Inter should retain achieved quality of news presentation and journalistic standards - opinion

Kyiv, February 8 (Interfax-Ukraine) – It is important for the Inter TV channel to retain the progress it achieved in the quality of the presentation of news, CEO of the Mass Information Institute and member of the Inter public council Viktoria Siumar has said.

"It's very important to retain the progress that the TV Channel made over the last half of the year," she said at a press conference hosted by Interfax-Ukraine on Friday.

Among such achievements Siumar named "the maintenance of journalistic standards in the news, the growth of news criticality, balance, the number of the expert commentators and live debates, in particular at Spravedlyvist (Justice) talk show with Anna Bezulyk.

According to a monitoring of Inter news programs conducted by Ukrainian Press Academy in December 2012-January 2013, the channel had the biggest share of the news with two or more opinions.

Moreover, on the results of a content analysis, Inter is a leader (together with TVi Channel) in the share of domestic political news (34% of all news content) and in the share of discussion of events in Ukraine (60%, there is more only on the TVi channel).

According to the Academy of the Ukrainian Press, the monitoring showed that the TV channel demonstrated the most well-balanced (compared to another national channels) approach to the distribution of attention to politicians and political forces.

President of the Academy of Ukrainian Press Valeriy Ivanov, in turn, said that the analysis testifies the quality of news at Inter TV channel, but not their opposition bias.

"In fact we see a quality information product. The kind of news that is now being shown on Inter, according to standards of journalism, [is as good as] in the countries we are used to calling civilized," he said.