The following story appears in the current issue of Columbia Journalism Review.
Journalism’s champions can come in unlikely packages. Like Natalia Dmitruk, a forty-seven-year-old sign language interpreter for Ukraine’s state-run television. During her country’s recent contested election, she refused to translate lies about the outcome. As the bogus vote counts went up on screen, Dmitruk signed: “Don’t believe the results from the Central Election Commission. They are not true. Our president is Viktor Yushchenko.”
Dmitruk briefly returned to translating the actual newscast, but broke away from the script once again: “I am ashamed to be translating these lies to you. I won’t do it again.” She knew such honesty would get her fired, but, she says, lying to her “listeners” — deaf Ukrainians — “weighed heavily on my soul.”
In Ukraine, reporting inconvenient facts can be lethal. More than a dozen journalists investigating alleged business and government corruption have died mysteriously. One was found decapitated. Dmitruk was aware of the risks. She finished the November 25 broadcast by signing: “Maybe we’ll see each other again.”
She then told her boss what she had done. Word spread. Grips, cameramen, lighting technicians — and professional journalists who never broke from prepared scripts — applauded her, chanting, “Molodets!” (“Well done!”). Many bowed before her. Within moments, a private television station supporting the opposition reported Dmitruk’s disobedience. Her nineteen-year-old son, Andriy, gathered with protesters in Kiev’s central square, heard the broadcast projected on a large-screen TV. The crowd began chanting Dmitruk’s name.
That evening, for the first time in history, the state-run TV station gave permission to protesting journalists to report the truth, not merely information fed to them by the government. Natalya Ligachova, editor in chief at Telekritika, an organization that monitors Ukrainian journalism, applauds Dmitruk’s courage. She says the viciously contested election “pushed many people to extraordinary steps.”
During the campaign, somebody poisoned the opposition leader, Viktor Yushchenko, with dioxin. More than 2.8 million fake ballots were cast for Viktor Yanukovych, the government candidate. Fed-up Ukrainians exploded in fury. Thanks largely to the massive protests, the Supreme Court declared the runoff invalid. Yushchenko won the revote.
“Can you imagine if Yanukovych had won?” Dmitruk joked warily. “I would be under the asphalt.” She offers no opinions about whether renowned journalists in her country should have risked their careers to get the truth out. “I am not a journalist,” Dmitruk says. “I was convinced I was doing the right thing.”
–Greg Raver-Lampman and Natalia A. Feduschak
Bill McDermott was CJR’s Webmaster.