INTERVIEW: Respublika's Serhiy Naboka on press and censorship (10/10/93)

INTERVIEW: Respublika's Serhiy Naboka on press and censorship

by Roman Woronowycz

The Ukrainian Independent Information Agency Respublika (UNIAR) celebrates its fifth anniversary this year. It has been a driving force in establishing a free press in Ukraine, and its daily news releases from Ukraine are utilized by many Western news agencies. From a three-person operation in 1988, associated with the Ukrainian Republican Party, it has developed into an independent, multi-media press agency. Today, it consists of four branches: the press agency; video/television production; an analytical research department; and a press monitoring section.

Serhiy Naboka, 38-year-old editor-in-chief and founder of Respublika, was in the United States recently through a grant from the United States Information Agency. While here he spent a week as an intern at our sister publication, the Ukrainian-language daily Svoboda. The Weekly took the opportunity to interview him. Last week he discussed the development of the news agency Respublika. This week we turn our attention to his thoughts on press censorship in Ukraine today, and Mr. Naboka's earlier arrest for political activities.

PART II

Q: I want to shift gears now and talk about censorship and the accuracy of the information you receive. Does official government censorship still exist?

A: In principle, yes. Censorship remains. It is of a different character, but it remains. There is less of it and it is softer. That's first. Secondly, the press centers of the Cabinet of Ministers and the Supreme Council are inadequate. And the president's press center and his press secretary do not work at all.

His press center has brought such a negative image of Ukraine to the public that I do not know why the president keeps those people. Instead of explaining certain things or pointing out news items, instead of calling a journalist or many, they do the opposite.

Many times they simply do not inform the press about press conferences. Let's say there are 100 correspondents who cover the Parliament, foreign and domestic. Thirty will be told. Forty will not find out. And the rest will find out on their own.

Q: Whom do they usually call?

A: In principle, they should call everybody. But sometimes you call asking, let's say about when [President Leonid] Kravchuk is due to land returning from some important meeting. When will his plane arrive? "What, don't you realize that it's lunch now," replies the press center's director and hangs up.

So I call again and tell him that it takes us an hour to get to Boryspil Airport and contacts tell us the plane is due in two hours. Could you confirm this? "I don't know," he replies.

In this instance, we sent our correspondent anyway to meet Kravchuk, who had returned from some important conference. In the Crimea last spring, I think it was. No other correspondents were there.

Kravchuk's press secretary comes up to our correspondent and asks, "Why did you come here? Remember that this will be the last interview you will ever get with the president," he says.

What is this? We have to deal with this. Another thing, they openly demand bribes. I am completely fed up with the president's press service. Okay, let's forget about me, I'll deal with it. But other well-respected journalists have also suffered this business; if you want an interview with Kravchuk, you must pay us an amount of money or give the press center a substantial gift. Corruption even at that level.

All the members of the Western mass media have had to deal with this. All of them. I do not want to reveal names, but they belong to some of the best and most respected agencies and firms.

Myself, I just ignore it. The head [of the press center] is a member of the old cadres from Communist times. He worked his whole life in the Soviet press. He was a speech writer. It's obvious who he was.

And how does he think? He realizes he has to make as much money as possible. He knows sooner or later he will lose his job.

Q: Freedom House several months ago described the Ukrainian press as partly free, on a par with Kuwait, Moldova or Oman. What are your thoughts on this?

A: I agree that it is partly free. But I've never been in Kuwait and cannot read Moldovan, so I don't know how to compare it with these. But the situation in Ukraine - let's take as an example Ukrainian government-run television. It is absolutely not free. I am absolutely convinced of this because I saw it on my own when I did broadcasts for Ukrtelefilm, a government studio that broadcasts films for television. I was doing some publicity work and did interviews with several diaspora Ukrainian representatives, specifically with Ronya and Askold Lozynskyj and with Mary Mycio. Afterward, I received feedback that they were criticizing the government and the president; that certain comments could not run. At the studio, one producer told me, after the Mary Mycio piece already had been cut to almost nothing, that yet another sentence was not acceptable. So I pulled the whole piece.

But on the non-governmental commercial channels, we can do most anything. We are absolutely free. We can say what we want, including publicly unknown information. If the assistant director of the Bank of Ukraine calls to stop me from running a story, I don't listen to him if I so choose.

In [government] radio, the situation as a whole is better than television, even though it is controlled by the same people. Perhaps the people who work there are active to a greater degree and are younger, more creative.

The printed press is a mixed bag. The majority of papers are either associated with political parties or serve the interests of certain commercial structures that buy the paper and pay the editors. The editors are all representatives of the companies, however large or small, and, of course, they support their political interests. And most of them, especially the largest of the firms, are run by former Communists.

We have a few papers that think they are completely free. They in a sense are not free because they feel compelled to criticize those things that one might not criticize, or may even praise. There's a search for sensationalism. A search for something bad, for something black. As a result there is a perceptive anti-Ukrainian trend in their reporting, regardless of the fact that the atmosphere of the publication is patriotic.

Q: Some say the government uses its rationing of paper as a tool for censorship. What is the current availability of print and does the government withhold it at times?

A: Paper can be had if a person is a good businessman, with some money, a bit of a brain, and runs a good newspaper that is bought by people.

The paper released by the government in May was strictly for government and Parliament publications, although it was advertised as paper for all newspapers.

But paper can be found, I am convinced of this. Post-Postup finds it, Kievskie Vedomosti does. Case closed. These are newspapers independent of the government. Neither the government nor Parliament supplies them with paper. They get it where they can.

The fact that many editors today ask for paper from the government is a result of old habits learned under the Soviet system. They request paper from the government. The government gives it to them. Now this is no longer a free newspaper. The circle closes. No paper, you do not put out a newspaper. With paper you have to listen to that part of government that supplied it to you.

Q: You spent some time in the Soviet prison system as a political dissident. What were the details of your arrest?

A: From the time I was 14, I was "anti-Soviet." My parents were always worried because I was constantly writing or reading something. After the Army, when I entered university I saw up close what Soviet journalism was, and this really bothered me. So like-minded friends and I formed the Kyyiv Democratic Club. At first, we discussed the political situation in friends' apartments. Then we began to put out a magazine, followed by leaflets criticizing the Olympic Games in Moscow, the Afghan War. We were caught in 1981 after some of the women in the group brought leaflets about the Afghan War to a friend's apartment, where we were celebrating a birthday. As some of us left and entered the Metro, we were arrested.

I think they had been following us for a while. I know that my phone had been tapped since 1972. Five were arrested. Four were sentenced to three years apiece. We never admitted any guilt. Nor did we appeal.

We sat in prison in Ukraine. The Politburo had made a policy decision to put the new dissidents with the murderers and the drug dealers, with an assortment of bandits. Their new policy was to separate the new dissidents from the older ones. They wanted to isolate us from their influence. But they couldn't do it.

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