Switzerland - When a journalist declines to become an oligarch's press officer

(MENAFN- Swissinfo)

Ukraine, Europe's second biggest country, has come into the global spotlight at the same time as it has come under the rather unfriendly fire of its eastern neighbour Russia. Inside Ukraine meanwhile, another war is raging around the freedom of the press, as our latest“Voice of Freedom” tells us in Kyiv. 

Bruno is swissinfo.ch's global democracy correspondent as well as being a long-term foreign correspondent for the Swiss Broadcasting Company, based in Sweden. He is also the Director of International Relations at the Swiss Democracy Foundation and Co-president of the Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy.

The filmmaker from Italy, who was raised in Africa, calls Switzerland home now. Carlo studied film directing at the Italian National Film School, worked as a documentary editor and director/producer in Berlin and Vienna. He crafts multimedia into engaging narratives.

We meet the 24-year-old journalist Dylan Carter on Zhylianska Street, in the heart of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. We are outside the headquarters of the Kyiv post, one of Eastern Europe's oldest and most renowned English-language newspapers.

“We are being watched closely,” says Carter, who is originally from Sheffield in northern England and who has worked in Ukraine as a business journalist for a few years. Indeed, behind the tall windows of the high-rise office building, several pairs of eyes are following our conversation.“A few days ago the other journalists and I were taken out onto the street after our owner Adnan Kivan, a billionaire oligarch from Odessa, had enough of our professional journalism,” says Carter. On November 8, the editor Brian Bonner told the 50 members of staff that they were fired, something which created strong reactionsExternal link in and outside Ukraine.

Ukraine could however highly benefit from an independent and free press as the country tries to develop a stronger civil society and participatory democracy. Earlier this year, the national parliament adopted a new law governing modern direct democracy in the country – reforms which will also be the topic of the international Ukraine Reform ConferenceExternal link to take place in Lugano in Switzerland next year. However, there will no longer be an independent English-language reporting outlet in Ukraine.“Kyiv Post has been relaunched, but as a press service for the newspaper's owner,” says Carter.

Stay tuned in 2022 for the next instalments of our “Global Voices of Freedom” series.

A global stress test for freedom of expression

One of democracy's fundamental pillars is under attack, and under scrutiny, across the world.

Series Global Voices of Freedom

• Episode 1: 1. Freedom of Expression, Ishigaki Style
• Episode 2: 2. Speaking freely in an unfree society
• Episode 3: 3. Press freedom: a foundation of modern democracy
• Episode 4: 4. Asylum seeker: we all need freedom of expression
• Episode 5: 5. Freedom of expression 'has a price', says Brazilian comedian
• Episode 6: 6. Nabil Alosaidi: Press freedom in Yemen has been sentenced to death
• Episode 7: 7. Walking a tightrope as a democracy advocate in Thailand
• Episode 8: 8. 'Freedom of expression is under pressure even in Switzerland'
• Episode 9: 9. When a journalist declines to become an oligarch's press officer

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