Famous Media Experts Summarize the Results of the Year in Belarus: The Village, ‘Native’ Advertising, Prosecuted Freelancers etc.

Yahor Martsinovich, ‘Nasha Niva’ Editor-in-chief

There hasn’t been any­thing cru­cial­ly impor­tant this year. The note­wor­thy events includ­ed the estab­lish­ment of new news resources, includ­ing The Vil­lage Belarus, Ref­or­ma­tion, and “Nasha Nina”.

Also, the dis­missal of Ananich was a small but pleas­ant event of the year.

As for ‘Nasha Niva’, it was an impor­tant achieve­ment that we occu­pied the third top posi­tion among the most viewed media resources in Belarus in 2017.

Siarhei Sakharau, ‘CityDog’ Web-site Editor-in-chief

TUT.BY is the nation­al leader among Web-resources this year. The achieve­ment has been repeat­ed­ly con­firmed by Gemius. Mary­na Zolatava’s team has learned the mantra: “We are the fourth estate”. The state­ment might be met with cer­tain skep­ti­cism one-two years ago, but it is evi­dent now that TUT.BY is the infor­ma­tion­al and that is even more impor­tant tech­no­log­i­cal leader among Belaru­sian media. And they can real­ly influ­ence the pub­lic agen­da.

The region­al leader is a Web-site Intex-Press.by from Baranavichy. The Edi­tor-in-chief Uladz­imir Yanuke­vich is a real guru of media man­age­ment. The per­son has a pro­found skill of sur­vival and devel­op­ment. He is genet­i­cal­ly capa­ble of team-build­ing and cre­at­ing a com­pet­i­tive media prod­uct.

Valer Kalinouski, ‘Radio Liberty’ News Editor

The “Bel­sat” TV-chan­nel has been the cen­tral event in the media field this year. There start­ed a finan­cial scan­dal close to its 10th anniver­sary, but it end­ed well. Also, there should be rec­ol­lect­ed the pros­e­cu­tion of free­lance jour­nal­ists.

Sasha Ramanava, Director of ‘Mint Media’ Publishing House

The start of The Vil­lage Belarus Web-site has been def­i­nite­ly an out­stand­ing event, since actu­al­ly it is the first fran­chis­ing media com­pa­ny in Belarus.

Aliaksandr Klaskouski, Head of Analytical Projects, BelaPAN News Agency

I would like to men­tion the high pro­file work of non-state mass media dur­ing the ‘par­a­site’ protest actions (the infor­ma­tion flow, com­ments, and live online streams). By the way, the soci­ol­o­gists, includ­ing Andrei Vardamadski’s Belaru­sian ana­lyt­i­cal lab, reg­is­tered the increased pub­lic trust in inde­pen­dent mass media at that peri­od of time. It is well seen who is who dur­ing such cri­sis moments.

The state media slan­dered and the jour­nal­ists of inde­pen­dent media imple­ment­ed the pure­ly jour­nal­is­tic mis­sion, despite fac­ing all hard­ships and attacks. I’m proud of my col­leagues dur­ing such moments of truth!

Anton Kashlikau, Editor, 34mag.net

In my opin­ion, the start of The Vil­lage in Min­sk and the re-launch of “Piar­shak” are among the most promi­nent events in the media field this year.

Siarhei Hudzilin, Photo journalist

There were two promi­nent pieces of news in 2017. The good news was the estab­lish­ment of The Vil­lage fran­chise com­pa­ny that is def­i­nite­ly a sign of local media mar­ket devel­op­ment. The bad news is the dis­missal of Ali­ak­san­dr Vasiukovich from TUT.BY.

Also, I would like to praise the exhi­bi­tions of “Ime­na” project, which make new forms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the read­er.

Alaksiej Minchonak, Official Representative of ‘Belsat’ TV Channel in Belarus

As for me, the most impor­tant things are those that I observe myself every day. It has been for the first time in his­to­ry this year that we’ve man­aged to con­firm the real impor­tance of “Bel­sat” for Belarus. The protest actions in the spring showed the high impor­tance of satel­lite TV. Due to our broad­cast­ing, peo­ple in small towns and vil­lages could fol­low the events in the streets of big cities, even hav­ing no access to the Inter­net. The increas­ing role of ‘Bel­sat’ is also con­firmed by the actions of the author­i­ties, who imposed fines on our jour­nal­ists 60 times for the total amount of 46,138 Belaru­sian rubles since the year start.

