Pershyi Kryvorizkyi journalist Yevhenia Bykova faced a wave of hateful social media comments and death threats, including warnings such as “some journalists don’t live long,” following a series of articles and registering a petition opposing the raise in water tariffs in the city, Bykova and chief editor Olena Smolina told Kateryna Lysiuk, the Institute of Mass Information representative in Dnipropetrovsk oblast.
Yevheniya Bykova registered a petition calling for the resignation of the Kryvbasvodokanal director due to complaints about water quality, the lack of transparency in the company’s work, and the decision to raise the water tariffs.
The petition gained the required thousand votes in 10 hours and is to be reviewed at a Kryvyi Rih City Council session.
“And immediately many commentators under the post reporting that I was writing the petition rushed to defend the water utility. Which is not the first time this has happened to us. For at least a year now, there has been untypical activity under every news story about the water utility. The commentators included an account named ‘Anna Yuriivna’. She wrote, verbatim, ‘They say that not all journalists live long,'” said Yevhenia Bykova.
Pershyi Kryvorizkyi chief editor Olena Smolina said that the news outlet often reported on the water quality issue, relying on laboratory studies by state institutions.
Yevhenia Bykova said that she had decided to initiate a petition calling for the resignation of the director of Kryvbasvodokanal, since, in her opinion, there have been many issues in the company’s work.
“As a journalist, I see the general picture of the problem: the water utility does not respond to information queries, simply sending non-answers; the water quality is not up to code; the way the water utility repairs all these networks and responds to leak reports by Kryvyi Rih residents. A lot of problems have accumulated overall, which the company director should be monitoring,” said Yevhenia Bykova.
Using open sources, the journalists found that some of the commentators under the news outlet’s posts about Kryvbasvodokanal may be affiliated to the utility company.
Olena Smolina said that users actively defending the company regularly appear in the comments under the news outlet’s posts on Telegram. She added that some of the accounts were identified by names and surnames.
“These are real employees of the water utility, either those working in procurement those who oversee the water quality. That is, they are officially employed by the company. We have been seeing unusual activity on our channel, so we tracked them,” said Olena Smolina.
Yevhenia Bykova plans to report the threats and online harrassment she has faced in connection with her reporting to the police.
