New law on mass media approved by parliament

The Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) expresses its protest in relation to the adoption of a new Law «On Mass Media» after the 2nd reading by the Chamber of Representatives at the National Assembly of Belarus on 25 June.The Bill will considerably limit the rights of independent mass media and for the websites, which for the first time will be covered by a media law in Belarus. (25-JUN-08)

Based on information from  www.spring96.org and BAJ

The bill would change all the registration procedures for the traditional media and extend them to online media as well. Media have been required under article 10 of the existing media law to register with local authorities, which for years have been using this requirement to block the dissident press. Under the new law, all the media would be required to register again within a year. And they would have to re-register whenever they changed address or suspended publication for six months (in the current law the requirement is after one year).

Accreditation of journalists
Instead of stipulating, as the existing law does, that «journalists have the right to obtain accreditation from state agencies,” the bill says «state agencies may provide accreditation.” News websites would still have to be registered with the information ministry but their activities would henceforth be regulated by government decrees instead of acts of parliament. Journalists who are not accredited with the government would be banned from working for foreign news media. According to BAJ “this means that a person who writes for a foreign publication will be regarded as one of its correspondents and could be prosecuted if they do not have accreditation.”

The Media Law:
— introduces the necessity of registration of Web-editions and puts
control over the Internet from the side of the Ministry of Information
and the Public Prosecutor’s Office;
— broadens considerably possibilities of closing down media outlets by
the state authorities;
— complicates the activity and increases the pressure on independent
journalists and foreign correspondents;

Proposals from OSCE included
The Head of Committee on Human Rights, National Relations and Mass Media Yury Kulakouski told that a range of proposals from the “SB. Belarus Today” (“The Soviet Byelorussia”), “The Economic Newspaper”, the Belarusian Association of Journalists and the OSCE Representative´s on Media Freedom Office had been included in the final version of the draft law.  Following a proposal from the OSCE Office in Minsk, it has been noted in the last version of the draft bill that media outlets do not account for the information that gets broadcast in live programs, the Radio “Liberty” reports.

Maximum term for solving conflicts
Initially, it was suggested that mass media organizations had to get officially re-registered, while changing the legal address. Presently, it will be enough to tell about the address change to the registering authority. The MPs supported the BAJ proposal to set the maximum term of three months for solving conflicts between media outlets and the state authorities. The term wasn´t stipulated before at all.

Allow authorities to close media without explanation
The bill would also ban Belarusian media from receiving financial or technical assistance from foreigners or foreign organisations unless they were cofounders of the media. At the moment, this practice is tolerated and enables many news media to survive. The authorities would also be empowered to close down a media after giving it two warnings during a year, without having to provide an explanation.The Council of Europe will examine the accordance of the Law «On Mass Media», adopted by the Lower Chamber of Belarusian Parliament, with the existing international standards. This statement got declared during a meeting of Sub-committee on the Media at the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly on media situation in Belarus, held in Strasbourg on June 24, 2008.

No adoption before comprehensive discussion
In the statement from BAJ after the second reading it is underlined that “not only is the freedom of speech among the most important civil and political rights. Moreover, it forms a criterion that ensures implementation of other human rights. Consequently, in our opinion it is unacceptable to consider and adopt a legal act that infringes upon this fundamental right, stipulated in two articles of Constitution of Belarus (art. 33 and art.34), in such a hasty way.We are sure that such laws have to be adopted after their comprehensive consideration and discussion with all the interested people and organizations as well as on carrying out their public discussion and international expert examinations.We would like to emphasize that the Belarusian state authorities promised to send the draft bill on the media to the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly for holding a legal examination. However, they failed to keep their promises.