BAJ Sent Its Comments on the Amendments to the Law on Mass Media to the Parliament

BAJ lawyers pro­duced a 19-page doc­u­ment.

BAJ offers to rad­i­cal­ly revise the reg­u­la­tion of online resources. The jour­nal­is­tic asso­ci­a­tion believes that the lev­el of legal pro­tec­tion of online pub­li­ca­tions, which are reg­is­tered as mass media (net­work pub­li­ca­tions), must be iden­ti­cal to the one enjoyed by con­ven­tion­al media. No sim­pli­fied pro­ce­dures of sus­pen­sion or ter­mi­na­tion of online media and online resources in gen­er­al should be intro­duced.

The rules sug­gest­ed for appli­ca­tion to the com­ments post­ed on forums and oth­er dis­cus­sion plat­forms should be revised. Based on the prin­ci­ple of free­dom of expres­sion, in the case where online media do not pre-mod­er­ate user dis­cus­sions, they should be held respon­si­ble for the con­tent of such dis­cus­sions only if they fail to react to a noti­fi­ca­tion about an iden­ti­fied vio­la­tion. Any oth­er approach would mean intro­duc­tion of cen­sor­ship ele­ments in the reg­u­la­tion.

Accord­ing to the asso­ci­a­tion, there is a need for an over­all review and a pub­lic dis­cus­sion of the pro­posed and exist­ing grounds for invok­ing lia­bil­i­ty of mass media as to the pro­por­tion­al­i­ty of the intro­duced and exist­ing restric­tions on free­dom of the media to the Con­sti­tu­tion and the inter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions of the Repub­lic of Belarus.

In this con­nec­tion, the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists asks the mem­bers of the Par­lia­ment:

- to ini­ti­ate fur­ther improve­ment of the draft law before the first read­ing tak­ing into account its com­ments and sug­ges­tions;

- to involve rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists in the dis­cus­sion of the draft law and the process of its fur­ther improve­ment.

It should be recalled that last week the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists received the draft law of the Repub­lic of Belarus «On amend­ments and addi­tions to some laws of the Repub­lic of Belarus» from the Stand­ing Com­mis­sion on Human Rights, Eth­nic Rela­tions and Mass Media of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Most amend­ments relate to the Law on Mass Media.