Public discussion of changes in the Law on Mass Media: We are like a frog in a heated water that doesn’t feel she’ll be cooked soon

At the begin­ning of the meet­ing, the Chair­man of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists Andrei Bas­tunets out­lined the main changes again.

“Changes in the law are not some­thing that their devel­op­ers decid­ed by their own voli­tion. Obvi­ous­ly, the high­er author­i­ties tasked them to strength­en con­trol over the media sphere. There is a feel­ing that we are like a frog placed in grad­u­al­ly heat­ed water. She doesn’t feel she’ll be cooked soon. Changes will also be made to the Admin­is­tra­tive Code. New ele­ments of offence will be intro­duced, which have been for­mu­lat­ed non-exhaus­tive­ly, thus pro­vid­ing the author­i­ties with addi­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties to per­se­cute edi­tors and jour­nal­ists. In par­tic­u­lar, the ques­tion is about the dis­tri­b­u­tion of pro­hib­it­ed infor­ma­tion.

Anoth­er impor­tant issue is the reg­is­tra­tion of online media. Online peri­od­i­cals will get the same rights as tra­di­tion­al media. How­ev­er, the pro­ce­dure of reg­is­tra­tion of mass media remains very com­pli­cat­ed. We have long talked about the com­plex process of reg­is­tra­tion of mass media in Belarus. And rather than sim­pli­fy it, the author­i­ties will extend this prac­tice to the online media: the require­ments to form a legal enti­ty, to main­tain a legal address, and to have an edi­tor with five years of expe­ri­ence of hold­ing a senior posi­tion in the media.

It is also telling that a spe­cial pro­ce­dure for the clo­sure of online media will be estab­lished. Unlike tra­di­tion­al media, online peri­od­i­cals can be sus­pend­ed through an extra-judi­cial block­ing. Besides, it can­not be appealed in court. Also, there are many ques­tions about the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of com­men­ta­tors”, Andrei Bas­tunets ran through the main neg­a­tive aspects of the pro­posed changes.

Mem­ber of the Board of BAJ Zhan­na Litv­ina point­ed out that the jour­nal­is­tic asso­ci­a­tion had received the pro­posed changes in advance, unlike in 2014, when every­thing had been adopt­ed in secret.

Media expert Pauliuk Byk­ous­ki not­ed that there was no guar­an­tee that offi­cial agen­cies would coop­er­ate with online jour­nal­ists even after they would be reg­is­tered. He also spoke about many uncer­tain­ties over reg­is­tra­tion of online media, copy­right, con­tent man­age­ment etc. Also, many online peri­od­i­cals will have seri­ous prob­lems with find­ing an edi­tor-in-chief with a five-year expe­ri­ence in the field of media man­age­ment.

Deputy Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion Pavel Lioh­ki said that the author­i­ties were con­sid­er­ing the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of com­men­ta­tors via text mes­sages but it is not spec­i­fied in the law. The online media will also have to com­ply with the rules of pro­tec­tion of per­son­al data but the law that spec­i­fies the pro­ce­dure is still under devel­op­ment.

Anoth­er change is the require­ment for the TV chan­nels to air at least 30% of con­tent pro­duced in Belarus. It could be a prob­lem for pri­vate cable chan­nels. Also, there are con­cerns about the pro­pos­al to block media out­lets for improp­er adver­tise­ment.

Andrei Bas­tunets said that he was not an opti­mist about the chance for the pro­posed amend­ments to be sig­nif­i­cant­ly cor­rect­ed.

Accord­ing to the pro­posed changes, the own­er of an online resource must pre­vent pub­li­ca­tion of pro­hib­it­ed and false infor­ma­tion and obscene lan­guage. Thus, the huge respon­si­bil­i­ty falls on the edi­to­r­i­al boards.

The head of BAJ’s legal ser­vice Aleh Ahiejeu said that the Association’s com­ments and pro­pos­als had been sent to the par­lia­men­tary com­mis­sion. Also, Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Han­na Kana­p­atska­ja sub­mit­ted her own draft law on amend­ments to the Law on Mass Media to the com­mis­sion. Her pro­pos­als include a judi­cial pro­ce­dure for block­ing web­sites, a pro­ce­dure to appeal deci­sions of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion with regard to the media, a legal sta­tus for free­lance jour­nal­ists, a new word­ing of the rules of accred­i­ta­tion at state agen­cies, as well as abo­li­tion of the require­ment for the Belaru­sian cit­i­zens to receive accred­i­ta­tion in the For­eign Min­istry to coop­er­ate with for­eign media. Aleh Ahiejeu believes that chances for the intro­duc­tion of changes in the pro­posed amend­ments are very slim as the par­lia­men­tary com­mis­sion must get approval of the Pres­i­den­tial Admin­is­tra­tion for every­thing.

What is planned to be done in this sit­u­a­tion:

• BAJ will send per­son­al let­ters to each MP;
• Experts in online media will appeal the par­lia­ment;
• BAJ has asked the OSCE rep­re­sen­ta­tive on media free­dom to start a dia­logue with the Belaru­sian author­i­ties;
• BAJ has asked media to pub­li­cize the issue and to inform cit­i­zens and fel­low jour­nal­ists that the amend­ments would affect every­one;
• Pub­lic nature of the dis­cus­sion on these amend­ments should be main­tained;
• It is impor­tant that rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the main online media com­ment on the draft law;
• It is planned to devel­op an online peti­tion that every­one could sup­port.