Ukrainian Journalists Switch Sides
Written on November 26, 2004
The election strife in the Ukraine is literally on the verge of a civil war, and the anti-Moscow opposition is almost guaranteed to win.
How do we know? Because the state-run television stations, in a mass example of CYA, have thrown their weight behind them:
Journalists on Ukraine’s state-owned channel - which had previously given unswerving support to Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych - have joined the opposition, saying they have had enough of “telling the government’s lies”.
Journalists on another strongly pro-government TV station have also promised an end to the bias in their reporting. The turnaround in news coverage, after years of toeing the government line, is a big setback for Mr Yanukovych.
Journalists in Ukraine seem to have responded to the call by opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko for them to reject government censorship.
A correspondent on the state channel, UT1, announced live on the evening bulletin that the entire news team was going to join the protests in Independence Square. She said their message to the protesters was: “We are not lying anymore”.
Filed in: Politics.