The Media Market and Media Ownership in Post-Communist Ukraine

Abstract

Concentrated ownership of media by industrial oligarchs dependent on political favor is a significant obstacle to securing freedom of the press in Ukraine.

Full text

Ryabinska Media in Post-Communist Ukraine 3
Problems of Post-Communism, vol. 58, no. 6, November/December 2011, pp. 3–20.
© 2011 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved.
ISSN 1075–8216 / 2011 $9.50 + 0.00.
DOI 10.2753/PPC1075-8216580601
NATALYA RYABINSKA is an assistant professor at the University of Euro-
regional Economy in Jozefow, Poland.
Concentrated ownership of
media by industrial oligarchs
dependent on political favor is a
significant obstacle to securing
freedom of the press in Ukraine.
The Media Market and
Media Ownership in
Post-Communist Ukraine
Impact on Media Independence
and Pluralism
Natalya Ryabinska
Me d i a markets and media ownership in Central and
East European countries are useful indicators of
the levels of media freedom and pluralism in the region.
Strong, developed media markets are essential for the po-
litical independence of the media. The type of ownership
and the strength of the connections between media owners
and political actors determine how closely the interests of
the people who own private media are intertwined with the
concerns of political parties and leaders.1 The scope and
direction of state regulation of media markets are decisive
for the state’s ability to affect media democratization. An
analysis of these factors will help in determining whether
governments hinder the democratic performance of media
institutions or have tried to facilitate the democratization
of the media by implementing policies that ensure the
transparency of media ownership, limit ownership con-
centration, or secure public access to information.2
Media markets have been the subject of several large,
wide-ranging studies focused on Hungary, Poland, the
Czech Republic, Slovakia, the Baltic states, the countries
of the former Yugoslavia, Romania, and Bulgaria, among
others. However, such inquiries have never considered the
situation of the media market in Ukraine. The transforma-
tion of the Ukrainian media has, in general, attracted very
little attention on the part of scholars. This article attempts
to fill the gap by focusing on the issue of media markets
and media ownership in post-communist Ukraine.

4 Problems of Post-Communism November/December 2011
Media Markets in Central and
Eastern Europe
The changes that took place in the post-communist coun-
tries of Central and Eastern Europe were expected to lead
to the creation of independent, pluralistic, and democratic
media. This process was to begin with the end of the state
monopoly over the media and the establishment of pri-
vate ownership. Privatization was seen as a prerequisite
for the independence of the media from state control,
because the creation of privately owned media outlets,
plural and diverse, would guarantee the fair, representa-
tive reflection of the whole range of views and interests
in Ukrainian society.
However, the formation of a developed and pluralist
commercial media sector—free of control or pressure
from political or economic interests—has turned out to
be a difficult task. Although students of post-communist
media transformations acknowledge that some post-com-
munist countries, especially those currently categorized
as “consolidated democracies” (especially the Czech Re-
public, Poland, and Hungary) managed to establish strong,
financially successful, independent commercial outlets
and to shape a developed and diverse media market,3 there
is a lingering dissatisfaction with media performance in
the region. Commercial media, even if financially inde-
pendent, are not fully free of political influence coming
from both outside and inside. Post-communist politi-
cians habitually see the media as “theirs,” while many
journalists still share the communist-era conviction that
the population needs to be led, schooled, and mobilized
and that journalists should be players in political arena.4
Political leaders perceive media criticism as a threat and
therefore use various formal and, especially, informal
instruments to exert pressure on the media.5
The other obstacle to the democratic performance of
privately owned media arises from economic pressure—
the dictates of the market. Commercial media have to
survive the growing competition in pluralistic media mar-
kets; at the same time, they seek to maximize their profits,
like any other business. The desire of media owners to
obtain profits at the lowest possible expense results in the
commercialization of the media and the tabloidization of
media content.6 Quality press is replaced by tabloid-like
dailies, and TV and radio broadcasters fight for audience
attention with the help of cheap entertainment shows
and soap operas. As a result, the richness and diversity
of media content shrinks: TV formats are standardized
and unified (e.g., “Dancing/Singing/Skating with the
Stars”), while TV channels offer viewers the same menu
of popular soap operas and films. Last, but not least,
the growing concentration of media ownership poses a
significant threat to the pluralism and independence of
commercial media.7
However sharply media analysts in the “settled” new
democracies of East-Central Europe criticize the privately
owned, market-driven media in their countries, these
outlets commonly demonstrate a high level of editorial
independence and resistance to political pressure. For
example, Gazeta Wyborcza and Rzeczpospolita in Poland,
Pravo and Mlada Fronta Dnes in the Czech Republic, and
Népszabadság in Hungary all show that media in these
countries may themselves decide about their content.
These countries have completed the transformation of
their media institutions to a democratic model and are
currently consolidating media freedom as well as shaping
the behavioral and attitudinal foundations of media free-
dom.8 The hallmark of this stage is the fact that behavioral
patterns corresponding to a baseline of media freedom
are more and more commonly perceived in these coun-
tries as something normal and regular, whereas actions
that challenge the freedom of the media are increasingly
marginalized.9
This is not the case in Romania, Bulgaria, Albania,
Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, and other post-com-
munist countries whose media are still categorized by
Freedom House as “partly free.” For example, studies of
Romanian media show that the values, mentalities, and
behavior of media owners, editors, and directors in that
country are far removed from media independence and
democratic conduct.10 As Romanian media mogul Dan
Voiculescu commented, “The theory of independent me-
dia is a chimera.”11 Newspapers, radio, and television in
Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, or Albania are, by and large,
not autonomous from governments or vested interests,
but highly dependent on them, and they function not as
democratic institutions, but as tools for trading influ-
ence and manipulating public opinion in the interests of
power-holders.12 In general, media markets and media
ownership in these countries meet several of the follow-
ing criteria:13
• Theyareunderdeveloped,andthereforecannoteasily
sever their economic ties with institutions of power.
• Theyaremostlysmallandfragmented,andtherefore
have very limited possibilities to be credible and
profitable.
• Theyaresubjecttorecurrentattemptsbythestateto
control and regulate them.
• Theirownersarecloselylinkedtopeoplewhowield
economic and political power.
• Theyhostagreatnumberofmediaoutlets,particularly
broadcast media.

Ryabinska Media in Post-Communist Ukraine 5
• Theyarecharacterizedbyalackoftransparencyofmedia
ownership.
• Theymaycontainmonopoliesorahighconcentrationin
press distribution services.
In addition, in some countries (Bosnia and Herze-
govina, Montenegro, Macedonia) the existence of parallel
media markets divided along linguistic lines makes the
economic survival of commercial media outlets even more
complicated. Finally, as in the “settled” new democracies,
their media have a negative tendency toward tabloidiza-
tion, and are undergoing a process of concentration of
ownership.
Ukraine began to democratize its media sector in the
early 1990s. Censorship was abolished in 1991, and in
1992 the Ukrainian parliament adopted legislation that
legalized private ownership of media. While media in
Ukraine resemble the media in the “advanced” new de-
mocracies in some respects (e.g., ownership concentra-
tion, commercialization, tabloidization), they have much
more in common with the media in Romania, Bulgaria,
and the Western Balkan countries. The underdeveloped
media markets in these countries are breeding grounds
for the use of media in the interest of governments and
political-economic elites rather than of the general
population.
At the same time, the Ukrainian media system has
some peculiarities, such as the unfinished privatization of
the media, the continuing existence of state-owned me-
dia outlets, and the predominance of so-called oligarchs
or industrial-financial magnates in the media industry.
Ukrainian private media have to operate amid legal un-
certainty and disregard for the rule of law, under which
even such high-profile crimes against journalists as the
murder of Ukrainska Pravda editor Georgiy Gongadze on
September 16, 2000, remain unsolved.14 They also have to
compete with media from neighboring Russia, which eas-
ily penetrate the Ukrainian market with diverse, quality,
and—most important—cheap products. This article pres-
ents the main features of the Ukrainian media market and
media ownership in comparison with the situation in other
post-communist countries, pointing to their commonali-
ties and differences as well as analyzing the impact of the
characteristic features of media ownership in Ukraine on
the independence and pluralism of the media.
The Ukrainian Media Market
Size and Wealth. With a population of 46 million, Ukraine
could have a large, dynamic media market. According to
ZenithOptimedia, Ukrainian television has the second-
largest (after Russia) audience in the region—18.6 million
viewers.15 Before the global economic crisis began in the
fall of 2008, Ukraine had the fastest-growing advertising
market in Europe, which was expanding at an average of
30 percent per year and was becoming more and more
attractive for investors, both domestic and foreign.16
However, compared to other European countries,
the Ukrainian media market is largely underdeveloped.
The country’s weak economy does not produce enough
market resources to ensure the development of a private,
advertisement-financed media sector. The advertising
budget in Ukraine is low in comparison with the ad bud-
gets of countries with populations of comparable size.
For example, in 2008 the total TV advertising budget
in Ukraine amounted to about $500 million, which was
twice as small as the total advertising budget in neighbor-
ing Poland, and forty times smaller than in Germany.17
Per capita advertising spending in Ukraine is among the
lowest in the region—$15.90 in 2006, whereas in Poland,
the Czech Republic, and Hungary it was $100, $173, and
$296, respectively, as well as $44.20 in Russia and $57
in Bulgaria.18
Since Ukraine is a TV-viewing nation, the largest
share of advertising money (more than 45 percent) goes
to broadcast media.19 Newspapers, meanwhile, comprise
only around 7 percent of the advertising market, which
is very small compared to the more common 30–40
percent in neighboring countries, and cannot ensure the
newspapers’ financial independence.20 This is one of the
reasons for the underdeveloped print media market in
Ukraine, where newspaper circulation (74 readers per
1,000 inhabitants) is comparatively low among the post-
communist countries.21 As for the TV advertising market,
only nationwide channels have a good chance of attracting
scarce advertising money, since the advertising budget is
very unevenly divided between national and regional TV
channels. For example, in 2010 the advertising budget
of national TV channels totaled $342 million, whereas
regional stations got only $14.7 million in advertising
money.22
Advertising income is difficult to get because the ad-
vertising “pie” has to be divided among too many players.
There are fifteen nationwide, nonsatellite broadcast TV
channels, one of which (UT-1) is state-owned.23 This is
2.5 times that in Poland, which has only six national TV
broadcasters (two of which are public service broadcast-
ers).24 As a result, commercial TV channels in Ukraine
wage a fierce battle for ad revenue, often by resorting
to the commercialization and tabloidization of their
content.

