The mass media of ethnic minorities are rather specific. On the one hand, they are necessary simply because everyone is constitutionally entitled to receive information in one’s mother tongue. On the other hand, most such media are doomed to stay in the red. So far we have few self- supporting periodicals run by ethnic minority communities in Ukraine. Thus dependency emerge dependent relationships between the editors and their pecuniary donors, regardless of who finances what: governmental structures, international organizations, or community leaders. V. Nakhmanovych, chief editor of the newspaper The Jewish Observer, pointed to the fact at the round table called Ethnic Minority Media: Problems of Development held on April 24. V. Bondarenko, chairman of the State Committee for Religious Affairs, noted that the ethnic minority and religious community media are underdeveloped in terms of equipment and personnel, and prove at times ineffective. This, he stressed, causes such negative consequences as radicalism, rash judgment, and much bias in approaching various events. H. Sereda, chairman of the State Committee for National Minorities and Migration, was more optimistic. At present, there are 176 publications (including periodicals owned by 21 ethnic communities) that carry materials in their respective languages as well as radio and television programs in “regions of compact settlements.” The state supports the publication of literature in ethnic tongues (significantly, 1,823 periodicals are in Russian).
