Kropyvnytskyi's "Hrechka" reports biased treatment by City Council officials

Journalists of the Kropyvnytskyi news portal "Hrechka" say they experienced what they perceived as a biased attitude towards their team on the part of some Kropyvnytskyi City Council officials. This was reported to the IMI representative in Kirovohrad oblast by the editor Tamila Deliurman.

According to the editor, the current situation is best illustrated by communication, or rather the lack thereof, with the city's education department.

According to Tamila Deliurman, the management ignores the outlet's attempts to get at least minimal verbal comments. The head of the department, Larysa Kostenko, does not answer phone calls either from the journalists' personal numbers or from the editorial office's number. The official can not be contacted through the landline number of the education department's reception office.

"In early July, our outlet wanted to report socially important information such as when the school year would begin and how the education process would be organized. I personally tried to call Larysa Kostenko to get a comment. She didn't pick up the phone," says the editor.

The journalists contacted the department's chief of mass media relations, Serhiy Yakunin, for help. He said that Kostenko was on vacation and would be back in three days. After another contact attempt, "Hrechka" was told that the official still had made no answer to the question.

Even several weeks later, no one shared information with the media outlet.

Instead, the report about the beginning of the school year, and later about the education process, was released by another Kropyvnytskyi news outlet.

"In a conversation with a colleague from this outlet, I learned that Ms. Kostenko shares information on their request directly in a messenger app, no need to contact the press office. I turned to Serhiy Yakunin to clarify why that was and when we could expect to receive the information. To this he replied (on the same day when our colleagues were releasing a news item with the official's comment) that Kostenko was on vacation again, and noted: 'You should analyze why she isn't picking up the phone,'" sums up the "Hrechka" editor Tamila Deliurman.

The "Hrechka" team believes that such a selective approach to communication with journalists indicates a deliberate obstruction of their outlet's reporting, as it has repeatedly published critical material about the department's work.

The IMI representative tried to get a comment from Larysa Kostenko herself. However, it was impossible to contact the official on her work phones. This and other similar situations will be discussed at a meeting between the Kropyvnytskyi mass media editors and the City Council secretary, initiated by the IMI representative in Kirovohrad oblast.