6 Problems of Post-Communism November/December 2011
Dependence on Political Advertising. The lack of a de-
veloped advertising market and the low average income
of the Ukrainian population make it difficult for print
media to reap profits from sales. In consequence, Ukrai-
nian media are dependent on political advertising. Since
2000, Ukraine has held national elections almost every
two years, and political advertising (both direct and indi-
rect) has become one of the leading sources of advertising
money. During the 2009 presidential election campaign,
for example, the share of political advertising during
the last five months of the year (August–December)
accounted for as much as 23.5 percent of all television
advertising income in 2009.25 Bearing in mind that this
figure is based on data for direct political ads—and thus
does not take into account the hidden advertising widely
used by presidential contenders—one may assume that
political advertising accounts for an even larger share of
total TV ad revenue.26 This is an important difference
between Ukraine and other post-communist countries.
For example, spending on political ads in Poland dur-
ing its parliamentary and presidential elections in 2005
accounted for only about 15 percent of the total TV ad-
vertising market.27 In mature democracies, the share of
political advertising in media ad revenues is even lower. In
the United States, the share of TV political advertising in
total television ad revenues oscillates between 2.6 percent
and 7.6 percent.28 In West European democracies like
France, the United Kingdom, and Sweden, paid political
advertising is banned or heavily restricted.29
Unfinished Privatization. Two factors hinder fair market
competition in the Ukrainian media market: unfinished
privatization and the continued existence of state-owned
and municipal media outlets. Ukraine has not introduced
public service broadcasting yet. Its media are essentially
divided into two sectors: private and state-owned (includ-
ing municipal and communal media).30 Ukrainian national
and local governments have been in no hurry to privatize
the remaining state-owned outlets because they frequently
use them for self-promotion and in power struggles.
The unfinished privatization of the media has inhibited
media democratization across post-communist Central
and Eastern Europe. The states where the media partly
remains in the hands of national or local authorities—
Albania, Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Moldova, Armenia, Belarus, Russia, and the Central
Asian republics—are all states with low scores in the
international press freedom rankings.31
When Viktor Yushchenko became president in 2005
after the Orange Revolution, he declared that the privati-
zation of state and municipal media was one of his major
goals. However, no significant action followed upon these
promising words. In 2006—fifteen years after the start of
the post-communist transformation—as many as half of
all newspapers and magazines in Ukraine still belonged
to the state.32 The state also owned thirty-five television
and radio outlets, including the nationwide UT-1 televi-
sion channel and three radio channels.33 As of late 2011,
the situation has not changed.
In addition, there are still more than 100 state-owned
newspapers, as well as more than 800 municipal news-
papers, awaiting privatization; together they constitute
almost 22 percent of all Ukrainian periodicals.34 The
national state owns about 4 percent of the TV and radio
sector, on top of the nearly 815 municipal television and
radio companies controlled by local governments.35 These
media are used in the interests of local authorities. One of
the most well known cases is that of the mayor of Kyiv,
Leonid Chernovetsky, who has, for practical purposes,
transformed the capital city’s media into his personal
public relations firm.36 During the pre-term municipal
electoral campaign in 2008, Kyiv print and TV outlets
heaped lavish praise on Chernovetsky while smearing
his rivals’ reputations.37 Similar practices are widespread
across the county.
Although state and municipally owned media are gen-
erally less popular than privately owned outlets, at least at
the national level,38 many retain a considerable audience
share in distant or poorly populated areas where they are
the only media available. Three state-owned nationwide
radio channels have managed to keep a relatively large
part of their listeners because of their exclusive access to
a system of wire radio broadcasting traditionally popular
in Ukraine (especially in rural areas) from Soviet times.39
The same is true for municipal newspapers, which often
are the only papers in some rural areas.
State-owned media, whether national or local, pose
unfair competition against privately owned print media.
Unburdened by the need to earn money for their survival,
they offer much lower rates to advertisers and lower prices
for readers and subscribers, indirectly undermining the
financial sustainability of their privately owned rivals.
Moreover, state media wage unfair competition on the
labor market because the salaries they offer journalists
and, more important, their pensions are calculated accord-
ing to the public-servant scale. Thus jobs at state-owned
media—especially local print media—are considerably
more lucrative than those offered by private media.40
Unfinished privatization poses yet another obstacle to
the development of the media market in Ukraine; namely,

Ryabinska Media in Post-Communist Ukraine 7
the state-owned enterprise Ukrposhta, which dominates
the press distribution market. Ukrposhta, a government-
controlled post office, has a monopoly on press delivery
in some regions. Thanks to its continued Soviet-era
management system, Ukrposhta is highly inefficient
and constantly raises the prices of subscription delivery
as well as delivery to retail outlets, thus raising barriers
to the development of private publishers, especially in
outlying areas.41 In addition, state authorities have been
known to discipline unfavorable media by refusing to
deliver publications that have criticized them.42
Foreign Investments. The state is not a good media
manager. State and municipal newspapers are boring and
continue to practice Soviet-style journalism, while state
radio and TV lack new equipment and technologies. The
example of other post-communist countries that have
managed to create a developed media market shows that
substantial investments are needed to turn old-style pub-
lications into outlets capable of winning audiences and
competing in a free market.
The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and the Baltic
states solved their funding problems by relying on foreign
investments. For example, the Polish Rzeczpospolita, an
official government daily up to 1989, became a high-
quality, high-circulation newspaper after the French firm
Socpresse bought 49 percent of its shares and poured $4.5
million into its renewal.43
In addition to bankrolling the modernization of out-
dated communist-era media or launching new outlets to
help diversify the market, Western businesses bring indus-
try expertise, professional management, education, and
training. Students of media and democracy often criticize
Western media corporations in Central and Eastern Europe
for putting profit ahead of quality,44 but they acknowledge
that foreign owners have extensively contributed to the
development of independent pluralist media in the region.
For example, Miklos Sükösd, of the Center for Media and
Communications Studies in Central European University
(Hungary), believes that foreign ownership effectively
ensured that the government would not interfere with
Hungary’s print media, which were privatized by German
and Austrian investors.45 Marius Dragomir, media expert
at the Open Society Institute and editor of the “Television
Across Europe” series, claims that without Western play-
ers in the media markets of Eastern and Central Europe
to keep the debate about media freedom alive and ease
the legal environment concerning the media, the situation
would have been much more problematic.46
Western investments in media have been much lower
in Ukraine than in Poland, Hungary, or the Baltic states.
The rare exceptions include glossy magazines and the
Internet, the only type of media in Ukraine where foreign
capital—both Western and Russian—is extensively rep-
resented. In many Central European countries (Poland,
Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia), Western media
companies invest in daily and weekly newspapers, sec-
tors that are unattractive in Ukraine because of their low
profitability. The only popular nationwide news outlet that
ever belonged to a Western investor was Korrespondent
magazine, whose former main owner, Jed Sunden, is a
U.S. citizen, but in April 2011 he sold his media holding,
KP media, which included Korrespondent, to Ukrainian
oligarch Petro Poroshenko.47 Foreign capital is also pres-
ent in the Ukrainian TV market, but it is Russians, not
“Westerners,” who invest in Ukrainian TV channels.48 In
general, however, Ukrainian television, which has become
increasingly profitable since the early 2000s, is dominated
by Ukrainian businessmen.
To be precise, Western companies did make substantial
investments in Ukrainian TV in the late 1990s and early
2000s, but they gradually began to leave the market, sell-
ing their shares to Ukrainian entrepreneurs. For example,
the U.S. company Story First Communications was one
of the co-founders of ICTV (International Commercial
Television), a national TV channel, but in 2000 it sold
the channel to the Ukrainian tycoon Viktor Pinchuk, the
son-in-law of then-president Leonid Kuchma. Similarly,
the U.S. company Central European Media Enterprises
(CME), which cofounded 1+1, one of the most popular
Ukrainian TV channels, in 1996 and became its 100 per-
cent owner in 2008, sold the channel in early 2010 to the
Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky.
Western investors stay away from the Ukrainian media
market because of the lack of stable, transparent business
regulation, the widespread corruption, and the uneasy
relationships between the media and politicians. For
example, the above-mentioned Jed Sunden, the former
co-owner of the KP media holding and founder of the
leading English-language weekly Kyiv Post, was detained
at Boryspil Airport in early 2000 and declared persona
non grata. He was allowed to enter Ukraine only after
diplomatic intervention from Washington.49
An additional barrier to foreign investors, especially
in television, is that the main players in the broadcasting
sector are not primarily driven by market logic. This dis-
torts market competition. The owners of Ukrainian TV
channels are entrepreneurs, but media outlets are not an
important source of capital for them. They see TV as a
medium in which they can accumulate political influence

