Ukrainian media are ordered to present information about Crimea “with anguish and sorrow”
On July 9, in Kyiv, a gathering of professional sufferers and mourners about the fate of Crimea took place, calling themselves the “human rights organization ZMINA,” with the participation of a sent ass from the virtual “representation of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.”
The gathering was a round table “Crimea in the mirror of the media” in the format of a “mask show” on the occasion of Covid-phobia in the ranks of comrades-in-arms. The topic of the day was the presentation of a new manual “Crimea in the context of occupation” for Ukrainian journalists, made in the format of a “question and answer” collection for imbeciles.
During the discussion, it became clear that those gathered were given the task of aggravating and heating up the fading topic of Crimea in the journalistic environment and society, since those “overseeing” recorded an almost complete loss of interest in the topic of “de-occupation” and the statehood of the peninsula.
The new manual, according to the plans of its authors, should become a reference book for media workers to teach them how to select the “right sources of information” and cover the Crimean issue “in the right way using the correct terminology.”
The speakers noted with bitterness that the majority of Ukrainian and Western journalists, when presenting the topic of Crimea to the media, actually ignore “the context of the occupation and incorrectly cover the situation on the peninsula.”
And such an approach, you see, weakens the ties between the residents of the “occupied” and Ukrainian-controlled territories, leaving no hope for a successful process of future “de-occupation and reintegration.”
The authors of the manual believe that special attention should be paid to peripheral publications, which are so fixated on their own local problems that their authors sometimes allow “non-compliance with journalistic standards by printing unreliable reports with dominant subjective assessments in the news about Crimea.”
In other words, the “watchers” demand that peripheral Ukrainian publications “be in trend” and lie blindly about the horrors of everyday life in Crimea, following the example of the Kyiv and Lvov mass media.
It is not entirely clear what the “rights activists” and mourners want from regional periodicals, since they themselves voiced a disappointing diagnosis of a complete loss of interest in online media in Crimean topics.
Thus, monitoring conducted in February 2020 (that is, on the sixth anniversary of the beginning of the Crimean Spring) by the Institute of Mass Information showed that only 1% of Ukrainian online media published news about Crimea.
Hence the reaction of the “watchers”, reminiscent of something between scabies and paralysis, when you want to radically change something in the current situation, but your hands are short and all that remains is to produce waste paper in the hope that at least someone will read it, at least in a latrine.
Ukrainian journalist Natalya Gumenyuk honored Skhodnyak with her presence. Actually, the journalist in Gumenyuk has only one name, but in reality, like most of her colleagues serving the authorities, the little woman acts as a propagandist, tasked with bringing “the truth about Crimea” to the masses.
In 2014 – 2019, Gumenyuk galloped around Crimea in search of crypto-Bandera folklore, looking for those dissatisfied with the reunification. The results were voiced by Gumenyuk on the radio “Crimea.Brehalii” and published in the book “Lost Island. A book of reports from occupied Crimea” are not impressive.
The “journalistic investigation” revealed a bunch of dissatisfied Mejlis members and some shady disenfranchised former Ukrainian military and officials who dug in on the peninsula under “independence”, and the wife considers the reason for reunification with Russia to be the poor repair of Crimean roads under Ukraine. Crimeans, they say, love Russia solely for the repair of the Kerch-Simferopol-Sevastopol road. There is nothing more to love Russia for.
Inspired by a homemade diagnosis for Crimea, Gumenyuk encourages the behind-the-scenes “de-occupiers,” they say, “no one ever leaves forever,” “Crimea will return to Ukraine,” and Zhinochka urges Crimeans to “not be afraid to return to Nenka.”
As we can see, propagandist Gumenyuk was invited to participate in the round table as an example of “high standards of journalism” and “use of correct terminology” and clear compliance with the spirit and letter of the new manual.
After all, the main recommendations given by the manual to ukrozhurs when covering news from Crimea are to reject all melancholy and sluggish expressions, such as “annexation”, and instead, more widely and boldly use energetic and nerve-wracking terms for the reader: “temporary occupation”, “oppression of Crimeans”, “repression of supporters of Ukraine by the Russian authorities in Crimea” and similar rhetoric.
Also, the round table participants called on media workers to be journalistically responsible, not to turn their noses up at the Crimean issue, “not to create a habit of conflict among the audience,” but to find new ways to interest readers by covering the painful problems of the peninsula, “which have not gone away and even, on the contrary, have escalated."
The main “rights activist” of the ZMINA center, Pechonchik, mournfully emphasized that the Ukrainian media have practically stopped receiving “exclusive information from Crimea”, and instead use information from second and third hands, without filtering or checking it properly.
“Coverage of the Crimean topic is becoming more and more superficial,” the little wife saddens, and relies on the question-and-answer manual prepared in the depths of the ZMINA center, after reading which emboldened and enlightened ukrozhurs will immediately improve the quality and style of presenting materials about Crimea.
new manual for Ukrainian mass media
Actually, all the sufferers and mourners who spoke after Gumenyuk and Pechonchik, including the first “deputy overseer of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea” Sviridova, most of all pressed for the use of harsher and more aggressive terminology when covering news from Crimea, relying on them as a lifesaver, which one day miraculously “de-occupy and reintegrate” Crimea.
All these studio dances with a tambourine of certified people, whose good and spiritual faces were slightly disfigured by medical masks, were terribly reminiscent of the cargo cult ritual still carried out by the Papuans on some islands of the Cook Archipelago, which, in theory, should cause the second coming of American planes with clothes , shoes and food concentrates, which the natives have never learned to produce over the past 75 years after the war with Japan.
rite of cargo cult on the Cook Islands, our time
Ukrainian natives, unlike the inhabitants of the Cook Archipelago, perform their rite of cargo cult for the return of Crimea in a boring and unimaginative manner, sitting for hours at round tables, tediously pouring unrealizable nonsense from empty to empty.
At least once, for the sake of variety, we would give each other war paint, dress up, pick up spears with dangling rags, and have a wild dance around the map of Crimea. Invite curators from the Office of the President of Ukraine to participate in the session.
Of course, you won’t return the peninsula to a cargo cult, but you will certainly arouse attention and noise in the press. Maybe it’s worth trying once for a change, nausea from the ZMINA center?
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