A very important event took place last week when the European Court recognized the lawfulness of The Day’s stand during the presidential campaign of 1999, when this newspaper carried two features describing Natalia Vitrenko and Petro Symonenko’s roles in the presidential race. The author of the articles, Tetyana Korobova, and The Day insisted that these two leaders were merely going through the motions of opposing the regime while actually backing President Leonid Kuchma. One might say that they played out a well coordinated political scenario, protecting the government’s interests; in other words, those who were posing as champions campaigning against the “anti-people regime” in reality were acting as Kuchma’s satellites in an orbit worked out by Bankova St.
When I read this in Korobova’s commentary in Obozrevatel (www.obozrevatel.com.ua) I thought for a fleeting moment that things were getting back to normal. For example, Korobova’s remark that the European Court’s judgment didn’t mark a noteworthy event for the Ukrainian media sounded quite reasonable. Another pertinent remark was that the news agency Interfax let this extraordinary event pass unnoticed, yet instantly began circulating clearly dubious information (I might add that this agency provided Dzerkalo Tyzhnia with material that the latter happily carried, without bothering to look around for alternate opinions. Why should they bother? Everybody had been waiting for this kind of “material” while paving the way with all kinds of hearsay. The resultant publication had a definite falsified odor, but they carried it nevertheless).
Here we could switch to the subject of current Ukrainian journalism. Yet this discussion would be incomplete without clearly assessing what came to pass in Strasbourg on March 29 — the European Court’s verdict that stated, among other things, that “The limits of acceptable criticism are accordingly wider as regards a politician as such than as regards a private individual.” Now this is a principal clause in European practice. However, it would be erroneous to neglect to mention what this European practice looks like in the Ukrainian context. I believe that applying European norms concerning freedom of the press should be combined with a high professional level, mostly in terms of responsibility and observance of the code of journalistic ethics. I read Tetyana Korobova’s commentary on the European Court’s judgment in Rupor, addressing The Day: “If I were thanked for telling the truth, for having fought to reinstate the freedom of the press I would never offend anyone by declining to accept this...” This sounds a bit pompous to me, considering that Korobova wasn’t the only one campaigning for this freedom back in 1999. And she wasn’t present during the court hearings. Yet I would be among the first to extend my sincere gratitude to her.
I believe it’s necessary to consider the background of our relations, since for five years after 1999 I did not comment or react to anything this former journalist of The Day wrote or said. I would refrain from doing so even now if I didn’t think that a new generation of journalists and readers has appeared, who know little if anything about those events, and therefore may make a genuine mistake when considering both political events and their consequences for Ukraine’s latter-day history and journalism.
Shortly before the 1999 presidential elections, The Day became a rocket carrier for Tetyana Korobova, as the reading public in Kyiv and elsewhere in Ukraine knew nothing about her until she started writing for this newspaper. She was known in certain moneyed quarters in the Crimea. I’m not going to dwell on her character and reputation; I believe that she was an aggressive and concerned individual, especially given the background of the predominant I-don’t-give-a-damn attitude among journalists. Naturally, she was bound to receive responses in kind. We hired her at The Day after her former employer had literally thrown her out, leaving her facing criminal proceedings and a possible jail sentence. This was the mid-1990s and the consequences could have been very tragic. When Tetyana Korobova tearfully applied for employment at The Day, I realized that she was in a critical situation.
Let me remind the reader that she was a resident of Simferopol at the time. We had her move to Kyiv and rented an apartment for her at The Day’s expense. Yevhen Marchuk tried to make a deal with the person that was suing her to protect her and help settle the case in a friendly fashion. That is why it was surprising to read a phrase in Korobova’s commentary last Saturday, where she was fantasizing on the subject of possible financial dividends from the European Court. She imagines that someone will come to her one day and say, “Dear Tetyana, The Day, with its general and all those other scumbags, has earned so many dividends through your good services...” As for dividends, I doubt that the debit and credit entries would tally in her case. Some will say: You knew whom you were hiring, so why complain now? Of course, we sensed that something was wrong at the time, but as Editor-in-Chief, I believed that we could keep the situation under control. Among other things, I had to tell Tetyana Korobova to keep her comments about the personal relations between Yulia Mostova and Oleksandr Razumkov (God rest his soul) to herself, and the same for Olena Franchuk and Viktor Pinchuk (she wasn’t his wife at the time), and Yulia Tymoshenko and Pavlo Lazarenko. Obviously, such “harsh work conditions” were oppressive to Tetiana for a long time.
What later appeared to be a dismissal on political grounds looked somewhat different when viewed from the inside. She wrote, in particular, “... I believe that the reasons are understandable; I quit The Day when the worthless oppositionist Marchuk surrendered, together with his corrupt newspaper, after the first round of the 1999 presidential campaign, for the benefit of presidential candidate Kuchma.” This is a convenient version, nothing more. The newspaper was in a difficult situation at the time, so Tetyana Korobova simply walked out.
As for Yevhen Marchuk, even the two articles carried by The Day, “Is This a Second Yurik for Poor Yoricks, or a Ukrainian Version of Lebed?” (August 21, 1991) and “On the Sacred Cow and the Little Sparrow: The Leader of the CPU as Kuchma’s Last Hope” (September 19, 1999), make it absolutely clear that the opposition, as represented by Marchuk, Moroz, and Tkachenko, later as the “Kaniv Four,” was in the line of fire. Tetyana Korobova knows only too well that on that fateful night, when the Kaniv Four agreed that Yevhen Marchuk would be the opposition’s presidential candidate, Oleksandr Moroz gave a press conference six hours later without notifying any of the opposition partners, thus wrecking the opposition’s plans. This marked a cardinal change in the presidential campaign, leaving the opposition candidate practically no chance. She knew all this, yet her subsequent actions proved the opposite.
Here one is bound to arrive at a very simple conclusion; the government couldn’t get rid of Yevhen Marchuk as a political opponent, for his prestige and professionalism wouldn’t have allowed them to get the better of him in an open dialogue. So they applied a special technique, humiliating and otherwise damaging his public image, using the proverbial cat’s paw. In this sense, Tetyana Korobova’s creative endeavors came in very handy, especially after she decided to violate the code of journalistic ethics. She continued to write articles, each time getting closer to the very things she had previously wrathfully and firmly opposed. She became Leonid Kuchma’s very convenient sparring partner, and like that “wild Natalia,” she lashed out at him while actually attacking his principled political opponents.
When we talk about Kuchma’s regime and his personal responsibility, I believe that his main fault lies in the fact that he constantly lowered political standards and criteria, and in doing so created a “swamp” that will take years to clean up.
He gambled on the most negative human qualities and, regrettably, he proved to be right. Tetyana Korobova, perhaps like no one else, became the personification of his methods. The new journalists will one day write about this, only it won’t be pleasant reading. There is a semi-grotesque Internet project in Russia called “Putin’s Daughters.” I think it’s worth mentioning that in this regard Ukraine reacted considerably earlier, although we don’t have a definite organization. If a project called something like “Kuchma’s Daughters” is ever registered, Tetyana Korobova would make it to the top of the list, even above Natalia Vitrenko’s name.
As for the conclusions to be drawn by Ukrainian journalists, I believe that the European Court, by establishing the breadth of possibilities available to journalists, has given us a very strong tool to restore our politics to health. It will depend only on Ukrainian society and journalism whether we can develop preventive measures, so that a stiletto doesn’t end up in the hands of a maniac.
This is precisely why I can’t congratulate Tetyana Korobova on the European Court’s judgment concerning the two articles that were published by The Day. The Tetyana Korobova that I knew in 1999 no longer exists.
