Journalists Are Important: NUJU’s Work Report for 2023

Throughout 2023, the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU) worked under martial law imposed after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by russian troops. The Union performed its statutory duties by focusing on the priority tasks in a particular period. Among them are safety and psychological support for journalists, special attention to internally displaced persons (IDPs); comprehensive assistance to NUJU’s regional branches and mass media newsrooms, development of the network of Journalists’ Solidarity Centers (JSC) with the participation of international partners; protection of freedom of speech; promotion of creative activity; professional education; cooperation with public organizations and higher education institutions in the interests of the development of the media industry; and involvement of new members of the Union.

Important areas of work of mass media at this time were and remain informational resistance to enemy propaganda and broad coverage of the heroic struggle of the Ukrainian people against the invaders.

In 2023, only the work of the Union‘s JSC network helped restore or continue the work of more than 230 newsrooms, support more than 3,000 journalists, including those affected by the war. More than 600 times, colleagues have been provided with protective equipment for going to cover the situation in combat zones. Body armor, helmets, and first aid kits have saved more than one life. More than 200 training sessions and workshops were held – on security, digital technologies, and professional ethics. The Union helped restore 30 local media in the liberated territories. A hotline for psychological support worked at the NUJU 24/7; individual consultations were provided to more than 300 journalists, 90% of whom were women.

The collective leadership of the NUJU, as before, took care of the urgent issues of the release of illegally detained media workers, advised colleagues on security issues in the conditions of work in the front-line and temporarily occupied territories, and informed international partners about cases of violations of journalists’ rights. The Union monitors the deaths and injuries of media workers, actively participates in the investigation of the circumstances, and contacts colleagues and relatives of the victims. Over the course of the year, data was collected on more than 30 journalists who were killed while performing their professional duties or as mobilized soldiers or civilians (in total, as of February 2022, there are more than 75 colleagues who lost their lives).

The President of the NUJU, Sergiy Tomilenko, and the First Secretary of the NUJU, Lina Kushch, provided journalists from different regions of the country with safety advice during training sessions, trips to the region and hotspots by phone and in writing. NUJU‘s JSCs have been actively operating on the basis of the NUJU‘s organizations in five regions of Ukraine, in particular, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivtsi, Zaporizhzhia, and Dnipro ones since 2022. The JSCs hold seminars, roundtables, webinar discussions, master classes, and other activities. In December 2023, the Kharkiv JSC was added to the existing network of Centers in Ukraine. It was created by the Union with the support of IFJ, EFJ, and UNESCO. The purpose of the network is to support journalists, freelancers, bloggers, and associated media personnel who work in difficult conditions during the war.

Currently, the Zaporizhzhia JSC is taking care of 28 journalists from the eastern and southern regions of the country. Colleagues were provided with assistance in acquiring the status of IDPs, providing them with the necessary things, housing, and work. They, like local media workers, participate in the activities of the regional organization and the JSC. Psychological training and art therapy events are held here: free museum tours, concerts and performances, and sports competitions. In total, more than 50 multifaceted art therapy events were held during the year. In fact, the Center has become a collective office that provides conditions for productive work (there is a generator, the ability to access the Internet through the Starlink system, etc.). Zaporizhzhia residents report on a number of implemented projects, including support for relocated and local publications, work with youth, “Volunteer Journalists,” “Supporting Hand,” “Journalistic co-working is operating,” “My personal war” (a project in three areas of information activity). For the fruitful and effective work of the Center, the Zaporizhzhia regional organization of the NUJU received a special award from the regional military administration.

All JSCs help their colleagues to stay in the profession, hold various creative events, join journalistic initiatives, such as World Press Freedom Day, International Day Against Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists, honor the memory of Georgy Gongadze and all fallen journalists, hold patriotic actions on Vyshyvanka Day [the Day of Embroidered Shirt], etc. Those in the Ternopil, Khmelnytskyi, Zakarpattia, Volyn, and Poltava Regions take care of assisting IDPs. It happens wherever media workers and their families find shelter.