8 Problems of Post-Communism November/December 2011
and “convert” it into opportunities to develop or support
their main businesses. They invest generously in their
media holdings and fight for the high ratings that deter-
mine how much influence a channel has, but obtaining an
(immediate) profit is not necessarily what motivates them.
For example, Rinat Akmetov’s “Ukraine” TV channel,
which has undergone basic and expensive reorganization
since 2005, has never turned a profit.50
This does not mean that Ukrainian media owners, espe-
cially media moguls, do not seek profits. On the contrary,
with the development of the media market, they increas-
ingly view their media companies as profitable businesses.
Nonetheless, they do not hesitate to pay overpriced sums
for broadcasting licenses, invest in disproportionately ex-
pensive equipment, or take other steps that seem illogical
from the point of view of normal market behavior. This is
because political goals take precedence over profits.
“External” Media Ownership. The most popular media
in Ukraine, especially at the national level, are privately
owned. The top five Ukrainian TV channels are all com-
mercial enterprises, whereas the state-owned UT-1 ranks
seventh, with an audience share of only 3.39 percent (see
Table 1).51 The top nationwide dailies, Fakty i kommentarii,
Argumenty i fakty, Segodnya, and Komsomolskaya pravda
v Ukraine, are also privately owned (see Table 2).52
What distinguishes the Ukrainian market from the
media markets in many other post-communist countries
of Central and Eastern Europe is the fact that the most
prominent media owners in Ukraine are industrial and
financial magnates with good political connections. Their
main interests are outside the media sector. Three of the
four media empires controlling the TV market in Ukraine
belong, respectively, to Viktor Pinchuk, the founder and
main owner of one of Ukraine’s leading steel industry
groups; Rinat Akhmetov, a coal and steel magnate and
the country’s richest man;53 and Igor Kolomoysky, the
leading partner of a banking and industrial conglomer-
ate engaged in the steel, chemical, and energy industries.
They need access to media to influence politics and protect
their businesses, given Ukraine’s weak state, unreliable
institutions, and lack of rule of law. Political influence
also may lead to commercial privileges and advantages
as state property continues to be privatized.54
In her study of contemporary Russian media, Koltsova
distinguishes two types of ownership: “internal” and
“external.” Internal media owners confine their activities
to media organizations and are guided mainly by their
interest in earning a profit from their media business.
External owners, in contrast, are “interested first of all
in their political capital or in the development of other
kinds of business for which they need the advertising-
propaganda resource of the mass media.”55
External ownership of media outlets constrains the
independence and pluralism of the media because of the
political and economic interests of their owners. Koltsova
notes that internal media owners, whose primary aim is
profit maximization, predominantly control the financial
aspects of their media business and never interfere in the
area of content. This is not the case for external owners,
for whom the media is a tool with which to realize their
political and economic goals. They can overlook some
financial mismanagement, but steadfastly exercise control
over content.56
External media ownership is not common in the
“settled” new democracies of Eastern and Central Europe.
Table 1
Ownership of Terrestrial TV Stations (2011)
TV channel Owner
Position in Gfk broadcast
ratings (June 2011)
Audience share
(Gfk Ukraine, June 2011)
Inter
InterMediaGroup (Valeriy
Khoroshkovsky) 1 15.45%
1+1 Ihor Kolomoyky Group 2 11.39%
“Ukraine” Rinat Akhmetov Group 3 9.99%
STB StarLightMedia (Viktor Pinchuk) 4 9.9%
ICTV StarLightMedia (Viktor Pinchuk) 5 8.04%
Novy StarLightMedia (Viktor Pinchuk) 6 6.51%
UT-1 State 7 3.39%
Source: Gfk Ukraine (June 2011); Diana Dutsyk, “Media Ownership Structure in Ukraine: Political Aspects,” in Public Service Broadcasting:
A German-Ukrainian Exchange of Opinions. Results of the Conference on October 20th, 2010 in Cologne, Germany, ed. Olexiy Khabyuk,
Manfred Kops (Cologne, 2010), pp. 29–40.

Ryabinska Media in Post-Communist Ukraine 9
Media outlets in these countries are owned mostly by
national and foreign companies for which media is the
main business. The cases of entry of external capital into
domestic media markets are a cause of concern among
analysts.57 Post-communist countries with weak media
markets (Macedonia, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania) tend to
be dominated by external owners. The media in all these
countries suffer from the interplay of economic, political,
and media power concentrated in the hands of the same
owners. In some cases, the owners of media conglomer-
ates specialize in the media business. In Romania, for
example, the media landscape is a mix of outlets that are
profit-oriented and outlets for which profits are incidental
to protecting and promoting the economic and political
interests of their owners.58 However, in all the post-
communist countries external ownership of media outlets
hampers the democratic performance of the media.
Ironically enough, although private ownership is con-
sidered an important condition for the independence of
the media,59 the process of media appropriation by large
financial-industrial groups in Ukraine was accompanied
by a reduction of their autonomy and freedom.60 Ukrainian
“big fish” began to seize portions of the media market in
the mid-1990s. By 1995, interest groups that had both
administrative decision-making power and economic
resources began to emerge. Their economic power was
consolidated through the large-scale privatization process
conducted by President Kuchma. Ukrainian oligarchic
clans also gradually gained ownership or control in the
media sector.61
This trend intensified after 1998, when a global finan-
cial crisis significantly weakened private media compa-
nies. Their establishment was possible after the adoption
of laws in 1990–1991 abolishing the Communist Party’s
monopoly on the media and allowing private ownership
of media organizations. If before 1998 many broadcasting
companies functioned as conventional, middle-sized busi-
ness structures and were relatively free and independent,
the crisis—combined with growing political pressure by
the Kuchma administration—forced them to sell their
shares to politically and economically powerful oligarchic
clans. Within a year or two, the main nationwide Ukrai-
nian TV channels (Inter, 1+1, ICTV, TET) fell under the
control of industrial magnates. Most of these figures were
members of the entourage of President Kuchma—his
son-in-law, steel-pipe tycoon Viktor Pinchuk; leaders of
the pro-presidential Social-Democratic Party of Ukraine
(United); energy barons Viktor Medvedchuk and the
Syrkis brothers; and members of the wealthy donetski
clan of Donbas magnates, which includes Akhmetov.
This process triggered a constant reduction of media
independence, which in 2002 resulted in the introduction
of censorship by means of temnyky, unofficial instructions
issued by the Kuchma administration to the main media
outlets “recommending” what events to cover and how.
Thus, oligarchs bought media outlets in the late 1990s,
but not necessarily as financial investments. Instead, they
did so as a means of accumulating political capital and
enhancing their personal prestige. Aleksander Bohutskyi,
general director of ICTV, noted that in the 1990s owning a
TV channel or at least a radio station was a status symbol
for Ukrainian businessmen.62
Media-political relations changed after the Orange
Revolution in 2004–5, which brought Viktor Yushchenko
to the presidency instead of Kuchma’s designated succes-
sor, Viktor Yanukovych. Yushchenko canceled the practice
of issuing temnyky and other forms of presidential control
over the content of the media. The Orange Revolution
elevated a new group of political elites; many of the oli-
garchs who had supported Kuchma had to withdraw—at
least temporarily—from prominent roles in parliament,
the government, or the state administration. Oligarchs
who owned influential media shifted their focus to the
profit-making component of their media portfolios. By
the early 2000s, their television companies reached a
break-even point, if not turning a small profit. From this
moment onward, it is fair to use the term “marketization”
to describe the Ukrainian TV business.
Table 2
Ownership of Top Four National Dailies (2010)
Newspaper Owner
Fakty i kommentarii Viktor Pinchuk
Argumenty i fakty Boris Lozhkin
Segodnya Rinat Akhmetov
Komsomolskaya pravda v Ukraine Boris Lozhkin, Ihor Kolomoysky
Sources: Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, “Ukrainian Media Landscape—2010,” 2011, www.kas.de/ukraine/ukr/publications/23004/; Konrad-
Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS), “KAS Democracy Report 2008: Ukraine,” 2008, www.kas.de/wf/en/33.14855/.

10 Problems of Post-Communism November/December 2011
By the early 2000s, Ukrainian TV channels had begun
to compete for revenue and operate as conventional busi-
nesses. The weakening of state control over the media
and the growing marketization (at least in the field of
broadcasting) did not, however, lead to their independence
from political and economic interests.
On the one hand, after the Orange Revolution newspa-
pers and TV channels allowed far more criticism of the
government and leading politicians than in the Kuchma
era. On the other hand, the Ukrainian media’s dependence
on politics (and economic interests) did not go away in
2005; it merely changed in form. If, during Kuchma’s
presidency, the media published materials propagating the
policies of the president and the government and remained
silent about their misconduct because they were forced to,
under Yushchenko they began to praise political leaders
or criticize their rivals for pay.
In the search for profits, the owners of the Ukrainian
media did their best to attract any type of advertising.
Starting in 2006–7, jeansa (hidden advertising) became
a very common sight in Ukrainian newspapers and on TV
channels. Incessant and fierce rivalries for political power
between oligarchic clans conditioned the popularity of
political jeansa, especially before elections.
During the most recent electoral campaigns (the 2006
and 2008 parliamentary elections and the 2010 presiden-
tial elections), Ukrainian media monitoring organizations
registered record amounts of jeansa in newspapers and
on TV.63 In 2008 pre-paid materials accounted for up to
80 percent of all media content.64 Media experts reported
that before the elections the media set fixed prices not
only for official political advertising, but also for materi-
als produced to order.65 Before the 2006 parliamentary
elections, for instance, the price for hidden political ad-
vertising on a national TV channel was 2,500 hryvnias
(about $495) per minute, whereas a twenty-minute talk
show on a low-rated TV channel cost 30,000 hryvnias
(about $5,940).66 One could contact an editorial office and
order not only a “promotional story” about a candidate or
a “discrediting story” about the candidate’s rivals, but also
something more significant. According to media expert
Otar Dovzhenko, one top-rated national TV channel of-
fered a “loyalty package” guaranteeing positive coverage
of a candidate, regular appearances of the candidate on
the air, blockage of critical materials launched by the
candidate’s rivals, and even the maximum reduction of
materials about other candidates; this package could be
purchased in 2006 for around $2–3 million.67
Ukrainian media experts have described the period
of jeansa dominance from 2005 to 2010 as a time when
“censorship by the authorities” was replaced with “censor-
ship by money.” After the Orange Revolution, against all
expectations, the media did not become public watchdogs
or platforms for debate on issues of public interest, but
instead were merely mouthpieces for big business and
politics.
Moreover, while the oligarchs adopted a more com-
mercial approach to programming, they continued to use
the media for their own political schemes. The best-known
example is the “war” that Inter TV waged against then–
prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko in 2009 as part of a
conflict around the gas supply business between one of
the channel’s owners and the prime minister’s political
group, the so-called Bloc of Yulia Tymoshenko.68
The “Orange period” of relative press freedom ended
in February 2010 when Viktor Yanukovych won the presi-
dency. The new president’s team implemented a return
to centralized control over the media, as practiced under
Kuchma. However, their policy is more sophisticated in
that it takes into account the mistakes made by Kuchma’s
advisers. For example, whereas the Kuchma adminis-
tration distributed its temnyky by fax or e-mail (which
facilitated disclosure by the media community), today’s
government instructions are communicated to the media
by telephone or in private to avoid leaving a paper trail.
However, the changed character of TV news programs,
which have become uniformly uncritical of the president
and the ruling coalition, indicates that the content of pri-
vate media is again being orchestrated from above.
Reports by media monitoring and research organi-
zations confirm that today’s information programs in
Ukraine are much like those in Kuchma’s (and even in
Soviet) times: They are full of government propaganda
and manipulations, and the performance of power-holders
is either covered positively or (in the case of unpopular
decisions) not mentioned.69 This shift in political cover-
age, affecting both state and private media, occurred
immediately after President Yanukovych came to office.
Reporters at private TV channels reacted to the pressure
exerted on their editorial offices by issuing public state-
ments on censorship and taking other organized actions.
However, the industrial magnates who own the channels
did not protest the infringement of their media indepen-
dence. As long as their main business interests (which lie
outside the media sector) are not troubled, they readily
adjust the editorial policies of their channels to the de-
mands of current political leaders.
External ownership of media, the predominant form
in Ukraine, significantly hampers the independence and
pluralism of the media. The media owned by oligarchs

