The decision to broadcast the channels should be made taking into account the importance of freedom of the media, and emerging disputes should be considered by independent judicial bodies. This was announced on Thursday, December 23, at the office of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Teresa Ribeiro.
Thus, the bureau commented on the decision of the German regulator to remove the RT DE channel from broadcasting.
“The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media wants to emphasize the importance of all parties involved taking into account freedom of expression, freedom of the media and access to information when deciding whether to broadcast a channel, and also transparently indicate the reasons for such a decision,” the representative’s office said. OSCE on mass media TASS.
Earlier that day, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law, Deputy Director of the Department for Humanitarian Cooperation and Human Rights Grigory Lukyantsev said that the blocking of the Russia Today YouTube channel in German on the day of its launch and the subsequent disconnection of the channel from television broadcasts are a manifestation of censorship by Germany.
A day earlier, it was reported that the German media regulator MABB forced the European satellite operator Eutelsat 9B to remove from its platform the new German-language TV channel RT DE, broadcasting from a studio in Moscow.
In response to this, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, said that by disconnecting the RT DE TV channel in Germany from broadcasting, Berlin led Moscow to the need to take retaliatory measures. Zakharova announced censorship and the practice of clearing information space by Berlin.
An official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry called the “practice of coercive influence on a satellite operator” unacceptable.
In turn, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Russia never wanted to go “along the path of strangling the press,” but does not rule out a response to the blocking of Russian media in the West. Lavrov noted that discrimination against the Russian media has been observed for many years, and the desire to respond mirrored has arisen more than once.
