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  • «Belarusian media funding is declining, while competition from Russian media is on the rise.» Is there a solution?

    The troubling case of the KYKY website is not an isolated event. Many independent media outlets are likely to experience funding problems shortly. After three years of working in exile, the Belarusian media has entered another turbulent period. Not all of the outlets will successfully navigate this period. But is there a way out?

    Why did the problems arise now?

    In pri­vate and pub­lic meet­ings, there is much dis­cus­sion about the neces­si­ty of sus­tain­able fund­ing mod­els. But it’s hard to call the grant sys­tem one. First, unlike the adver­tis­ing mod­el, grant oppor­tu­ni­ties are high­ly diver­si­fied. For instance, last year, there was a grant call, but this year there is none. As a result, the media must often seek out new pro­grams. Sec­ond, only state pro­grams typ­i­cal­ly offer a pub­lic bid for accept­ing appli­ca­tions.

    Now there is much talk of for­mal­i­ties and short­com­ings in grant appli­ca­tions. How­ev­er, these projects have exist­ed for years, so the man­agers like­ly have the nec­es­sary expe­ri­ence to pre­pare the appli­ca­tions cor­rect­ly. What’s changed?

    «In the first months after the relo­ca­tion, Belarus received sig­nif­i­cant atten­tion from the world. Both short- and long-term sup­port pro­grams were avail­able. That offered some wig­gle-room for sur­vival,» recalls Barys Haret­s­ki, BAJ deputy chair­man.

    How­ev­er, after the out­break of a full-scale war in Ukraine, the sit­u­a­tion changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly.

    «Some donors consider Belarus to be part of the same package as Russia’s liberal media» 

    There is anoth­er impor­tant fac­tor to con­sid­er. Belaru­sian media man­agers are pay­ing more atten­tion to com­pe­ti­tion from neigh­bor­ing media out­lets. These out­lets also com­pete for resources to sup­port inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism.

    «The decrease in fund­ing for Belaru­sian media is evi­dent from recent devel­op­ments,” says Barys Haret­s­ki. «This is part­ly due to some donors con­sid­er­ing Belarus to be part of the same pack­age as Rus­si­a’s lib­er­al media. The con­test has strict require­ments, but it does not con­sid­er the local sit­u­a­tion.

    For exam­ple, one grant had a con­di­tion that a medi­a’s reach should be at least 1 mil­lion peo­ple. How­ev­er, dis­cussing a coun­try with an offi­cial pop­u­la­tion of 9.3 mil­lion is dif­fer­ent from dis­cussing a state with a pop­u­la­tion of 143 mil­lion. 15 times the dif­fer­ence!”

    Con­sid­er­ing audi­ence reach as a per­cent­age rather than quan­ti­ta­tive met­rics is log­i­cal in this case. Oth­er­wise, it can end up like in an old anec­dote about two ath­letes: the Amer­i­can fin­ished sec­ond to last, as report­ed by the USSR radio, while the Sovi­et run­ner trailed slight­ly behind the leader.

    Accord­ing to the Belaru­sian Ana­lyt­i­cal Work­shop, 57% of the Belaru­sian pop­u­la­tion trusts inde­pen­dent mass media. Despite the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of jour­nal­ism, Belaru­sians are recep­tive to alter­na­tive sources, accord­ing to soci­ol­o­gists. The regime’s efforts to estab­lish infor­ma­tion hygiene have been titan­ic, but rather unsuc­cess­ful.

    The question arises: Can Russian liberal media provide objective and comprehensive coverage of events in Belarus?

    The for­mal approach high­lights a con­cern­ing and per­ilous real­i­ty: some donors fail to rec­og­nize our inde­pen­dent media as a dis­tinct enti­ty. Despite numer­ous appeals and the efforts of demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­ers, some indi­vid­u­als refuse to acknowl­edge the dif­fer­ence between Belaru­sians and Rus­sians.

    This is exact­ly what Pavel Sviard­lou, edi­tor-in-chief at Euro­ra­dio, said recent­ly:

    «Europe is start­ing to adopt the approach con­sid­er­ing ‘media in exile,’ regard­less of their coun­try of ori­gin, such as Belarus or Rus­sia. We are pooled togeth­er and mon­ey is allo­cat­ed for all of us. Eval­u­at­ed by cov­er­age. How­ev­er, it is not appro­pri­ate to com­pare a mil­lion YouTube fol­low­ers of Russ­ian media with a mil­lion fol­low­ers of Belaru­sian media.

    Addi­tion­al­ly, Russ­ian media claim to be able to reach out to Belaru­sian fol­low­ers, too. Euro­pean politi­cians are hap­py with this: prob­lem solved.

    But can Russ­ian lib­er­al media pro­vide objec­tive and com­pre­hen­sive cov­er­age of events in Belarus? Do they have the resources, the under­stand­ing, and most impor­tant­ly, the desire? Appar­ent­ly not.

    The way they pre­sent­ed the lat­est news about the prob­lems of pes­simiza­tion of inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian media in Google search results, to which Media IQ drew atten­tion, is con­cern­ing. Russ­ian media reprint­ed the Finan­cial Times news and shift­ed the focus, dis­tort­ing the infor­ma­tion. Alleged­ly, the restric­tions con­cerned both the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion and Belarus, although this is not true. In the orig­i­nal piece, Rus­sia was not men­tioned at all.

