ANDRIUSKUNCINA
Journalist
& Activist
by Richard Solash
A chain of bodies forms around the
embattled Lithuanian parliament. As a teenager, with
Soviet tanks drawing closer by the minute, Andrius Kuncina
is one of the links. A country on the verge of recovered
independence and an empire in its final, exhausted days
means fertile ground for the start of a career in journalism.
Immediate opportunity, too, for Kuncina: “I was
one of the few lucky Lithuanians who had considerable
command of the English language, allowing me to assist
the first Westerners arriving to my newly-independent
country on investigative, research, and business missions,”
he recalls. Nearly twenty years later, Kuncina still
serves as a link between his homeland and the West,
and his role as a proponent for social change goes beyond
just journalism.
“It was a stale-water mixture of
boring Soviet movies, worse-than-bad Soviet song festivals—with
mediocrity spanning from Siberia to Central Asia to
Belarus—and no-news newscasts, saturated with political
advertisements and propaganda, delivered by huge, tractor-sized
women with harsh baritone voices.” That Kuncina
has a way with words is undeniable. Linguistic ability,
coupled with an equally obvious revulsion for “stale-water
mixtures,” soon led Kuncina to his calling. In
1993, he joined Tele-3, Lithuania’s first private
television station, as co-producer, editor, and anchor
of the evening news. It was in 1996, however, when Kuncina
switched networks to host the lifestyle and fashion
magazine Nuo…iki... (“From A to Z…”),
that he would reach the height of his public notoriety.
“I had been the Lithuanian translator for the now-nonexistent
CNN program Style with Elsa Klensch, and was approached
one day by the TV station’s director with basically
an order to create a Lithuanian version,” Kuncina
remembers. “The program gradually grew into one
of the most successful primetime shows in the country.”
High ratings saw the show extended to a full hour in
length, and a talk-show-style segment was added. Kuncina
was squarely in the spotlight, traveling to Moscow and
Paris to cover international fashion weeks and scoring
interviews with fashion luminaries ranging from Paco
Rabanne to Christian Lacroix. Kuncina even interviewed
Larry King along the way, an experience he ranks among
the highlights of his career. The success of a male-hosted
show about fashion would not come without a price for
the TV star—and it was a personal one.
“There is no doubt that being gay
is not only a benefit, but simply a must for a fashion
and lifestyle reporter,” Kuncina reflects. “To
put it in humorous terms, there are too many wild and
loose women in the fashion business for a straight man
not to get distracted, and too many refined men and
women in it, along with all of the design and lifestyle
subtleties that are almost completely off limits for
a non-gay guy.” Nevertheless, Kuncina became quick
and constant fodder for the tabloids—“the
source of juicy rumors and front-page gossip,”
as he puts it—which even took the form of a television
puppet show in which a Kuncina character was parodied.
Under the floodlights of public scrutiny, attempts at
maintaining a personal life that was truly personal
in nature were once and again thwarted. Perhaps most
telling as to the state of social development in the
newly post-Soviet nation was the fact that Kuncina,
through all of the ridicule directed at him, was never
directly questioned about his homosexuality. Not once.
For all the public scrutiny, one simple truth was left
conveniently in the dark. “As none of the journalists
interviewing me ever asked, they never got the direct
answer about my orientation,” Kuncina explains.
“I remain true to my resolution to be open and
honest once they are ready.”
 In
1999, Kuncina’s life and career shifted course
when he left Vilnius for Prague and left fashion reporting
for a return to hard news. The liberality of the Czech
capital provided welcome contrast, allowing him to live
in peace with his partner, a local whom he had met on
a previous trip. The pro-Western stance of the government
also helped to make Prague the home of Radio Free Europe,
a U.S. Congress-funded news service predicated on the
goal of providing quality journalism to many of the
world’s less-than-democratic countries. Kuncina
joined the Lithuanian bureau, broadcasting to his countrymen
from abroad. Once again, he was working to broaden the
horizons of his homeland. Old habits, however, die hard—not
to speak of deeply entrenched stereotypes, safeguarded
for years by ignorance and state-sponsored intolerance.
“It all came back to hit me in the face,”
reflects Kuncina on remembering this time. Even as he
covered the stories that define a journalist’s
career—the fall of Milosevic, September 11th, the
war in Afghanistan—the vitriol from Lithuania intensified.
“There were remarks in the media about ‘fashion
ballerina Kuncina pirouetting into the world of politics’
and the so-called naïveté of my new bosses
trying to ‘lighten up the gloom of serious broadcasting
with a faggot timbre,’” Kuncina recalls.
Continued
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