KIEV, Ukraine (JTA) — Following weeks of inactivity, the television news channel JN1 said it may stop covering Jewish stories.
JN1, or Jewish News One, began broadcasting general and Jewish news nonstop in 2011 from offices in Ukraine and Israel. It is co-owned by Ukrainian Jewish businessmen Igor Kolomoisky and Vadim Rabinovich, a presidential candidate in the May 25 elections.
But because “a big Jewish TV channel has been launched in France recently [and] taking into account this fact and the current difficult situation in Ukraine, Mr. Kolomoyskiy has taken a decision to shift the focus of the channel policy to Ukrainian news,” a JN1 spokesman told JTA Thursday in a statement.
The statement referred to the opening of the Paris studio of i24 news, an Israeli network, and followed reports that JN1 stopped airing new stories last month, instead broadcasting archive material.
“For the present moment it is difficult to say how the channel will work in future,” the statement read.
Ukraine’s economy is recovering from an upheaval connected to months of instability during a revolution that resulted in the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych.
In January, Rabinovich said the government under Yanukovych was trying to take over JN1, which is available online and in television channel packages sold by several providers in European countries.
Kolomoisky was recently appointed the temporary head of the Dnipropetrovsk region.
