You're reading: National Council on TV, Radio Broadcasting bans retransmission of Belarus 24 TV channel in Ukraine

The National Council of Ukraine on Television and Radio Broadcasting has removed the Belarus 24 TV channel from the list of foreign programs, the content of which meets the requirements of the European Convention on Transfrontier Television and Ukrainian legislation.

“The reason for the withdrawal of the TV channel from the list of programs allowed for retransmission was the airing of audiovisual works prohibited for a demonstration on the territory of Ukraine, and films with the participation of actors included in the list of persons who threaten the national security of our state by the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy,” the press service of the National Council reported.

It is noted that the National Council has been closely monitoring the activities of the TV channel for a long time.

“For some time, the on-air content of this channel was noticeably different from typical pro-government Belarusian ones, since this is the international version, obviously, they paid attention to this. But recently, our monitoring has recorded violations,” said a member of the National Council Maksym Onopriyenko.

In particular, during the monitoring of the program content of the Belarus 24 TV channel in the period from May 19 to May 22, the broadcast of the programs “Understand and Neutralize” with the participation of Oleg Gazmanov, “The Last Day” with the participation of host Boris Shcherbakov and “Slavianski Bazaar,” “the Union State Invites,” ‘Pesnyary – 50, Part1″ with the participation of Kormukhin. The popularization by the Belarusian customer of persons included in the list of persons who threaten national security contradicts the requirements of Paragraph 10 of Part 2 of Article 6 of the Law of Ukraine “On Television and Radio Broadcasting.”

“Such content contains elements of inciting ethnic hatred and obviously has signs of violation of Paragraph 4 of Part 2 of Article 6 of the Law of Ukraine “On Television and Radio Broadcasting.” The broadcast took place in the recording or pre-prepared plots were used, and therefore, the broadcaster had the opportunity to edit the information offered to viewers for accuracy,” the National Council notes.

Since, as of June 6, Belarus is not a signatory to the European Convention on Cross-Border Broadcasting, the retransmission of the Belarus 24 TV program from the territory of Belarus was carried out in accordance with the decision of the National Council, if the requirements of the Convention and Ukrainian legislation are ignored, the National Council has the right to take measures to prevent or suppress such violations.

“Thus, the regulatory body made a decision to remove the Belarus 24 TV channel from the list of allowed for retransmission,” the council said.