A little bit about “24” channel’s love for mathematics

The news that starts with a headline “It was found out…” has gained big popularity with the home-grown media space. Who knows whether it is inborn curiosity of Ukrainians that comes into play, or a prospect of being let into a secret, yet such news is always extremely catching. Perhaps, it was exactly what the “24” channel calculated for when it published an article on its site called "It was found out how much money was spent by Ukraine on the UOC MP Cross Procession”.

One may involuntarily think this is engaging mathematics. Figures are truly impressive: “Half a million hryvnas from the budget was spent on organization of safety and service for pilgrims during the Cross Procession of the Moscow Patriarchate,” the news resource reports, operating with the data of Kiev City Council and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Service for pilgrims – sounds funny. The authors of the message do not even bother to enter into details, what kinds of services were rendered to over 80 thousand believers of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church during the Cross Procession of peace, love and prayer for Ukraine. They just add at the end that “there were over 6 thousand law enforcers from various regions, including the National Guard and Security Service. There were 25 ambulances, rescue squads, as well as on-site workers. Central streets were blocked and circled with metal detectors.”      

Here you are. In their comments benevolent readers advise to issue an invoice to the Patriarch, FSB, Putin, and put forward a number of other interesting proposals. In a word, everything is like it should be: sowing seeds of hatred into the fertile soil and wait for early seedlings. Well, to say to an average cash-strapped Ukrainian, who tends to believe every word coming from the screen, that the expenditures from the state budget (read it as from his/her pocket) for the “pro-Moscow”, “funded” etc make up half a million hryvnas – who is going to like that? The calculation was correct, however, the “24” channel scored their own goal. In answering a letter of address of executive editor of the “24” channel S. Karpenko to the Prevention Department of the National Police of Ukraine, NOT A SINGLE WORD is said about the service for pilgrims and similar acts.      

The Department “…considered an issue with regard to ensuring public security and order during the religious actions held by the UOC representatives on 27 July 2016 in Kiev city within the framework of “All-Ukrainian Cross Procession of peace, love and prayer for Ukraine”, and the one dedicated to the 1000^th anniversary of the old Russian monkhood on Holy Mount Athos and 1028 anniversary of the Rus Baptism,” says the reply. “We inform that in order to ensure public security and order, the Main Directorate in Kiev city employed over 4,6 thousand law enforcers. Out of the overall amount of law enforcers over 1,2 thousand policemen were sent on mission from other regions of the state. The National Police assigned a total of 488,6 thousand hryvnas for their mission trips.” Here is peculiar mathematics.  

The point hereby is not even why journalists are surprised by the policemen from other regions being paid. Should 1,2 thousand cops as they are called now – either with love or with a view to humiliating police officers – have fulfilled their work on a voluntary basis?

The matter is that on July 28 the same news resource reported that extensive involvement of the policemen to ensure public order on July 27 is “the most large-scale preventive measures to have been ever taken in the capital and the funds thereto “were taken from special security expenses. According to the law enforcers, “additional money was not attracted, everything was developing within the annual Ministry’s budget. We have a special programme called “Safe Capital”, therefore funding these events is carried out under this program”, told the First Deputy Chairman of Kiev City State Administration Gennadiy Plis. 

I wonder why the “24” channel did not make an effort to calculate how much budgetary appropriations were spent by Kiev policemen, say, on the “Equality March” defense this media resource had been actively publicizing? It did not even let small letters in the titles, not to speak of the provocative headlines, whereas it violated basic spelling rules of their native language in publications about “cross procession of the Moscow patriarchate.” Another bewildering thing is why the reply the journalists had received on August 8, was announced publicly a week later. It might seem, the Cross Procession ended a long time ago, against all odds, tens of thousands believers got together to pray in the capital of their country, the media hysteria vanished as if by magic. Or is the “24” channel’s slogan – “we will let the hatred degree drop”?   

What actually embarrasses the journalists of this news resource? Aren’t you reaping the harvest of your labor? Wasn’t it you and your colleagues who, from the very first hours of the Cross Procession, blackwashed those who were going on their feet with prayer and faith covering hundreds of thousands kilometers along the Ukrainian roads from the West and from the East? It’s enough to take a look at some publications related to the CP to make sure it was true.   

If a thoughtful reader bothers to follow each of the suggested links, they will notice an interesting fact: there is nothing of the sort in the news what the headlines tell. The journalists do not recite about “extraordinary rituals with microphones”, “clashes in Lavra”; furthermore, in the publication with a vocal name “It was found out about evacuation of the Cross Procession participants from Kiev” nothing is said about the evacuation or even about its hypothetic need. The position of the resource which tagged the UOC Cross Procession in all its reports exceptionally as “the so called” and tried to highlight the events in a specific light, does not require for redundant comments. What are all these demonstrative economic calculations of the budget expenditures?  

For weeks the Ukrainian media space “heated” the public with messages about provokers, troopers, disguised FSB workers in the Procession columns, then they launched hard artillery out of radicals and attempts to mine and block “mined roads” along which, however, the traffic was freely moving. I wonder if the false information “petrol”, poured open-handedly on live coal of the public opinion, by journalists of other than “24” channels, could have caused explosion? In the CP columns there were ordinary people – monks, priests, entire Ukrainian families, men, women, mothers with infants, prams, and elderly people. You tag them with “Russian patriots, separatists, Moscals, yet they are like you – made of flesh and blood, Orthodox Christians. What could have happened if the policemen and Guard soldiers had failed to halt the crowd of fretful radicals who were behaving like demons in the suburb of Borispol?  If you hadn’t witnessed the event yourselves, watch the live video on-site, and you will give me an answer then. What could have happened there? Could the “24” journalists sleep peacefully at nights if the worst had occurred? Or can a salary outweigh remorses of conscience? 

Metropolitan Antoniy (Pakanich), Chancellor of the UOC, compared our country in one of his interviews with an ill paraplegic man from the Gospel’s parable about the miracle of the Savior in Capernaum. The Metropolitan aptly emphasized that “it depends on each of us if Ukraine will rise or continue to lie on stretches paralyzed by mutual hatred, animosity and violence.” Regretfully, despite all adversities, thousands of deaths, poverty, devastation, we continue to fan the flames of hatred, not least at the instigation of the mass media like channel “24”.

Well, what does your conscience tell you now? 

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