Energoatom press office only invites national media to the Khmelmytskyi NPP press tour

The press office of the joint-stock company "Energoatom" organized a press tour to the Khmelnytskyi nuclear power plant only for representatives of national media outlets. Regional media workers were not invited to the event due to safety concerns. The company promised to take this situation into account and look for a solution, says the IMI representative in the Khmelnytskyi oblast, Alyona Bereza, who spoke to the Energoatom press office following the reports of the incident.

As the IMI representative notes, the company's press office organized a press tour for journalists with national scale media outlets and invited regional representatives of national TV channels to the Khmelnytskyi NPP on April 11, 2024. The event was dedicated to the start of the construction of new power units. On that day, the first concrete cube of the NPP's Unit No. 5 was laid in the presence of Ukraine's Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko, the Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of the USA to Ukraine Bridget Brink, the Energoatom board chair Petro Kotin and the Executive Director of Westinghouse Electric Company Patrick Fragman.

Mass media representatives at the Khmelnytskyi NPP. Photo by Energoatom JSC

A photo attached to the news shows media representatives present at the event. The attendance by journalists with the central TV channels is also confirmed by the "United News" live news broadcast at that time. For example, the 1+1 report and the Inter TV report.

The Energoatom press office says their approach to inviting journalists was taking the martial law into account.

"Our central mass media were invited, and if they had branches in the oblast they simply sent their regional journalists. We did it this way due to the martial law, and the number of journalists was limited due to safety concerns. That's why this situation occurred. This is a nuclear power plant, so the number of attendees was limited for safety reasons," the company's press office explained.

They also promised to take this situation into account and look for a solution so that it doesn't happen again.

"We apologize that this happened. We do not divide journalists into more important and less important ones. We treat everyone equally, so we apologize," the press office added.

As Roman Holovenko, a lawyer at the Institute of Mass Information, notes, Energoatom is an enterprise, not a subject of state authority, therefore the legislation does not regulate which media persons they must invite to their events and in what way. It depends purely on the will of the company itself.