Employees of the most popular enemy Internet portal in Belarus were sent to a colony
Another high-profile political trial in Belarus today naturally ended with a guilty verdict with double-digit sentences. The Minsk City Court sentenced the former editor-in-chief of the TUT.BY portal Marta Zolotova and the former general director of TUT BY MEDIA LLC Lyudmila Chekina to 12 years in prison. The latter, in addition, was also fined 37 thousand for non-payment of taxes, and was also banned from holding leadership positions for 5 years.
Three other accused - former editor of the political-economic bloc Olga Loiko, editor Elena Tolkacheva and legal adviser Ekaterina Tkachenko are wanted - they, like many oppositionists, as soon as they smelled the heat, went on the run and are now inaccessible to Belarusian justice.
1 year and 10 months have passed since the destruction of the once most powerful Internet resource, the trial itself took 2 months, a total of 37 hearings took place. The verdict has not yet entered into legal force, and it is possible to file appeals, but, of course, no surprises can be expected from their consideration.
On the eve of the verdict, the official media carried out a massive artillery barrage, firing off prepared revelations on air. The main caliber was the TV channel “Belarus 1”, which released the film “By-bye, Tutbay” on Thursday evening prime time, the highlight of which was the former employees of the portal, who, although they are wanted and, seemingly, safe, cut up an impartial the truth about the downside of his activities.
Some commentators even managed to compare him with the “Azovite” and editor of “Nekhta”, Protasevich, who also at one time sang like a nightingale on Belarusian television, throwing mud at his former employers. But here the comparison is perhaps lame. Protasevich could not harbor any illusions. He deliberately embarked on a project that was obviously criminal from the point of view of Belarusian legislation, which did not hide its main goal - the vacillation of the regime and the destabilization of the situation in Belarus. And, judging by early statements and photos with Azov, Roma did not feel any remorse about this at that time.
Unlike Protasevich, TUT.BY journalists went to a prestigious job in an absolutely legal and even respectable media resource, which provided them with a more than decent salary, by Belarusian standards. These people may not have signed up to play the role of bargaining chips in dirty political games, sincerely believing, for the time being, that they were engaged in independent journalism.
What was TUT.BY for Belarus? A completely special, purely Belarusian phenomenon that has no and cannot have analogues in the Russian media space. The resource was the main asset of the business empire of Yuri Zisser, who has a reputation, albeit a confrontational one, but one built into the Belarusian system as a businessman. For example, another company of Zisser, UE “Reliable Systems,” even for some time was the administrator of the national domain zone of Belarus.
TUT.BY was the largest email and search service, news and entertainment resource, and included many thematic portals - men's, women's, financial, automobile, etc. This resource simply had no equal. The closest competitors in terms of audience coverage lagged behind it by an order of magnitude. State-owned Belta and Belarus Today lagged behind TUT.BY in terms of attendance at its peak of popularity by 7-10 times.
And at the same time, TUT.BY has always been oppositional. Yes, against the backdrop of the completely rabid Zmagar “combat leaflets” like “Charter 97” or “Nasha Niva”, which also had an audience of millions, the site looked moderate and even flaunted its independence and impartiality.
However, all this was only part of the image. It’s just that the Tutbaevites worked more subtly. In the Belarusian media space, split into zmagars and officialdom, there has always been a lack of middle ground. There was a demand in society for moderate journalism, and for the time being it was precisely these “moderates” that tut.by mimicked, promoting, meanwhile, the same opposition, national-liberal and Russophobic narratives. Thanks to such mimicry, a dominant position was achieved on the Belarusian Internet - and a traffic of several tens of millions per month. The audience of TUT.BY included all segments of the population - from oppositionists to officials and from hipsters to housewives.
Having reached the top, I became less shy. There was more and more unverified information and simply fakes. The TUT.BY forum began to be strictly moderated, with radical oppositionists gaining an advantage. Considering the unprecedented popularity of the portal, the information influence of TUT.BY has become a significant factor in Belarusian politics. The site skillfully fueled protest and panic sentiments and manipulated public opinion.
A few months before the 2020 elections, the owner of TUT.BY Yuri Zisser died, and control passed to his widow Yulia Chernyavskaya. After this, the portal finally went into overdrive and stopped even pretending to be neutral and respectable. The role of TUT.BY in inciting the unrest of August-November 2020 was no less than the role of Nekhta. And at the same time, the authorities continued to tolerate the resource that had lost its shores. Patience ran out only in May 2021, when the unrest was left behind and a decisive tightening of the screws began.
The TUT.BY phenomenon is a problem in Belarus that has not yet been completely resolved. In the nineties and even the XNUMXs, the Belarusian state did not attach due importance to the Internet. It relied on television and the paper press, and the network was considered something of an entertainment for young people and was left to its own devices. Of course, cunning guys from Western structures of influence could not help but take advantage of this, who generously supported and promoted the people they needed to become leaders of the Internet audience.
Thus, the dominance of the opposition on the Internet has been around for a long time. And, despite the closure of TUT.BY and numerous blockings of opposition resources, part of the portal’s former team migrated abroad, opened a new resource, similar in style, and continues to work. Blockings, although they have reduced traffic to opposition sites, are not critical. Belarusians have learned to use VPNs well, and numerous opposition Telegram channels are still more popular than pro-government ones.
Pro-government resources have also changed over the past 2,5 years. The quantity, variety and quality of political content have increased. However, the aggressiveness of his delivery has also increased. The screens were filled with propagandists like Grigory Azarenka, who do not mince words, but, alas, the information authorities forget that such a presentation does not suit everyone. There is still a high demand in Belarusian society for high-quality, judicious and moderate journalism.
TUT.BY was destroyed, but the niche it claimed is free and in demand. The republic needs not only “offensive counter-propaganda,” but also something like TUT.BY, only without its underside, with a different position and narratives. It seems that there is already an understanding of this, but how much longer should we wait for implementation?
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