When a journalist refuses to become a billionaire’s press officer

Series Global Voices of Freedom, Episode 8:

Ukraine, Europe’s second biggest country, has come into the global spotlight as tensions have risen between it and its eastern neighbour Russia. Inside Ukraine, meanwhile, another war is raging around the freedom of the press, as our latest “Voice of Freedom” tells us in Kyiv.

This content was published on December 16, 2021 - 09:30

2 minutes

Bruno is SWI swissinfo.ch’s global democracy correspondent as well as being a long-term foreign correspondent for the Swiss Broadcasting Company, based in Sweden. He is also the Director of International Relations at the Swiss Democracy Foundation, Co-president of the Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy and Co-initiator of the International League of Democracy Cities.

More from this author

The filmmaker from Italy, who was raised in Africa, calls Switzerland home now. Carlo studied film directing at the Italian National Film School, worked as a documentary editor and director/producer in Berlin and Vienna. He crafts multimedia into engaging narratives. 

Deutsch

Dieser Journalist will nicht Pressesprecher eines Milliardärs werden
Français

Quand un journaliste refuse de devenir l’attaché de presse d’un milliardaire
Italiano

Quando un giornalista rifiuta di essere l’addetto stampa di un oligarca
Español

Cuando un periodista rehúsa ser jefe de prensa de un multimillonario
Português

Quando um jornalista se recusa a trabalhar para um oligarca
日本語

財閥に支配されるウクライナの表現の自由
العربية

عندما يرفض صحفي التحوّل إلى أداة طيعة في خدمة حكم العائلات المتنفّذة
中文

一名记者拒绝成为寡头的新闻喉舌
Русский

Когда журналист отказывается быть в пресс-службе олигарха

We meet the 24-year-old journalist Dylan Carter on Zhylianska Street, in the heart of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. We are outside the headquarters of the Kyiv Post, one of Eastern Europe’s oldest and most renowned English-language newspapers.

“We are being watched closely,” says Carter, who is originally from Sheffield in northern England and who has worked in Ukraine as a business journalist for a few years. Indeed, behind the tall windows of the high-rise office building, several pairs of eyes are following our conversation. “A few days ago the other journalists and I were fired after our owner Adnan Kivan, a billionaire oligarch from Odessa, had enough of our professional journalism,” says Carter.

Kivan, a real estate tycoon, took over the PostExternal link for more than $3.5 million (CHF3.23 million) in 2018. The publisher announcedExternal link on November 8 that the newspaper would close immediately “for a short time” but would hopefully reopen “bigger and better”, and that chief editor Brian Bonner was retiring. All 50 members of staff were fired. He did not give a reason for the abrupt closure. The news created strong reactions in and outside Ukraine.

Ukraine, however, could benefit from an independent and free press as the country tries to develop a stronger civil society and participatory democracy. Earlier this year, the national parliament adopted a new law governing modern direct democracy in the country – something which will also be discussed at the international Ukraine Reform Conference to take place in Lugano in Switzerland in 2022. However, there will no longer be an independent English-language reporting outlet in Ukraine.

“Kyiv Post has been relaunched, but as a press service for the newspaper’s owner,” says Carter.

Stay tuned in 2022 for the next instalments of our “Global Voices of Freedom” series.