15 May / 2024
The Commission on Journalistic Ethics of Ukraine (CJE) has published its decision on the complaint filed by the State Enterprise “IBMPU” against the research “Domestic International Broadcasting of Ukraine. Who are the state-owned TV channels “Dim” and “FREEDOM” broadcasting to, authored by IMI media expert Oleksandr Ruban, as well as the news about this study “International broadcasting channels work for the domestic audience (of Ukraine) – IMI analytics” published on the website of the Institute of Mass Information (IMI), according to which the CJE is not authorised to review analytical studies, even if they are posted in online media, and the news meets the requirements of the Code of Ethics of Ukrainian Journalists.
We are grateful to our colleagues for the time and attention paid to our appeal. We are convinced that an open dialogue on the ways of development of Ukrainian international broadcasting promotes constructive interaction between state and public institutions and strengthens the resilience of the Ukrainian media community. We are also grateful to IMI, which published on its website the commentary of the State Enterprise “IBMPU” on the above-mentioned study in full without editing, thus exercising our right to reply.
At the same time, we consider it necessary to provide comments on certain theses of the CJE decision, which appear to us to be contradictory.
The Commission called on the state enterprise “to be more tolerant to criticism of its activities by public organisations, especially when such criticism is based on proper facts”. We would like to note that our company is always open to constructive criticism and interaction with the public. In order to avoid misunderstandings, in the Commentary on the IMI study, we specifically emphasised that “we fully understand and support the importance of institutions of public control over events and phenomena related to the media space, compliance with the law, use of state budget funds and other manifestations of civil activism in relation to the public sector, and in no way question the right of IMI to conduct monitoring studies of media content, assess its quality and provide consultations, and support the goal that guides IMI in its activities and the values it declares, in particular, quality and responsibility.”
The commentary of the SE “IBMPU” on the materials of IMI, as well as the appeal to the CJE, were, among other things, intended to demonstrate our commitment to the principles of open dialogue with NGOs and the expert community, to strengthen the quality of this dialogue and the quality of the criticism itself. The comments of the SE “IBMPU” were largely related to the fact that the criticism expressed by O. Ruban, in our opinion, was not based on proper facts. The author of the materials noted that he allegedly lacked data on the SE “IBMPU”, in particular, on the views of the TV channels “Dim” and “FREEDOM”, etc. At the same time, he did not ask the SE “IBMPU” to obtain such data or to clarify other data provided in the material, although they were key to O. Ruban’s statements about “domestic broadcasting”. This, in our opinion, violated the principles of completeness and objectivity of information and presentation of the opponent’s point of view in the news and in the study.
Indeed, the state-owned enterprise “IBMPU” is a representative of the state sector, which does not deprive us of the right to analyse, study, comment on any public materials or opinions about our activities, clarify and even criticise them when they contain false information, inaccurate data, conclusions or assumptions that seem to us to be wrong, especially if such materials do not reflect our point of view. Furthermore, our status as a state-owned enterprise imposes significant responsibilities on us in terms of compliance with standards, transparency, accountability and control, both to civil society institutions and to the relevant state control bodies.
Our appeal to the CJE was not about the criticism expressed by O. Ruban against the foreign broadcasting, but about the lack of completeness of information in both the study and the news based on it, the separation of facts from assumptions, and the absence of the point of view of the SE “IBMPU”, instead they contained inaccurate information.
For example, in its decision, the CJE notes that the news article by O. Ruban “indicates a possible incorrectness of the statistics of views of its own materials on Youtube, as this statistics also takes into account the statistics of views on the channels of large media groups”. It is this arbitrary and inaccurate interpretation of the statistics of views of content under the FREEDOM brand, which, by the way, is regularly published by the SE “IBMPU”, and the erroneous conclusions based on this interpretation, that was one of the objects of our appeal. Firstly, the State Enterprise “IBMPU” has never reported that these multibillion views refer only to international broadcasting platforms, instead we always emphasise that these are total views on digital platforms of the State Enterprise “IBMPU” and partner media groups. Secondly, in terms of viewership, we regularly publish information not only on the number of views but also on their localisation, providing information both on individual YouTube channels of the State Enterprise “IBMPU” and its partners and weighted average figures for all YouTube channels. For your understanding, in 2023, the volume of views from abroad on the YouTube channels of the State Enterprise “IBMPU” and its partners ranged from 76 to 79% in different months, and on the YouTube channels of exclusively international broadcasting – FREEDOM and FREEDOM.LIVE – 89 to 92% of views came from abroad. This information is open and available both on our websites and in the industry media, and therefore we have considered and still consider the conclusions about the work of FREEDOM for the domestic audience to be false. Similarly, the information in the news about the presence of FREEDOM on Ukrainian cable networks is completely untrue, and regarding broadcasting on OTT platforms – explanations for the author of the news and IMI research are provided in the Commentary of the SE “IBMPU”.
In its decision, the CJE explains that the review of an analytical report that “consists of author’s judgements” is beyond its competence, as it is the result of the activities of the IMI NGO, and not of the online media outlet of the same name that published the report. We understand this approach, which is supported by the explanation of IMI Director and CJE member Oksana Romaniuk that “expert opinions as value judgements should not be subject to reliability assessment at all”. Therefore, the Commission made a decision only on the news item. In our opinion, it contained the same deviations from the Code of Ethics of Ukrainian Journalists as the study. We do not in any way deny the provision of the law that “value judgements are not subject to proof of their truthfulness”, but in our opinion, the news story, like the study, has signs of violation of the requirements of paragraph 9 of the Code: “Facts, judgements and assumptions should be clearly separated from each other”. In particular, some of the controversial, in our opinion, information in the news was presented in the form of statements with selectively cited factual data, rather than judgements. Unfortunately, the CJE Decision does not contain any clarification on this point.
Our Commentary to the CJE Decision is aimed at maintaining a professional dialogue with the industry community. First and foremost, we want to show respect for the public’s right to full and objective information. We ask our media colleagues, representatives of NGOs and CJE members not to perceive our right to a reasoned response and our own point of view as a manifestation of intolerance, even if they seem critical.
