How can we end the our tribal warfare?

On the eve of parliamentary hearings on the freedom of speech in Ukraine, The Day conducted an interview with Serhiy VASYLIEV, chief of the Presidential Administration’s Information Policies Department (blamed by many for censorship) who explained his own vision of relationships in the triangle of the government, business, and media.

“The journalistic community has experienced a number of events that resulted in the formation of a strike committee and trade union. Last week parliament held a hearing on the freedom of speech and censorship in Ukraine. All this means the media are beset with serious problems. What do you think should be the role of the Presidential Administration and your department in this situation?”

“The administration is a body the president set up to help him carry out his constitutional duties. All that it has done in the most recent period simply illustrates how the president observes the Constitution. In this situation, the Presidential Administration was deliberately exploited to project a negative political image of the president as part of a scheme hatched by the opposition aided by foreign financial sources. Suppose the first scheme was called ‘bad president,’ the second ‘political censorship in Ukraine,’ and the third ‘freedom of speech.’ Each was and still is financed through grants worth thousands of dollars. This in turn created a group of journalists who earn their living from it. They service certain schemes. They can be successful only if there is a situation such that these grants can be received. In other words, if there is no freedom-of-speech problem, it has to be created. But the problems of the freedom of expression does not exist the way they would like. There is no problem of political censorship. What really exists is the problem of the nation’s mass media, which has nothing to do with what the schemers try to make the public believe. What they are doing contradicts elementary logic. For example, they had been claiming for two months that political censorship is clamping down on everything. Then, two months later, they raise some items for parliamentary debate, one of them being political censorship. This raises the question: what had they been fighting in the two previous months? The Presidential Administration and society as a whole is watching these processes and responds adequately if attacked.”

“What do you mean by adequately?”

“In case if the president or his administration are accused of meddling in the process of journalists’ creative work — I say this for those who want to know the administration’s functions. Yet, the strike committee fully consists of representatives of the media funded by foreign grant donors; it is these media outlets that are screaming about censorship. Thus it would be a good idea to urge leaders of the countries that fund these schemes to lift censorship immediately. For whoever pays money exercises censorship. None of the strike committee members has said they personally receive any instructions or feel pressure from the administration. What they oppose is hypothetical censorship.”

“When you say the administration does not practice censorship, it’s clear this can’t happen literally. But it’s also common knowledge that the administration is a resource capable of influencing publishers via their business...”

“In this country, any governing body can influence business, including that of the media. So why speak only about the administration?”

“Still, are there any prosperous businesses in this country that do not depend on the government?”

“Of course not. Taking into account all three branches of government, all national business depends on the latter, just like in any other country.”

“In fact, everything should depend on the law, and something begins to depend on government only when the law ceases to function.”

“The level of legal culture in a country is a matter of not only the government.”

“This country is at the stage of the uncivilized primary accumulation and redistribution of capital. We have naturally stepped away from the Soviet model, but not too far.”

“The greatest problem of the Ukrainian media is the absence of democratic traditions in supplying public information. If they existed, the government would be in its proper place.”

“Is there nobody in society to exert pressure on you?”

“By tradition, all our niches have been filled by the government. Now that the institutions of civil society are maturing, some areas feel less government influence. This will reach its climax when societal interest outweighs that of the government. The government itself, by its very nature, will never invite society into its own territory.”

“This means the government is aware that this situation will sooner or later end. Should the government maintain a comfortable state of affairs as long as possible? Which side should the Administration’s Information Policies Department head play on?”

“The department I head is interested in laying down, as soon as possible, rules whereby everyone will know the court to play on and the conditions to meet. In Kyiv, signals travel more or less rapidly from the president to a minister or the premier. Still, occasional misunderstandings do occur. As to the presidential-governor vertical, this is virgin territory. To be relayed to the regions via the governors, a presidential signal has to pass through dozens of filters. We are now monitoring the participation of governors as executors of the president’s policy in the media. It turned out that the regional press may give a detailed coverage of, say, the governor’s visit to a pig farm but fully ignore nationwide events. By putting presidential decrees on the back burner, a governor projects his own positive image at the expense of head of state’s prestige. The recent replacements of governors is something to reflect on. This is a European-style approach to cadre policies.”

