The
YABLOKO party expresses its concern with the information on
liquidation of professional news services of the Ren-TV and
the Fifth television channels. We consider maintenance of
such services extremely important for the Russian society.
The prospects of liquidation of such services and their subordination
to one of the state propaganda factories cause much concern
especially in the situation of grave mass-scale election fraud
on October 11. The Russian citizens were first deprived of
elections and then there were announced plans to deprive them
of the television news that could tell the truth about this
and other events.
We assess such plans as an attempt to finally oust freedom
of speech from the Russian television and introduce total
censorship there.
Any references to business motives in elimination of the
last independent television news services resemble the argumentation
of the “dispute of the economic entities” covering the mopping
up of the [independent] NTV channel in 2001.
The political viability of such a step from the point of
view of “the party of power” is obvious: the gap between the
official lies and normal news has become too large and too
obvious. Leonid Brezhnev’s (Ed. leader of the USSR during
stagnation period) model of elections is compatible only with
Brezhnev’s television.
The Russian United Democratic Party YABLOKO announces its
support to professional journalists from the news services
of the Ren-TV and the Fifth channels and calls all the decision-makers
not to let objective news to disappear from the Russian broadcasting.
Sergei Mitorkhin,
Chairman of the YABLOKO party
See also:
Media
Law in Russia
NTV Case
TV6 Case
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