Shariy convicts “5 channel” of inciting religious hatred

Journalist and video blogger Anatoly Shariy. Photo: Shariy’s YouTube video screenshot

On April 20, 2020, journalist and video blogger Anatoly Shariy published a video about how 5 channel journalists misrepresent facts and lie with impunity in order to set their viewers against the UOC and incite sectarian strife in Ukraine. Shariy spoke about what this channel used to create its bogus story on his YouTube channel.

The blogger analyzed 5 channel’s video footage about Easter and called public attention to several methods used by the journalists of this media outlet to unfairly accuse the Church of not observing quarantine:

1. There was voiced an outspoken falsehood that the UOC allegedly called for violating quarantine standards, while actually hierarchs and clergy from all the sites accessible called for the opposite (Shariy demonstrated several examples of such calls for compliance with sanitary requirements and quarantine rules).
2. The words of the Primate of the UOC, His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry of Kyiv and All Ukraine, were taken out of context and cut off so that their meaning turned out to be the opposite of what was actually said (it is about the Primate’s address to the flock – Ed.).
3. Archived videos of 5 channel were showed without specifying the fact that they were taken from archives and had nothing to do with the coronavirus pandemic or were made even before the quarantine was announced, when the country was not aware of the extent of the threat.

Shariy noted that the journalists used this method with archived videos several times.

For the first time, they demonstrated a fragment of the call of the Abbot of the Holy Dormition Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, Metropolitan Paul (Lebed) of Vyshhorod and Chornobyl, to come to temples and let children receive the Holy Communion. In fact, Vladyka Paul addressed the congregation with such an appeal on March 13, even before the announcement of quarantine and lockdown in Ukraine, the blogger drew the attention of his subscribers.

The second time, the outlet simply showed cuts from several religious processions and mass services that took place long before the coronavirus pandemic. In these video materials, there are huge groups of worshipers without any PPE like masks, since there was no mention of any coronavirus then.

“They should have shown the summer cross procession,” Shariy joked about this.

He emphasized that the above channel quialified all this distorted information as "sabotage against the Ukrainian people".

“They speak for their viewers, and this is a TV channel. It means inciting religious hatred directly from the TV,” the journalist commented on the actions of 5 channel employees. “They say so for their viewers to think that the great deal of temples did this intentionally, because it’s a diversion.”

Shariy also noted that such unpunished media pressure on the Church occurred under the former President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko. The blogger noted that the channel reporters, after voicing all their framed-up facts about the UOC, accused President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky of “weak power”. According to the journalist, opponents of the Church can really try to put pressure on the President to take the same position as his predecessor.

Shariy called on the Ukrainian authorities to punish 5 channel journalists for violating Ukrainian laws and deliberate incitement of interfaith hatred.

Earlier, a freelance correspondent for the APnews editorial office witnessed a journalist of the 1+1 TV channel offer money for kissing icons in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra in order to use this deception for his video plot.

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