“There also is another problem in the regions. The local and regional press is under so strict supervision that people cannot have a discussion or express their own opinion.”

“In reality, the press is not to blame. The trouble is a market with an imbalance of supply and demand. I look through about a thousand regional media a week. They all look identical, no matter who founded them. This occurs because those who founded them live according to the laws set in a certain region. The media founders, as petty officials, are subordinated to the governor, a big authority. As any business is under someone’s control, everything is reduced to the individual who does it. What has this got do with the Presidential Administration? An owner who has a newspaper as his third or tenth most important business will use it as an instrument for political maneuvering. If the media depended on the solvency of their consumers, they would be talking about things that interest their customers, i.e., the people. We don’t have this, unfortunately, so all complaints to the government about this are just nonsense.”

“The complaints to the government are about the foreseeable future, when everything will be different. Volodymyr Lytvyn once advanced an idea that owners be legislatively banned from interfering into the media’s editorial policy, thus ‘advising the cows not to eat the cabbage’...”

“I think he was too hasty... If we analyze our mass media legislation, we will see we have most of the required laws. But what if somebody cannot make use of them? Nothing is heard now about any high-profile lawsuits filed by an aggrieved journalists. If a journalist does not want or is unable to make use of the law, it is his deliberate choice, not the problem of the society or government.”

“Are you in contact with the chairman of the relevant parliamentary committee? What do you and he produce?”

“He and I produce a lot of noise and local conflicts because we cannot find a common language. Our goals and tasks are different. We agreed that it was necessary to hold parliamentary hearings, but when we touched on the subject we agreed to differ. Deputy Tomenko has prepared for these hearings a draft resolution calling on the president to immediately abolish political censorship, etc. I do not think political censorship is a matter of parliamentary hearings. It is a matter of scholarly conferences attended by media top executives, academics, political scientists, lawyers, and foreign colleagues. It is impossible to gauge the amount of the freedom of speech. If Ukraine banned the profession of journalist and if a journalist were not free to choose the place of work, then we could say that Ukraine is a dictatorial country.”

“But is your office not supposed to keep track of the still being investigated Gongadze and Aleksandrov cases?”

“Journalists are in the same relationship with the law as everyone else. I think that any attempt to exalt a certain profession insults people in other walks of life.”

“Are you deliberately stirring up a storm of negative emotions?”

“I’m a journalist myself.”

“As you are now an administration department head, you should be a lobbyist in reasonable doses for the interests of journalists.”

“I do not want to play up to anybody or lobby the corporate interests of those of my colleagues who cannot do without hotbeds of tension. But I share the opinion of the people who believe that the profession of journalist is in general quite risky, especially if a journalist enters the spheres where big business interests collide.”

“But we have to go there. Or should business be allowed to go as far as to buy up politics and put down society?”

“What is being projected as a legend has several implied meanings. The lone-wolf journalist is fiction. But when a journalist puts on a flak jacket and gets himself ready to sling mud, he turns into a soldier of a certain pressure group. And, as we know, war has laws of their own...”

“You have an odious reputation in the opposition media. Why?”

“The administration is the opposition media’s feeding trough. Were it not for the administration and Mr. Vasyliev personally, many of them would not be earning money for their work. If you analyze all their moaning and groaning about the administration, you will see they are just ludicrous. What impresses, though, is the frequency of affixing the ‘minus’ sign to the administration and calling Vasyliev the chief strangler of all independent journalists. When they report to their bosses, they show the number of negative publications about the administration. ‘OK,’ says the rich uncle and starts to pull out the long green. We keep a large number of journalists afloat.”

“The impression is that the administration is not pushing for some long-overdue bills, for example, on exempting the media from the VAT, as done in other countries, and on limiting the monetary court-ordered damages payable by the media. For it is beyond any doubt that the administration has vast lobbying potential.”

“We have already studied the situation and formed in compliance with presidential instructions a task force to draft a number of new laws and proposals about amending the existing laws, including one on revising the upper limit of court damages.”

