Satellite Dishes, NATO and official media

It looks like propaganda effectiveness of Belarusian official media continues to decrease. And critical attitude towards their contents becomes more wide-spread. The demonstration of that is an on-line voting on STV channel. To the question “Whether you are afraid of the NATO?” most of viewers answered “No” (54.2%). It’s an unexpected result.

The thesis of critical attitude towards content of state-run media is confirmed by the results of the latest opinion poll. To the question “To what extent does the information received from official sources correspond to your real life?”, only 12.7% answered that it corresponds fully. The majority believes that it “corresponds partially”, “doesn’t correspond partially” or “doesn’t correspond at all”. It is worth mentioning that the number of pollees who hadn’t given any answer, is minimal, 1.9%. As a comparison, it should be noted that the number of respondents who didn’t answer other questions, was about 20 and even 40%.

It means that the attitude of our fellow-citizens towards the state-run mass-media is well-defined, and in a sense, consolidated. And the main tendency is that the majority of Belarusians view them critically or very critically.

What is the conclusion? It is most likely that if many-sided and uncensored information would as before be present at Belarusian informational space, skeptic attitude could be extended to such spheres as the official policy, social and economic situation inside the country and the model of development proposed by the regime.

That is why the new round of struggle with satellite dishes is not only an attempt to limit access to information, but to prevent any expansion of critical attitudes and opinions. Moreover, despite of difficulties with tuning in, 7.3% of pollees have acquainted themselves with the TV channel Belsat.