Melon Farmers Original Version

TV Censorship in Russia


Russian TV censors easily wound up


 

Tit for tat...

Russian TV censor finds the BBC World News in breach of Russian censorship law


Link Here1st February 2019
Full story: TV Censorship in Russia...Russian TV censors easily wound up
The Russian TV censor has found certain violations in activities of the BBC World News broadcaster in Russia. The probe into the broadcaster's actions was launched in response to the British TV censor Ofcom's ruling against the Russian propaganda channel RT for biased reporting about the Salisbury poisoning.

Roskomnadzor the Russian TV censor said BBC World News in Russia, has been found in breach of Russian legislation following an unscheduled inspection. It did not elaborate on the nature of the revealed violations but said that it is assessing their severity. Roskomnadzor will later provide further information about the measures taken.

On a separate occasion, January 10, Roskomnadzor said it found some BBC online reports in breach of Russian anti-extremism laws as they contained some direct quotes of Al-Baghdadi, the head of Islamic State, something that is banned under a Russian law.

 

 

Update: TV Rain...

Major Moscow TV providers drop independent channel that poked old wounds


Link Here31st January 2014
Full story: TV Censorship in Russia...Russian TV censors easily wound up
A Russian television station that made its name covering massive street protests against President Vladimir Putin has been taken off the air by three television providers in a move the channel's chief said was censorship.

Dozhd (TV Rain), an independent-minded television station with a strong online presence, has aired aggressive reporting critical of Russian authorities and even-handed broadcasts on Ukraine's anti-government protests.

General Director Natalia Sindeyeva said three providers had dropped the channel in and around Moscow. The station was still available on two major providers in the Moscow area.

The Dozhd has been under pressure since it ran exposes on expensive property owned by high-ranking Kremlin officials. And more recently Dozhd has faced criticism after poking old wounds by asking if Leningrad, now St Petersburg, should have been given to Nazi Germany to save lives during a 872-day blockade during World War Two.

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian agency Interfax that the survey was beyond what was acceptable from the moral and ethical point of view of our people .

 

 

Update: A Date with the Censor...

Russian state TV pulls show daring to joke about Putin's divorce


Link Here10th June 2013
Full story: TV Censorship in Russia...Russian TV censors easily wound up

Russian state television has pulled a show over a joke about President Vladimir Putin's surprise divorce announcement..

The youth-oriented television show called The Social Network recorded a satirical item about Putin putting up a profile on an online dating site. The programme's co-host Vladislav Sorokin wrote on Facebook:

We made a video item about photos of Putin for mamba.ru (dating site). They took the whole programme, all of it, off air entirely.

We'll work till our contract ends on June 30 and then so long.

 

 

Update: Negative MP...

Russian MP proposes that TV should consist of 70% propaganda


Link Here12th December 2012
Full story: TV Censorship in Russia...Russian TV censors easily wound up

A Russian MP has produced a bill that would limit what he describes as negative TV content to 30% of air time in a move to ensure people are fed a diet of propaganda

The draft law defines what is acceptable and what should be kept away from viewer's eyes. Journalists should inform people rather than show explicit bloody details in news, the author of the initiative, Oleg Mikheyev told Izvestia daily.

The MP insists the point of the law is not to introduce censorship... .[BUT] ... In his opinion, people just cannot deal with all the negative information they get from the media.

Reports from sites of accidents and terrorist acts that provide close-up view of injured people cause psychological trauma, Mikheyev spewed.

Under the proposal, such content, as well as videos of violence against animals, acts of suicide and paedophilia should be completely banned. Heads of TV channels and journalists who violate the law would face up to six years behind bars.

The propaganda idea was welcomed in the ruling United Russia Party, which may soon develop its own more specific version of the bill. A person should be informed without scenes of violence and horror, a senior member of the party, Valery Trapeznikov noted.

 

 

Update: Fag End TV...

Russia opts for all day, and nearly all night, children's TV


Link Here31st August 2012
Full story: TV Censorship in Russia...Russian TV censors easily wound up

A Russian national TV channel is going to censor The Simpsons . In light of a new law banning displays of violence, drinking, and smoking on TV before 11pm, the young adult-targeted channel 2x2 will remove all scenes with the show's violent spoof cartoon The Itchy & Scratchy Show starting Friday.

The channel's general director Lev Makarov told AFP:

We will retouch in an ironic way all the programs where there are scenes that fall under the new law.  For example, we will black-out the screen and write a jokey message in a rolling caption.

Makarov said the animated series South Park , on the other hand, will not be aired before 11pm because creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone insist on killing Kenny in almost every episode.

The classic Soviet-era children's cartoon Nu, pogodi! featuring a hapless wolf trying to catch a crafty rabbit, is another victim of the new censorship law. It features a character with a lit cigarette or ten, dangling from his lips.

Longtime fans of Nu, pogodi! are dismayed at the news that it may be relegated to late-night time slots due to the prodigious tobacco use by its star.

