Representatives of the Ukrainian media community announced the creation of the Conscious Choice Media movement, aimed to make everything possible so that voters had the opportunity to elect the president and the future parliament, relying solely on reliable and impartial information.
The text of the memorandum states that the creation of the media movement is determined by the understanding of the media community itself: the future of Ukraine depends on the honest and impartial work during the election campaign. In particular, the authors of the document emphasize: media should not be used for hidden, unclear influence on public opinion, and bribery, intimidation, covered agitation and black PR are the threat to society during election campaigns.
The signatories of the agreement promise to be unbiased with regard to all candidates, to reflect positions, discussions and conflicts in a balanced way, to refuse the placement of a black PR, to file facts with reference to specific sources, to refute false information as well as admit and correct their own mistakes on public.
As noted by Natalia Lihachova, the editor-in-chief of The Detector Media, the main task of the future movement is to protect those who seek to provide quality information and help the society to make conscious choices.
“There already was some blaming, they say we are dividing our media. And we really do, but we divide media and non-media. The media are those who seek to bring high-quality information, but those who work for hype and money are non-media. We will not fight with them, our goal is to support and protect those, who want to work well and we have the right to do so,” Lihacheva emphasized. The editor-in-chief also added that further decisions on how to work, how to monitor the situation, react to a memorandum violation, etc. will be approved together with all the first signers, who at the same time are co-authors of the project.
Similar associations of the media community are common for the world’s practice. According to Oksana Romaniuk, the executive head of the Institute of Mass Media (IMM), in America, there are more than 80 media organizations which have united and created a project called “Trust”, and Ukrainian Media movement should become a part of it.
“We have already started negotiations with leading world corporations. The media that will join our movement and will adhere to the indicators of credibility, transparency, etc. will receive better indexation from these corporations. This will increase the audience gain up to 10%. The examples are Google and Facebook. We have to return to what qualitative journalism really had been before, it has always been and will always be. And this project is intended to support it,” said Oksana Romaniuk.
Such associations can also serve as a specific marker for high-quality media. This was stated during the meeting of authors and signatories of the memorandum by the editor-in-chief of The Ukrainian Week magazine Dmytro Krapyvenko. According to him, the future movement is able to bring the objectivity factor to the assessment of domestic media.
“We will still have to fight for the readers, and that’s great that we are not talking as competitors (authors and signers of the memorandum – ed.). Because we will have to compete with pseudo-mass media, poor mass media and oligarchic mass media. Sometimes, I have to recommend some media, and it turns out that I have always recommended the majority of those, which joined this project. But there was not a formal sign before, and now it is a memorandum. That is, it is a kind of objectivity factor, it’s not a subjective opinion, but a certain community and there are similar ones abroad and we can become a part of them,” the journalist commented.
However, for the most of the media involved in the signing of the memorandum, the stated requirements and commitments are not new, as they are in line with editorial policy and are guiding the work of journalists. In particular, Svitlana Bondar, the editor-in-chief of The DUMKA said so. According to her, the editors bear double responsibility, since the media is targeted at both Ukrainian and foreign audience.
“The memorandum does not really have anything new for our media as well as anything that we would disagree with. Those are the same principles and rules that we have been working on since the launch of the website. Objectivity, credibility, impartiality and other features of high-quality media are what we care about in our work. Especially, since our media has a huge responsibility, as the website, in addition to the Ukrainian version, has the English one, and hence the foreign reader. Therefore, we have fought and will continue to fight for the trust of each of the Ukrainian and foreign readers in the future, while following those principles and rules that were taken at the beginning,” said the editor-in-chief of DUMKA.
Tetiana Troshchynska, the editor-in-chief of “Public Radio” supported Svitlana Bondar’s opinion, adding that, despite enormous efforts, quite often they remain unnoticed by the audience and society as a whole.
“It was easy for us to support the memorandum because we are already doing what is written there. But our efforts, it seems to me, are not visible enough, and we have to admit that this is a big problem. And we are not talking about competition now. But when you give more full information, more balanced, you do not always get more attention of the audience. Hopefully, we will become more visible to the consumer, and then it’s up to his choice. After all, we cannot force anyone to consume anything. Therefore, this visibility is a great value, and if we inform people, it may be easier for them to choose what we consider to be good,” Troshchynska suggested.
Among the first signatories who joined the future media movement, there are leading Ukrainian media and civic organizations, whose weight was gained over the years of honest and open work. Among them are The Ukrainian Week, The Novoye Vremya, Suspilne TV, The Dzerkalo Tyzhnya, The DUMKA, “Media Detector”, “Institute of Mass Information”, “Institute for the Development of Regional Press” public organizations and others.
Photo by Oleksiy Chumachenko
