The state’s media watchdog is seeking to shut down a news agency, claiming it violated the recent legislation that forbids using foul language in the media.
The Federal Service for Supervision in Telecommunications, Information Technology and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor) has filed a lawsuit to annul registration of the Rosbalt news agency due to “repeated serious violations” of a recent law forbidding taboo language in the media, it reported on its website on Oct. 4.
In the lawsuit, Roskomnadzor referred to warnings issued to Rosbalt over allegedly obscene language in two videos on the agency’s website.
Rosbalt news agency said that the lawsuit lacks ground and signals the start of censorship in Russia.
Yevgeny Zubarev, the St. Petersburg-based editor of Rosbalt’s video section, wrote on the agency’s website that the warnings issued in July were actually about links to two external videos, rather than Rosbalt’s own material.
One of the videos that Roskomnadzor objected to was “Like a Red Prison,” the most recent music video by feminist punk group Pussy Riot uploaded on YouTube on July 16.
The video showed the balaclava-wearing women performing on installations related to the oil and gas industry and a Rosneft gas station. In it, they poured black liquid over the portrait of Rosneft’s head Igor Sechin. The video contained an expletive, which, according to Zubarev, he missed when listening to the song the first time and discovered only upon receiving the warning from Roskomnadzor.
“I heard an obscenity in one instance and bleeped it out, but failed to catch it in another verse. The censors from Roskomnadzor were certain that they heard it,” Zubarev wrote.
“I edited the video once again after their claims and there are no expletives there anymore, but the officers happily ran to the court.”
Roskomnadzor reported about the warning issued to Rosbalt on its website on July 25.
Both videos were edited as soon as the warning was received and the censored versions were uploaded to Rosbalt’s website, according to Zubarev.
Zubarev suggested that the lawsuit meant that the command to deal with Rosbalt had been given “from the very top” and if so, the agency “faces a serious challenge.”
Courtesy : St. Petersburg Times