The new law supposedly aimed at protecting children under the age of 18 from programming featuring drinking, smoking, or drug use comes into force on September 1.

 

15th September
2011
  

Update: Supreme Council on the Protection of Public Morality...

Russia's Communist Party propose a new TV censor

Russia's Communist Party has submitted a bill to the State Duma aimed at creating a Supreme Council on the Protection of Morality on state TV channels and radio stations.

The bill is awaiting consideration by lower house legislators during their last session prior to the December elections.

If approved, a specially-created body would make appraisals or, at least, express opinions on the extent to which TV and radio broadcasts promote public morality, one of the authors of the initiative, MP Nina Ostanina, told Itar-Tass.

This is not meant as an instrument of censorship, Ostanina claimed. In contrast to the situation in the Soviet era, the moral assessment would be made after rather than before a TV or radio program went on air.. . [BUT] ... In any case, it would send a signal to conscientious producers of TV programs when broadcasts are unacceptable to public morals.

The bill makes no provision for any punishment or sanctions against broadcasters who regularly violate the rules of morality. The council would, however, have the right to appeal to the state leadership and a channel's majority shareholders as well as to urge the public to show its disapproval.

However another Communist faction deputy, Sergey Obukhov, suggested that the watchdog bodies should have far more extensive powers, including the defining of TV channels' program policy. The television has been turned into a scrapheap, Obukhov observed. The council's task would be to sort that scrapheap out and bring Russian TV up to European standards.

As for the membership of such TV watchdogs, the MP believes they could be comprised of representatives of political parties and public organizations, as well as members of society with moral authority .

 

6th June
2010
  

Update: Dangerous Content...

Russia proposes a 10pm TV watershed

Russia's ruling party has proposed legislation to increase censorship for children, the BBC Russian service has reported.

TV and radio news programs featuring episodes of violence, destruction, disasters, death and the like should be put off-air during daytime because they are harmful for children's psychology, said the draft legislation proposed by the United Russia party.

The proposed legislation submitted defines daytime as a period from 6am to 10pm.

After 10pm, TV programs should be accompanied with a warning about the dangerous content of the upcoming program.

Dangerous content is defined as those promoting drugs, smoking, alcohol, gambling, prostitution, begging and vagrancy as well as materials that deny family values or provoke people into committing crimes.

The bill proposed that the first and the last pages of printed media should not bear any information that might be harmful for children's health. Otherwise, these editions must be sold in non-transparent covers, as must be adult magazines.

Experts said some definitions in the proposal are too vogue, and if the bill becomes law, it will result in banning nearly all the news programs.

 

17th October
2009
  

Update: Curtain Comes Down on TV News...

Russia's last independent TV stations return to state controlled news

Campaigners accused the Kremlin today of killing off the last vestiges of independent television in Russia, after it emerged that the two remaining private TV channels would come under state control next year.

REN TV and St Petersburg's Fifth Channel, which are sometimes critical of the authorities, have until now been Russia's last semi-independent private TV stations. Although neither can be described as radical, they are the only channels on which opposition politicians can air their views, or where dissenting voices may be heard.

Next year both channels' news bulletins will be restructured, Russia's Kommersant newspaper reported today. The state-owned, pro-Kremlin English language television station Russia Today will take over responsibility for their news broadcasts from 2010, the paper added.

Journalists said they were appalled by the move. This means independent TV will be destroyed. It will disappear, said Oleg Ptashkin, a former correspondent with Russia's state-run Channel One TV. Ptashkin, who now runs an independent journalists' union, added: Russians won't be able to find alternative views to state propaganda. We are returning to the Soviet regime and Soviet model.

Until now, the Kremlin has not interfered with REN TV or the Fifth Channel, which are watched by only 10-15% of Russia's population. But the economic crisis, and fear of a popular uprising, appears to have persuaded Russia's risk-averse leadership to pull the plug on the last surviving television platforms for liberal views and discussion.

 

25th September
2008
  

Update: Cartoon Capers...

Russian TV channel 2x2 lives on after South Park whinge

The Russian channel under fire from prosecutors and religious groups for airing South Park and The Simpsons kept its license Wednesday, RIA Novosti news agency reported.

We unanimously recommended the extension of the license of 2x2 channel, Mikhail Seslavinsky, a member of the Federal Competition Commission for Television and Radio Broadcasting.

Fans had staged protests in support of the channel, fearing that the commission would take 2x2 off the air starting next month after a campaign by religious groups against the irreverent US cartoons.

But the channel still faces a criminal investigation on charges of extremism for broadcasting the notoriously foul-mouthed South Park.

Religious activists heading the campaign against the channel say its cartoons are offensive to their faith. I've got no problem with my sense of humour ...BUT... any satire has its limits, Konstantin Bendas, a Pentecostal pastor who is heading the campaign and has written a formal complaint to prosecutors, told AFP.

Update: License Extended

18th October. From en.rian.ru

Russia's adult cartoon 2x2 TV channel thanked the federal TV and radio watchdog body on Friday for extending its license for another five years amid a row over 'extremist' cartoons such as South Park .

