Donetsk journalists claim about attempts of press-services to hush up information about plane crash

The statement is addressed to Mykola Ilchenko, chief of the local directorate of the Main Service for Emergencies of Ukraine and Svitlana Borodina, the spokesperson of the Service for Emergencies. The statement was signed by representatives of almost all national TV-channels, a number of correspondents, editors of newspapers and online publications.

The journalists stressed that, on February 13, 2013, the press service of Donetsk Directorate of the Emergencies Service of Ukraine "showed incompetence and unprofessionalism in covering the topic of AN-24 plane crash in the Donetsk International Airport named after Prokofiev. "

Thus, the media got to know about the emergency situation in the airport not from the press service but from messages on Facebook at 19.10, when it was more than an hour after the plane crash.

"Inna Sedova, head of the press service of the Emergency Service of Ukraine in the Donetsk Oblast, did not respond to calls of almost all journalists who tried to call her (she either interrupted the call or did not answer the phone). However, having an experience in television, she probably knew that in this situation it was better to give news agencies the prerogative to communicate, as they are the most responsible and operative media. As a result, the majority of Donetsk journalists got to know about the events at the airport from the Kyiv press service of the Emergency Service of Ukraine ", - the letter stressed.

Representatives of the media, who signed the letter, noted that, from 19.30 of February 13, in the airport, there were more than 20 journalists of national TV channels, newspapers, news agencies, websites, trying to get a comment on the event. However, there were no representative of the press service of the Emergency Department of Ukraine in the Donetsk Oblast.

Journalists say that Inna Sedova found a speaker for TV-stations only after 21.00, when the almost all TV-channels already left the airport.

The address also lists other examples of difficulties in obtaining information from the press service of the Donetsk Directorate of the Emergency Service of Ukraine.