Chair of Chernihiv CMA gives incomplete answer to Suspilne query
Dmytro Bryzhynskyi, chair of the Chernihiv City Military Administration, provided incomplete information in response to a query by Suspilne Chernihiv journalists, reports chief editor Andriy Titok to the Institute of Mass Information representative in Chernihiv oblast.
“One of the things we wanted to know was the first and last names of all Chernihiv CMA staff. As soon as the CMA chair received the query, he claimed on his social media that our query sought to find out classified information, although this is not the case and the people of Chernihiv have the right to know the names of officials who receive taxpayers' money. More than 20 days later, we received the replies to our queries and the CMA head provided no information about the administration staff,” said Andriy Titok.
Volodymyr Zelenchuk, the lawyer at the Institute of Mass Information, says that providing incomplete information is a violation of the law on access to public information on par with providing no information at all.
“First, the response deadline may have been violated, as more than 20 days passed between the submission of the queries and the registration of the reply. Second, the administration may have deliberately ignored the requirement to provide the full names of all employees, not just the management,” the lawyer said.
He noted that Part 2 of Article 5 of the Law of Ukraine “On Personal Data Protection” states, “The personal data related to the performance of official duties by a person authorized to perform state or local authorities functions, is not classified information.”
Volodymyr Zelenchuk advised the journalists to file a complaint with the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights or appeal the administration’s actions to the administrative court. However, either will be a lengthy process, the lawyer added.
The Suspilne Chernihiv team is now preparing a complaint to the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights.
Andriy Titok added that communication with the Chernihiv City Military Administration and its chair Dmytro Bryzhynskyi has always been difficult. The administration chair conveyed through his press office that he would communicate with Suspilne journalists through information queries exclusively.
“This is their right, although we disagree with this approach to communication. We started submitting queries, which Dmytro Bryzhynskyi started posting on his social media. Unfortunately, we did not receive complete answers to all queries, not to mention the fact that the answers to some of the queries had lost their relevance by the time they were sent to us. There was even a case when we asked for more information on one of the queries and were told to submit another query,” noted the editor-in-chief of Suspilne Chernihiv.
Dmytro Bryzhynskyi posts all information queries sent by Suspilne journalists and the replies to them on his social media.
Screenshot by the IMI from the Telegram channel of Chernihiv CMA chair Dmytro Bryzhynskyi
Screenshot by the IMI from the Telegram channel of Chernihiv CMA chair Dmytro Bryzhynskyi
In 2023, Mediabaza Chernihiv, the Institute of Mass Information's regional hub, surveyed local journalists to identify the local officials, deputies, institutions and structural divisions of government bodies who are the least open in communication with journalists and openly violate the rights of media representatives.
During May 30 – June 5, 2023, 21 media professionals took part in the survey. These were journalists with the TV channels Novyi Chernihiv, Dytynets, Suspilne Chernihiv, the newspapers Vest and Visnyk Ch, the Chernihiv Media Group, the websites Cheline, Chas Chernihivskyi and Svoboda.FM.
Later, the Chernihiv military administration requested that the IMI representative in Chernihiv oblast, Pavlo Pushchenko, disclose the results of the editorial voting that IMI received as part of the poll determining the winner of the anti-award "Chernihivsky Budyak".
Mediabaza Chernihiv organized an "off the record" meeting between mass media representatives and Dmytro Bryzhynskyi to facilitate communication.
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