{"id":64701,"date":"2015-03-11T07:56:46","date_gmt":"2015-03-11T07:56:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=64701"},"modified":"2017-01-11T12:29:49","modified_gmt":"2017-01-11T12:29:49","slug":"lithuania-press-freedom-groups-decry-proposed-bans-on-russian-tv-channels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=64701","title":{"rendered":"Lithuania: Press freedom groups decry proposed bans on Russian TV channels"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A coalition of international press freedom organisations has hit out at a move to force some Russian &#8220;government-controlled&#8221; TV stations off Lithuanian airwaves.<\/p>\n<p>Lithuania&#8217;s\u00a0Committee on Radio and Television is reportedly considering, at the request of the government, to ban two Russian television channels from broadcasting to the Baltic country.<\/p>\n<p>The channels in question &#8212; RTR Planeta and\u00a0NTV Mir Lithuania &#8212; have in the past been handed down temporary\u00a0suspensions of specific programs, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.themoscowtimes.com\/business\/article\/lithuania-may-block-two-more-russian-tv-channels-for-biased-coverage\/514084.html\">according to the commission head Edmundas Vaitiekunas<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If a\u00a0ban is imposed on\u00a0the whole channel due to\u00a0repeated violations, I believe it should be longer \u2026 I believe it should be up to\u00a0one year,&#8221; Vaitiekunas added in comments to the Baltic News Service\u00a0earlier this year.<\/p>\n<p>Russian state-owned media such as RT (formerly Russia Today), has come under fire for alleged distortion of facts in the their coverage, especially in relation to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p>In a letter this week to the Lithuanian President, media freedom organisations including the\u00a0World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers\u00a0and the\u00a0World Press Freedom Committee, argued that while they understand the objection to certain Russian broadcasts in &#8220;the current tense situation&#8221;, they consider a ban to be counterproductive and in contradiction of international free speech standards.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If put into effect, bans on broadcasts across frontiers would almost inevitably be seized upon by the Russian authorities to justify bans on broadcasts by independent news media from other countries,&#8221; the letter states.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is an established conviction in free societies that the best answer to bad speech is more speech. We can see from the reaction to recent events in Moscow that there is a large public that is open to arguments, news reports and information to counteract official propaganda. The risk should not be taken to cut off such audiences from the free flow of information from outside their borders,&#8221; the group added.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"www.indexoncensorship.org\/2015\/03\/lithuania-press-freedom-orgs-decry-proposed-bans-on-russian-tv-channels\/\">This article was posted on Wednesday March 11 2015 at indexoncensorship.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A coalition of international press freedom organisations has hit out at a move to force some Russian &#8220;government-controlled&#8221; TV stations off Lithuanian airwaves <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[4059,6564,6903,581],"tags":[6982,1048,6980,7349,6981],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64701"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64701"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65245,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64701\/revisions\/65245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}