Media | When the air alert comes, journalists from Ukraine’s “Yle” run to the bomb shelter to continue broadcasting

To the bomb shelter applying in the middle of the work day and doing a news broadcast in a bomb shelter.

This is what a typical working day might look like in the editorial office of the Ukrainian broadcasting company Suspilne.

HS met the general manager of Suspilne to Mykola Chernotytskyi In Helsinki in connection with this visit to Yle.

Suspilne is a relatively young broadcasting company – as is its forty-year-old CEO. Until 2014, Ukrainian media was largely owned by oligarchs.

Then with the reform of the law, preparations began for a new, independent public broadcasting company, which merged old national TV and radio channels. In 2017, Suspilne was officially registered as a public broadcasting company of Ukraine.

Due to its young age, Suspilne does not yet have the same established position in the Ukrainian media field as broadcasting companies in other countries. For example, Finland’s Yleisradio and Britain’s BBC were founded as early as the 1920s.

Today, Suspilne has several TV and radio channels and active content production on various social media platforms, such as a messaging service on Telegram and a video service on YouTube.

Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, which began in February 2022, also revolutionized media activities. An action plan for a war situation had been developed in Suspilne from the fall of 2021, says Chernotytskyi.

For example A news studio and a working internet connection have been built in the bomb shelter of the head office in Kyiv. They have come in handy.

“If the TV broadcast is interrupted due to an air raid, we will announce it on our social media channels and gather in a bomb shelter in ten minutes. The work continues from there. We are already well used to it,” Chernotytskyi describes.

At the beginning of the war, the focus was especially on social media channels, as the number of followers grew many times over. Even before the war, most of Suspilne’s news content was consumed via television.

For example, they tried to be among the first to inform about air alerts on social media. For citizens, the media was no longer just a means of information, but also a means of survival.

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“Many question the things they learned at school.”

Headquarters in addition, Suspilne has several regional deliveries in different parts of the country, for example in Lviv and Kharkiv. Especially in Kharkiv, the fighting has intensified, and journalists have had to evacuate elsewhere.

“Our reporters in Kharkiv are tired but brave. They strive to continue working as normally as possible. Our biggest challenge is the same as other citizens: living under pressure and fatigue. However, we are optimistic,” says Chernotytskyi.

In addition to war news, Suspilne also invests in investigative journalism, which deals with, among other things, war crimes and the history of Ukraine from the time of the Soviet Union and strong propaganda.

Ukrainians are still thirsty for independent information about their country’s history.

“We have to rethink who we really are. Many question the things they learned in school. Readers want to hear, for example, about Ukrainian writers killed by Russia.”

to Chernotytskyi according to Suspilne does not face censorship pressure, but the funding is being wrangled with the state.

“We have never received funding in accordance with the law during our entire seven-year operation. Now, of course, money is needed for warfare, but we are trying to make the state understand how important a role the public broadcasting company plays, especially during war.”

Chernotytskyi reminds that the existence of a public broadcasting company is also one of the conditions for EU membership. Ukraine applied for EU membership soon after the war started, but the negotiations are still ongoing.

As a counterweight to the war, Suspilne also wants to offer the people culture and entertainment. The company still invests in sports and Eurovision, for example.

“Eurovision is like the presidential elections or the Superbowl: we get very excited about them,” Chernotytskyi laughs.