Bastunets Met with the Minister of Information Karliukevich: ‘We have agreed to discuss changes in the Law ‘On Mass Media’

It was our first meet­ing since his appoint­ment to the Minister’s post and it left pos­i­tive impres­sions. It looked like the Min­is­ter was ready for a dia­logue and ready to lis­ten to our views, — not­ed Andrei Bas­tunets to the BAJ Press Ser­vice.

- The main top­ic of dis­cus­sion was con­nect­ed with the planned changes in the Belarus mass media leg­is­la­tion. The min­is­ter not­ed that they hadn’t been pre­pared by then. Accord­ing to him, they will be relat­ed to the activ­i­ty of broad­cast­ing media (TV and radio) and the Inter­net. The Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion has agreed to invite the BAJ rep­re­sen­ta­tives for dis­cus­sion of leg­isla­tive changes. The for­mat will be set­tled in near future, stressed Andrei Bas­tunets.

Accord­ing to the BAJ Chair­per­son, the con­sid­er­a­tion of legal sta­tus of free­lance jour­nal­ists is about to be dis­cussed in March 2018. Present­ly, the Min­istry is con­vinced that a free­lance jour­nal­ist should be con­nect­ed with a con­crete edi­to­r­i­al as a non-staff cor­re­spon­dent.  

The prob­lem of block­ing pub­lic access to some Web-resources was also dis­cussed dur­ing the meet­ing. Ali­ak­san­dr Kar­liuke­vich not­ed in this respect that the Min­istry had repeat­ed­ly invit­ed all inter­est­ed own­ers of blocked Web-resources to address to the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus for advice. 

Andrei Bas­tunets not­ed that anoth­er meet­ing with the Min­is­ter had been planned to be held in the near future. In par­tic­u­lar, it will be ded­i­cat­ed to the detailed analy­sis of the prob­lem, faced by free­lance jour­nal­ists as well as to oth­er issues, con­nect­ed with the planned changes in the media leg­is­la­tion of Belarus.