Ukrainian Churches Protest Biased Reports on “1+1” TV Channel

KYIV — In an open letter to the management of the TV channel “1+1,” the Eastern-Dnieper Conference of Seventh-day Adventist Church in Ukraine expressed its protest against a slandering report about that church broadcasted on the channel.  RISU’s Ukrainian-language web site posted this story on December 15, 2009.

“In a report of the TV channel on December 5, a journalist Olha Pavlovska provided inadequate information about the Seventh-day Adventist Church…This fact compels us to address the public in Ukraine and abroad with an open letter,” quotes the Institute of Religious Freedom from the published document.

The open letter stresses that in the coverage of the process of reconstructing the office of the religious community in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk, the TV channel “1+1” “violated the rights and freedoms of believers and defamed the name of the Adventist Church and hurt our dignity as citizens of Ukraine.”

The letter includes eight facts of distortion of information and of providing inadequate information in the report on the channel as examples of non-objective coverage and violation of journalistic ethics.

In particular, the report includes a statement of a resident of Dnipropetrovsk that the Adventist Church is a “sect” and other hostile statements of the city’s residents. No other opinions or comments of religious studies experts were included despite the official registration of the church and its long history in Ukraine.

Let us recall that other Christian churches expressed similar complaints about the journalistic practices of the TV channel “1+1.” For instance, after the broadcast of a series of reports “Like in God’s bosom,” during the meeting of the president of Ukraine with members of the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations on October 28, Metropolitan Volodymyr, the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate, raised the question of offending believers by such reports.  Such coverage by the Ukrainian media reminded him of the times of militant atheism and according to him it is dangerous for the spirituality and morality of the Ukrainian society.

On October 9, 2009, the Spiritual Council of Christians of Odesa Region published an address expressing indignation and concern with regard to numerous  reports of the TV channel “1+1” which offended millions of believers.