Throughout 2023, thousands of journalists received various types of assistance from the Union and its partners.

The NUJU pays special attention to the support of regional newspapers. All-Ukrainian online meetings of newspaper editors (in total, three such meetings were held) also dealt with pressing issues of subscription and postal delivery of the publications. The general director of the Ukrposhta joint-stock company took part in the meeting on September 27. The majority of the regional organizations of the NUJU, the head and governing bodies of the Union during the year, paid attention to the solution of topical problems in this field because the postal reform led to a significant reduction of post carriers, as a result of which newspapers are not delivered on time, people refuse to subscribe to the press. NUJU Secretary Vitalii Holubev, together with his colleagues, conducted industry research on the needs of local newspapers in the de-occupied and front-line territories and the state of press delivery. This was done with the support of the project titled Increasing The Sustainability Of Ukrainian Media, financed by Swiss Solidarity and implemented with the participation of Fondation Hirondelle (Switzerland) and the International Institute for Regional Media and Information (IRMI, Ukraine). The results of the first of two studies were presented in Kyiv during a two-day training of the educational and enlightenment project Steps To Sustainable Development for local media from the front-line and de-occupied territories, held with the assistance of UNESCO and the Japanese government.

Strengthening international ties and assistance from partners are among the most important things during the war. This direction was developed by the leadership of the NUJU. The President of the Union represented it at forums and meetings in EU countries (France, Germany, and Poland), in the United States – at the site of the UN General Assembly in New York. In May, events were held there on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, and the film 20 Days in Mariupol was presented (the author is Mstyslav Chernov, a Pulitzer Prize laureate).

NUJU First Secretary Lina Kushch spoke, in the interests of advocating the priorities of the Union‘s activities at the international level and attracting new partners to help Ukrainian journalists, at more than 20 online and offline events, among other things as co-chair of the EFJ expert group on gender equality and diversity. Meetings were held with the leaders of the journalists’ unions of Norway and Sweden and members of the EFJ executive committee from Italy, Denmark, and Germany. The analytical report Ukrainian Mass Media In Conditions Of Large-Scale War And Economic Crisis was presented abroad.

In November 2023, a large group of Ukrainian Union members, led by the leadership of the NUJU, visited the thematic campus and international conference RE:Cover in Krakow (the event of the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom is part of the Voices of Ukraine program, funded by the German Foreign Ministry).

In 2022, Union secretaries Kostiantyn Hryhorenko (spoke at events in Lithuania and Moldova), Hlib Holovchenko (participated in the Forum of the National Press Club of Poland, scientific and practical conferences and seminars, roundtables on countering the spread of disinformation and other topical events), Serhii Shevchenko (public and information activities in the Balkans).

The work of Ukrainian journalists during the war was the focus of most of the Union‘s public actions. The created photo exhibitions were displayed in the Kyiv Metro [subway] (it serves as a shelter during air raids), and the photos were shown in Paris and Brussels. The large-scale NUJU project called Executed Free Speech was presented in Ukraine and abroad. Work on it began in 2022. The project is dedicated to documented attacks on media workers, video stories of more than a hundred journalists who became victims, or eyewitnesses of russian war crimes in Mariupol, Kherson, Melitopol, Bucha, Kharkiv, Bakhmut… The goal is to draw the attention of Ukrainian and international audiences to gross violations of human rights and crimes against journalists and mass media committed by the russian federation (the executor of the project is the NUJU with the support of the Swedish organization Civil Rights Defenders). The collected materials were handed over to human rights organizations for use in international campaigns and trials to bring the russian federation to justice. The team that prepared the project consisted of up to 30 people, including representatives of the NUJU managerial bodies: Sergiy Tomilenko, Lina Kushch, Mykola Semena, Serhii Shevchenko, Viktoriya Plakhta, Dmytro Tarasiuk.

