The development of Citizens Media is very important for Ukraine. It should be noted that public media are independent of commercial trends and popular culture. But the problem is – they must develop a culture and do not depend on oligarchs. But in Ukraine there is no Citizens Media. Public Media has must serve the public society. It is financed by the public society and has to serve it. But Ukrainians are not willing to pay for media, because they are used to have it free of charge. The debate about the necessity of Public Media in Ukraine has been going on for about 10 years. Only after EuroMaydan President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko publicly signed the law on public broadcasting on April 7, 2015. This day is considered the birthday of Public Media in Ukraine. However, this is a long process. At the beginning the state should support Citizens Media. But we do not know whether public media will then be sponsored by the public society. Ukrainians must understand that if they want to have free media, they have to pay for it. We also have important example of those countries that were able to build public media in their countries. For example Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom. Therefore such projects as „Citizens Media for Intercultural and Political Dialogue“ held jointly with Germany should help to speed up the process of building Public Media in Ukraine.
Tetiana Litvinova (Тетяна Літвінова), 21 from Ukraine