On Thursday, Rossvyazkomnadzor approved a decision on extending the license of the 2x2 TV channel, which was due to expire on Friday, until October 17, 2013. The move was earlier recommended by the Russian federal broadcasting commission.

 

24th September
2008
  

Update: Humourless Russians...

Russian TV channel faces closure over the airing of South Park

Pornographic, extremist and immoral - that's how Russian prosecutors are describing popular US cartoons like The Simpsons, Family Guy and South Park.

The channel that carries them has been forced to suspend broadcasts of the offending programs pending legal action. On Wednesday (local time), a meeting of a government monitoring agency could take channel 2x2 off the air.

Throngs of teenagers have taken to the streets to demand their favourite cartoons back.

Fans of the cartoons say critics just don't get the joke and are engaging in Soviet-style moral censorship, while opponents say the cartoons are poisoning the minds of Russia's young.

Channel 2x2 is also facing a criminal investigation under strict new Russian legislation against extremism for broadcasting the notoriously foul-mouthed South Park.

Judging by a highly critical statement issued by the prosecutor general's office this month, the prospects for the channel and its cartoons appear bleak in a Russia that commentators say is becoming increasingly conservative: The cartoons broadcast by 2x2 propagandise violence, cruelty, pornography and anti-social behaviour.

The Federal Service for Monitoring in the Sphere of Connections and Mass Communications is set to meet on Wednesday (local time) to discuss whether or not to renew the channel's licence, which runs out on October 17.

 

12th September
2008
  

Update: South Park Cold War...

Cartoon invokes fear, panic and terror in Russia children

Killing Kenny is apparently against the law, and the popular South Park cartoon series appears set to become the latest victim of Russia's crackdown on “extremism.”

As the Interfax news agency reports, Moscow city prosecutors have filed a motion with the Basmanny regional court after finding that an episode of the show broadcast in January bore signs of extremist activity. Simultaneously, the channel that broadcasts the American cartoon, 2×2, has been issued a warning for disseminating extremist materials.

An investigation conducted by prosecutors found fault with an episode titled Mr. Hankey's Christmas Special, which went on air on January 9th. Experts found that the show humiliates the honor and dignity of Christians and Muslims, offends the feeling of believers regardless of their denomination, and can provoke interethnic conflict, up to and including extremist acts.

A panel of experts examined the 12 animated series shown on 2x2, including 118 films. Among them are the Simpsons, Family Guy, Metalocalypse, Drawn Together, Lenore the Cute Little Dead Girl, Angry Kid , and others.

The experts found that the cartoons do not correspond to the legal requirements for protecting children's moral and mental development and protecting their health. The cartoons promote violence and cruelty, pornography, anti-social behavior, abound with scenes of mayhem, the infliction of physical and ethical suffering, and are aimed at invoking fear, panic and terror in children, the Office said in a statement: Practically all the cartoons exploit the topic of suicide, and characters demonstrate readiness to risk their lives for the sake of deriving extreme sensations.

 

17th March
2008
  

Update: Russian Intelligence Insulted...

Nutters win as Happy Tree Friends banned

A government decision to ban two cartoon shows on a Russian TV-channel has caused widespread debate. While some see the decision to clamp down on violence on TV as a defence of taste and decency, others see it as unnecessary censorship.

The Happy Tree Friends are a kind of extreme Tom and Jerry, aimed at young adults and heavy on stylised violence. It's a cult classic that's shown in more than 50 countries.

The Two by Two station that airs the show pulled it and another show after receiving an official government warning

The controversy began with a complaint from Russia's protestant church. One of its top officials says the station is perverting the morals of the nation. And they want the station closed down. Someone has to stop the violence. Television is a tool shaping the minds and the future of our children, Konstantin Bendas from the Union of Evangelical Christians said.

However the regulator - despite upholding the complaint says that closing TV stations is not on their agenda.

Nevertheless for Two by Two this is a serious issue. Their CEO says the channel has had thousands of messages of support and thinks the ban is an insult to the intelligence of viewers and that the complaints are unwarranted.

 

15th March
2008
  

Nutters 2 by 2...

Russian nutters wound up by South Park

Protestant nutters have urged Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chaika to shut down the cartoon channel 2x2 for broadcasting shows they claim promote homosexuality and religious intolerance.

It is the second time in a week that the network, owned by Vladimir Potanin's Prof-Media Group, has come under fire for its content.

The Consultative Council of the Heads of Protestant Churches in Russia sent a letter to Chaika, accusing 2x2 of promoting cruelty, violence, homosexual propaganda, religious hatred and intolerance by airing cartoons such as South Park , said Vitaly Vlasenko, a spokesman for the group, which unites several Protestant denominations.

Last week 2x2 pulled two of its shows, Happy Tree Friends and The Adventures of Big Jeff , after a receiving a warning from the government media watchdog that the shows promoted a cult of violence and brutality.

Under Russian law, a second warning letter could result in the loss of the channel's broadcasting license.




 

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