New law on mass media in force: prosecutor’s office issued warnings to 10 journalists

The Belarusian Association of Journalists has summarized the results of the Law on Mass Media’s half a year’s existence.

At the press-conference in Minsk the deputy chairman of the BAJ, lawyer Andrei Bastunets, called it a positive moment that the action of this law has suspended development of the resolution “On regulating Internet resources”, and that approaches to registration and re-registration of mass media have been somewhat “liberalized”.

But at the same time Bastunets paid special attention to the negative aspects of operation of the new law. It primarily concerns possibilities of obtaining information by journalists, the European Radio for Belarus informs.

Over the last year the legislation on obtaining information for mass media. Amendments have been made to the Law “On State service”, according to which state officials would be able to make statements for mass media only after an approval of leadership of state organs. And the Decree No. 65 of the president “On streamlining the work of state organs with mass media” was reduced to appointing persons in these organs who are subjected immediately to heads of these organizations and are to give mass media filtered official information,” Andrei Bastunets said.

The situation with journalists’ accrediting hasn’t become better. As said by Bastunets, for half a year the prosecutor’s office has issued 10 warnings to journalists who are charged with cooperation with foreign mass media. According to the lawyer, the prosecutor’s office violates the law itself by that.

“Prosecutors read one article of the Law “On mass media” and do not read another. They read that the activities of foreign journalists without accreditation in Belarus is prohibited. But they do not read the description who is considered to be a foreign journalist of foreign mass media. And it is stated in the law that they are those who are on staff of a foreign newspaper and so on. Nobody checks whether a Belarusian journalist is a staffer or not,” the expert said.