Shortly before 6 p.m., engineers in Ukraine`s Radio Transmission Center are adjusting sound levels while listening to WBEZ`s Chicago weather forecast. It`s just about noon in Chicago, 40 degrees, and the forecast is for snow.
Beyond the sound room`s glass partition, Radio Kiev editor Yevgeni Kuzmin sits at a table surrounded by sheet music stands, he adjusts his headphones and the tall mike hanging overhead. ”Yevgeni, how are you?” pipes in the voice of WBEZ`s Sondra Gair. Minutes later, her voice begins to fade in and out. ”OK, I`ll put you on hold,” Gair says. ”We`ll be back as soon as possible.”
So begins the monthly hookup between WBEZ-FM 91.5 and Radio Kiev, a radio bridge that will celebrate its fifth anniversary in June. On the second Monday of each month, Ukrainian journalists, scholars and political analysts are connected by trans-Atlantic phone line to their Chicago counterparts.
”It`s the first time, and I believe the only program on an ongoing basis between the former Soviet Union and the United States where people every month are hearing the changes,” said Gair.
Gair came up with the idea of the joint WBEZ-Radio Kiev broadcast over lunch with Alexi Sologubenko, a former Radio Kiev political reporter. Two months later, a tenuous phone line traversed more than 5,500 miles, eight time zones and seven decades of mutual suspicion to link the two stations.
The talk show`s main theme is the transformation sweeping the former Soviet Union. But behind the scenes, profound changes are crippling the distribution of news by Radio Kiev and other media in the Commonwealth of Independent States.
The media are dependent on Moscow`s monopoly of the former Soviet news wires and newsprint. This control, coupled with economic chaos, is
compromising the press` independent reporting of the news.
News has become one-sided. Few of the news media can afford foreign correspondents or news wires. Most subscribe to Itar-Tass, the former party information agency now controlled by Russia. Disinformation and nationalism are rising.
”There is no dissenting voice,” Sologubenko said of the press. ”No one (in Ukraine) is saying we don`t need the Black Sea Navy. You might hear voices like that on Russian television. Why? It`s the political society and everyone thinks there should not be a free press at this time. They want a controlled press serving the state.”
But Inna Chichinadze, vice director of the State Ukrainian Television and Radio Co. foreign service, blames the news distortion and bias on the media`s youth and inexperience. ”We try to reflect all points (of view) that exist in this society,” Chichinadze said. ”We do not do it in all cases and not with tolerance in all cases. But we are trying.”
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Radio columnist Dan Kening is ill.
