{"id":1293700,"date":"2025-09-17T16:56:39","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T13:56:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/freedom-of-speech-for-one-and-a-half-billion-how-we-are-forced-to-watch-the-right-news\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T10:10:29","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T07:10:29","slug":"freedom-of-speech-for-one-and-a-half-billion-how-we-are-forced-to-watch-the-right-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/freedom-of-speech-for-one-and-a-half-billion-how-we-are-forced-to-watch-the-right-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Censored for 1.5 Billion: How Free Speech Is Crushed by \u2018Approved\u2019 News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Source: Author’s Facebook<\/a> page<\/em><\/p>\n

Imagine this: you pay your taxes in full, the state proudly lifts its chin, takes 1.5 billion hryvnias from your pocket \u2014 and spends it to silence your right to hear an alternative point of view. This is no joke. This is the Single Telethon.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sociologists from Rating<\/em> found that the number of viewers of the state-run marathon and of three independent channels (Espresso, Pryamy, Pyaty<\/em>) 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?<\/p>\n

And here comes the juiciest part. For the absence of criticism in the marathon, the money doesn\u2019t go to some unknown \u201cpatriots,\u201d but to Bankova\u2019s old friends: Kolomoisky, Medvedchuk\u2019s wife, and Pinchuk. And the \u201ccherry on top\u201d is Kinokit, the company of Timur Mindich, Zelenskyy\u2019s longtime associate from Kvartal<\/em>. Our censorship, it turns out, is not only political but also commercial.<\/p>\n

In reality, Ukrainians are not funding freedom of speech, but the government\u2019s 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\u2019s access to state-run media.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>: 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.<\/em><\/p>\n

Also, follow \u201cPryamyi\u201d<\/strong> on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, Telegram<\/a>, and Instagram.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2022 Materials published in the \u201cOPINIONS\u201d section reflect the opinion of the author of the publication, who bears full responsibility for the accuracy of the information.<\/em><\/span>
\n\u2022 The editorial staff of prm.ua may not share the opinions expressed in the author’s material.<\/em><\/span>
\n\u2022 The owner of the webpage in the \u201cOPINIONS\u201d section is the author of the publication.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 \u2014 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":1293845,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76871,76872,76893],"class_list":["post-1293700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-2","category-news-feed","category-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1293700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1293700"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1293700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1293848,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1293700\/revisions\/1293848"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1293845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1293700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1293700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}