Ryabinska Media in Post-Communist Ukraine 11
serve at best as a mouthpiece for business oligarchs
and political groups and have little in common with the
democratic functions of a free press. The changes that
have taken place in Ukrainian media since Yanukovych’s
victory in the 2010 presidential elections suggest that hav-
ing the media concentrated in the hands of a few external
owners considerably helped the Yanukovych team to curb
the relative independence of the media.
Russia experienced a similar reverse development in
the early 2000s that established centralized state control
over the most significant media, further suggesting that
external media ownership may facilitate the process of
reversing the democratization of the media in post-com-
munist countries. In the 1990s, Russia owed the relative
pluralism and independence of its media to their owner-
ship by several oligarchs whose interests did not always
coincide with the interests of the Kremlin and who used
their media outlets to criticize the government and further
their economic and political goals. In the early years of
his presidency, Vladimir Putin methodically attacked the
media empires owned by his critics and redistributed their
holdings among state-controlled businesses or oligarchs
loyal to the Kremlin.70 For example, Gazprom, a state-
controlled gas monopoly, acquired the popular nationwide
NTV channel owned by Vladimir Gusinsky, whereas
ORT, the TV channel with the widest reception area in
Russia, passed from Kremlin critic Boris Berezovsky to
Kremlin-connected Roman Abramovich.71 These high-
profile cases cowed other independent media, which
began to self-censor content and avoid challenging the
regime, practices now widespread among journalists in
Russia. Today’s Russian media are obedient servants of
the regime, manipulating public opinion in the interests
of the Kremlin.
Another pernicious effect of external ownership is
corruption, especially among journalism professionals.
Journalists employed by external media owners become
accustomed to pleasing their masters rather than meet-
ing the public need for information or striving to act in
the public interest. Studies of the culture of journalism
in Russia, where external media ownership is common,
show that journalists there perceive their profession as “a
type of PR, working for the interests of influential groups
and persons in politics and business.”72 Pulled into the
clientelist orbits of their patrons, they serve particularist
interests and not the interests of society at large.73 They
“consider venality and professionalism to be of the same
order” and judge fellow journalists not on the basis of
ethics but by their ability to earn money.74 Professional
attitudes of this kind impede the democratic transforma-
tion of the media but seem quite compatible with a reverse
movement toward centralized control of the media.
Karol Jakubowicz describes the appropriation of
the media market by oligarchic groups in some post-
communist Central and Eastern European countries as a
“re-monopolization.” In his view, abolition of state media
monopolies (de-monopolization), media differentiation,
democratization, and professionalization of journalists
constitute the minimum of what would ensure qualitative
change in Central and Eastern European media as com-
pared to the situation under communist rule.75 In some
countries, such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary,
Slovenia, and Estonia, the process of de-monopolization
was relatively successful and resulted in the creation of
a developed media market with diverse, privately owned
outlets independent both financially and generally.76 In
many of the former Soviet republics, the media were in
fact “re-monopolized” by media groups headed by oli-
garchs closely associated with—or part of—the political
elite. Instead of gaining independence, the media became
dependent on political-economic elites that use the media
for personal political and economic purposes.
Concentration of Ownership. Ukrainian media share with
the media in other Central and East European countries a
tendency toward concentration of media ownership. The
major owners on the Ukrainian media market own media
“empires” that encompass TV and radio, newspapers, and
other kinds of outlets. Rinat Akhmetov owns the high-
rating national TV channel “Ukraine,” the national daily
Segodnya, the Internet portal Segodnya, a printing house
in Vyshgorod, and a number of local media outlets in the
Donbas. Viktor Pinchuk is the owner of four national TV
channels—ICTV, STB, Novy, and the M1 music chan-
nel, the largest-circulation daily Fakty i kommentarii
the publishing house Ekonomika (newspaper Delo, and
magazines Investgazeta and Marketing Media Review),
and other media. Ihor Kolomoysky owns the national
1+1, TET, and Kino TV channels, several newspapers and
magazines, is a co-owner of the UNIAN news agency, and
in 2010 extended his media empire to the media holding
Glavred, which includes several Internet sites and news
outlets.77 The broadcasting sector of the Ukrainian media
is divided between four financial-political groups: the
InterMediaGroup group, led by Khoroshkovsky, cur-
rently the head of the Security Service of Ukraine,78 and
the groups owned respectively by Akhmetov, Pinchuk,
and Kolomoysky.
The high concentration of the Ukrainian media mar-
ket means that several large media corporations receive

12 Problems of Post-Communism November/December 2011
the lion’s share of the advertising “pie.” For example, in
2009 the advertising revenue of the national TV channels
totaled 2.1 million hryvnias, whereas Khoroshkovsky’s
InterMediaGroup (TV channels Inter, NTN, K1, K2,
and Megasport) and Pinchuk’s StarLightMedia, accrued
almost 1.6 million hryvnias. This means that just two
media players in the Ukrainian TV market obtained 75
percent of the total advertising revenue.79
The media market in Ukraine is subject to anti-trust
legislation, but in practice media monopolies are not
regulated. The government’s anti-trust agency is unable
to effectively combat the monopolization of the media
market.80 Ukrainian media moguls conceal their owner-
ship of the media with the help of offshore entities and
figureheads. At the same time, there is no legal provision
for more transparent media ownership, and attempts to
draft such a law have, to date, not proved successful. As a
result, the process of media concentration does not come
up against any significant government barriers.
Media concentration is harmful for at least for two
reasons. First, it hampers the diversification of program-
ming. In Ukraine, where the main TV channels are
owned by four large corporations, airtime is filled with
the same kinds of product—cheap Russian soap operas,
American shows, Russian comedies and gala concerts,
and national talent shows. Second, it endangers political
pluralism. This becomes obvious in situations when the
political interests of the media owners coincide, at least
temporarily. Under Yushchenko’s presidency, the first
alarming case of this kind took place during the Kyiv
mayoral elections in 2008.
Leonid Chernovetsky, who was seeking another term
as mayor, was for various reasons a convenient candidate
for the owners of all the main TV channels. No wonder,
then, that the channels waged a campaign on his behalf.
Special “capital city” segments added to the major news
programs did little more than advertise Chernovetsky’s
campaign. At the same time, news programs almost never
mentioned the candidates running against him. There was
also no critical coverage of Chernovetsky’s performance
in office, although his personality and his policies as
mayor gave plenty of opportunity for such a critique (dur-
ing his first term in office, for example, Chernovetsky was
twice denounced as “Press Enemy No. 1”). The editorial
offices of the major national TV channels claim that they
received strict orders “from above” (i.e., from their top
managers or owners) to not criticize Chernovetsky. They
were told that this order “was the decision of sharehold-
ers.”81 No journalists attempted to disobey it. The situa-
tion led Viktoria Syumar, director of the Institute of Mass
Information, to concede: “It was we, the journalists who
got Chernovetsky re-elected.”82
The Kyiv mayoral elections serve as proof that, even
when state pressure is reduced, concentrated ownership
may have grave consequences for independent, plural
media. The whole history of media oligopoly in Ukraine,
enriched recently by the evident strengthening of central-
ized control of the media under President Yanukovych,
argues in favor of the thesis that the concentration of
media ownership in the weak democracies of post-Soviet
countries is an important obstacle to the democratization
of the media.
The Russian Factor. Last but not least, the strong com-
petition coming from Russian newspapers, radio, and
TV channels weakens the Ukrainian media market and
hampers its development. The Ukrainian versions of the
Russian newspapers Komsomolskaya pravda, Izvestia, and
Argumenty i fakty are very popular;83 Argumenty i fakty is
the second most circulated newspaper in the country (see
Table 2). Russian TV channels are also popular. They are
available in Ukraine via cable and satellite, and in some
areas via terrestrial television (in U.S. usage, broadcast
television). This is especially true for the eastern territories
of Ukraine bordering with Russia and populated mostly
by Russian-speaking inhabitants, as well as the south
of Ukraine, also populated by Russian-speakers. In the
Crimea, more than half the population gets its news from
Russian TV channels.84
Products of the Russian media industry get to Ukrainian
audiences not only via Russian TV channels. Ukrainian
TV schedules are heavily padded with Russian serials,
reality shows, and gala concerts. Russian soap operas and
comedy shows are constantly among the most popular
programs in the Ukrainian TV ratings.85 In comparison
with the somewhat parochial domestic media product, the
Russian TV industry offers programs of higher quality
and variety. Ukrainian TV channels willingly purchase
Russian programs and serials, first, because viewers like
them, and second, because they are cheap. Since they usu-
ally come to Ukraine after having recouped their costs in
the huge Russian market, their prices are much lower than
the prices of Ukrainian product. This unequal competition
undermines Ukraine’s own media producers.86
The presence of a stronger media market in the neigh-
borhood that intrudes on a country’s information space
is typical of several other post-communist countries. It
can be found, first, in the Balkan region, where the media
of Macedonia, Montenegro, and Bosnia-Herzegovina
face strong competition from Serbian and, sometimes,

