End of election contributed to better quality of online media content – IMI’s research

The end of the election has been translated into stricter compliance with professional standards in online media. The average level of materials with any violation, compared to the previous monitoring period, has increased from 84 to 87.5%. These are the results of an analysis of 16 online media held by the Institute of Mass Information with the support of Internews Network * in August 2019. Compliance with three examined standards in 3Q of 2019 was approximately at the same level:

• 95% for confidence standard;
• standard of separation of facts from comments - 95%;
• standard of balance - 95.5%.

Balance of thoughts / points of view On average, in the nationwide online media, only 4.5% of materials failed to respect the balance principle (for comparison: 6.5% of materials had breaches of balance during previous monitoring). First of all, this trend was due to the end of election and so, the number of materials which had signs of being paid-for has decreased. The largest number of violations of this standard were recorded on the site of the 24^th TV Channels - 16% of the materials failed to have complied with the balance principle. No violations of the balance standard have been reported on the “Ukrayinsky Tyzhden”, Liga.net and Ukrinform news agency. The reliability of the news According to the monitoring results, the number of low-credibility news in online media was 5% (6% for the previous period). The "Sehodnya" daily and Strana.ua sites had the highest percent of violations of the standard of credibility, that is estimated at 14% of the materials. No violations of the credibility standard have been recorded in the following resources: Ukrinform, Liga.net, “Ukrayinsky Tyzhden”, “Dzerkalo Tyzhdnya”, Gordon and Censor. Separation of facts from comments During the third monitoring wave, the number of violations of the standard of separation of facts from comments has decreased by 2.5% and amounted to 5% (in previous monitoring - 7.5%). Most often, this standard of journalism has been violated in the editions of “Obozrevatel” and TSN, where, on average, there have been 22% of news that contained this violation (especially, it was true for the show business news). There were no violations of the standard of separation of facts from comments on the sites Ukrinform, Liga.net, “Ukrayinsky Tyzhden”, “Ukrayinska Pravda”, “Dzerkalo Tyzhdnya”, Interfax news agency and "RBC-Ukraine". According to the results of the monitoring into professional journalism standards, no violations were revealed on the sites that follow: Ukrinform, Liga.net, "Ukraiynsky Tyzhden”. The integral text of the research is available here. * Monitoring analysis was carried out in 16 nationwide online media (nine top rated and seven media that signed the Memorandum of Media Movement for adherence to  professional standards): obozrevatel.com, segodnya.ua, 24tv.ua, tsn.ua, strana.ua, pravda .com.ua, rbc.ua, unian.com, gordonua.com, nv.ua (M), liga.net (M), ukrinform.ua (M), zn.ua (M), censor.net.ua (M), tyzhden.ua (M), interfax.com.ua (M). The total sample was 800 materials - 50 materials taken at a time from each site that was included in the monitoring.This research was made possible by the support of the American people through the USAID Media Program in Ukraine, implemented by the international organization Internews Network. The content of this material is the sole responsibility of the Institute of Mass Information NGO and does not necessarily reflect the views of USAID, the US Government, or the Internews Network.The methodology of the study can be found here.