    «Some independent media outlets have enough funds to cover one or two months of work»

    To objec­tive­ly assess the process­es, we can con­sid­er the num­ber of Russ­ian media projects that emerged after the full-scale inva­sion, such as Astra, Ver­st­ka, Dron, Project, and oth­ers.

    What is the sit­u­a­tion with the Belaru­sian media sphere? BA, the first pri­vate radio sta­tion in the city, lnfa-Kuri­er, the Slut­sk dis­trict edi­tion, Ranak TV chan­nel, and Dze­jaslou lit­er­ary mag­a­zine were closed down. Recent­ly, Reform.by, Plan B, KYKY media out­lets have report­ed prob­lems with fund­ing. The list goes on…

    “Some inde­pen­dent media out­lets have enough funds to cov­er one or two months of work,» express­es the gen­er­al con­cern Barys Haret­s­ki.

    Com­mon trends in the media indus­try include the atom­iza­tion of media and jour­nal­ists, with many start­ing their own projects. Oth­ers leave the pro­fes­sion for relat­ed fields, such as work­ing in NGOs or social media mar­ket­ing, or oth­er sec­tors, such as IT. Some jour­nal­ists also find work in oth­er juris­dic­tions, such as get­ting a job in the media of their host coun­try. A well-known exam­ple is when Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists opened a new media out­let ded­i­cat­ed to local top­ics in anoth­er coun­try, DigitalBusiness.kz.

    Of course, all these are demo­ti­vat­ing process­es that do not ben­e­fit the inde­pen­dent media sphere. Spon­sors are more will­ing to fund Telegram and YouTube chan­nels due to their small team size, low fund­ing require­ments, and wide reach. How­ev­er, these chan­nels rely on tra­di­tion­al media as a source of ver­i­fied and objec­tive infor­ma­tion.

    «We will not stop saying that Belarusian independent journalism is worth supporting»

    Inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian pub­li­ca­tions are fac­ing an unprece­dent­ed chal­lenge. They are work­ing in exile and can­not gen­er­ate rev­enue inde­pen­dent­ly. Is there a way out?

    «How can the media sur­vive?» Barys Haret­s­ki admits this is a dif­fi­cult ques­tion. «Inde­pen­dent media in Belarus used to make mon­ey through adver­tis­ing, but these are not easy times. Many pub­li­ca­tions are now labeled as ‘extrem­ist’ and are there­fore unable to receive sup­port. Com­pa­nies in Belarus are hes­i­tant to engage with these pub­li­ca­tions due to the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of any inter­ac­tion with ‘extrem­ists.’

    Some media sites have adver­tise­ments, but they only gen­er­ate a small por­tion of the rev­enue. There’s no way to sur­vive on this mon­ey.

    The same goes for finan­cial sup­port from read­ers. That wave of sol­i­dar­i­ty went down after 2020 for obvi­ous rea­sons. The surge of dona­tions will sus­tain Reform.by and Plan B (fol­low­ing their SOS cry) in the short term. How­ev­er, rely­ing sole­ly on short-term solu­tions is not sus­tain­able.”

    Inte­grat­ing media projects is believed to be help­ful in times of neces­si­ty. How­ev­er, there are cur­rent­ly no suc­cess­ful exam­ples. A joint project involv­ing Malan­ka Media and Euro­ra­dio has just been announced, but there are no spe­cif­ic out­comes yet.

    If jour­nal­ists start mak­ing mon­ey from oth­er ser­vices, such as edu­ca­tion­al ser­vices, it will mean less work for the media.

    “This is not an effec­tive approach,» says Barys Haret­s­ki. «Replac­ing a fun­da­men­tal pro­fes­sion­al func­tion is not advis­able. Today, the mass media is not just a busi­ness, but a social mis­sion to deliv­er free and impor­tant infor­ma­tion to Belaru­sian soci­ety.”

    Lithua­ni­a’s jour­nal­ists sur­vived abroad dur­ing the Sovi­et era, as we can see from their expe­ri­ence. An ecosys­tem of com­pa­nies and orga­ni­za­tions found­ed by the dias­po­ra in Amer­i­ca and else­where was cre­at­ed. How­ev­er, it takes time for Belaru­sian relo­ca­tors to recov­er from the shock of forced emi­gra­tion, and their pri­or­i­ty is to main­tain their cause.

    “The sale of brand­ed items and oth­er meth­ods of mon­e­ti­za­tion do not gen­er­ate suf­fi­cient income to cov­er the month­ly salary of even one employ­ee,» accord­ing to the deputy chair­man of BAJ.

    There­fore, inde­pen­dent media can only rely on donor sup­port. If for some rea­son a part­ner reduces sup­port or aban­dons the Belaru­sian top­ic alto­geth­er, it will become even more dif­fi­cult for jour­nal­ists. The last oppor­tu­ni­ty is to draw atten­tion to it in the pub­lic space.

    “Belaru­sian media have a longer his­to­ry of suc­cess and more effec­tive work than Russ­ian lib­er­al media. BAJ states this on all pos­si­ble plat­forms, includ­ing offi­cial meet­ings with the EU, joint calls with large foun­da­tions, and con­ver­sa­tions with pri­vate donors,» sum­ma­rizes Barys Haret­s­ki. «For exam­ple, dur­ing the Decem­ber meet­ing of the Euro­pean Par­lia­men­t’s Del­e­ga­tion for rela­tions with Belarus, Andrei Bas­tunets drew the MEPs’ atten­tion to the prob­lems of the mass media. Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism is worth sup­port­ing. We appre­ci­ate every­one who helps us.»

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