Ryabinska Media in Post-Communist Ukraine 13
Croatian newspapers, TV, and radio, and, second, in some
former Soviet countries (Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania,
Estonia), which experience the “intrusion” of Russian
media into their markets. In all these cases, the neighbor-
ing media entering the country’s market are supported by
a larger audience and a correspondingly larger advertising
market, and thus compete with national producers under
nonequal conditions.
What is special in this respect about Ukraine in com-
parison with other countries is the extraordinarily large
scale of the neighbor’s presence in its media market. For
example, whereas in Lithuania in 2007 the share of Rus-
sian programs, TV series, movies, and talk shows in the
broadcasting time of major TV networks ranged from 1
percent to 31 percent,87 in Ukraine it was and continues
to be much higher. According to the State Committee
of Television and Radio Broadcasting of Ukraine, up to
80 percent of the broadcast time of Ukrainian radio and
TV channels is filled with non-Ukrainian product.88 The
lion’s share is Russian product. Even more dramatic is
the picture of the book market in Ukraine. According
to market research ordered by the Renaissance Founda-
tion in 2007 as well as assessments by experts from the
Ukrainian Publishers and Booksellers Association, about
85 percent of the books sold in Ukraine are produced
in Russia.89
State Mechanisms to Pressure the Media
Market and Commercial Media
No analysis of the Ukrainian media market would be
complete without some discussion of the role of the state.
Although state-media relations in Ukraine are unstable and
largely depend on oligarchs who exercise influence in this
area by taking part in parliamentary law-making or by ap-
pointing their allies to the state bodies that oversee the media,
it is worth examining the tools for regulation of the media
market that the Ukrainian state has at its disposal.
Like several other post-communist countries, the
Ukrainian state plays a constraining rather than enabling
role in the development of the media market and the
enhancement of independent, privately owned media.
Ukraine’s foremost politicians formed their views on the
relations between media and politics during the Soviet
epoch; they demonstrate little knowledge of or interest
in the essence of freedom of speech and prefer to treat
the media as servants of the political interests of power-
holders. Moreover, the state does not simply hamper the
privatization of state- and municipally owned media,
leaving them at the disposal of national or local govern-
ments, but it also applies different mechanisms to control
the commercial sector of the media.
Selectively Enforced Laws. One such mechanism is me-
dia legislation. As exploited by those who hold power,
laws pertaining to the media are often transformed into a
tool for disciplining disobedient media. According to the
Report of the Moscow Media Law and Policy Institute
(2007), Ukrainian media legislation is the second most
developed, from the standpoint of legal guarantees of
mass media freedom, among the countries of the former
Soviet Union, including the Baltic states. However, the
authorities employ legal drawbacks and loopholes to im-
pede media independence and democratic performance.
For example, in summer 2009 the Ukrainian parliament
amended the national criminal code to add the posses-
sion of pornography to the master list of crimes. The
amendment made it a criminal offense to electronically or
physically store literature, images, or other objects of “a
pornographic nature” intended for sale or distribution, but
does not clearly define what constitutes “a pornographic
nature.” Human rights activists and lawyers in Ukraine
fear that the law will be misused by the police to blackmail
individual citizens and editorial offices.
The next shortcoming of Ukraine’s media legislation is
that some of it is vague or contradictory, which opens up
the possibility for arbitrary decisions by judges and regu-
latory bodies. For example, the National TV and Radio
Broadcasting Council (NTRBC) often uses the language
quota regulations to punish broadcasters. These regula-
tions limit the amount of broadcasting in languages other
than Ukrainian, but they are inconsistent. For example,
Article 10 of the law governing the use of languages in
TV and radio broadcasts treats the Ukrainian quota dif-
ferently in two separate paragraphs. Whereas Paragraph
3 requires that every non-Ukrainian film or program be
dubbed in Ukrainian, Paragraph 4 establishes a 75 percent
quota on Ukrainian language programming for national
broadcasters, which means that it is acceptable that some
non-Ukrainian programs (as much as 25 percent of total
broadcasting time) are not dubbed.90 The inconsistency
of these regulations gives the NTRBC an opportunity to
enforce the law selectively.
What is more, the media legislation is frequently
changed, which causes additional problems for me-
dia organizations and makes them vulnerable to state
pressure. According to the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung
Democracy Report for 2008, Ukraine’s media law was
modified and supplemented as many as ten times dur-
ing the preceding five years.91 In 2008, for example, the

14 Problems of Post-Communism November/December 2011
NTRBC introduced new provisions on production and
language quotas in broadcasting.92 These raised the quota
of Ukrainian-language broadcasting from 75 percent to
80 percent. Editorial offices were troubled, because it
was difficult to follow the new requirements on startup:
Broadcasters calculated that to meet the new NTRBC
demands, they had to spend an additional $200 million
to translate foreign-language programs (mostly Russian)
into Ukrainian.93
However, the language quota change in license provi-
sions and the subsequent NTRBC monitoring of national
TV channels did not mean that every channel with a broad-
cast schedule that did not satisfy the 80 percent Ukrainian-
language rule was deprived of its license. Channels 1+1,
NTN, Ukraine, and Novy, according to the NTRBC moni-
toring, did not fulfill the Ukrainian-language requirements,
but they were not punished at all. The sanctions (or, to be
more precise, a warning on sanctions) were received only
by the Inter channel, which was not loyal to then-president
Victor Yushchenko. As the president had de facto control
of the NTRBC up to mid-2009, he was able to use amend-
ments to discipline broadcasters.
Regulatory and Monitoring Bodies. The institutions that
regulate and monitor the media are another tool employed
by the state to control the media market. Marius Dragomir,
in his study of media reforms in post-communist Europe,94
shows that post-communist governments employ two
main strategies to exert influence upon media via insti-
tutions: they either adapt existing broadcasting councils
whose real task is to regulate the activities of TV and
radio in the name of the public good, or they establish
new monitoring institutions similar to the censorship
committees of the communist era.
For Ukrainian politicians, the broadcasting council
is an important means of controlling and regulating the
media market. The National Television and Radio Broad-
casting Council was created in 1994 as a public regulatory
body, with a remit to supervise broadcasters and grant
licenses. However, from its early days, the NTRBC was
accused of manipulating the procedures for awarding and
canceling TV and radio licenses to further the political
and economic interests of its members or the political
groups backing them. This was claimed, for example, in
thirty lawsuits filed by journalists in 2002.95 In the first
years of Yanukovych’s presidency, the NTRBC repeat-
edly proved to be an instrument of political control over
broadcasting. For example, in June 2010 it forwarded a
court decision to withdraw frequencies awarded to the
opposition-oriented channel TBi on the eve of the presi-
dential elections.96 Later, in June 2011 it refused to award
a license for satellite broadcasting to TV channel Info-24,
founded by managers and journalists of TBi.
At the time of writing this article, the licensing of
broadcast media is a very nontransparent and shadowy
process, just as it was in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
According to many broadcasting managers and editors,
the NTRBC has become the “traffic cop” of Ukraine’s
television and radio space,97 a disparaging nickname
given the poor reputation of its bribe-seeking namesakes
in the Ukrainian State Automotive Inspection. Since the
licensing regulations are unclear and ambiguous, it is hard
to know what conditions must be met in order to get a
license and exactly what actions are in violation of the
licensing requirements. Besides, the NTRBC itself very
often either fails to punish license violations or penalizes
only arbitrarily selected violators.
This leads to a situation where practically every broad-
casting company bends the regulations to some degree.
Consequently, the regulatory power of the NTRBC is a
convenient tool for the punishment of dissenting broad-
casters. As Telekytyka magazine characterized the state of
affairs, “as far as every channel is violating the law or its
license to a certain extent, the NTRBC may be a univer-
sal tool of influence on television businesses like the tax
administration or fire inspectors,” government agencies
traditionally used to harass businesses.98
As mentioned previously, some post-communist states
also influence the media through new monitoring entities
created officially for some respectable purpose, such as
the protection of state secrets, but in fact fulfilling the
functions of censorship bodies.99 The recent history of
post-communist countries brings several examples of
such institutions: the Inspection Agency of State Secrets
in Uzbekistan, which reviews and approves the publica-
tion of news stories; the Turkmen State Committee for the
Protection of State Secrets, which de facto screens critical
and opposition views in the media; the State Inspectorate
to Protect the Freedom of the Press and Mass Information
at the Russian Ministry of Press and Mass Information,
which functions as a censorship body.100 In Ukraine,
this tendency is exemplified by an institution named the
National Expert Commission for Public Moral Protec-
tion (NEC), which is progressively becoming a powerful
means to execute governmental control over media.
The NEC was created by the Cabinet of Ministers of
Ukraine in November 2004 shortly before Yushchenko
was elected president. Its declared aim was “to ensure the
realization of state policies in the sphere of the protection
of public morals.”101 The Cabinet of Ministers appoints

Ryabinska Media in Post-Communist Ukraine 15
the head of the NEC102 and approves the composition of
its membership. The duties of the NEC include supervi-
sion of adherence to the Law on the Protection of Public
Morals, monitoring of TV, radio, video, and other infor-
mation products with regard to their compliance with the
regulations on protection of public morals, and prevention
of the distribution of materials containing scenes of vio-
lence and pornography.103 The Law on the Protection of
Public Morals, among other things, bans the production
and distribution of materials propagating war and hatred
on religious or national grounds, fascism and neofascism,
and harmful habits such as alcoholism, addiction to drugs
or toxic substances, and smoking.
The NEC was initially conceived as an expert agency
whose main function was to analyze media products based
on morality guidelines, but since 2008 it has become an
influential media-controlling body. For example, it ef-
fectively prohibited further airing of The Simpsons by
issuing a verdict that the cartoon series might provoke
juvenile delinquency. Based on its evaluation, the National
Television and Radio Broadcasting Council warned TV
channels not to air The Simpsons under penalty of a fine or
even license withdrawal. NEC complaints similarly led to
the cancellation of several comedy programs and serials,
including a Russian adaptation of the American sitcom
Married . . . with Children. It also prohibited the screen-
ing of Sacha Baron Cohen’s film Bruno and seized copies
of the Ukrainian novel The Woman of His Dreams by the
winner of the Shevchenko Prize, Oles Ulianenko.
What appears to be even more significant about the NEC
is that its full potential has not been realized, but could be
activated under the prevailing circumstances. The NEC is not
independent, but is subordinate to the government and hence
can be directly used for political purposes. The legislation
that regulates it, the Law on the Protection of Public Morals,
contains a number of vague clauses concerning freedom of
expression and information distribution.104 Some of them run
counter to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human
Rights.105 According to Professor Dirk Voorhoof of Ghent
University, who carried out an expert analysis of the law for
the Council of Europe in 2004, this legislation is unclear
and ambiguous and has a very wide purview of application.
Consequently, the NEC has the potential to become a true
weapon against independent media.
Disregard for the Rule of Law and Failure
to Protect Media Independence
A specific feature of the Ukrainian media market and the
environment in which it exists is a profound disregard for
the rule of law. As a result, although Ukrainian media law
is considered to be rather liberal and well developed, it
does not ensure the independence of commercial media
and protect them from political pressure.106 Ukrainian
legislation contains such advanced elements as a law on
access to public information, legal provisions on editorial
independence, and civil (not criminal) responsibility for
defamation, but the democratizing effect of these laws is
hampered by serious enforcement problems. Ukraine’s
media laws and regulations are routinely violated by state
officials, by media regulatory bodies, and by private media
enterprises and their owners.
The government itself displays a disregard for the law.
For example, in 1999 President Kuchma refused to ap-
point his four members of the NTRBC because he disliked
the members appointed by the parliament. The NTRBC,
in consequence, was unable to function for more than a
year—until the parliament gave in and appointed four
other people, after which the president finally appointed
his quota of members.107
Equally dramatic is the situation regarding parliament’s
adherence to the law. As a case in point, in 2008–9 the term
of office of two members of the NTRBC expired.108 They
had both been appointed under the parliamentary quota, and
parliament was required by law to appoint replacements
within two months.109 But as parliament never appointed the
new members, the “old” ones continued to serve until the
beginning of 2010, rendering as questionable the legality
of NTRBC actions taken during that period.
The decisions of the NTRBC are often in conflict
with the law. Not only does it award and renew licenses
to companies that violate licensing agreements, but it
also tolerates the operations of unlicensed broadcasting
companies. In 2008, the NTRBC turned a blind eye to
a gross violation of the licensing regulations—the so-
called exchange of logos between Megasport, a national
terrestrial sports channel, and K1, which broadcasts only
in thirteen cities (plus cable broadcasting). The license
holders of these channels, in fact, exchanged not only
logos, but also frequencies and licenses. The Megasport
channel, licensed to broadcast for a national audience,
switched to a narrower broadcast signal, giving its place
to K1. The NTRBC took no action against, once more
demonstrating that it is governed not by the law but by
other considerations.
Media companies in Ukraine also often break the law.
The most widespread infringements by private broadcast-
ers include breaches of license agreements, exceeding
advertising limits, and violation of language quotas. An-
other common practice of media owners and management

