Law On Media actually introduces censorship despite its formal prohibition - Kharkiv Human Rights Group

Vsevolod Rechytskyi, an expert of the Kharkiv Human Rights Group and a constitutional lawyer, believes that the law On Media recently adopted by the Verkhovna Rada actually introduces censorship despite its formal prohibition.

He stated this in an interview posted on the website of the Kharkiv Human Rights Group.

"Because this law is mostly restrictive, it actually requires people to be censors. Yes, this law recognizes the prohibition of censorship, but in order to put it into force and satisfy the interests it is designed to satisfy, it has to create a whole union censors. They may be called editors, members of the National Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting, but they will actually be censors. However, censorship is prohibited," Rechytskyi said.

He emphasized that the law has a several times wider list of grounds for restricting freedom of speech than the Constitution provides.

Thus, according to Rechytskyi, the law narrows the constitutional rights of citizens, including freedom of expression, which is unacceptable.

He emphasized that the law has certain positive norms, which are offset by a significant strengthening of state regulation of the media.

"This law formally contains such positive things as the three-fold test, the prohibition of censorship, the prohibition of agreeing information messages, but in fact it is permeated with the idea of censorship from the beginning to the end, and we hid it under the concepts of "control" and "supervision", and this is actually censorship If "supervision" is passive observation, then "control" is intervention, and here it involves the imposition of various sanctions," Rechytskyi summarized.

He added that this law is so burdensome and detailed that it is unlikely to work. The law, according to the expert, will be used as a means of punishment, but purely selectively.

As earlier reported, the International Federation of Journalists calls on the Ukrainian authorities to review the recently adopted by the Verkhovna Rada and signed by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy the law On Media and to start a dialogue with journalist unions and the media sector.

The European Federation of Journalists called on the Ukrainian government to postpone the draft law On Media. The draft law was also criticized in the OSCE.

The draft law on media is not supported by the vast majority of print media editors.

Critical materials about this law were also published by the Western press, in particular The New York Times.

The main focus of criticism is the excessive expansion of the National Council's powers over television, which has been given the authority to regulate all media, including online and print media, and giving the National Council the right to extrajudicially terminate or suspend the media.

The law enters into force on March 31, three months after its publication.