Belsat contributor fined over news story about children’s playground

Judge Aksana Tabo­la has found him of vio­lat­ing the law on media and imposed a fine of 1,080 rubles (about $540) on him.

The case was ini­ti­at­ed under Art. 22.9 of the Code of Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es (ille­gal mak­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion of media prod­ucts).

Zmitser Lupach, a res­i­dent of the town of Hly­bokaye, was tried for con­tribut­ing to a news item about a children’s play­ground. It was part of Bel­sat TV satir­i­cal show ‘Point-of-view Shot’ (Суб“ектыў).

To prove the journalist’s guilt, the judge pro­posed to watch the show on the Inter­net.

“Thus, [the 15-minute episode of] the show was viewed in court, it down­loaded from the web. <…> There­fore, the audi­ence watched the whole sto­ry from start to fin­ish,” Lupach told Belsat.eu

Bel­sat TV, which has been broad­cast­ing for over 12 years, has been denied accred­i­ta­tion for its jour­nal­ists. The Belaru­sian For­eign Min­istry has repeat­ed­ly declared that it could not issue any accred­i­ta­tion to Bel­sat because the jour­nal­ists work­ing for the TV sta­tion … break the law.

Thus, the cir­cle clos­es: jour­nal­ists are denied accred­i­ta­tion because they break the law and they break the law, because they work with­out accred­i­ta­tion that they seek. And it explains the exis­tence of absur­dist Arti­cle 22.9, which pro­vides pun­ish­ment for ‘ille­gal pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion of media prod­ucts’. If one has accred­i­ta­tion, they are allowed to per­form jour­nal­is­tic duties, if not – their activ­i­ty is out­lawed.