Editors Demand Air Time on State TV to Speak about Media Role

The media rep­re­sen­ta­tives want to talk about the role of mass media; they men­tion a pro­gram Edi­tors’ Club, dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 7, was ded­i­cat­ed to the issue of free­dom of speech; the edi­tors think that in the pro­gram, jour­nal­ists of non-state media were men­tioned sev­er­al times in neg­a­tive light; jour­nal­ists were split into antag­o­nist groups, labeled with neg­a­tive notions, gen­er­al­ly, those who “do not stick to the posi­tion of the state” were dero­gat­ed. The peti­tion­ers demand to give word to inde­pen­dent media rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the state TV, to dis­cuss the issues reflect­ed in two lat­est pro­grams of the Edi­tors’ Club. The let­ter was addressed to Henadz Davy­dz­ka, chair of the BT.

The pre­vi­ous pro­gram of the Edi­tors’ Club was ded­i­cat­ed to the recent inci­dent when a cor­re­spon­dent of TUT.by was beat­en in a build­ing of court. In fact, the chief edi­tor of news­pa­per SB.Belarus Segod­nya (Sovi­et Belorus­sia, top news­pa­per in terms of cir­cu­la­tion) Pavel Yakubovich and the head of BelTA news agency Dzmit­ry Zhuk picked the side of the police­men. Only edi­tor of Kom­so­mol­skaya Prav­da Hali­na Mal­isheuskaya insist­ed that jour­nal­ists are not to be beat­en. The lat­est issue of the Edi­tors’ Club sound­ed like “why mass media esca­late hys­te­ria and why they tar­get­ed at the police”; one of the guest speak­ers was Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion Liliya Ananich.