“The media want to force to serve the government” journalists surprised by the initiative to apply e-decoratie
The Deputy from “popular front” and a former journalist, Tatiana Chornovil initiated to adopt the amendment to the law, which obliges media professionals and activists to submit electronic declarations.
Explaining the initiative, Chornovol said: “when we talk about the influence of civil society on the government, state institutions, mass media is the Communicator between civil society and government.”
“Remember the statement of Mr. Onishenko – how many millions of dollars he paid media to realize their corruption projects”, reports “espresso TV” words to the center.
But this amendment angered the media and social activists. According to them, this legislative initiative will block the work of public organizations. In addition, journalists do not receive salaries from the budget and not live on taxpayers ‘ money, unlike civil servants and officials, so this amendment seems strange.
Journalist Nastya Stanko believes that in this way the legislators want to force media to be more dependent on the government.
Electron declares for Hosok I redaktorv – idea, Yak semusici ZMI Buti more zaleznie
— Nastya Stanko (@StankoNastya) 22 Mar 2017
“In my opinion, to oblige the journalists to fill in the electronic Declaration is an attempt to force them to serve the government, not society,” agrees with the first Secretary of the National Union of journalists of Ukraine Sergey Tomilenko.
“The desire of politicians to take revenge on the community activists and investigative journalists is so high that they are willing to turn Ukraine into a totalitarian state,” writes the Executive Director of the Center for anti-Corruption Daria kalenyuk.
According to her, the adoption of these amendments carries such threats to public organizations and the media:
Members of non – governmental organizations (NGOs) and the media become objects of criminal liability for failure to submit declarations and fraud in the statements. This can be used as a tool to pressure from NGOs and the media, who are fighting against corruption;
– The activities of NGOs and media that receive international funding for the fight against corruption, can be blocked;
– There are threats to the personal safety of people working in NGOs.
The activist anti-corruption group “Reanimation Package of Reforms” Anton Marchuk noted that NACP could not manage to check 100 thousand of income declarations of officials, filed last fall. And the deputies decided to throw NACP still work in the form of verification of declarations of public activists and media representatives.
Manager of the “reanimation package of reforms” Alexander Semenov directly compares the initiative of the cascade with the law on “foreign agents”, which operates in Russia.
MP Yegor Sobolev said that the initiative Chornovil’s trying to sabotage anti-corruption legislation. “Tomorrow I will ask the Parliament to correct this stupidity,” wrote Sobolev on Facebook.
We will remind, the initiative of filing an electronic Declaration of public activists and journalists last fall criticized the EU delegation in Ukraine. The EU delegation noted that electronic Declaration shall apply only to public servants or persons performing the functions of the state. The parliamentary coalition then listened to international partners and refused to vote for this bill.