Law on Mass media has been adopted in second reading: society is to be shielded from Internet’s “negative” effects

The draft law “On Mass Media” has been adopted today in the second reading by the “chamber of representatives” of the “national assembly”. As informed by the chairman of the Commission on Human Rights, National relations and Mass Media Yury Kulakouski, by the second reading a number of amendments have been made in the draft law. 96 MPs voted in favour of the draft law, while 2 voted against.

In particular, under the draft law, a coordinating committee is to be created in the country. Representatives of state institutions, public associations, mass media are to become members of the coordinating committee. The provisions about it and its statute are to be defined by the Council of Ministers, and not by the Information Ministry, as was expected during the first reading. The decisions of the council are to have permissive character.

As said by the chairman of the commission, some offers of editorial offices of “Sovetskaya Belorussia” and “Ekonomicheskaya Gazeta”, the Belarusian Association of Journalists and the OSCE Office of the Representative on Mass Media Freedom have been considered in the law.

As recommended by these structures, in the second reading the stipulation not to allow distortion of the accepted norms of the language, as “there are no such norms”, Y. Kulakouski said. Instead of that, a requirement not to allow use of swear words and expressions was added to the law. By the second reading the number of grounds for re-registration of mass media has been limited. The law has imposed the ban on ungrounded denial to register a journalist.

Answering a question of “deputies” on regulating of all news websites by this law, including the sites of Belarusian banks and enterprises, Y. Kulakouski stated that “the draft law only regulates online analogues of mass media”. “They are to correspond to printed versions, with an exception that they are not to undergo the state registration,” y. Kulakouski said. At the same time, it was difficult for him to answer questions of the journalists about how complete correspondence of online and printed versions of mass media could be achieved, and also of online versions and TV programs.

The first deputy Information Minister Lidziya Ananich has also confirmed that the law regulates accountability of printed mass media and their online versions. “Neither banks, nor other organisations won’t register their websites under this law,” L. Ananich said.

She has also noted that the Council of Ministers, which is to decide on the order of distribution of online mass media, is to study the international experience, “how to shield the society from the negative effects of the Internet and leave only positive ones”.

What does the draft law includes?

The draft law on mass media has been prepared for 5 years on the initiative of the presidential Administration in a closed regime. It was received by the Belarusian “palatka” (chamber of representatives) just on June 10, and on the next day the date of its consideration was announced, June 17.

The Belarusian Association of Journalists received the text of the draft law only on the eve of the debate on it. The BAJ lawyers analyzed the text of the law and made a conclusion that in case the present wording of the law would be adopted, an irreparable blow would be made on independent mass media, which would put them on the verge of disappearance, and in fact would end in total destruction of independent media in the country.

The greatest concern is caused by the fact all online editions which are not registered in Belarus as mass media could be blocked by the regime.

Under the draft law on mass media, the list of violations for which an official warning could be made to the editorial office, is imprecise and not defined clearly, and it is possible to suspend issuing a mass media even after one warning. And not only the Information Ministry, but any judge, prosecutor of official of any district capital could issue warnings to mass media.

Previously Belarusian high-ranking officials have many times spoken in favor of the necessity to make legislation on mass media harsher. In particular, the deputy Information Minister Lidziya Ananich stated that today the problem of “flows of deceptive information from foreign websites” exists in Belarus. “But there is experience of China, that has blocked access of such websites to its territory,” Ananich said.

Aleh Pralyaskouski, director of the Information Analytical Center at the Presidential Administration, insists on necessary “increasing of responsibility for information on the Internet” and offers to place responsibility for spreading information via the Internet on a website’s administrator and an owner of Internet resource and a provider.