RIA Novosti: Euronews TV channel says Kiev wants “blunt propaganda”, not “balanced approach”
(RIA Novosti – Moscow, January 12, 2015) The Ukrainian authorities for a long time have been doing everything possible to restrict access to any information that runs counter to their position but Kiev can’t close down the Ukrainian language version of the international television channel Euronews because decision lies with the television channel itself, Petr Fedorov, vice-chairman of the Euronews Supervisory Board, told RIA Novosti (part of the state-owned International News Agency Rossiya Segodnya) on Monday [12 January].
The draft resolution of the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers stating its intention to close down the TV channel was posted on the website of the country’s State Committee for Television and Radio Broadcasting on Monday. An explanatory note to the draft resolution says that the decision was necessary because the Euronews project does not pay off, the 2014 budget did not provide financing for it and the Ukrainian side is now running a debt.
“Ukraine cannot close down the Ukrainian version. What the Ukrainian leadership and national television can do is to stop paying, but they are not paying anyway. It is Euronews that will take a decision whether to close down the Ukrainian version or not,” Fedorov said. [passage omitted]
At the same time Fedorov said that the channel may take a decision to close down the TV channel already in February because “neither Kiev nor the European Union need it (Ukrainian-language version – RIA Novosti)”.
He explained that journalists working at the channel were patriots of their country but that they “are working in the framework of the Euronews News Charter and cannot go beyond its norms even when driven by patriotic motives, and that this is something that does not suit Kiev because Kiev wants blunt propaganda rather than a balanced uniform European approach”.
At the same time, according to Fedorov, during talks with the European Commission the channel managers were told that the European Commission no longer needed soft power to influence Kiev “because European Commission officials can ring the president or prime minister of Ukraine any time”.
“Therefore, it has nothing to do with Kiev’s wanting or not wanting [to close down the channel]; the Ukrainian version is doomed by the policy of the current authorities in Kiev which do not need even this non-aggressive truth about what is happening. This is obscurantism that can be compared to the degree of the restriction of access to information in countries such as Iran and South Korea, and also in the Baltic states, excluding Estonia for the time being. All this shows that information coming from Moscow is regarded as dangerous. Kiev can offer no reasonable journalistic argument to deny incoming information. The only thing Kiev can do is to cut it off, and they have done so (as regards Russian broadcasters – RIA Novosti). Now they are cutting off balanced European information,” Fedorov concluded.