Censored for 1.5 Billion: How Free Speech Is Crushed by ‘Approved’ News

Source: Author’s Facebook page

Imagine this: you pay your taxes in full, the state proudly lifts its chin, takes 1.5 billion hryvnias from your pocket — and spends it to silence your right to hear an alternative point of view. This is no joke. This is the Single Telethon.

Sociologists from Rating found that the number of viewers of the state-run marathon and of three independent channels (Espresso, Pryamy, Pyaty) is almost the same. The difference is that 1.5 billion hryvnias were spent on the marathon, and exactly zero on the independent channels. So who looks foolish now?

And here comes the juiciest part. For the absence of criticism in the marathon, the money doesn’t go to some unknown “patriots,” but to Bankova’s old friends: Kolomoisky, Medvedchuk’s wife, and Pinchuk. And the “cherry on top” is Kinokit, the company of Timur Mindich, Zelenskyy’s longtime associate from Kvartal. Our censorship, it turns out, is not only political but also commercial.

In reality, Ukrainians are not funding freedom of speech, but the government’s freedom from freedom of speech. And while ordinary people count their last pennies for utilities, the government is paying in hryvnias to block the opposition’s access to state-run media.

Recall that citizens express the highest level of distrust among all media in Ukraine towards the “United News” telethon, 39% of respondents. According to a sociological study by the “Rating” group, it is Telegram channels and YouTube that are currently significantly ahead of traditional media in terms of trust. At the same time, the joint telethon received the highest rate of negative assessments: 30% of respondents said that they do not trust it at all, another 9% – rather do not trust it. 24% of respondents expressed uncertainty, and 19% could not answer.

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