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

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.

– 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.