·       Ukraine’s national public service broadcaster UA:PBC maintained the high quality of its weekly political talk show Countdown, increasing its audience by 50% in the last twelve months and reaching 40 million views. It was also praised by Ukrainian watchdogs as the most balanced and unbiased political talk-show on the air. Countdown became a launch pad for young newly elected MPs and public officials, who were able to discuss crucial political, economic and social issues with independent anchors and experts showing the viewers a realistic picture (positive and negative steps) of reforms in Ukraine.

Content produced by LIGA.net with a focus on decentralization in Ukraine reached six million online views during July 2019 – March 2020. Head of the Veselivska amalgamated community, Petro Kyiashko, reported that thanks to LIGA.net’s extensive media coverage of their activities, they created a new communication model between communities in the region, reaching beyond communities in the West to those in the East and South of Ukraine. Authorities in the Vosnesenka community organized a tour for journalists of their region following LIGA.net coverage to improve awareness of the tourism and recreational opportunities available in their region.

Internews Ukraine created an educational program for local media outlets on the transformation of journalistic activities under challenging conditions created by Covid-19 and the quarantine. The program consisted of eight video courses on adjusting newsrooms, tips on remote work for media, and fundraising. The live webinars engaged 289 participants via Zoom and 7,000 views on Facebook. Internews Ukraine made six public video lessons, two video courses for registered participants, and 24 short videos for social media that reached 70,000 users.

Over 78 regional broadcasters now have free access to 2,050 pieces of high-quality content thanks to free access to NAM’s Content Fund – the largest online content-sharing platform in Ukraine. The platform offers high quality content developed by NAM´s ¨Formats Lab,¨ other partner platforms, and Ukrainian media.

In early 2020, TEXTY.ORG.ua won the 2019 Sigma Award with its Fakecrunch application (supported by USAID’s Media Program in Ukraine). The award was in the category “Best News Application.” Other shortlisted media competing in the same category included Pudding and the Washington Post. TEXTY’s Fakecrunch (an app for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox browsers) automatically signals users about manipulative content with a banner and can be used to collect alerts from the public about disinformation online. 

·       Detector Media’s News Palm, focused on debunking disinformation and exposure of unprofessional media practices, entered the list of top 20 most popular Ukrainian language YouTube blogs on political topics (according to Wikipedia) in late March. After the Covid-19 pandemic started, Detector Media made the show available for free use on the National Association of Media’s Content Fund (a repository of free content for regional media). Six regional TV channels began to broadcast Newspalm, including Poltavske.tv, Vita–TV (Vinnytsia), TRC Nezalezhnist (Kalush, Ivano–Frankivsk oblast), Uzhinform (Uzhhorod), Kamyanets–Podilsky TRC (Kamyanets–Podilsky), TRK “Rhythm“ (Rivne). During Year 2 of the project, Detector Media produced 41 episodes of News Palm, which collected over 1,700,000 views online.

By the end of FY2020, 12 textbooks on media education, developed by AUP for 5-11 grades with support of the Media Program in Ukraine for the life of the project, were included in the list of educational products,  recommended for use in secondary schools by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine in 2020-2021 academic year. AUP’s online portal “Media Education and Media Literacy” is one of the biggest online sources of methodological and education materials in Ukraine. It was visited by 581,198 users in FY2020 (October 2019 – September 2020). 30,400 among these users were regular visitors of the portal. 

A cycle of ten video reports titled Putin’s Soldiers, produced by the Center for Journalist Investigations of the Information Press Center (formerly based in Crimea, now located in Kyiv), resulted in actions taken by the Security Service of Ukraine, the National Police, and Crimea Prosecutor’s Office, which announced that it would place 20 people on a wanted list who took part in Crimea’s occupation by Russia in 2014, including the leaders of illegal armed group “Sevastopol Self-Defense” Mykhailo Chaly and Oleg Roslyakov. The Center investigated war crimes in Crimea, activities of illegal armed groups and their role in Russia’s occupation of Crimea in 2014. 

The Center for Democracy and Rule of Law has brought oversight of access to public information to a conventional (interstate jurisdiction) level by advocating for a draft Law on the Ratification of the Council of Europe’s Convention on Access to Official Documents for   parliamentary approval. On March 5, 2020, the Committee on Integration of Ukraine with the European Union recommended that the Ukrainian Parliament adopt a bill on the Ratification of the Council of Europe Convention on Access to Official Documents (Bill No.0032), which would enforce the European Union Convention known as the Tromso Convention. On August 19, 2020, Ukraine finished the process of the Ratification of the Convention. Thanks to Ukraine’s ratification, the Convention will come into force for all signatory countries on December 1, 2020. Upon ratification, the provisions of the provisions of the Convention will dominate over the national laws of each member state should they fail to provide an adequate access to public information and documents.

Regional media specialists (82 women and 30 men) improved their knowledge and skills in the following areas: management of effective advertising departments, sales maximization, and the legal specifics of online journalism through series of trainings organized by Ternopil Press Club. The survey held after the trainings, showed that 85% of newspapers began experimenting with native advertising, 90% improved communication with advertisers, 66% implemented active sales programs, and 33% hired advertising managers. The reformed newsrooms demonstrated more interest in creating online versions of their newspapers as platforms for new opportunities in advertising activity, attracting new audiences, and promoting multimedia content among potential subscribers.

This marked a 12% increase in transparency compared to the same period in 2019. The media outlets that published all relevant information in the three categories were considered transparent. This group included Liga.net, Weekly Mirror, NV.ua, Komsomolskaya Pravda in Ukraine, Strana.ua, Segondya.ua, Ukrinform, Obozrevatel, and Unian.

The key achievement for the last six months was the development and presentation of “Recommendations to prevent hate speech in the Ukrainian Facebook segment and establishment of free speech principles on the internet.” These expert recommendations on sensitive issues (hate speech, copyright, etc.) came in response to Facebook limiting and blocking activities of some of its users, allegedly for bad behavior. The recommendations were delivered to Facebook’s communication manager for Ukraine and discussed with traditional and non-traditional media players and experts at an array of offline events in Kyiv. These included meetings of the Parliamentary Committee on Humanitarian Policy working group for developing the law On Media, a public discussion on blocking in social networks (November 7), a forum entitled “Key challenges of freedom of speech on Internet: Ukrainian and world-wide context” (December 13), and a press conference (January 30) where a new online game “Survive on the internet – mission is (not)possible“ and recommendations were presented. In total, 110 experts were involved (65% of whom were women).