(Pure Information) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is starting to control extra like his Russian nemesis by the day, as evidenced by his latest signature on a brand new invoice that additional restricts press freedoms in his nation.
As struggle continues to rage following Russia’s invasion practically a yr in the past, Zelenskyy is doing nothing to show he’s worthy of the tens of billions of {dollars} actual democracies all through the West are throwing at him.
“The laws considerably will increase the powers of Ukraine’s state broadcasting regulator to permit it to manage each the print and on-line information media,” Reclaim the Internet experiences. “Additional, it permits for fines to be imposed on media retailers, their licenses to be revoked with out due course of, and even some web sites to be briefly blocked with out going via the courts. Lastly, it offers the regulator authority to order search giants comparable to Google and different social media platforms to take away content material.”
Come to think about it, that sounds an terrible lot like our personal authorities, which pressed American social media firms to censor content material and ban customers all through Donald Trump’s administration, clearly with out his information and by no means to his benefit.
Reclaim the Internet notes additional:
Zelensky’s actions are already being criticized by press freedom advocates. As this invoice moved via Parliament, members of worldwide organizations such because the European Federation of Journalists and the Committee to Shield Journalists expressed their considerations about its provisions.
“The coercive regulation envisaged by the invoice and within the arms of a regulator completely managed by the federal government is worthy of the worst authoritarian regimes. It should be withdrawn. A state that will apply such provisions merely has no place within the European Union,” mentioned EFJ Basic Secretary Ricardo Gutiérrez.
“Media regulation must be carried out by a physique unbiased of the federal government and its goal must be media independence, not media management,” Gutiérrez added.
“Ukraine’s media invoice critically imperils press freedom within the nation by tightening authorities management over info at a time when residents want it probably the most,” Gulnoza Mentioned, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, added in an announcement, in response to Reclaim the Internet. “Ukrainian legislators ought to abandon the invoice, or at the least pause its progress in parliament till the European Union can weigh in with suggestions.”
The positioning added:
Members of Ukraine’s Nationwide Union of Journalists strongly opposed the invoice because of its potential to scale back elementary freedoms inside the nation. Nonetheless, Yevheniia Kravchuk, the deputy chairperson for Parliament’s Info Coverage Committee contradicted these worries by stating that Ukraine’s media laws had not been up to date because the absence of the web 16 years prior. This new broader invoice was wanted to carry their media legal guidelines updated and supply higher entry to correct info and applied sciences.
In the meantime, earlier this yr, a Dutch journalist who had been protecting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine mentioned the Western media is routinely mendacity about what is definitely happening within the war-torn nation in an effort to take care of a “blame Moscow” narrative.
Sonja van den Ende, an unbiased journalist from Rotterdam, Netherlands, mentioned the Western media “lie repeatedly about every thing simply to implement their very own agenda.”
Van den Ende isn’t reporting from the consolation of a protected studio someplace in a Western capital, however fairly, she is on the bottom in Ukraine and has witnessed the invasion and its atrocities on either side for weeks, noting that at current, there are “solely a handful” of Western journalists within the hotspot of Donbas. As such, Western press retailers are merely “rubber-stamping pretend information” simply as they did throughout the Iraq, Syria, and Afghan wars.
With Western press mendacity about what is occurring in Ukraine and Zelenskyy and his authorities transferring to silence the nation’s media, there must be no purpose American taxpayers are compelled to proceed sending tax cash there. If they’ll’t make certain they’re being informed the reality, then they shouldn’t need to pay to be lied to.
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