UNIAN

The media holding of I.V. Kolomoisky, along with UNIAN, also includes the following channels: 1 + 1 , 2 + 2 , TET, PlusPlus, Bigudi, Unian-TV , Ukraine Today , 1 + 1 International; sites: TSN.ua, Glavred, Telekritika ^[1] .

UNIAN Agency was founded in 1993. Among the founders are the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine and the Union of Lawyers of Ukraine . The agency’s editorial office is located in Kiev , at 4 Khreschatyk Street. Since 1995, a monitoring department has been working in UNIAN that analyzes the central and regional press, leading online publications, and evening prime time television. In 1999, UNIAN created one of the first in Ukraine real-time operational news photo services.

UNIAN was the first in Ukraine to hold online press conferences broadcast in real time via Internet television. The agency is most closely involved in these matters with the Ukrainian Channel 5 Channel . In February 2008, the joint project “ Re: Promotion ” was launched - an analytical diary in which guests (politicians, experts, journalists, businessmen) comment on the events of the day on the air.

According to Maxim Urakin, marketing and sales director of Interfax-Ukraine agency, UNIAN is the second largest news agency in Ukraine in terms of revenue, but it is still unprofitable - according to SPARK-Interfax, UNIAN net loss for 2011 amounted to UAH 2.8 million , for the first half of 2012 - 2 million UAH. At the same time, the main item of expenditure is the maintenance of the company’s staff, and income (according to the director general of the RBC-Ukraine agency Joseph Pintus) from subscribers. In connection with the statement on censorship (see the section “Criticism of editorial policy and accusations of censorship”), UNIAN began to lose them - the online publication Ukrainian Pravda and the newspaper Zerkalo Nedeli refused the contract ^[2] .

On May 25, 2012, UNIAN chief editor Alexander Kharchenko resigned, moving from the post of chief editor to the position of chief editor of the agency’s website. In his place was appointed Mikhail Gannitsky, a former employee of the Ukrainian newspaper Segodnya ^[3] . The UNIAN team of journalists demanded the return to the post of Kharchenko and announced cases of censorship that the new leadership of the agency allowed ^[1] . At the same time, the claims submitted by the team concerned provocative materials, which were regarded by the site management as an attempt to publish custom articles. After receiving confirmations and receipts from the chief editor of the site, Alexander Kharchenko, the materials were returned to the feed.

In October 2012, five UNIAN website editors announced censorship by the site’s management. In turn, Mikhail Gannitsky told the Ukrainian Truth news site that he could not comment on this statement since it was not provided to him ^[4] . According to the UNIAN website’s editors, their leadership banned the transmission of bad news about President Viktor Yanukovych and the Communist leader Petro Symonenko , and also ordered that the election campaign of Alexander Tretyakov be intensely covered. A group of five editors filed a statement about censorship after they were fined 200 [hryvnias] for publishing on the development of Belichansky forest after ignoring the instructions to remove this dubious material. UNIAN Director General Vadim Osadchiy denied censorship charges ^[5] . “Some employees, remaining confident in their right to influence the objectivity of the reflection of events covered by the agency, perceived attempts to make UNIAN information products neutral, truly independent and out of context (which, of course, is one of the most important characteristics of the products of any company called the“ news agency “), as censorship or the practice of infringing on freedom of speech, ”Osadchy believes.

On February 11, 2013, UNIAN published an interview on its website with Sergey Vlasenko and Alexandra Kuzhel . On the evening of the same day, the Batkivshchyna press service stated that Vlasenko did not give any comments and his interview, as well as the interview with Alexandra Kuzhel, were fake, after which the interviews were removed from the site ^[6] . The conflict between the team of five editors and the leadership continued (the news agency team is more than 60 people). On February 26, it became known that the owner of the agency, I. V. Kolomoisky, does not exclude the closure of UNIAN, if the team does not agree to fulfill one of its three requirements, they have a choice: withdraw the statement of censorship by the leadership and apologize for this charge; quit in full force; forget about the incident with the bears and continue to work, as before. According to the newspaper Kommersant-Ukraine , employees refused to fulfill these requirements ^[2] .

• Ukrainian media

• UNIAN News Agency
• Russian version of UNIAN