Members of Ukraine’s Association of Workers in the Mass Media have addressed an open letter to Dennis MacShane, Great Britain’s Minister for Europe, stating their concern about “blackmail and threats to our state,” recently expressed by Minister MacShane in his reply letter to the National Union of Journalists of Great Britain. In part, it says that Ukraine cannot enter the EU until it solves its problems with the freedom of expression. Association members admit problems with the freedom of expression in Ukraine, “especially in terms of the media outlets’ financial dependence on their owners and the state,” but simultaneously note that “this in no sense means that somebody from within the country or without has a right to sully its honor and integrity.” The authors of the open letter released in the mass media drew public attention to the double standards applied to Ukraine by some Western public figures and express their doubts that the British government and personally Mr. MacShane are “true followers of the freedom of expression and objectivity.” The basis for these doubts was laid by “the recent address by the Reporters Without Borders international organization accusing the British government of the pressure on the press and discrediting some journalists in connection with their ‘incorrect’ coverage of the Iraq War.” Other telltale instances are given in the letter: in part, a statement by French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, “openly claiming an anti-French campaign of disinformation,” and report of the Economic and Social Research Council of Great Britain which, “having analyzed 5600 American and British television news shows, states that these countries deliberately falsify the position of their citizens...”
