Who owns Ukraine's media?

Who owns Ukraine's media?

There is a war being waged in Ukraine and it is playing out on television sets and in the minds of viewers.

"There is a war being waged in Ukraine, but this one is not being fought from trenches in the east. It is being played out on television sets and in the minds of viewers on an informational frontline where oligarchs and politicians fight for influence.

On this battlefield, the media serves as a weapon with which owners can exert political leverage, attack opponents or foment specific public sentiments.

Oligarchs, through their control of and influence on the media, play a critical role in shaping the discourse around and public consciousness of unfolding events. And this, says former investigative journalist and current member of parliament Sergey Leshchenko, poses a danger to democracy.

"TV stations are used for achieving political goals," he says.

Some of Ukraine's wealthiest oligarchs, including the country's president, Petro Poroshenko, Igor Kolomoisky, Dmytro Firtash, Victor Pinchuk and Rinat Akhmetov, own media groups. While only Poroshenko is actually in government, Kolomoisky, Firtash, Pinchuk and Akhmetov are all involved in supporting and promoting political parties or policies.

Ukraine ranked 129th out of 180 countries in the 2015 World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders.
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Media is a threat to Ukraine's fledgling democracy. Because oligarchic media "deprived [the public] of the possibility to receive balanced and true information about what's going on," says Telekritika's Roman Shutov, "it changes their behaviour, the political behaviour and the electoral behaviour." The use of the media in the political and economic war in which the various factions of the Ukrainian establishment are engaged is disruptive for democracy.

"As oligarchs manipulate and divide the public," Shutov argues, they create "a threat to internal stability" and pose "a challenge to democracy".

Democracy and the freedom of the press have been appropriated by the elite to create a factionalised plutocracy in the guise of a democratic state. The media, Yuri Makarov argues, looks "like a reflection in a broken mirror"."

Greg Krasovsky: What makes matters worse is that most of these Oligarch-controlled media outlet are actively fomenting Russo-phobia with tacit approval by the U.S. Government.

Please read rest of the article at http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/04/owns-ukraine-media-160405130121777.html