The team of the former editorial staff of TUT.BY launches a new media Zerkalo.io
8 July 2021
On May 18, 2021, the authorities sealed the office of the largest independent online media in Belarus — TUT.BY, detained everyone who was there and blocked access to the website. 15 people are still under arrest: current and former employees of TUT.BY, and its partners. According to the State Control Committee, a criminal case has been opened against the executives of TUT BY MEDIA LLC. It is Article 243 part 2 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus — «taxes and fees evasion at especially large scale». The process of declaring the informational products of the portal as extremist materials has also begun. Most of the editorial staff were forced to leave the country. All this time, the news of the portal is published only in official media accounts on social media and Telegram. Part of the team decided to continue full-fledged work on covering the situation in the country and is launching its own media — Zerkalo.io.
After the destruction of the largest news portal in Belarus TUT.BY (*Аccording to Yandex.Metrica, an average 1.8 million unique visitors came to TUT.BY in a weekday, and more than 3.3 million per month), most of the employees had to leave the company, some of them had to leave the country. Soon after the criminal case, a process to declare the TUT.BY materials as extremist materials began. A small team of the former editorial office decided to launch an independent media that will be able to fully cover the situation in Belarus and the world. The website was named Zerkalo.io. This name is a reference to a mirror of TUT.BY that has not yet been launched, as well as a new opportunity for the editorial office to display the real facts of the country’s life («zerkalo» means «mirror» in Russian).
The new resource has a structure different from TUT.BY. The portal has only five sections: Politics and Finance, Life, In the World, Incidents, and The Basement. The editorial policy is maximally focused on the social and political life of Belarus.
If the portal is blocked on the territory of Belarus, access to Zerkalo.io will be possible through a VPN. Outside Belarus, the address opens without additional settings and services.
You can also continue reading the news on social media and Telegram. Thanks to agreements with the owners of TUT BY MEDIA LLC, Zerkalo.io obtained the right to use TUT.BY accounts on social media. Therefore, soon the logo and the name of the accounts will be changed, and the high standards of journalism will be preserved.
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