Svyatlana Kalinkina: “Now Lukashenka Must Dismiss His Chief Propagandists” :: Charter'97 :: News

“I agree with any freedom of a journalist, and today in Belarus we are carrying out this policy. But the most important thing is that a journalist should be responsible for what he had written. Then there would be less articles written on order,” Alyaksandr Lukashenka said yesterday during a meeting with the chairman of the Hungarian Communist Workers` Party, Vice chairman of the Party of the European Left Gyula Thuermer.

“When you speak about a person, about a person’s qualities, you could criticize his position, but you shouldn’t drag out something from his personal life at the surface and stamp on it. I do not tolerate when journalists slide into ad hominem attacks and distort [facts]. Everything else is welcomed, let there be criticism, one shouldn’t be afraid of that,” A. Lukashenka said.

“If A. Lukashenka was sincere, the first thing he should do now is to dismiss his chief propagandists from state TV channels,” told Svyatlana Kalinkina, an editorial director of the newspaper “Narodnaya Volya” to the press-service of the Belarusian Association of Journalists, commenting the words of the Belarusian ruler. “They are not only criticizing, not only stamping on personal life of oppositionists, but very often they report fictitious and untrue facts, and they even cannot be sued for that later”.

“President is a public person and he must remember that he should be accountable for his words. In reality nothing is done for freedom of expression development in Belarus today”, S. Kalinkina said.

According to the well-known Belarusian journalist, this issue has been brought up because of a struggle with Russian mass media that criticize Lukashenka’s policy.