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Court strips independent TV frequencies
Journal Staff Report

KIEV, June 8 – Ukraine’s two independent television stations lost dozens of broadcasting frequencies following a Tuesday court ruling on a lawsuit from a rival media company owned by the chief of the SBU security service.

Channel 5, the leading 24-hour television news station, and TVi, an independent television station, vowed to appeal the ruling, but admitted it was an uphill battle with the authorities.

The development may be the most devastating attack yet on independent media outlets in Ukraine since President Viktor Yanukovych has been sworn in as the president in February.

There was a growing number of cases of censorship and media restrictions, including physical assault on journalists by police, over the past three months, but Yanukovych had repeatedly pledged his commitment to democracy.

The latest attack essentially questions those commitments, and may be a game changer that puts media developments in Ukraine into a new – much worse – perspective, signaling wrapping up of freedoms and personal liberties.

“The government hopes everybody will be silent,” Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister and the leader of the largest opposition group in Parliament, said at a press conference on Tuesday. “The country is changing before our eyes and is turning into a non-free country with non-free people.”

“They seek to make two things: to destroy television channels that tell the truth and to destroy the justice system,” Tymoshenko said. “Then everything else can be destroyed.”

“I am convinced that without the high blessing from Yanukovych this would not have happened,” Tymoshenko said.

The court ruling comes a day after Channel 5, in an open letter to Yanukovych, alleged that SBU chief Valeriy Khoroshkovskiy was behind the lawsuit.

Khoroshkovskiy is a co-owner of U.A. Inter Media Group, which includes Ukraine’s most popular television Inter and a number of smaller channels. The group is managed by Khoroshkovskiy’s wife.

Vitaliy Portnikov, a prominent journalist who represents TVi, said on Tuesday the SBU raided the National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting, a regulator that had issued the frequencies, to seize papers, which U.A. Inter Media Group had later used to file the lawsuit.

“SBU has illegally intervened with the regulator,” Portnikov said. “We state that Khoroshkovskiy has a clear conflict of interests leading to abuse of position in favor of one media group that tries to monopolize the market illegally.”

Khoroshkovskiy was recently appointed by Yanukovych as a member of the Supreme Council of Justice, a body that has the power to nominate or to seek dismissal of judges in Ukraine.

In a statement released Tuesday morning, Khoroshkovskiy denied the allegation, calling them a “stream of untruth.”

The latest court ruling revokes dozens of broadcasting frequencies that would have allowed Channel 5 and TVi to expand coverage throughout Ukraine.

Without those frequencies the stations will be essentially limited to broadcasting within the city of Kiev, while their advertising revenue would drop sharply, leading to layoffs of 70% of news staff.

Hanna Herman, a deputy chief of staff at the Yanukovych administration, denied the allegations that the authorities have been restricting the media.

“To a large extent we do not have censorship,” Herman said in an Internet chat conference at Korrespondent weekly on Tuesday. “I don’t see those problems that they are talking about.” (tl/ez)




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