Monday, June 11, 2007

If I had more time and energy, I'd translate more of this article (UKR) by Maryna Pyrozhuk in Ukrainska Pravda - about the lousy coverage of the mysterious illness of Ukraine's interior minister:

Vasyl Tsushko is feeling better... Interior minister's condition has gotten worse... Vasyl Tsushko is better... Interior minister is feeling worse again... Then better again...

Eight times like this.

These reports were traveling around Ukrainian news agencies all day long, were being retold on radio and TV stations by the ministry's representatives and those with clear personal interest - Tetyana Montyan and Kostyantyn Stohniy. The former called herself the minister's friend and aide, and the latter was just an employee of the ministry.

And none of the reports on this subject carried voices of the doctors who were treating the Ukrainian minister, or the voice of Tsushko himself, who, according to Stohniy, was feeling better from time to time, and was even telling jokes, and managed to control the situation at the ministry, and then some more. According to that very same Stohniy.

[...]

Until now, none of the TV channels has managed to check and show a true picture of where exactly Mr. Tsushko has been hospitalized, and whether he is indeed hospitalized, what city and country he is in.

In the story of the Socialist minister Tsushko, the main newsmakers were and are the Socialists themselves, as well as friends and colleagues mentioned above. And the comrades are very active in insisting that Tsushko has been poisoned, and they've even named those who harmed him.

[...]


Maybe Ukrainska Pravda will get a full translation online later. This is one of the very few texts on Ukrainian politics - and journalism, and medicine - that I've read lately, and I liked it.

3 comments:

  1. Re: Tsushko:

    http://forum.korrespondent.net/read.php?2,182745

    Guess what unites Tsushko, Brad Pitt and Johnny Veronica-does-not-like-him Depp?

    Sasha

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  2. yes, i know, i was shocked when i learned his age, too. he's 30 years younger than my papa - 44 years old. (only maybe that's a typo? i wouldn't trust those government sites too much...)

    ReplyDelete
  3. That's not a typo. It's a typical Ukrainian male specimen who's been drinking all his life thinking that he rules the world.
    S.

    ReplyDelete