By Thomas d’Istria (Kyiv, correspondent), Le Monde, 3/14/24
The photos, which were taken in the first weeks of the Russian invasion, have hung ever since then – side by side – on the premises of the Starlight Media television group. They depict journalists working from darkly-lit makeshift shelters, at a time when Russian forces were only 20 kilometers from the center of the capital, Kyiv.
On Friday, March 8, the media conglomerate’s communications manager pointed to the portrait of a man sitting at a school desk. She explained that it was Orest Drymalovsky, a star presenter of Starlight’s ICTV channel, who had announced his mobilization to the Ukrainian army in early February, live on air. “A powerful signal for our audience,” said Yana Honcharenko with a hint of pride.
This announcement was all the more powerful as it was made in the context of the United News Telemarathon, a major tool in the information war waged by the Ukrainian authorities. For more than two years now, teams from six channels have been jointly producing and simultaneously broadcasting identical news content – 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The initiative was initially conceived by journalists as a way of maintaining the country’s cohesion against Russian attempts at destabilization via social media, before being passed into law by presidential decree in March 2022.
“While, at the start of the invasion, the production of the ‘marathon’ was a unifying factor and was watched by half the country, the situation has now changed,” said Svitlana Ostapa, head of the supervisory board of the Suspilne public television and radio broadcasting group.
Representatives of channels linked to opposition groups (Espresso.tv, 5 Kanal and Priamyi), which were sidelined at the outset of the “telemarathon” before being excluded from the national system of digital video broadcasting (DVB-T2) in April 2022 − thereby losing 40% of their audience − have accused the authorities of taking control of the country’s media. Several human rights organizations, and Ukrainian civil society more broadly, have recently called for the return of plurality in the country’s news channels.
Trust has been continually eroding
Above all, confidence in these programs, as measured by opinion polls, has been plummeting among the Ukrainian population. “The term ‘telemarathon’ has become synonymous with excessive positive propaganda reporting on victories, while the situation on the front lines is worsening,” said Otar Dovzhenko, an official from the NGO Lviv Media Forum.
“In reality, that’s not exactly true,” he immediately qualified, “because the telemarathon doesn’t systematically broadcast such positive propaganda. Rather, it’s seen as a communication tool for the authorities, one that society, it’s true, doesn’t entirely trust.” Of the six broadcasters participating in the telemarathon, the expert considered the teams at Suspilne, 1+1 Media Group and Starlight to be “professional and responsible.” On the other hand, he noted that the “Rada TV” parliamentary channel – which has stopped broadcasting plenary sessions of the Ukrainian Parliament since the start of the invasion – and the My-Ukraina (“We are Ukraine”) channel “focus excessively on government representatives and on building up their positive image.”
After reaching up to 40% of viewership ratings following the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, this “telemarathon” has now fallen to 10% of viewership, according to Ostapa. Viewers’ levels of trust have been continually eroding: from 69% in May 2022, to 36% in February 2024, according to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS). Also per this institute’s latest study, the share of Ukrainians who do not trust the program is now at 47%, compared with 38% in December 2023.
This decline of interest in Ukrainian television has prompted participating newsrooms to explore ways to re-engage their viewership. “The best producers are thinking every day about finding solutions that would be in the interest of Ukrainians,” said Oleksandr Bohutskyi, CEO of Starlight Media, the owner of the ICTV channel.
The issue of this program’s future has also been a matter of concern for Mykyta Poturaiev, who – before becoming a Ukrainian MP in 2019 with the presidential party Servant of the People – had spent his entire career in positions of responsibility in the media industry. “We want all citizens to be able to receive verified information,” said the head of the country’s humanitarian and information policy parliamentary committee. However today, “there are only two possibilities,” he said: “Either the telemarathon invents a new format, or we stop it.” To justify his position, Poturaiev also pointed to the cost of the programs (465.2 million Ukrainian hryven in 2024, or around €11 million), which he felt was too high given the low viewership figures.
Using Telegram for ‘alternative’ information
Galina Petrenko, director of media watchdog Detector Media, has also observed the decline in interest in the “telemarathon,” but called attention to the existence of a core group of loyal followers. This expert was amused at this discrepancy between the positions of civil society organizations, which have been critical of the program “because we are for freedom of expression,” and those really held by viewers: “We see that a portion of society still needs this format.”
Over two years of war, Ukrainian people have considerably changed the ways by which they obtain information. This has been reflected in a massive increase in the use of Telegram channels, to receive “alternative” information – as opposed to that put out by the “telemarathon.” This has also been because channels on this encrypted messaging app are more effective for use in wartime: “When you’re in a bomb shelter and you need information related to your safety, you’re not going to turn on the TV and wait for them to bring up something that is relevant to you,” said Petrenko.
As a result, she said, “[Volodymyr Zelensky’s] communications team has begun to understand that the government can’t rely on the telemarathon alone, and is trying to exert influence through other news channels.” While the presidential administration has allowed independent media to operate freely on the internet, “it has started to take control of [some] Telegram channels because it sees that they are now the main sources of information.” At a press conference held by the president in December 2023, three Telegram channel representatives were invited, two of whom were officially accredited.
In Petrenko’s opinion, the most problematic aspect of this “telemarathon” is its unequal political representation. According to Detector Media’s research into the profiles of guests on the program, former President Petro Poroshenko’s opposition party European Solidarity was clearly under-represented when compared with Zelensky’s Servant of the People party.
Ostapa, head of the supervisory board at Suspilne, qualified the authorities’ responsibility for the choice of guests. For commercial channels which are part of the “telemarathon” – such as 1+1, Inter and ICTV – “it’s more a form of self-censorship,” she said, “because journalists don’t want to broadcast information that Zelensky might not like, or invite guests he might not want to see.”