16 Problems of Post-Communism November/December 2011
is paying salaries “in envelopes,” a violation of the labor
regulations.110 This is especially harmful for the indepen-
dence of editorial personnel and individual journalists.
When the size of a journalist’s salary is not a matter of
public knowledge, the manager is free to pay less.
Disregard for the law has a very negative impact on
the independence of the media. The law serves not so
much to protect journalists and freedom of speech as to
punish disobedient media. Media and journalists have
little chance to defend their rights in courts. While there
has been somewhat less violence against journalists since
the great public outcry about Georgiy Gongadze’s murder
and especially since the Orange Revolution, harassment
and intimidation are still not rare, and these crimes are
not properly investigated.111 The most striking example is
the lack of progress in the investigation of the Gongadze
murder, but there are also a number of instances where
the perpetrators of other crimes against journalists have
not been convicted or sent to prison. According to Vik-
tor Danylov, the director of the OGO Publishing House,
“Crimes against journalists gain broad resonance in the
media, but actually there are no completed investigations
and prosecution of the guilty.”112 The impunity of those
who assault journalists has led to a state of permanent
tension and fear among media professionals, making them
resort to self-censorship.
Karol Jakubowicz considers inadequate separation
of powers and disregard for the law to be the two most
characteristic features of the so-called Type B countries
(mainly former republics of the Soviet Union: Moldova,
Ukraine, Russia, etc.), as opposed to the Type A countries,
namely, the “established” new democracies of Central
and Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland,
Slovenia, Estonia).113 In Type A countries, “media wars”
are conducted within the bounds of law, while in Type
B countries, they are carried out irrespective of existing
laws and institutions.114 This partly explains the different
pace of media democratization in the countries of these
two groups. Jakubowicz claims that effective rule of law
is an indispensable condition for the establishment of
media independence and autonomy. It is vital that the
legal framework designed to protect media autonomy be
respected by the media, political circles, and the state ap-
paratus.115 Unfortunately, the current situation in Ukraine
falls short of this demand.
Conclusion
The preceding discussion has analyzed the media market
and media ownership in Ukraine from the standpoint of
their impact on media independence and pluralism. It
indicates some commonalities and differences between
the Ukrainian media market and the media in other post-
communist Central and East European countries.
The analysis showed that the Ukrainian media system,
like the media in Europe (and the rest of the world), are
undergoing the processes of commercialization, tab-
loidization, and concentration of media ownership. What
is specific to Ukraine, however, is that the concentration
of market ownership is predominantly conditioned by
political and not just commercial interests.
The comparison of the Ukrainian media market with
the markets in Central and Eastern Europe showed that
Ukrainian commercial media have much more in com-
mon with the media of south European post-communist
countries (Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Montenegro,
Romania, Serbia) than with the media in Poland, Hungary,
or the Czech Republic. Compared to the “advanced” new
democracies of Central and Eastern Europe, Ukraine
has not managed to create a large and developed media
market, where the high profits of media enterprises can
ensure their independence from political interests. Like
the countries of Southern Europe and some post-Soviet
countries (excluding the Baltic states), Ukraine has an
underdeveloped media market with a low advertising
budget. As a result, most of its private media are unable
to cut the links that make them economically dependent
on political interests. As is also the case in the countries
mentioned above, the Ukrainian market hosts too many
media, further impairing both their profitability and their
autonomy. The market “overpopulation” in all of these
countries has essentially the same cause—media owners
set up or maintain media businesses not in quest of finan-
cial success but to exercise political influence.
What is specific to Ukraine, however, is the pre-
dominance of oligarchs as owners of its media. These
industrial-financial magnates are “external” to the media
industry, because their main business interests are not in
the media but in steel, coal, energy, banking, and other
spheres. They see media ownership as a means to further
their economic interests, which depend extensively on
political decisions. They use the media to gain political
weight in order to influence these decisions. Oligarchic
ownership of Ukraine’s major media considerably con-
strains their autonomy. Because they are politics-driven
rather than market-driven, Ukraine’s most important
media enterprises are anything but politically indepen-
dent. Significantly, oligarchic ownership of the media
enhances the risk of introducing centralized control over
the media. When a media market is divided between a

Ryabinska Media in Post-Communist Ukraine 17
few owners highly dependent on politics, it is easier to
get their compliance to serve a ruling political group than
would be the case if media owners were more numerous
and more independent. The past decade of media history
in Russia and recent events in Ukraine give convincing
proof of this.
The Ukrainian media market differs from media mar-
kets in Central and Eastern Europe in two other ways.
First, the privatization of the media is still incomplete
and thus there are a large number of state-owned and
municipal media. Second, it is in competition with the
powerful presence of a neighboring (Russian) media
market supported by a larger readership and a larger
advertising budget. Both these features distort market
competition in Ukraine and reduce the sustainability of
the majority of its players.
What is common to the media in Ukraine and such
countries as Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, or Albania is
that in all of them the state makes recurrent attempts to
exert pressure on private media. The means of influencing
the media market in Ukraine and these other countries
include flawed and frequently changing media legislation
and licensing policies, and, in addition, the widespread
misuse of the law by the government.
An important obstacle to the development of a strong
Ukrainian media market is the general disregard for the
law in the country. The unhealthy situation whereby the
law does not protect freedom of the press, but is used to
punish of critically minded media, aggravates the condi-
tion of the national media market and restricts the inde-
pendence and pluralism of the opinions voiced in it.
Notes
1. S. Hrvatin, L. Kuèiæ, and B. Petkoviæ, Media Ownership Impact on
Media Independence and Pluralism in Slovenia and Other Post-Socialist
European Countries (Ljubljana: Peace Institute, 2004).
2. Following Katrin Voltmer’s argument, we consider that the role of
the state vis-à-vis the media is not necessarily antagonistic and lack of state
regulation does not necessarily mean more freedom for the media. On the
contrary, as will be shown below, a weak state unable to pass and enforce laws
providing freedom to the mass media may be detrimental for the development
of independent media. See Katrin Voltmer, “Comparing Media Systems in New
Democracies: East Meets West,” Central European Journal of Communication
1 (2008): 37–38.
3. Karol Jakubowicz, Rude Awakening: Social and Media Change in
Central and Eastern Europe (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2007); Karol
Jakubowicz and Miklós Sükösd, “Twelve Concepts Regarding Media System
Evolution and Democratization in Post-Communist Societies,” in Finding the
Right Place on the Map, ed. Karol Jakubowicz and Miklós Sükösd (Chicago:
Intellect Books, 2008), pp. 9–40; Jane L. Curry, “Eastern Europe’s Postcom-
munist Media,” in (Un)civil Societies: Human Rights and Democratic Transi-
tions in Eastern Europe and Latin America, ed. Rachel A. May, Andrew K.
Milton, Marc Belanger, and Jane L. Curry (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books,
2005), pp. 139–61.
4. Peter Gross, Entangled Evolutions: Media and Democratization in
Eastern Europe (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2002);
Jakubowicz, Rude Awakening; B. Dobek-Ostrowska and M. G³owacki, ed.,
Comparing Media Systems in Central Europe: Between Commercialization and
Politicization (Wroc³aw: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wroc³awskiego, 2008).
5. Curry, “Eastern Europe’s Postcommunist Media.”
6. Dobek-Ostrowska and G³owacki, Comparing Media Systems; Karol
Jakubowicz, “Post-Communist Media Development in Perspective” (2005),
available at http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/id/02841.pdf, accessed September
21, 2011; A. Wyka, “On the Way to Dumbing Down . . . The Case of Cen-
tral Europe,” Central European Journal of Communication 1, no. 2 (2009):
133–47.
7. Zrinjka Peruško and Helena Popoviç, “Media Concentration Trends
in Central and Eastern Europe,” in Finding the Right Place on the Map, pp.
165–190; Andrea Czepek, Melanie Hellwig, and Eva Novak, “Introduction:
Structural Inhibition of Media Freedom and Plurality Across Europe,” in Press
Freedom and Pluralism in Europe: Concepts and Conditions, ed. Andrea
Czepek, Melanie Hellwig, and Eva Novak (Chicago: Intellect Books, 2009),
pp. 9–22.
8. Peter Bajomi-Lazar, “The Consolidation of Media Freedom in Post-
Communist Countries,” in Finding the Right Place on the Map, pp. 73–84.
9. Ibid., p. 78.
10. Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, “How Media and Politics Shape Each Other
in the New Europe,” in Finding the Right Place on the Map, pp. 87–100;
Peter Gross, “Dances with Wolves,” in Finding the Right Place on the Map,
pp. 125–43.
11. Quoted by Gross in “Dances with Wolves,” p. 128.
12. Gross, Entangled Evolutions.
13. B. Petkoviæ, ed., Media Ownership and Its Impact on Media Inde-
pendence and Pluralism (Ljubljana: Peace Institute, 2004). See especially I.
Londo, “Albania,” pp. 39–60; T. Jusiæ, “Bosnia and Herzegovina,” pp. 62–92;
V. Popova, “Bulgaria,” pp. 94–117; S. Maloviæ, “Croatia,” pp. 199–140; S.
Trpevska, “Macedonia,” pp. 285–320; M. Zadrima, “Montenegro,” pp. 347–362;
M. Preoteasa, “Romania,” pp. 403–424; D. Ðokoviæ, “Serbia,” pp. 425–46;
G. Šipoš, “Slovakia,” pp. 447–462; S. Hrvatin and B. Petkoviæ, “Regional
Overview,” pp. 9–38.
14. The independent Internet newspaper Ukrainska Pravda often criticized
the policies of then-president Leonid Kuchma. Gongadze disappeared on Sep-
tember 16, 2000, after he left a colleague’s apartment in Kyiv. His headless
body was discovered in a forest 40 miles away from Kyiv two months later. At
the time of writing this article, eleven years after Gongadze’s disappearance,
the official investigation of the crime is still open.
15. A. Onufriyenko and I. Mironova, “Televizionnyi rynok. Komu
prinadlezhit Ukraina” (Television Market: Whom Ukraine Belongs to),
Kommersant (December 22, 2008), available at www.kommersant.ua/doc.
html?docId=1098087/, accessed September 21, 2011.
16. S. Kalinina, “Business Sense with Svetlana Kalinina,” Kyiv Post (August
21, 2009), available at www.cetv-net.com/en/press-center/media/94.shtml,
accessed September 21, 2011.
17. Ibid.
18. Horizon Capital, “Overview of Ukrainian TV Broadcasting Market,” avail-
able at www.horizoncapital.com.ua/files/sectors/Ukr.%20TV%20Broadcasting
%20Market.pdf, accessed September 21, 2011.
19. The shares of TV advertising revenues in the total advertising market
are calculated on the basis of data provided by the All-Ukrainian Advertising
Coalition quoted in IREX, Media Sustainability Index (MSI), Europe and
Eurasia, 2010: Ukraine, p. 210, available at http://www.irex.org/system/files/
EE_MSI_2010_Ukraine.pdf, accessed September 21, 2011.
20. The share of newspaper advertising revenues in the total advertising
market is calculated on the basis of data provided by the All-Ukrainian Adver-
tising Coalition quoted in ibid. The data on advertising revenue shares in the
media sector in Central and East European countries come from Z. Peruško,
and H. Popoviç, “Media Concentration Trends in Central and Eastern Europe,”
in Finding the Right Place on the Map, p. 172.
21. Compare, for example, to newspaper circulation in Hungary (194 per
1,000 people) or Czech Republic (89 per 1,000). See www.pressreference.com,
accessed September 21, 2011.
22. IREX, Media Sustainability Index.
23. Onufriyenko and Mironova, “Televizionnyi rynok.”

