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  • The Least Open Governmental Institutions for Journalists – the Operational and Analytical Centre, the Ministry of Information and the KGB

    They are followed by the Council of the Republic, the Ministry of Defense and the Presidential Administration.

    The Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists inquired the Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists as for the prompt­ness of receiv­ing infor­ma­tion from the main gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies and orga­ni­za­tions.

    50 authors from the main­stream state and non-state media took part in the sur­vey. Among oth­er, they rep­re­sent­ed such peri­od­i­cals as ‘Sovi­et Byelorus­sia’, ‘Zvi­az­da’, ‘Nasha Niva’, ‘Kam­samol­skaya Prav­da in Byelorus­sia’, ‘TUT.BY’, ‘Bela­PAN’ news agency and oth­er media.

    The col­leagues were asked to assess the degree of open­ness of dif­fer­ent gov­ern­men­tal insti­tu­tions for jour­nal­ists with the use of the 10-point grad­ing scale.

    The max­i­mum points were tra­di­tion­al­ly giv­en to the Min­istry of Emer­gency Sit­u­a­tions, the Court sys­tem of Belarus, the Min­istry of Sports and Tourism, as well as the Min­istry of Forestry.

    At the same time, the jour­nal­ists named the Oper­a­tive and Ana­lyt­i­cal Cen­tre at the Pres­i­dent of Belarus, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion, and the KGB as the least open gov­ern­men­tal insti­tu­tions in the coun­try.

     

    Rat­ing the open­ness of the Belaru­sian author­i­ties to the media accord­ing to the sur­vey
    Info­gram

     

    – The sur­vey results are very illus­tra­tive. They show the readi­ness of min­istries and gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies to con­duct their direct duties, i.e. to pro­vide jour­nal­ists with oper­a­tive and cor­rect infor­ma­tion in the scope of their respon­si­bil­i­ty. It includes the work of press-ser­vices, respons­es to inquiries, dis­sem­i­na­tion of offi­cial releas­es etc.

    It is very pleas­ant to see that quite a few of state insti­tu­tions work pro­fes­sion­al­ly and respon­sive­ly with mass media. Still, jour­nal­ists come across obsta­cles in get­ting infor­ma­tion from min­istries and gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies prac­ti­cal­ly every day. It is a great pity indeed that the small­est points have been giv­en by our col­leagues to such impor­tant gov­ern­men­tal insti­tu­tions as the Oper­a­tional and Ana­lyt­i­cal Cen­tre, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion, and the KGB. It looks like these gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions should think over the change of approach­es in their work, — not­ed Barys Haret­s­ki, BAJ Coun­cil mem­ber, who ini­ti­at­ed the sur­vey.

    It is impor­tant to note that the jour­nal­ists were asked to eval­u­ate the open­ness of gov­ern­men­tal struc­tures they reg­u­lar­ly con­tact in their work. In order to ensure the bet­ter accu­ra­cy of results, the final table includ­ed the gov­ern­men­tal struc­tures, whose work had been eval­u­at­ed by at least 10 media work­ers with­in the research.

    It should be men­tioned that the BAJ con­duct­ed sim­i­lar sur­veys in the years of 2013 and 2015. The inquired jour­nal­ists named the work of the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion, the Min­istry of Labour and Social Defense as well as the Min­istry of Health Care as the worst in the coun­try in the past.

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