The telethon was included in the US State Department's report on human rights violations in Ukraine

The telethon was included in the US State Department's report on human rights violations in Ukraine / Photo from open sources

The US State Department has published a report for the year 2023, which concerns the violation of human rights in Ukraine. It claims that the telethon toes the government line in its coverage of the Russian-Ukrainian war.

The report emphasizes that the constitution and legislation provide for freedom of expression, including for the press and other mass media, but the authorities do not always respect these rights.

«President Zelenskyy signed a decree imposing martial law in February 2022 following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, allowing for further restrictions on the media and media freedom,» the report said.

For example, the national telethon, according to the US State Department, follows the government line in covering the Russian-Ukrainian war.

The report also mentions that «the government has banned/blocked/sanctioned media outlets and individual journalists deemed to be a threat to national security or who have expressed positions that, in the authorities' opinion, undermine the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity.»

«Some speakers who criticized the government were also blacklisted from government news programs. Investigative journalists critical of the government have sometimes been the target of negative social media campaigns, sometimes through pro-government channels. The freedom of the mass media continued to be affected by other practices, including self-censorship,» the document states.

We will remind you that the number of citizens who trust the «Edyni Novyny» telethon continues to fall. At the same time, the share of those who do not trust is growing. This is evidenced by a survey of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology conducted on February 5-10, 2024.

Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Freedom of Speech, noted that the «Edyni Novyny» telethon may exhaust itself if it is not improved.