More­over, ‘Bel­sat’ cel­e­brates the 10th anniver­sary since the begin­ning of its broad­cast­ing ser­vice this year. It is an impor­tant date for us and we are full of opti­mism as for the future of our TV-chan­nel and the whole Belaru­sian media com­mu­ni­ty it is a part of.

Iryna Leushyna, ‘BelaPAN’ News Agency, Editor-in-chief

There were quite a few high pro­file events this year. And due to com­mon efforts of civ­il soci­ety and jour­nal­ists, the author­i­ties had to step back in many cas­es.

In par­tic­u­lar, it con­cerns the ‘par­a­site’ decree, the ‘patri­ots’ case’, the busi­ness cen­tre con­struc­tion in Kura­p­aty, a tri­al on the case of home birth in Vit­sieb­sk, and the con­script sol­diers’ sui­cide cas­es in the army.

It is for the first time for many years, that I’ve got a feel­ing that mass media can be real­ly ‘the fourth estate’ in our coun­try.

As a sep­a­rate media event I would like to rec­ol­lect the dis­missal of Ananich from the posi­tion of the Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus.  It was a real gift for me.

Sviatlana Kalinkina, journalist

The unprece­dent­ed pres­sure on free­lance jour­nal­ists has been the main event in the year of 2017. The news about it appeared prac­ti­cal­ly every week…

Pauliuk Bykouski, media expert

The list of impor­tant events this year includes the resumed prac­tice of deten­tion and impo­si­tion of fines on jour­nal­ists, the appoint­ment of a new Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion and the aggra­vat­ed eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion, faced by a num­ber of pub­lish­ers of print­ed news­pa­pers.

Maryna Zolatava, Editor-in-chief, TUT.BY

I think it was an inter­est­ing year for mass media. It was the time of chal­lenges. Also, it was the time of appear­ance of new media for­mats. It was very inter­est­ing to work and observe the col­leagues’ work. We have good and not very good news in this respect.

The non-par­a­sites’ protest actions showed that the Belaru­sian inde­pen­dent media has become an influ­en­tial source of infor­ma­tion, both in form and con­tent. The live online stream­ing and video reports, pro­duced by TUT.BY, і “Radio Lib­er­ty”, “Nasha Niva”, and “Bel­sat”  have been watched by mil­lions of peo­ple, all in all. And I’m con­vinced that it was due to our work that the author­i­ties recon­sid­ered their deci­sion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, jour­nal­ists were detained dur­ing the actions, and the num­ber of imposed fines on them for the alleged work with­out accred­i­ta­tion reached 46 cas­es by August 2017. 

As for tech­nolo­gies and new for­mats, I think that almost every­one deals with devel­op­ment of their rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the social media, and it is prac­ti­cal­ly impos­si­ble to find some­one, who doesn’t deal with video reports there.

I know for sure that numer­ous online-edi­to­ri­als deal with Web-ana­lyt­ics that makes their work more con­scious and mod­ern. I fol­low with plea­sure the devel­op­ment of the “Names” project, start­ed by Kat­sia Siniuk.

At the same time, there are some things that make me sad, includ­ing the neg­li­gent work with facts and the bias. I will not men­tion con­crete exam­ples, but there have been quite a few of them. Pho­tos from the social media, posts from under the lock with­out com­ments and ref­er­ences to oth­er sources… A lot of this kind of ‘infor­ma­tion’ appeared on the pages of media…

Also, I’m embar­rassed with the extreme­ly aggres­sive use of ‘native adver­tis­ing’. It is not the con­tent of these adverts that wor­ries me, but the way it is pre­sent­ed. The neg­li­gent atti­tude towards the top­ic can reflect neg­a­tive­ly on the media con­tent and the pub­lic trust in the media.  

Pho­to cour­tesy: “Radio Lib­er­ty”, Ali­ak­san­dr Taran­ti­no Zhdanovich, budzma.by, btools.by, belprauda.org, TUT.BY, mediakritika.by