Head of Chernihiv CMA accuses Suspilne Chernihiv of manipulation; the media outlet denies it

The head of the Chernihiv City Military Administration, Dmytro Bryzhynsky, accused "Suspilne Chernihiv" journalists of being manipulative while reporting on the city's 2024 budget.

He wrote about this on his official Facebook page.

"Yet again I am faced with manipulation on the part of the local mass media. The TV channel 'Suspilne Chernihiv' presented INCOMPLETE information while reporting on the city's 2024 budget, which can mislead the readers. The material on the website only contains proposals from the public and deputies, touching on a wide range of issues and outlined in 29 points. Meanwhile, the CCMA's budget proposals were ignored. The journalists could have accessed full comprehensive information both on my and the CCMA's official social media and in the documents provided to them. However, one of the letters was ignored, resulting in biased and incomplete reporting," wrote Bryzhynsky.

For her part, the "Suspilne Chernihiv" editor-in-chief, Alla Skoryk, remarked in her comment to the IMI representative in the Chernihiv oblast that the situation was purely miscommunication, not an attempt to hide something or manipulate the reader.

"We believe that this situation is simply miscommunication. In the morning, we contacted Mr. Bryzhynsky for a comment and received a reply through his press office saying that he would be unble to talk to us during the day. Instead, we received three PDF files with edits from the public, activists, deputies and from Bryzhynsky himself," Alla Skoryk said.

According to her, if Dmytro Bryzhynsky had agreed to comment on the budget, his comment would have been included in the article, because allocating UAH 240 million to the Armed Forces is a socially important topic.

Suspilne denies the accusations of trying to hide something or exclude it from their reporting. "If Mr. Bryzhynsky had noticed an ommission in the material, and, realizing that we had asked him for a comment and were waiting, he could have contacted our office or a correspondent directly, and we would definitely have added to our article," added the "Suspilne Chernihiv" editor-in-chief.

As reported earlier, according to a survey by the IMI's regional hub "Mediabaza. Chernihiv", media workers considered Dmytro Bryzhynsky one of the most inaccessible in terms of communication.