Self-censorships in Ukraine: Distinguishing between the silences of television journalism

Abstract

This article builds on biographical interviews with public service broadcasting journalists, who have earlier worked for mainstream private media in Kyiv, Ukraine, to argue that journalists, according to their own understandings, engage in several different forms of self-censorship that do not necessarily have a direct relationship to external censorship. I identify and analyse three different forms of self-censorship – pragmatic, ethical and affective – that are simultaneously present in the same professional community of Ukrainian television journalists at a single historical moment, despite the fact that they operate in accordance with distinct logics. Taken together, they offer an empirical basis to challenge scholarly accounts that understand self-censorship as a singular phenomenon. The article proposes some initial analytical parameters and questions for a more nuanced analysis of the empirical heterogeneity of self-censorship.