Search results : 241

New powers were given to the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Mass Communications, Telecommunications and Protection of Cultural Heritage ( Россвязьохранкультура ) by the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation in March 2007 (see IRIS 2007-7: 18). The Service now not only provides licensing of broadcasting, as well as organisation and supply of the licensing commission (the Federal Competition Commission), but also performs both the legal regulation and the supervision in this field. In the absence of a broadcasting statute in Russia, licensing in broadcasting is now largely...

A decree of the Government of the Russian Federation of 29 November 2007 (# 1700-r) approved a Concept for the development of TV and radio broadcasting in Russian Federation in 2008-2015. This document has been worked out by the high-level Governmental Commission on development of TV and radio broadcasting chaired by Dmitry Medvedev in his capacity of 1st vice-chair of the Government. The Concept states that analogue over-the-air broadcasting remains the only means of access to TV and radio programmes for 88.5 per cent of the population; 11 per cent have access to both over-the-air and cable transmissions,...

On 15 November 2007, Miklós Haraszti, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, presented his regular report to the OSCE Permanent Council, the organization’s main decision-making body. This was his third and final report of the year. Mr. Haraszti’s presentation began with a commemoration of Alisher Saipov, “a young journalist whose promising career was cut short by an act of brutality”. Saipov, a correspondent with the internationally acclaimed media outlets Ferghana, Radio Free Europe and Voice of America, and a founder of an Uzbek-language newspaper, was shot and killed in downtown Osh...

On 24 July 2007, the State Duma of the Russian Federation adopted a statute to amend some legal acts (including the Mass Media Statute, the Criminal Code, the Administrative Code, the Anti-Extremism Statute and others) aimed at increasing liability for extremist activities. The amendments refer directly to the media. Article 4 (“Inadmissibility of Abuse of Mass Communication Freedom”) of the Statute of the Russian Federation “ О средствах массовой информации ” (On mass media) of 27 December 1991, No. 2124-1, was added with the provision that forbids the media from publishing information on the...

The Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers’ (CM) latest batch of country-specific Resolutions adopted in the context of the Second Monitoring Cycle of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM) concern: the Russian Federation; Romania; Ireland and Norway. The Resolutions contain a number of provisions concerning the (audiovisual) media (for similar provisions in earlier country-specific Resolutions, see IRIS 2007-3: 6 and IRIS 2006-2: 4). The CM recommends that the Russian authorities “further improve access to the media of persons belonging to national minorities”...