The future of public service broadcasting continues to be a hot issue in Ukraine. A public hearing addressed the question of what kind of public broadcasting the new Ukrainian government is going to launch

By Antonina Cherevko, IMS

Is there any danger of creating “Russian style” Public Broadcasting in Ukraine? Is the country going to implement the best practices of European Public Broadcasting Services? Will an independent supervisory board and mechanisms for transparent funding will be established? On September 02 2010, Hotel “Rus” in Ukraine hosted a public hearing on the Assessment of the Concept of Public Broadcasting proposed by the new Presidential Administration where the above questions were discussed.  More than 100 participants – politicians, journalists, civil activists, media experts – gathered to discuss the new concept of public broadcasting initiated by the President.

Public service broadcasting a life-long task

Introducing public service broadcasting (PSB) seems to be a lifelong task for Ukrainian governments and civil society. Even though  there was hope for swift and effective transformation after the Orange Revolution, nothing happened in practice and numerous draft laws were dismissed by Parliament. In fact, the public service broadcasting idea never gained enough political support as no politicians wanted to be involved in the difficult process of closing state broadcasters and transforming them into public service broadcasters afterwards. The new President, however, has recently claimed he would undertake the transformation from state to public broadcasting and asked the Humanitarian Council acting under his auspices to develop a PSB concept. Civil society and media experts are concerned that the transformation will be done without active public participation and that Ukrainian public service broadcasting will be created just as an another government instrument for manipulation and lobbying.

The governmental PSB concept was presented by the vice-chancellor of the University “Ukraine”, Valeriy Bebyk. The discussion was further led by Mr Ad van Loon, Consultant of the EU-Council of Europe Media Project for Ukraine, Nick Nugent, BBC World Trust project manager, Boyko Boev, ARTICLE 19 lawyer, Lia Chakhunashvili, member of the Supervisory Board of the Georgian Public Broadcasting, and other national and international experts including Ukrainian MP Andriy Shevchenko and chief editor of Telekritika Natalia Ligachova. 

Following the experts’ presentations participants considered the draft Resolution on public hearings prepared by Kostiantyn Kvurt (Internews-Ukraine) and amended its text. Aas a result of the discussions participants concluded that the PSB concept must include provisions on financial, human resources and editorial independence. It was also announced that additional propositions and amendments to the Resolution should be sent in a written form to the editorial board headed by Kostiantyn Kvurt which will consider them and include them in the final text. 

The public hearings was co-organised by a broad coalition including New Citizen Public Campaign, Institute of Mass Information, Media Law Institute, Internews-Ukraine, Telekritika, Foundation Souspilnist, Center for Social Media, Independent Media Trade Union of Ukraine, Kyiv Independent Media Trade Union, Trade union ‘MediaFront’, and National Union of Journalists of Ukraine.

The event was initiated by the “Stop Censorship!” campaign and supported by International Media Support throught its IMS Media and Democracy Programme for Central and Eastern Europe and the Caucasus.

For more information please refer to Antonina Cherevko, IMS Programme Officer for Ukraine, via e-mail ac[snabela]i-m-s.dk or phone +380 50 410 27 68