Kirovohrad media felt somewhat lost in the first weeks of the invasion – IMI representative
In the first week or two after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the media of Kirovohrad oblast experienced a certain confusion. Journalists did not understand how best to present information: to copy reports from the national media or to build their own strategy.
Pavlo Lisnychenko, the IMI representative in Kirovohrad oblast, spoke about this in his interview with the Institute of Mass Information.
"The national media immediately rushed to fill the news feeds, providing new information every 5–10 minutes. Regional mass media were mostly, let's say, extras, because collecting information while being based an oblast that does not have, so to speak, immediate access to the line of contact was quite problematic. Everyone was on the phone non-stop, using all their contacts. You could also get information from national media. Accordingly, no one wanted to just copypaste things," Pavlo recalled.
However, according to him, regional media gradually created a certain concept: copying some of the national news while covering local topics at the same time. In particular, Kirovohrad oblast was the first to start covering IDPs, the mobilization, the volunteer movements, aid, organization. Other local media focused on these topics as well.
"Long story short, people were getting involved in this process. Journalism, like the country itself, came out of a comatose state of a kind and started working at its full capacity," said the IMI representative.
Pavlo Lisnychenko explained that such behavior on the part of journalists is due to the fact that Kirovohrad oblast itself and its media market have always been distinguished by a "very, very calm working pace", since the region has no access to the borders, is not an area with any significant presence of industrial giants, therefore finances were flowing through it quite sluggishly.
"Everything that was happening did so at a very, very measured pace. After the start of the full-scale war, this pace became a little faster, but did not change all too much," added Lisnychenko.
As reported by IMI, in late June, a hub for journalists coordinated by Pavlo Lisnychenko, IMI representative in Kirovohrad oblast, opened in Kropyvnytsky.
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