Ukraine: Union secures financial support and offers training for media workers

Ukrainian journalists are facing multiple problems due to the coronavirus pandemic, a situation that is being addressed by the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU).

Credits: NUJU

NUJU has developed a special anti-crisis program for support for media. The program was developed by NUJU’s experts and representatives of more than 100 media and is based on the experience in other European countries. The program includes tax, economic and organizational measures. The union is currently negotiating with the Parliamentary Committee on Humanitarian and Information Policy for the implementation of this program and it has already reached an agreement on public grants for local media.

NUJU, along with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) project "Human Rights for Ukraine" , launched a series of webinars on the "Organization of work of local media in a pandemic of COVID-19". The training project organised 10 webinars in May-June 2020 where regional media owners, editors-in-chief and journalists learned key concepts and skills on how to optimize resources, reduce costs, and adapt to the new context of the media sector.

On the eve of the Ukrainian Day of the Journalist, which will be celebrated on June 6,  NUJU has launched an information campaign “#Journalists are important”. The objective of this campaign is to remind society about the importance and the hard work thousands of journalists are doing every day to keep citizens informed. This role has become even more important during lockdowns and the social distancing measures implemented to fight against COVID-19. Journalists, like doctors and other workers, are in the frontline against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The President of NUJU Sergiy Tomilenko, said: “The media industry has been essential during the lockdown. However, it has suffered an economic collapse. Our mission, as the largest journalistic organization in Ukraine, is to support our colleagues during these difficult times”.

IFJ General Secretary, Anthony Bellanger, said: “We welcome NUJU’s hard work to support Ukrainian media workers by lobbying the government for support measures for the media sector, organizing webinars for journalists and educating society on media freedom values. All these actions are very inspiring and will improve Ukrainian journalists’ working conditions”.

For more information, please contact IFJ on +32 2 235 22 16

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