“Setting up a task force to properly solve a problem that has already set our teeth on edge could be the best way to block any solution...”

“There are mechanisms for solving various problems. The administration is not the Verkhovna Rada committee in question. Moreover, our initiative was carefully considered throughout; we have never altered it, so the formation of a task force consisting of broad- spectrum experts is the most suitable and adequate mechanism to solve this painful problem.”

“Another rather sore point is the complete Russification of the media. The printed media often push the Ukrainian language onto the fringes. Can we expect you to take measures to protect, say, Ukrainian children’s book, cultural publications, and the Culture television channel?”

“I would pose this issue in the shape of separate, not adjoining, elements. We must treat separately one element called ‘Russian-language literature and media’ and another called ‘Ukrainian-language...’ I would not try to solve one at the expense of the other.”

“We do not say there is a problem of the Russian-language press, for this problem does not exist...”

“In my opinion, the committee chaired by Ivan Chyzh is addressing this issue as best as it can. It takes a systemic approach to this problems. I am sure this problem will be solved in the nearest future provided there is ample funding and other law-related prerequisites. This is an economic, not political problem.”

“How can society stop a war it is waging against itself?”

“If this is to be considered as a nationwide problem, all must take part in solving it.”

“Yes, but somebody has to organize it.”

“To this end, there exist some forms of a nationwide dialog common to all civilized countries. But we must understand that all does not depend only on our desire to stabilize the domestic situation. And, although I am not one who rejects Western democracy as an organizational principle of societal relations, I still see more and more clearly that if some foreign sources did not warm up the territory where Ukraine is situated, there would be fewer conflicts in this country and interests would be struggling in a totally different vein. We have been burdened with the millstones of globalization. Clearly, we cannot stop the machine hear and say we will no longer play the game. What we must do is ride out this whirlpool without grave consequences. Now the helmsman and the whole crew must rally forces and steer the ship between the reefs. I think this is precisely our nationwide goal.”

“In other words, are you saying that we must obey the general rules of the game?”

“I think that if we fail to establish our domestic rules, any foreign player will find it very easy to upset our situation of relative stability. Influential people in this country have failed to come to terms. They wage never-ending war against each other...”

“To come to terms in order to fit in with the general rules of the game or to establish a reservation, which would be the object of scholarly research?”

“To come to terms at least enough for this territory to have the right to be called a democracy and to set a certain range of mechanisms into motion inside this state. Concurrently, we must maintain relations with the outside world, pragmatically and firmly defending our national interests. What is more, if we were not so sensitive to every sneeze of the European public, our wardrobe would look more stylish and individual.”

“ForUm has quoted Mykola Tomenko as saying at his Monday press conference that the Presidential Administration supplied PACE with a false list of the Ukrainian media that ‘regularly criticize’ the president, also placing on this list pro-presidential organs. Would you comment on this?”

“This is what distinguishes me from Tomenko: I have well-documented proof with quotations from each of the listed media, while he claims I am lying because this could not be so a priori.

“To my mind, such statements are a lifeline to those lazy journalists who do not know how to process information correctly. It looks like Tomenko is asking them: is it clear to you how you should interpret information?”

“What is your attitude toward the establishment of an independent union of journalists?”

“I take a favorable view of the creation a journalists trade union and no view at all about an independent one, for I believe it is impossible to set up an absolutely independent union. Nothing is independent.

“I avoid the term ‘independent’ in my work. It is a good idea to form a trade union of journalists because, unfortunately, our Union of Journalists has shown complete impotence in defending the rights and meeting the needs of journalists.”

“Still, what should the government do to ease media business rules, to provide freedom of maneuver in the journalist- owner relationship, and to allow the opposition and the pro-governmental media to coexist as colleagues who hold different points of view rather than as warring tribes? There would seem to be every opportunity to do this.”

“We now seem to be regulating this process. I am told I tell people what to do. In fact, I do not order what to do, but I show how it can be done. We are now being requested by many media outlets to send them our press releases. However, they utilize a mere 2% of this information, thus robbing the public of the remaining 98%. So where is the freedom of speech here? This is why my department is and will play the role of a regulator of the information about government activities.”