Vitalii Holubev, Liudmyla Dolzhenko, Tetiana Kalynovska, Oleksii Kovalchuk, and others participated in the presentation of project materials in the regions of Ukraine. Eleven presentations of the project were held – in Kyiv, Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Kropyvnytskyi, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa, Mykolayiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, as well as in Sarny and Volodymyrka in the Rivne Region. A total of 37,000 people became the guests of the NUJU exhibitions.

Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, the head of the Parliamentary Committee on Freedom of Speech, visited the Union in December for a presentation of protective equipment for women and met with the leadership of the NUJU. Thanking everyone currently working in the mass media, he called their work invaluable. On the information front, NUJU secretaries Oleh Nalyvaiko (the head of the State Committee for Television and Radio-Broadcasting of Ukraine) made their contribution to strengthening the authority and influence of the Union; Valerii Makeiev, a lawyer and writer; Olha Kulish (MoD of Ukraine); Volodymyr Danyliuk (currently serving in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), major); Denys Ivanesko (director of the Ukrainian News Agency), Zoya Sharykova (organized and led book presentations in the NUJU press center / participated in the presentation of Kavun.City site, whose media representatives had to leave Kherson, which was temporarily occupied in 2022). Valentyna Dushok conducted thematic TV broadcasts and joined the volunteer movement in Cherkasy, has a relationship with volunteering, and Viktor Vesilyk in Odesa. Mykola Semena monitored the situation with freedom of speech and the media in the occupied Crimea. He participated in the protection of the rights of professional and citizen journalists in the occupied territories, in particular, those who suffered repressions and are behind bars in the territory of the russian federation. Publicist Serhii Shevchenko, during the period of working on the recommendation of the NUJU in the international professional protection program Journalists-in-Residence Kosovo, made efforts to ensure that the program was among the best to support projects for Ukrainian journalists in Europe. As the vice president of the charitable foundation, he was also involved in the provision of material and financial assistance to veterans of the press in Ukraine. He also prepared an application for the National Competition titled Charity Ukraine – 2022, in which public figure and editor Jun’ichi Kowaka (Japan) won in the Media and Charity category. During the war, he actively supported journalists’ organizations. From the Japanese donations, by the decision of the Journalist Initiative fund, which is headed by Liudmyla Mekh, assistance was provided to fellow veterans on the occasion of Independence Day in the total amount of more than UAH 40,000. In addition, tens of thousands of hryvnias were donated to the newsroom of the Zoria newspaper (Ovruch, Zhytomyr Region). Besides, during the year, the projects of volunteer members of the Union in Vinnytsia were supported more than once. There, Maryna Teplenko and Tetiana Skomarovska participated in the production of camouflage nets for soldiers.

Having reorganized their activities in accordance with the challenges of the times, the NUJU regional organizations focused on the important areas of mass media restoration, ensuring the sustainability of media enterprises, psychological support for journalists, and cooperation with territorial communities. The Union investigated the needs of local media in the de-occupied and front-line territories and found that in all regions, more than 80% of newsrooms lost advertisers due to the war, and 60% of media lack money for salaries. Every fourth journalist often works there for free, and another half of media workers have their salaries cut. At the same time, since the beginning of the full-scale war, the load on the mass media has increased. Local media are often the only source of verified information; if they disappear, hostile propaganda will fill the vacuum. At this time, every third Ukrainian newsroom has journalists who are currently fighting at the front. Their number includes many volunteers.

Thanks to the activity of the Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Cherkasy, and Lviv members of the Union, the second February 2023 issue of the newspaper We Are From Ukraine! was widely distributed in the country. The issue, created with the organizational support of the Journalistic Initiative and Japanese partners, contains selected works of the winners of the NUJU creative competition Informational Front-2022. The unique edition was prepared by the editorial team of the Kherson newspaper Novyi Den and printed on the basis of the Vysokyi Zamok Publishing House (Lviv).