naftohaz-Ukrayina Corporation, which Ms. Tymoshenko is now accusing of all mortal sins; they also referred to the talks as routine (and not triumphal, as was evidenced from the statement by Ms. Tymoshenko herself). Moreover, on January 11 The New Channel, in its 10 a.m. Reporter program, even contrived to show an extract of the direct-line phone conversation between the channel journalist and a Russian Gazprom representative. However, the extract of that sensational Gazprom conversation was on the New Year’s air only once: it was withdrawn from all the subsequent issues of Reporter and The Day’s Topic! Even despite the fact that on January 12 Andriy Shevchenko, in his Topic program, made a very detailed analysis of the Tymoshenko-Bakai conflict, implying that it may be fraught with political consequences. However, here, too, the program did not overstep the dangerous borderline between complete information and adequate analysis of what caused the current event. This is the line drawn by those who decide on behalf of us all what, when, and to what extent we, the citizens, should know or, which is a more frequent case, not know.
Business Window (STB) showed, following the report on Ms. Tymoshenko’s press conference, an exclusive material about how the privatized regional electric companies and some state officials foiled the general meeting of energy market members scheduled for January 12. The program thus tried at least to raise the question of declarations and the real situation in energy generation and supply. However, such accents, put in a telegraphic way, will hardly help the ordinary Ukrainian to understand where he will be double-crossed again.
In fact, there is perhaps nothing new or exclusive for Ukraine or negative on the global scale in the fact that some private media pursue the interests of their owners. Quite a different thing is state-run television and how it organizes a totalitarian pattern of the information theater of our country, so that society cannot have the slightest opportunity to see and understand what in reality is going on in the country’s economy and politics. In all democratic countries, the monopolization of broadcasting by the authorities or private capital lobbyists is offset by a non-governmental television system or powerful opposition parties with their own media, as well as by a well-developed system of cable television and low-budget noncommercial information projects. We do not have such counterbalances, which amounts not only to infringement of the right to free expression but also the right of citizens to information, especially about vitally important things, and the rights of citizens to consciously make certain decisions as private individuals and members of society. What is infringed upon is the right of citizens to know and the possibility to think on the basis of this right. Incidentally, one television journalist recently told me he recorded (and then erased, of course) the words of a person, now a very high official, that Ukrainians do not need to think because the IMF, the World Bank, etc., have long ago decided everything for them. But I think the point is really not in these international institutions and their ready-made prescriptions. Ukrainians need not think because this hampers those who want to rule them. Did you by chance notice that the other day the President in fact forbade our ministers to mingle with the press? Everything should go through the press services, Mr. Kuchma said, thus dooming this country to a still more closed type of decision-making and to still less accessibility of society to global economic information.
I once read that the Soviet totalitarian system had destroyed itself because, having to maintain a most powerful military-industrial complex, it was forced to take care of society’s intellectual elite. And, perhaps not to allow all scientists and engineers to become inveterate drunks, the system had to publish for them some scholarly journals, make some movies and theater productions — just to enable them to catch their breath. Thus the system itself created the critical mass of the “people” who had a sufficient inoculation through education and a certain degree of free thinking: all they had to do was give a shoulder- push to the sagging Soviet economic and administrative system.
Ukraine no longer has a developed military industrial complex. Perhaps for that reason it need not have any basic need for intellectuals? This means it is quite possible (or even planned) that the Ukrainian people may turn into a poorly-educated, obtuse, and self-loving mob of Sharikovs and Shvonders (characters of Bulgakov’s Dog’s Heart), unable to think critically and easy to manipulate. A mob with which one can do things for another thirty years or so. And then one will say: well, this is life: once you and we felt good... By “you” I mean this country. Was or is there a place called Ukraine?
