Ukrainian journalism is currently seeing its finest hour – and a deep crisis, says Romaniuk
Ukrainian journalism is currently seeing its finest hour – and a deep crisis at the same time. This opinion was voiced by the executive director of the Institute of Mass Information Oksana Romaniuk at the expert discussion "How are journalists to write about russian atrocities, war crimes, and genocide during the war?" Detector Media reports.
"Now Ukrainian journalism is at its high point. But at the same time, we are in a deep crisis. We are facing internal and external challenges. The internal ones are having to work in special wartime conditions. The external ones include the lack of information access, when it is difficult to get responses to requests, when usual sources and topics are no longer an option, the workload increase.
"At the same time, the audience has become more demanding of the mass media: they want to be informed, but on the other hand, they do not want the media to inform them, because what if it does some damage. All this imposes much responsibility and many restrictions. This is the crucible wherein new Ukrainian journalism is now being forged," she said.
Oksana Romaniuk added that more and more questions arise to foreign media and journalists.
"Before, we used to treat many of them as some kind of gurus, but now you realize that they have too much pathos and not enough real adherence to standards. Toppling the Western journalism from its pedestal necessitates agency on the part of Ukrainian journalism, the emergence of its voice at the international level. It should be setting the bar, saying that a thing is right or wrong, being unafraid to criticize the international media. There are no more idols on pedestals. If they write something that does not meet the standards, we should respond to that," she believes.
Oksana Romaniuk considers the freedom of speech protection and independent journalism to be another urgent challenge for Ukrainian journalism.
"Now there is a financial crisis and the crisis related to the martial law restrictions. It is important that these restrictions end together with the war and that we can develop as a democratic state. In order to protect independent, high-quality journalism, we need to develop self-regulation, build horizontal connections, defend each other, unite and protect the independence of journalism," the head of IMI added.
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