ABSTRACT
Georgy Gongadze, editor of the news web site Ukrainska Pravda, which often featured critical articles about President Leonid Kuchma, Ukrainian government officials, and the opposition, disappeared in Kyiv in September 2000. The murder and disappearance of Gongadze highlighted once again the serious security threats faced by journalists investigating corruption. This chapter analyses the Gongadze incident and looks at the political scandal that shook Ukraine in the fall of 2000 and has continued to cause political repercussions. It examines and applies crisis management analysis methodology to the challenges that journalists face when investigating corruption and social and political tensions. The ambition to trace the historical process of a case involves an extensive effort in data collection. This is salient if the case in question has already been subjected to previous investigation. Reliable data on how the decision-makers processed the information prior to reaching a decision is rarely available to researchers and is often made public through second-hand sources.
