Chair of BAJ Attends Conference on Media Freedom and Elections in Berlin

Andrei Bas­tunets told the press ser­vice of BAJ that Belarus has been almost the cen­ter of atten­tion, main­ly due to par­tic­i­pa­tion of Lidziya Yarmoshy­na, the chair­per­son of the Cen­tral Elec­toral Com­mis­sion of Belarus, who had been banned entry to Europe since 2004.

When answer­ing ques­tions of British jour­nal­ist William Hoars­ley, AEJ Media Free­dom Rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Lidziya Yarmoshy­na assured that state-run media made up only 27% of all mass media in Belarus. The chair of CEC under­lined that polit­i­cal lead­ers had the pos­si­bil­i­ty to place adver­tis­ing to mass media on com­mer­cial basis, using their elec­toral funds. She assured that CEC gen­er­al­ly did not influ­ence media free­dom, only ensured their engage­ment with the media process. In par­tic­u­lar, it observed pub­li­ca­tion of can­di­dates’ speech­es in cer­tain state mass media.

Andrei Bas­tunets argued with the chair­per­son of CEC that although there was sta­tis­ti­cal preva­lence of non-state mass media, one should have in mind that the major­i­ty of them were leisure-ori­ent­ed, dis­re­gard­ing socio-polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic or cul­tur­al issues.  

“Socio-polit­i­cal top­ics are cov­ered inde­pen­dent­ly by around 30 mass media, and around a dozen of them have been elim­i­nat­ed from the state-run net­works of dis­tri­b­u­tion, like sub­scrip­tion or kiosk sales,” said Andrei Bas­tunets. “As for TV, which is still the most influ­en­tial, the sit­u­a­tion is even worse. Here state-run mass media are twice as much as those non-state, and any­way the lat­ter stay under con­trol of the author­i­ty.” He set as an exam­ple the case of Autora­dio FM-sta­tion which was closed in 2011 because of hav­ing broad­cast a pre-elec­tion speech of the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Andrei San­nikau.

As for the gen­er­al approach to elec­tion cov­er­age in the media, Andrei Bas­tunets thanked Lidziya Yarmoshy­na for open­ness in work with jour­nal­ists, but dis­agreed with the state­ment that elec­tions events were reflect­ed in the media com­pre­hen­sive­ly and neu­tral­ly.

“BAJ mon­i­tors cov­er­age of every elec­toral cam­paign in mass media, and will do it this time, too,” said Bas­tunets and quot­ed some con­clu­sions from the pre­vi­ous mon­i­tor­ing report relat­ed to par­lia­men­tary elec­tions.

For exam­ple, state media cov­ered the elec­toral process in their tra­di­tion­al min­i­mal­ist man­ner… giv­ing the top­ic less atten­tion than to sport or weath­er; the mar­gin­al char­ac­ter of the cov­er­age revealed itself in giv­ing more atten­tion to CEC rather than to can­di­dates or polit­i­cal par­ties; extreme­ly typ­i­cal man­ner of cov­er­age was empha­sis on orga­ni­za­tion­al and tech­ni­cal aspects of the elec­toral cam­paign.

Bas­tunets said that in elec­tion cov­er­age in Belarus there is much talk about every­thing but choice itself. “Rit­u­al talks about tech­ni­cal sup­port of the elec­toral process over­shad­ow the ques­tion of choice itself between ideas, ways and per­son­al­i­ties,” he said.

The con­fer­ence was also attend­ed by Tat­siana Karatke­vich, one of lead­ers and in 2015 a can­di­date for the pres­i­dent of the Tell the Truth cam­paign, and Henadz Hrytske­vich, the chair­per­son of the par­lia­men­tary com­mis­sion on state-build­ing and local gov­er­nance.

BAJ Applies to Take Part in the Super­vi­so­ry Coun­cil on the Media of CEC dur­ing Par­lia­men­tary Elec­tions