“The wall of silence” shatters, but does not fall

It became known recently that Prosecutor General of Ukraine Viktor Shokin created a committee of inquiry and a committee of prosecutors, and restored the pre-trial investigation of the criminal proceedings into the organization of the murder of journalist Heorhii Gongadze. Before, the head of the General Prosecutor’s Office has already made a statement on this matter: “I am convinced that the new team which will be created now will find or name not only the executors, but also the masterminds behind the Gongadze assassination.” Shokin replied to The Day’s additional questions during the press briefing: “I personally will be overseeing the Gongadze case. As for the prosecutors that work on the case, if they have a wrong viewpoint, they will be replaced. A procedural decision will also be made in relation to Judge Andrii Melnyk.”

This high-profile case is a chance for the new Prosecutor General to show his worth from the professional point of view and finally establish justice in this tragic for the whole nation story. That is why it is utterly important for the society and journalists to support Shokin’s intentions today and “push” the government through all acceptable tools, and thus display demand for the punishment of masterminds of this murder. And not only that. This also implies the legal establishment of masterminds behind the assault on activist Oleksii Podolsky (his case is related to the Gongadze case), and also the attempt on the life of MP of the second and third convocations Oleksandr Yeliashkevych.

In fact, during the past months the coverage of the trial of Oleksii Pukach has moved to a new level. From now on, the whole country can watch the development of the high-profile Gongadze case virtually live. Firstly, the first two sessions (on February 6 and 9) were broadcast online, and secondly, the presence of a large number of journalists during the trials provides appropriate coverage during and after the trial itself.

“The wall of silence” has been breached, but this does not exclude the suppression of facts or distorted presentation of information by some mass media. This immediately raises a question on the position of media owners and responsibility of the journalists themselves. The reaction of media to Pukach’s speech in court is very revealing in this respect. During it, he made a public statement for the first time about the pressure, threats, and blackmail by prosecutors and Valentyna Telychenko, the counsel of the aggrieved party (Myroslava Gongadze). After scanning mass media, which covered this very trial, one can see that not all of them set the priorities clear and straight. A part of the journalists simply concentrated on the fact that the trial became open, and that is all.

Former journalist and now MP Volodymyr Ariev even stated that the Gongadze case is now among the speculative ones. “The present activation of the Gongadze case is related to the desire of specific people to improve their material well-being, and if we now pay attention to those who promote this subject, the trace will lead to the current authorities of Dnipropetrovsk,” the MP said. He said that a showdown between oligarchs is the most probable reason of the reviving of the debate on the Gongadze case by mass media. “Ihor Kolomoisky has such a feature as ‘hyena-like behavior’: when he senses that someone weaker is nearby (and Pinchuk is becoming weaker), he starts ‘eating’ them,” the MP added. “There were attempts to make Pinchuk pay even when Yanukovych was in power.”

In this statement Ariev as much as called Kolomoisky a hyena, and Pinchuk food, or rather, carrion. Perhaps, it is logical to hear about the oligarchic showdowns for an umpteenth time, but it is strange that the MP did not say a single word about the necessity to punish the masterminds behind Gongadze’s murder and crimes against Podolsky and Yeliashkevych (if he mentioned the topic anyway). But the worst is the total absence of any activity on the mentioned cases on the part of the head of Ukraine’s delegation to the PACE. However, there are other Ariev’s actions that speak for themselves, like voting for the appointment of the Opposition Bloc rep Yulia Liovochkina (sister of Serhii Liovochkin, former head of Yanukovych’s Presidential Administration and former assistance of president Kuchma and Lytvyn) as the first deputy of the Ukrainian delegation to the PACE, which made her vice president of the PACE Monitoring Committee. That same PACE committee which keeps track of the high-profile cases of Gongadze, Podolsky, and Yeliashkevych in Ukraine.

Experts have a different point of view. Channel 1+1, which is the most consistent in covering the Gongadze case on Ukrainian television, is accused of being a tool in the information war and abusing Gongadze’s name by Kolomoisky for personal profit,” chairperson of the Maidan Monitoring Information Center Natalia Zubar comments to The Day. “But let’s be honest, why would mass consumers of information care whether these are information wars or not? It is important for us that an important topic is not left without attention. Therefore, let there be even ten ‘information wars,’ but everyone wins if in the end the media are ready to present the facts and put pressure on the judicial system together with the society with a demand to name the masterminds of the journalist’s murder.”

If reports and news of Channel 5 and 1+1 contained virtually a straightforward account of what happened during the court session, and speeches by Pukach and other involved figures in particular, ICTV presented it from a completely different angle. Not only does Kostiantyn Stohnii’s program Breaking News conceals facts, but it is an example of outright manipulation of information.

Dzerkalo Tyzhnia was smarter. Having said on their website on February 6 that the court session would be open, the newspaper simply provided a link to the TSN.ua portal’s online broadcast. It looks fairly right, it is up to the viewers to evaluate what is going on in the Court of Appeal. But... “It should be reminded that this periodical supported Kuchma in 1999. And it has to admit its responsibility for what has happened. Those who voted for Kuchma then, chose the war now,” wrote The Day’s editor-in-chief Larysa Ivshyna on her Facebook page.

UNIAN can be categorized as balanced media, since during the day (of February 6), a lot of news of the court session events were published. And Ukrainska Pravda can be considered one of the media that suppress this high-profile case. Paradoxically, the website which was founded by Gongadze himself, only published one short message that “the court decided to view the appeal to Pukach’s verdict in the open regime.” And that was it.

“As regards the absence of a principled stand of Ukrainska Pravda, it has been ‘a killer site’ for a long time, in my view. That is, it lobbies for necessary materials, or otherwise it hushes them,” Zubar says. “But the thing is that the journalist staff has changed lately. Some obscure young employees came, for whom the Gongadze case is not a priority. It is doubtful if they know anything at all about it.”

In fact, at least three categories of journalists can be distinguished according to the attitude towards the Gongadze case: 1) those who deeply understand the essence of the problem and cover the situation objectively; 2) those who know, or partly know, but are on the side of the crime’s masterminds; 3) those who assess the situation on the surface, or simply do not care. Unfortunately, few belong to the first category.

“Now a rather telling trial is taking place. This is virtually the last chance to somehow retrieve this case, which is now a thing of history, and set it back in present,” said Oleksandr Tkachenko, CEO at 1+1 Media Group, in his comment to The Day. “In my view, it is crucial in terms of Ukraine’s future: we must at last create a precedent and call the top decision-makers to answer. The Gongadze case is symbolic for the nation, many processes started from it, in particular, those in the context of the European values discourse. Why is the Gongadze case now surrounded with a wall of silence in some media? Of course, it is up to them to answer. I have my own ideas about it, but let them better answer this question first.”