In the Shadow of Power: Ethics and Material Interest in Ukrainian Political Reporting

Abstract

This article examines the relation between political economy and ethics of news journalism in post-revolution, pre-invasion Ukraine. It explains why journalists working for the independent and the mainstream media evaluated their proximity to political and economic power in radically different ethical terms. In both cases, the journalists’ chief ethical problem was the subordination of their work to the material interests of powerful patrons. But independent and mainstream journalists interpreted interests differently: the former, as a dangerous pollutant; the latter, as an unavoidable limitation. Consequently, distinct forms of ethics arose among them. Among the employees of independent media, it was an ethics of values, which foregrounded the voluntary, disinterested pursuit of pure ideals free from compulsion or material reward. Among those working for mainstream, oligarch-owned broadcasters, it was an ethics of pragmatism, which emphasised practical compromise between powerful interests and high professional ideals. I argue that “pragmatism” thrived among those who, unable to challenge the domination that they laboured under, sought to turn it to their own ends, and accepted rewards for their complicity. In contrast, pure “values” dominated among the minority of those who found a credible way to reject such domination, which placed them however in a materially precarious position in their profession. Through these two forms of ethics, journalists navigating distinct structural positions in Ukraine’s media economy could meaningfully realise social goodness and square their autonomy with social determination, in ways that made use of, but were not reducible to, the resources available to them.