18 Problems of Post-Communism November/December 2011
24. R. Filas and P. P³aneta, “Media in Poland and Public Discourse,” in
Press Freedom and Pluralism in Europe, pp. 141–63.
25. According to the monitoring of political advertising in the 2010 presi-
dential elections conducted by the public organization Telerytyka, Ukrainian
TV channels were paid a total of 470 million hryvnias for political advertising
in August–December 2009. See M. Zakusylo, “Zavorozheni politreklamoiu”
(Charmed by Political Advertising), Telekrytyka (January 15, 2009), avail-
able at www.telekritika.ua/spec_tk/vibor2009/2010–01–15/50439/, accessed
September 21, 2011. The total TV advertising market in Ukraine in 2011
was 1.94 billion hryvnias. See A. Vakaliuk and M. Lazebnik, “Obyom
reklamno-komunikatsionnogo rynka Ukrainy v 2009 godu i prognoz na
2010 god. Ekspertnaia otsenka Vseukrainskoi reklamnoi koalitsyi” (The Size
of Ukraine’s Advertising-Communication Market in 2009 and the Market
Forecast for 2010. Expert Evaluation from the All-Ukrainian Advertising
Coalition), available at www.uapp.org/pub_analitics/8492.html, accessed
June 25, 2011.
26. See, for example, D. Gomon, and A. Rafal, “Pochem ‘dzhinsa’ v
Ukrainie” (How Much Is “Jeansa” in Ukraine?), Segodnya (October 19, 2009),
available at www.segodnya.ua/news/14085180.html, accessed September 21,
2011.
27. According to the Polish marketing and sales monthly Brief, no. 1 (2006,
p. 16), a total of 37 million z³oty was spent on political TV spots during the
six-month parliamentary and presidential election campaigns in Poland. The
country’s total TV advertising market in 2005 was 2.47 billion z³oty (Starlink
Media House, 2006).
28. These data for 2003–8 concern local television stations in the United
States, which historically get around 60 percent of political ad dollars (Pew
Research Center Project for Excellence in Journalism, The State of the News
Media: Annual Report of American Journalism: 2009, available at www.
stateofthemedia.org/2009/narrative_localtv_economics.php, accessed June
20, 2011).
29. Dennis W. Johnson, ed., Routledge Handbook of Political Management
(New York: Routledge, 2009).
30. Municipal media are not treated separately because in Ukraine they
are very close to the state-owned media in the sense of their dependence on
government entities. For example, under Ukrainian law, municipal media can
only be set up by local governments subordinated to the central government.
The finances of municipal media in Ukraine are heavily dependent on local
budgets.
31. See, for example, Freedom House, Freedom of the Press (2010), avail-
able at www.freedomhouse.org, accessed September 21, 2011.
32. Marta Dyczok, “Was Kuchma’s Censorship Effective?” Europe-Asia
Studies 58, no. 2 (2006): 215–38.
33. IREX, Media Sustainability Index (MSI) Europe and Eurasia, 2005:
Ukraine, 2005, p. 207, available at www.irex.org/system/files/MSI05-Ukraine.
pdf, accessed September 21, 2011.
34. Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Ukrainian Media Landscape—2010, 2011,
available at www.kas.de/ukraine/ukr/publications/23004/, accessed September
21, 2011.
35. Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, KAS Democracy Report 2008: Ukraine,
available at www.kas.de/wf/en/33.14855, accessed September 21, 2011.
36. “Aleksandr Chernenko: ‘Komunalnye SMI—PP-sluzhba Chernovetsko-
go’ ” (Alexander Chernenko: “The Municipal Media Are Chernovetsky’s
PR Agencies”), Telekrytyka (May 6, 2008), available at www.telekritika.ua/
news/2008-05-06/38221/, accessed September 21, 2011.
37. E. Bulavka and J. Shevchenko, “Rol media u kyivskykh vyborakh:
‘Nichoho ne bachu. Nichoho be chuju. Nichoho nikomu ne skazhu’ ” (The Role
of Media in Kyiv Elections: “I Hear Nothing; I See Nothing; I Say Nothing”),
Telekrytyka (May 30, 2008), available at www.telekritika.ua/media-suspilstvo/
expert/2008-05-30/38709/, accessed September 21, 2011.
38. For example, the state-owned UT-1 is only seventh in the broadcast
ratings (GfK Ukraine, June 2011).
39. V. Kulyk, Dyskurs ukraïnskykh medii: Identychnosti, ideolohiï, vladni
stosunky (The Ukrainian Media Discourse: Ideologies, Identities, Power Rela-
tions) (Kyiv: Krytyka, 2010), p. 198.
40. There are several exceptions to this rule, but they mainly concern
popular television presenters and entertainers who get unusually high fees
from private TV channels.
41. See, for example, IREX, Media Sustainability Index (MSI) Europe
and Eurasia, 2006/2007: Ukraine, 2006/2007, p. 180, available at www.irex.
org/system/files/MSIE06_ukraine.pdf, accessed September 21, 2011; IREX,
Media Sustainability Index (MSI) Europe and Eurasia, 2008: Ukraine, 2008,
pp. 202–3, available at www.irex.org/system/files/MSIEE08-Ukraine.pdf, ac-
cessed September 21, 2011.
42. Consider, for example, Ukrposhta’s refusal to deliver the paper Litsa
Dniepropetrovsk because of its investigation of the mayor of Dnepropetrovsk.
See IREX, Media Sustainability Index (MSI) Europe and Eurasia, 2008:
Ukraine, 2008, p. 203, available at www.irex.org/system/files/MSIEE08-
Ukraine.pdf, accessed September 21, 2011.
43. B. Klimkiewicz, “Poland,” in Media Ownership and Its Impact on Me-
dia Independence and Pluralism, ed. B. Petkovic (Ljubljana: Peace Institute,
2004), pp. 363–402.
44. See, for example, Angelika Wyka, “On the Way to Dumbing Down,”
in Marius Dragomir, Fighting Legacy: Media Reform in Post-Communist
Europe, Atlantic Council of the United States Senior Fellows Publication,
pp. 35–40, available at www.acus.org/files/publication_pdfs/65/2003-08-
Fighting_Legacy_Media_Reform_in_Post-Communist_Europe.pdf, accessed
September 21, 2011 pp. 35–40; Miklos Sükösd, “Democratic Transformation
and the Mass Media in Hungary: From Stalinism to Democratic Consolida-
tion in Hungary,” in Democracy and the Media: A Comparative Perspective,
ed. R. Gunther and A. Moughan (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2000), pp. 151–52.
45. Sükösd, “Democratic Transformation and the Mass Media in Hungary,”
p. 152.
46. Dragomir, Fighting Legacy, p. 40.
47. Finance.ua, “Poroshenko kupyv zhurnal ‘Korespondent’ ” (Poroshenko
Has Bought Korespondent Magazine) (April 13, 2011), available at http://news.
finance.ua/ua/~/1/0/all/2011/04/13/234902/, accessed September 21, 2011.
Until 2009, Jed Sunden also owned the quality English-language newspaper
Kyiv Post, one of the first truly independent newspapers in Ukraine. In July
2009, he sold the paper to Mohammad Zahoor, a United Kingdom citizen and
an owner of the ISTIL Group. In 2008, because of the economic crisis, Sunden
also closed two news outlets he had only recently founded: the metro daily 15
Minutes and the weekly news magazine Novynar.
48. For example, 29 percent of the shares of Inter, the TV channel that
leads the Ukrainian broadcast ratings, are held by the Russian state company
Russian Channel One. The main investor in TBi TV channel is a disgraced
Russian oligarch, K. Kagalovskii.
49. See, for example, “Jed Sunden Looks Back on 10 Years with Kyiv
Post and KP Publications,” Kyiv Post (October 19, 2005), available at www.
kyivpost.com/news/business/bus_general/detail/23376/, accessed September
21, 2011.
50. E. Prodayeva, “CME: proshchaniye bermudskoj slavianki” (CME:
Farewell of Bermuda Slavianka), Telekrytyka (January 26, 2010), available
at www.telekritika.ua/telebachennya-vlasnist/2010-01-26/50669/, accessed
September 21, 2011.
51. GfK Ukraine (June 2011).
52. The information on the top-four Ukrainian dailies comes from Konrad-
Adenauer-Stiftung, Ukrainian Media Landscape—2010, available at www.kas.
de/ukraine/ukr/publications/23004/, accessed September 21, 2011.
53. See “World’s Billionaires List by Forbes” (March 2011), available at
www.forbes.com/wealth/billionaires/list, accessed September 21, 2011.
54. For detailed analysis of the phenomena of oligarchs in Ukraine and
their relationships with the state, see Anders Åslund, How Ukraine Became
a Market Economy and Democracy (Washington, DC: Peterson Institute for
International Economics, 2009).
55. Olessia Koltsova, News Media and Power in Russia (New York: Rout-
ledge, 2006), p. 75.
56. Ibid.
57. V. Stetka, “Between a Rock and a Hard Place? Market Concentration,
Local Ownership and Media Autonomy in the Czech Republic,” International
Journal of Communication 4 (2010): 865–85.
58. IREX, Media Sustainability Index (MSI), Europe and Eurasia, 2009:
Romania, 2009, available at www.irex.org/programs/MSI_EUR/2009/romania.
asp, accessed September 21, 2011.

