Kevin reports on this amazing, one-person-can-make-a-difference story…
Kevin reports on this amazing, one-person-can-make-a-difference story…: “Kevin reports on this amazing, one-person-can-make-a-difference story
from Ukraine:
IN A SIGN OF THE TIMES, UKRAINIAN TV INTERPRETER MAKES BOLD ON-AIR MOVE
Ukraine’s state TV channel wasn’t broadcasting demonstrations by
hundreds
of thousands of supporters of Viktor Yushchenko, the pro-Western
candidate
who believes that the presidency was stolen from him through
government-sponsored fraud, so the channel’s sign-language interpreter
adopted guerrilla tactics to break the information blockade. Conspiring
with her makeup artist, Ms. Dmytruk tied an orange ribbon inside her
sleeve. Orange is the color of Mr. Yushchenko’s campaign, and of the
spreading protest movement that many Ukrainians now call the Orange
Revolution. Then after interpreting the news broadcast for the deaf on
Nov.
25, Ms. Dmytruk bared her wrist. “Everything you have heard so far on
the
news was a total lie,” she says she told viewers in sign language.
“Yushchenko is our true president. Goodbye, you will probably never see
me
here again.” But a funny thing happened on her way to oblivion… she
was
greeted with hugs from her shocked colleagues and even the station’s
technicians and the staffs of the daily children’s show and other
nonpolitical programs decided to join the strike over the coverage,
some of
them inspired by Ms. Dmytruk’s broadcast. A few hours later, the evening
newscast opened with a pledge to resist censorship in the future. Ms.
Dmytruk was also back on the air the next morning. Management at the two
other main television networks caved in the same day and allowed
balanced
reporting. The break of the government’s stranglehold over mass media
proved a turning point in Mr. Yushchenko’s campaign to annul the
official
results of the Nov. 21 election.
[SOURCE:
Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Yaroslav Trofimov
yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com]
(requires subscription)
See also:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/international/29media.ready.html?
oref=login
“
(Via A blog doesn’t need a clever name.)
——
we need more people like this person in the world.
