Abstract
When staff at independent Ukrainian station Hromadske Radio wanted to report the news without interference, they turned to crowdfunding to help.
CREDIT: Nick Lowndes
Now the station has 50 staff and freelance journalists, and raises up to $15,000 in each crowdfunding appeal. Some staff are paid and some are volunteers. They produce not only daily news and reports, but a lot of original programming. For example, the Kiev-Donbas programme is about life and events in the Donbas region, which is partly occupied by the Russian army. Hromadske Radio In Your Town is a project where journalists visit different towns to discuss important topics with local people. Another programme, UBD, is about the post-war lives of Ukrainian conflict veterans.
In 2013 Ukraine’s oligarchic government liquidated the country’s independent media and many journalists lost their jobs. Most of them quit, unwilling to work under constant suppression. Current Hromadske Radio journalist Natalia Sokolenko had experienced censorship at the STB TV channel where she worked previously. “The editors mixed illegal political plugs into the news.
“Our broadcasts became adverts for pro-government politicians on the eve of parliamentary elections,” said Sokolenko, who tried to stop the illegal adverts but was sidelined and quit. A similar situation prevailed across almost all Ukrainian media outlets; they were either owned by the state or by pro-government oligarchs.
I was also unemployed in 2013 and freelancing for small websites. I bumped into Sokolenko one day in central Kiev. She was setting up a radio station with some friends. She said to me: “I decided that if there were no free media outlets I would create one. I couldn’t establish a TV channel, but I had the resources for a radio station.” And she invited me to the next meeting of the journalists who’d set up Hromadske Radio.
The station’s future editor-in-chief, Lukerenko, was there. He’d quit the last independent TV Channel, TVi, after it was sold to government-linked oligarchs. Hromadske Radio’s future chairperson, Andrii Kulykov, was also present. He and Lukerenko had worked at the BBC’s Ukrainian service and knew about “proper” journalism. Then Oleksandr Buziuk, the station’s future chief executive, showed up. “I worked at commercial radio stations whose owners were involved in politics,” he said. “So they introduced censorship. Only ‘necessary’ politicians featured in the news and the ‘unnecessary’ ones never appeared. Journalists were told what angle to take.”
The idea of creating Hromadske Radio seemed absurd. Most people watch television, I thought. We’re doomed to a marginal internet existence. That was the fate of the first community radio station in Ukraine. Many terrific journalists worked there. However, the National Council of Television and Radio Broadcasting of Ukraine (NRUTR) hadn’t allocated them a frequency. They had only been able to broadcast for an hour a week on other stations and, lacking finance, had closed.
Buziuk said: “Until 2014 the NRUTR sold frequencies illegally. You had to go through intermediaries who’d set up a meeting with a corrupt official.” The NRUTR’s members were appointed on the basis of political quotas so the authorities controlled the airwaves. Lukerenko added: “We challenged the system in 2013 by creating Hromadske Radio to provide our listeners with a balanced view. We also played against the market because we didn’t belong to an oligarch. We didn’t sell information, but aimed to ensure our listeners were well informed. We weren’t a cash cow for an owner which can be associated with corruption in Ukraine. The existence of a channel like ours challenged an environment where ‘everything is bought and sold’.”
Everyone worked for free for a few months. The equipment and studio were donated by friends and some items were inherited from the first failed public radio station. Then we gathered cash from listeners via crowdfunding. European and US donors chipped in. By 2014 we had more than $90,000 in our budget.
This was the first time I had produced educational podcasts, rather than contemporary political articles, for the media. The Mechanics of Revolution was a history of the global revolutionary movement. The Philosophical Drum was a discussion of philosophical books and terms. The Revolution of Dignity commenced and I began my first novel, Kaharlyk. The book predicted Ukraine’s future 100 years after the revolution and military conflict with Russia. Sometimes I went to Maidan Square with a recorder and captured the voices of the revolutionaries.
On 20 February 2014 I was 38 years old. It was the bloodiest day of the Maidan demonstrations, when the police killed 100 protesters. One day later, President Viktor Yanukovych fled to Moscow, afraid of being held to account for this crime. The main censor had disappeared but the problems remained. “The authorities currently exploit the military conflict to discredit opponents and restrict their airtime,” said Lukerenko. “We don’t believe that representatives of the former government are honest or democratic. However, they are still entitled to speak.”
The prosecutor’s office has initiated proceedings against Ukrainian MP Mykhailo Dobkin, who is accused of corruption. “Other media channels didn’t give him air-time. However, we telephoned him immediately so he was able to speak out through our station,” he said.
The rules of the media market game have now changed. The NRUTR seems free of corruption, but it’s still difficult to acquire a worthwhile frequency. “We can’t acquire frequencies in large cities which are attractive to commercial radio stations,” said Buziuk. “Instead we obtain frequencies in small towns, which aren’t sought by the commercial stations. We also receive VHF frequencies, which are typically used by Christian radio stations. When we acquired a frequency in Volnovakha, a small town near to the frontline, the commercial stations laughed. That wouldn’t have been useful for them, but it’s socially important. The Russians had destroyed Ukrainian transmitters there. Instead they use their own to broadcast propaganda.”
“I believe that our station has contributed to an improvement in the atmosphere of the Ukrainian media,” said Kulykov. “Currently a lot of obviously commissioned material is appearing in the media. It squeezes out important topics that don’t bring in any cash. Because we don’t include any paid material we have a lot more airtime for subjects that aren’t lucrative.”
Footnotes
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