Ryabinska Media in Post-Communist Ukraine 19
59. See, for example, John Keane, The Media and Democracy (Cambridge,
UK: Polity Press, 1991), pp. 1–51.
60. Unfortunately, the Ukrainian situation is one more proof for the thesis
of Katrin Voltmer that in new democracies private ownership of the media
does not ensure their independence from politics, because in the conditions
of an underdeveloped advertising market, influential actors—politicians and
oligarchs—purchase media outlets to control them and further their political
interests (“Comparing Media Systems in New Democracies,” p. 37).
61. For an overview of appropriation of Ukrainian media by oligarchs,
see Dyczok, “Was Kuchma’s Censorship Effective?” p. 222; Kulyk, “Dyskurs
ukraïnskykh medii,” pp. 202–6.
62. See Onufriyenko and Mironova, “Televizionnyi rynok.”
63. See, for example, S. Artemenko, “Chy mozhna pokonaty ‘jeansu’ v
ukraïnskii zhurnalistytsi?” (Is It Possible to Overcome “Jeansa” in Ukrainian
Journalism?), UNIAN (October 21, 2008), available at http://human-rights.
unian.net/ukr/detail/188608/, accessed September 21, 2011.
64. A. Poludenko, and M. Semenchenko, “Jeansa i vybory” (Jeansa and
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daidzhest/2008-11-18/42078/, accessed September 21, 2011.
65. Ibid.
66. Ibid.
67. O. Dovzhenko, “Ukrainskiye media segodnia: I¿ garema v bordel”
(Ukrainian Media Today: From Harem to Brothel), Zerkalo nedeli (May
24–30, 2008), available at www.zn.ua/1000/1550/63020/, accessed September
21, 2011.
68. In January 2009, Tymoshenko signed an agreement on gas supply with
Russia that removed the private gas trader RosUkrEnergo from the Russian-
Ukrainian gas trade. For details, see Will Englund, “Gas Deal Disputed in
Ukraine,” Washington Post (December 11, 2010), available at www.washing-
tonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/10/AR2010121007029.html, ac-
cessed September 21, 2011. The co-owner of RosUkrEnergo, Dmytro Firtash,
who at the time supposedly was a shareholder in the Inter TV channel, used it for
a public campaign against Tymoshenko. Inter newscasts sharply criticized the
gas contracts with Russia signed by Tymoshenko and accused her government
of stealing gas from RosUkrEnergo. Dmytro Firtash, who earlier had avoided
TV cameras, several times appeared personally on Inter programs and accused
the government of mismanagement and messing things up.
69. See, for example, Academy of Ukrainian Press, “Monitoring of Politi-
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73. N. Roudakova, “Media-Political Clientelism: Lessons from Anthropol-
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75. K. Jakubowicz, “Lovebirds? The Media, the State and Politics in Central
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at www.ucrf.gov.ua/uk/doc/laws/1149583690/, accessed July 3, 2011.
91. Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung , KAS Democracy Report 2008: Ukraine,
2008, available at www.kas.de/wf/en/33.14855/, accessed September 21,
2011.
92. “Rekomendaciï shcho do vyznachennia movy program i peredach”
(Recommendations on the Choice of Language of Programs), National
Television and Radio Broadcasting Council, March 26, 2008, available at
http://nrada.gov.ua/ua/normativnydokumenty/rekomendacii.html, accessed
September 27, 2011.
93. “Iz ukrainskogo mediaprostranstva postepenno vytestiayetsia russkii
yazyk” (Russian Language Is Being Steadily Forced Out of Ukrainian Media
Space), Fokus (May 6, 2008), available at http://focus.ua/society/19287/, ac-
cessed September 21, 2011.
94. Dragomir, Fighting Legacy.
95. For details, see www.pressreference.com/Sw-Ur/Ukraine.html, ac-
cessed September 21, 2011.
96. See, for example, “National Council Claims There Were Gross Viola-
tions During Competition for Additional TV Frequencies,” Kyiv Post (June 14,
2010), available at www.kyivpost.com/news/nation/detail/69552/, accessed
September 21, 2011.
97. O. Dovzhenko, “Da poshli vy vse!” (Off with You!), Telekrytyka
(October 7, 2009), available at www.telekritika.ua/otar_col/2009-10-07/48390/,
accessed September 21, 2011.
98. IREX, Media Sustainability Index (MSI), Europe and Eurasia, 2009:
Ukraine, p. 199, available at www.irex.org/system/files/EE_MSI_09_russ_
Ukraine.pdf, accessed September 21, 2011.
99. Dragomir, Fighting Legacy.
100. See ibid., pp. 9–10; H. de Smaele, and E. Vartanova, “Russia,” in West-
ern Broadcast Models: Structure, Conduct & Performance, ed. L. d’Haenens
and F. Saeys (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2007), p. 344.
101. Zakon Ukraïny, “Pro zakhyst suspilnoii morali” (The Law of Ukraine
on Protection of Public Morals), available at http://zakon.rada.gov.ua/cgi-bin/
laws/main.cgi?nreg=1296-15/, accessed September 21, 2011.
102. This practice is illegal and results from a contradiction in the text of

20 Problems of Post-Communism November/December 2011
the Law “On Protection of Public Morals.” Article 18 of the law states that the
membership of the NEC must be approved by the Cabinet of Ministers upon
a submission by the head of the NEC, but that the head of the NEC is to be
elected by the members of the NEC.
103. Zakon Ukraïny “Pro zakhyst suspilnoii morali.”
104. See the conclusions of the round table “Mass Media and Protection
of Public Morals: European Standards in Public Morals and Child Protection,”
in Zakon, “‘Pro zakhyst suspilnoï morali’ potrebuye znachnoï korekciï” (The
Law on Protection of Public Morals Requires Significant Correction), UNIAN
(March 24, 2010), available at http://unian.net/ukr/news/news-368994.html,
accessed September 21, 2011.
105. Ibid.
106. See Andrei Richter, “The Partial Transition: Ukraine’s Post-Communist
Media,” in Media Reform: Democratizing the Media, Democratizing the State,
ed. M. Price, B. Rozumilowicz, and E. Verhulst (New York: Routledge, 2002);
2007 Report of the Moscow Media Law and Policy Institute, available at www.
medialaw.ru/e_pages/laws/exussr/2007.htm, accessed September 21, 2011.
107. G. Pavlov, “Grupa kanalu ICTV kontroluie robotu Nacrady. Lyst chlena
Nacrady do sumlinnia ïï kerivnyka” (The Group of the ICTV TV Channel Con-
trols the National Broadcasting Council. A Letter of the Council Member to Its
Head’s Conscience), Ukraïinska Pravda (March 21, 2001), available at www.
pravda.com.ua/news/2001/03/21/2982192/, accessed September 21, 2011.
108. “Instytut media prava: Chleny Nacrady, povnovazhennia jakykh zak-
inchylys, ne maiut prava braty uchast v zasidanniakh” (Media Law Institute:
National Council Members Whose Term of Office Expired Cannot Take Part
in the Council Sessions), Telekrytyka (February, 21 2008), available at www.
telekritika.ua/news/2008-02-21/36650/, accessed September 21, 2011.
109. Law on the National Television and Radio Broadcasting Council of
Ukraine (Art. 5), available at http://new.nrada.gov.ua/en/medialegislation/
nationaltv/1262620396.html, accessed September 5, 2011.
110. Which means that only part of journalist salaries is official and taxed
under the law, whereas the other part is unofficial (or shadow).
111. See, for example, the report “Temptation to Control” published by
the Reporters Without Borders organization after a visit to Ukraine on July
19–21, 2010, available at http://en.rsf.org/IMG/pdf/_rapport_ukraine_anglais.
pdf, accessed September 21, 2011.
112. IREX, Media Sustainability Index (MSI), Europe and Eurasia, 2008:
Ukraine, p. 194, available at www.irex.org/system/files/MSIEE08-Ukraine.
pdf, accessed September 21, 2011.
113. Jakubowicz, “Rude Awakening,” p. 70.
114. By “media wars,” Jakubowicz means the ongoing struggle for
media independence characteristic of media system transformations in post-
communist countries.
115. Karol Jakubowicz, “Public Service Broadcasting in Post-Communist
Countries: Finding the Right Place on the Map” (speech delivered as the Spry
Memorial Lecture, University of Montreal, November 27, 2007), available
at www.com.umontreal.ca/spry/old/spry-kj-lec.htm, accessed September 21,
2011.
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