UKRAINE: Government faxes telling the media what to say have stopped coming, writes Chris Stephen
Last Thursday night, as normal, the news room at Ukrainian's state television channel received its temniky - a fax of detailed instructions on what to tell the people on the evening news and how to tell it.
The temniky, seen by The Irish Times, was specific.
Journalists are instructed in sober tones that the first item of that evening's news must be about president Leonid Kuchma meeting a European Union diplomat, but that there must be no mention of the diplomat's blunt protest about the rigged presidential election.
Then, says the fax, journalists must write about congratulations on a "beautiful" election sent to Kuchma by one of the few countries still backing him, Krygystan.
The fax even instructs the journalists on how to present their propaganda, telling them the tone must be "polite and quick". But unlike every other temniky sent to the station over the past 2½ years, the one sent last Thursday night lay unread. Hours before, the journalists had rebelled.
Announcing that they would no longer broadcast government "lies", the reporters at Channel One ordered their editor out of the building.
"We had this interference for years," says Yana Lemeshenko, editor at the state's news agency, Ukrinform, who rebelled in tandem with state television. "All through the election campaign, we were having to put out black propaganda, helping the government, saying bad things about the opposition."
The same day, journalists at the pro-government One Plus One and state radio also rebelled. Since then, the faxes have stopped coming.
"Work is a pleasure now," says Lemeshenko. "The bosses do not bend us to do what they want any more. Finally we can do our job."
While the opposition's Orange Revolution is continues, the TV revolution is complete - but it was a long fight.
In June 2002, with Kuchma facing criticism that he was selling off state assets at rock bottom prices to favoured cronies, the dreaded temnikys began arriving.
Journalists found themselves entering an Orwellian world of news double-speak in which the government was to be praised and critics ignored.
Relations between the government and journalists further soured when the United States released tapes apparently recording Kuchma ordering the assassination of a missing journalist, Georgy Gongadze.
In September last year, the anchor man of TV station Novi Kanal, Andri Shevchenko, quit after being told to blacken the name of the opposition. He was backed by 500 journalists.
But the temnikys kept coming, and state TV informed Ukrainians that opposition presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko was a crook, an evil man and a stooge of the Americans.
Despite this, Yushchenko's poll ratings kept climbing.
Three weeks before the first round of the current presidential elections, Kuchma moved against the only independent TV station, TV5. It was accused of libelling the government, it was fined, its assets frozen and its broadcast licence cancelled.
Shevchenko, now TV5's news director, led journalists on a hunger strike. The evening news focused on their own newsroom, filming them sitting around in white T-shirts and headbands, a symbol of their innocence.
Four days later, the government, embarrassed, gave way, reinstating the TV5 licence.
But on the eve of the first round of elections, another protest broke out when seven reporters of One Plus One quit, accusing their bosses of bending to government pressure.
More journalists from other pro-government TV stations followed and censorship was eased, too late to affect the first round of voting in October, but in time to give more even coverage for the second round, on November 21st.
But when protesters flooded the streets last week, the red pen was back - and with a vengeance.
Last Tuesday, the mother of all temnikys came juddering through newsroom fax machines, containing no fewer than 30 banned items.
That fax, also passed to The Irish Times, makes compelling reading.
Item one forbids editors from mentioning that quarter of a million people have taken to the streets in the capital to protest.
Item three forbids mention of the ringing condemnation of the election by monitors, item 15 forbids mention of Washington's fury and item 17 forbids mention of the Financial Times for that day.
Also censored was mention of the European Union summoning Ukraine ambassadors to complain about election fraud. Item 24 instructs editors to make no mention of a woman from Poltava who voted four times over for the government candidate, Viktor Yanukovich.
Censorship still continues in eastern Ukraine, with TV5 and parts of state television kept off the air in Donetsk, the government's last stronghold.
But in Kiev the mood among journalists is bubbling.
Yevgenia Alexandria, a 24- year-old reporter at Kiev Post, an independent newspaper which has chronicled the sufferings of Ukraine's broadcasters, said. "You know, we were always feeling hope. The Ukrainian saying is that hope dies last."