Kherson State University

The event was attended by leading editors, heads of media and TV companies, war correspondents, fixers, and journalists.

The conference topics covered various aspects of journalists' work during the war, both in the war zone and under occupation. The guests also shared their experience of relocating newsrooms and transforming the media during the full-scale invasion.

Among the speakers of the media forum were representatives of Kherson media, including Valentyna Pestushko, a 3rd year student of journalism at KSU and an employee of Channel 5 and X.ON radio, journalist Angela Slobodian and Yevhenia Virlych, editor-in-chief of the publication ‘Watermelon.City’.

Valentyna Pestushko spoke about the specifics of working in the liberated territories. She emphasised the importance of local media to support both the residents of the right bank of Kherson region and our people on the temporarily occupied left bank of the region. The speaker examined the aspects of a journalist's work in the frontline areas through the prism of radio and television journalism.

‘X.ON is currently the only local radio station operating in de-occupied Kherson. We broadcast from Kherson itself, we are in the centre of events, we hear all the explosions - this is the information need of the residents of our city and our region to hear their native voices. We reach the temporarily occupied territories with our voices. This is sometimes our priority when creating new projects, because we take into account the needs of Ukrainians under occupation,’ says Valentyna.

For her part, expert Anzhela Slobodyan shared her own experience of working in the Kherson region.

‘Given the fact that there is constant shelling and drones are used to throw missiles at cars, and we constantly use vehicles to reach respondents, we try to plan our trip so that it is more or less safe. The most important thing for media workers is safety,’ the journalist said.

Yevheniia Virlych, editor-in-chief of Kavun.City, outlined in detail the principles of creating media content for the temporarily occupied territories and the threats of working under occupation.

‘When we talk about how to write about the occupation? I understand that the first thing to say is that we need to write about the occupation. The main rule is to do no harm. The task of a journalist working with topics about the occupation is to do no harm. We have to be responsible for the information we receive and for the way we write about it,’ the expert stressed.

Overall, the conference became an important platform for the exchange of experience and ideas between media professionals from different regions of Ukraine. Participants stressed the importance of supporting and joining forces to provide Ukrainians with quality information in times of war.

The All-Ukrainian online conference ‘Lessons 2024: on the resilience of Ukrainian media’ was organised by the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine in cooperation with the NUJU Journalistic Solidarity Centres.

Author - third-year student of the speciality ‘Journalism’ Oleksandr Sipko