Disputes over journalists’ self-censorship during Russia’s full-scale invasion in Ukraine: case of Latvian Public Service Media (2022 – 2023)

• In Event: Journalistic Ethics in Times of Turmoil

Abstract

After Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the socio-political discourse changed radically in matters of Russia's influence in Latvia. These changes affected the public debate about the role of public media during the crisis in a form of public and online attacks towards PSMs’, questioning their performance and expressing suspicions that the PSMs’ are a threat to national security. Reacting on those activities’ PSMs’ employees openly admitted that the work of journalists is affected by self-censorship and avoidance of discussing controversial social and political issues.
Defining self-censorship as a situation when information is voluntarily suppressed without formal restrictions, the purpose of this article is to explore what internal and external influencing factors determine the development of self-censorship in Latvian PSM during Russia’s invasion in Ukraine.
The research consists of two data sets: semi-structured qualitative interviews with 25 PSMs’ employees (journalists, producers, editors) and quantitative and qualitative content analysis of 45 Latvian PSMs broadcasts and articles.
To form the theoretical basis of research, we analysed the literature of self-censorship, the effect of the spiral of silence and employed the theory of journalism as a discursive institution (Hanitzsch & Vos, 2017), in which the value of journalism is determined by its self-perception.
The results of the research show that in the conditions of the war caused by Russia in Ukraine, self-censorship determined the decisions and content both in the coverage of current events and social and cultural topics in news, discussions, and archive broadcasts, influencing the editorial line of PSMs.

Short Bio

Anda Rožukalne is a member of Academia Europaea and Corresponding member of Academy of Science of Latvia. She holds positions of a professor and senior researcher at Faculty of Communication, Rīga Stradiņš University (RSU) in Latvia.
Rožukalne’s fields of expertise include the development of journalism values, media systems, media regulation and self-regulation, and media audience studies. Since 2011, her research interests focus on building artificial intelligence aided innovative audience and media content research tools.
Rožukalne is the author of many academic publications on journalism and media, she represents Latvia in the EC Media Pluralism Monitor, in the global Worlds of Journalism Study, and in the Euromedia Ownership Monitor EU 12.
Aija Kažoka is the editor-in-chief of Medicus Bonus, a specialized scientific journal for doctors, as well as a lecturer at the Riga Stradiņš University (RSU) Faculty of Communication and the Department of Sport and Nutrition of the Faculty of Public Health and Social Welfare. She has a master's degree in information and communication sciences, currently she is a PhD candidate in social sciences in the Communication Culture and Multimedia doctoral study programme.
Kažoka's areas of competence includes media discourse research, health and medical journalism, media content analysis. She is the author and co-author of several publications in these fields.
Linda Siliņa works as a international affairs journalists in online medium DELFI. She holds bachelor degree in communication of Riga Stradiņš University.

Author

• Anda Rožukalne, Rīga Stradiņš University