Janet Haven

Actually, it's not really a death match. Mel has Ukraine on the mat accordig to Google news, with 1800-and-counting stories covering all aspects of the alcoholic actor's anti-semitic rant and subsequent apologies versus the not-quite-500 stories on the resolution to the young democracy's mutli-month constitutional crisis. I had actually been quite pleased at the amount of coverage Ukraine's situation was getting until I compared it the ever-blossoming Gibson story.

Anyway, it's not just a matter of brute numbers. The endless Mel coverage means that every aspect of the crisis has been dissected for the public. Not so with the media coverage of the Ukranian resolution, which has been fantastically bad. With the exception of the International Herald Tribune's article I read on the issue, every major newspaper I've read has either misreported or under-reported the story. If I hadn't been in Kiev last week and had the situation explained to me by Ukranian colleagues, I would come away from the mainstream coverage of the situation understanding that Yushchenko, the hero of the Orange Revolution, had inexplicably turned his back on the party and appointed his arch nemesis, the Russian-backed Yanukovych, as prime minister. In fact, the parliamentary coalition of socialists, communists, and Yanukovych's Party of Regions (the Russian-leaning nationalists) nominated Yanukovych, meaning that as president of the country, Yushchenko was faced with a devil's bargain: either accept his rival as PM and try to work around him, or dissolve Parliament altogther and call new elections, which would almost certainly mean that he would not be re-elected as president -- by most accounts, he's done a pretty lousy job of being president and his ratings are in the single digits. Pretty rotten decision, but faced with that choice, it seems obvious why he would choose to do as he did. Now, that's a pretty straight-forward story. Why have I only read one article that explains it?

For useful information on understanding the situation Ukraine, follow Transitions Online's series of articles on the country, or the always thoughtful Neeka's Backlog.