State TV downplays major snowstorm

On social net­works peo­ple offered to bring petrol, food or hot tea and offered their hous­es for a free stay overnight to those stuck on the high­ways, and even fan­cy four wheel dri­ve own­ers (http://4x4.by/news/) ven­tured to help peo­ple pull cars out of the snow.

It was all over Face­book and cov­ered by all inde­pen­dent and oppo­si­tion media to the best of their abil­i­ties, giv­en the avail­able resources:

http://naviny.by/rubrics/english/2013/03/15/ic_news_259_412899/

http://euroradio.fm/en/report/snowstorm-javier-hits-minsk-pictures-video

http://charter97.org/ru/news/2013/3/16/66685/

A lot of peo­ple who were stuck in the bliz­zard lat­er said they were grate­ful to the FM radio sta­tion Alfa Radio (http://www.alpha.by/) which exten­sive­ly cov­ered the emer­gency and con­nect­ed peo­ple in need with those who could help.

It sound­ed quite seri­ous, so I decid­ed to watch state Belaru­sian TV for once in my life to see what’s hap­pen­ing in the coun­try. I was dis­gust­ed.

9PM. Main news pro­gram of the day “Panora­ma” on Belarus main TV chan­nel BT. From minute 1 to minute 10 all you see on the screen are the faces of Lukashen­ka, Putin and Medvedev mulling anoth­er uni­fi­ca­tion deal in St. Peters­burg. Thanks! I have seen this 200 times before. I loud­ly swear in pub­lic (admin­is­tra­tive offence in Belarus, usu­al­ly pun­ish­able by 15 days in jail) and walk away from the evil TV set. Then I cool down a bit, and decide that I real­ly real­ly want to know what’s hap­pen­ing and come back.

15 min­utes into the news pro­gram. The great lead­ers of the two nations are still on the screen pos­ing to the cam­eras. Medvedev says they have such great weath­er in St. Peters­burg, sun­shine, not like in Moscow, very good weath­er to sign impor­tant doc­u­ments. Can you imag­ine what they show on TV at the time when peo­ple are freez­ing in their cars or try­ing to make it home through snow!

17 min­utes into the news­cast. Final­ly! Now about the weath­er.  The  anchor­woman says a strong snow­storm hit Belarus. In fact, it was so strong that none of our film crews could make it to the streets to make sto­ries. (!!! How cool is this!) So the only thing we can show you is the footage shot by cell phones that our view­ers sent us. A minute or two of repeat­ing footage of cars stuck on the road, then a very impor­tant state offi­cial promis­ing every­thing will be all right soon, then (by the way) the woman men­tions that the Min­istry of Emer­gency closed all exits from Min­sk, anoth­er very impor­tant offi­cial, and that’s it. More news.

You real­ly had to pay close atten­tion to find out that the roads are closed for traf­fic, so those who didn’t watch this mas­ter­piece news pro­gram very care­ful­ly could very eas­i­ly get stuck in the mid­dle of the road again tomor­row.

Thank you, Belaru­sian Tele­vi­sion! I am not watch­ing your news bul­letins again.