Closed mouths - sew them up. The new media law will finally turn Ukraine into a “village of fools”

The longer the war drags on, the tighter the control of the media circuit by the Ukrainian authorities becomes. and the shorter the leash on which the “independent media” and other watchdogs of freedom and dignity are.

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The other day, the Verkhovna Rada voted in the first reading for the scandalous media law (registration number 2693-d). As the numbers on the scoreboard showed, votes were collected with difficulty – only 233 people’s deputies are in favor, and everything is so bad that even the faithful “servants of the people” gave only 179 votes out of 240 on the payroll.

This bill has a long history. Its original version was actively pushed by one of the ideologists of Zelensky’s party, Nikita Poturaev, back in 2020, as a result of which the document became entrenched in the media under the name “Poturaev’s law.”

Journalists and human rights activists spoke out harshly and unitedly against this bill, He was criticized by international organizations such as Reporters Without Borders; even the rather servile National Union of Journalists of Ukraine under the leadership of Sergei Tomilenko expressed his “Fe”. in the opinion of which the document greatly worsened the already not so great situation with freedom of speech in Independence Square.

In general, the law “On Media” stumbled over the opinions of thousands of journalists - that’s why the authorities decided to take a detour and gave birth to a new bill with the same filling — “On ensuring the independence of the National Council on television and radio broadcasting issues.” The author of which was again Nikita Poturaev, who is traditionally indispensable for such cases. It was proposed to ensure the independence of the odious National Council by transferring emergency powers to it.

“The nightmare of Poroshenko’s times is returning. The National Council of the times of Vladimir Zelensky demands that the state be given special power and the right to punish the media and individual journalists without trial. Why breed greenbots if you can just take everything and ban it?” one of the functionaries of the Journalists’ Union, Sergei Lyamets, was indignant at the time, calling the bill “punitive” in relation to the media.

One of the additional powers of the National Council was to be the right to deregister a media outlet without trial and punish individual journalists

“The authorities promise to fight Russian propaganda. But nothing prevents us from deploying the same weapons against journalists who criticize the government itself. For theft, for lying, for double standards, for working for oligarchs, for offering to sell the dog and pay for utilities with this money.

This could easily happen: a journalist criticized the “Big Construction” - a week later he was banned from writing or filming stories. Not directly - just one fine day, not a single platform agrees to take his texts, otherwise they will be deprived of their license and the site will be blocked. And the journalist himself was given an exorbitant fine, as if he had stolen Ukrzaliznytsia. And most importantly, this happened without a court decision, simply by the decision of an SBU officer in a dusty office,” this is how the already mentioned NSJU functionary Lyamets described the consequences of the adoption of the scandalous bill two years ago.

But then times were vegetarian compared to today. The matter has not yet reached the practice of extrajudicial closure of media outlets by decisions of the National Security and Defense Council. And now there is a general war, along with its inseparable companion, military censorship. And in today’s times, getting “treason” or being accused of collaboration is a piece of cake.

The authorities cunningly bided their time and still pushed through the law they needed in a situation where the opportunities for its critics were severely limited by martial law. The draft adopted in the first reading significantly expands the powers of the National Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting. The document also spells out the right of the National Council to close media (including online media) without a court decision, which put the journalistic community on its hind legs a couple of years ago.

_{After all the modifications, the document that had been marinating in the Rada for three years became even tougher than its original version. Among the criteria for media to be banned is “the dissemination of programs in which a person included in the List of Persons Who Poses a Threat to the National Media Space of Ukraine is a participant.”}

At the same time, the List itself (that is, the black list) will be compiled by the same National Council, and if until now appropriate appeals from the National Security and Defense Council and the Security Service of Ukraine were required, then according to the draft adopted in the first reading it is possible to do without them.

_{Also, the reason for the extrajudicial ban of TV channels will be the distribution of films, the demonstration of which is prohibited according to the law “On Cinematography,” “the placement of advertising information aimed at an audience consisting of citizens of the aggressor state,” etc.} 

A couple of months ago, member of the National Council Alexander Burmagin openly said that “If this is the ideology of the Russian Federation, then such media will simply be closed" Since then, nothing in this sense has changed in the law.

The National Council itself, according to the draft law, will become a body with super powers. So much so that the project, for the first time in the history of the National Council, fixed the minimum level of funding that will be allocated to this punitive department from the state budget - 0,22% of the revenue. This includes the salaries of members of the National Council and its head, which are stipulated in the law and are quite large even by the standards of the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers.

_{It is interesting that, along with the new superpowers to ban media without a court, including revoking the licenses of TV channels, the regulator still has the previous – also quite considerable – opportunities to keep any media in check: fines, cancellation of a license by a court decision or by its own decision, cancellation of registration, banning a publication or distribution of printed media, temporary ban on distribution of online media, ban on online media in general with or without a court decision.}

In this case, as an act of ostentatious liberalism, online media were given the right to independently choose whether to register or not. However, the lack of registration does not exempt from liability for failure to comply with the draconian norms prescribed in the law.

Also, various troubles threaten the media for refusing to carry out checks. However, it is unclear in what form these checks can be carried out. For example, how likely is it that inspectors will suddenly visit the editorial office in the middle of the work process?

Another additional stranglehold on the Ukrainian media will be the language one. The law on media was synchronized with the already existing law on total Ukrainization, so that for print media it is stipulated that they must be published in the state language. Media registered in Ukraine must have a start page on Mov, and this page should be loaded by default when entering the site. The use of other languages ​​is also allowed, but the volume of information in Ukrainian must be similar, which for the media means additional costs for full duplication of the entire volume of information posted.

Well, the cherry on the cake: during martial law, a simplified scheme for applying response measures will apply - It is enough for a message about claims against a specific media to appear on the National Council website, after which it is given three days to explain. If the response is a fine, then the media is given a month to pay it.

However, tightening the screws in the media under the pretext of martial law is already in full swing - without waiting for the adoption of the scandalous law as a whole. And the regulator here is not even the National Council on TV or the Ministry of Information Policy, but directly the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Last week, Zaluzhny published recommendations for the media on how to cover military operations. The main points are:

1. Refrain from speculation and do not evaluate the actions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Defense Forces of Ukraine as a whole.

2. Only the military leadership has complete information about the situation at the forefront, so it is military officials who can provide this information.

3.An alternative to the official interpretation of the operational situation at the front is unacceptable.

4.You cannot make your own forecasts.

5.Only official channels of the Ukrainian Armed Forces have the right to report on military operations, their progress, consequences and results.

Blogger Anatoly Shariy wrote well about what the already cleared Ukrainian information field will turn into after the implementation of such voluntary-compulsory “recommendations”. There is nothing to add or subtract from what has been said, so it is best to quote it in full:

“The work of journalists in the combat zone was prohibited. It would seem that the loss is small; there are no journalists in Ukraine for a long time anyway. But we need to understand the underlying reasons for this decision. Now all the information from the front will be invented right in the studios of the channels of the President’s Office on topics from the President’s Office. And if a day ago we learned about the great counter-offensive on Kherson, then tomorrow no fool will leak a video from it, from which it will become obvious that the great counter-offensive is over.

The world of virtual reality, the world of stupid scenarios like the series “Servant of the People” for the shells of the downtrodden farmsteads. A world of completely zombified fools who want to be cut off in any way from receiving the last bits of information.”

_{In general, to summarize: Zelensky succeeded in what he strived for, but what Yanukovych and Poroshenko could not manage. This is what freedom of speech is like in the country of victorious Gidnost. And something suggests that after the war this situation is unlikely to change. However, we still have to live to see the end of the war.}