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.