Press Freedom is heavily under attack in the ongoing Russia Ukraine war.
President Vladimir Putin led government on Tuesday banned two major Russia Media outlets over what observers said the media outfits were critical in their reportage in the Russia war on Ukraine.
According to NPR news, President Vladimir Putin led government content regulatory body had previously threatened media outlets with fines or blockage should they employ the words “war” or “invasion” to describe the Russian campaign, which the Russian authorities falsely portray as a humanitarian mission in support of Russian speakers in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine.
The affected Media include; The Echo of Moscow radio station that reportedly earned its name covering the collapse of the USSR — becoming a beloved liberal talk radio institution in Russia.
Also affected, Dozhd, or TV Rain, which observers said made similar inroads with its broadcasts of protests against Vladimir Putin’s Russia 20 years later.
NPR news said the two media have been targeted by Russia’s government for their coverage of the war in Ukraine.
It was gathered that Government Prosecutors claimed that both outlets provided “deliberately false information” about what the Russian government calls a peacekeeping “special operation” and should face restrictions.
“As the news broke late Tuesday in Russia, Echo of Moscow’s longtimie FM 91.2 signal turned to a hiss.
“TV Rain’s website also went down but was still available via YouTube stream. The government had previously labeled the channel a “foreign agent” and removed it from cable providers.
“Both outlets reject the government accusations and say they’ll appeal the decision.
“TV Rain editor-in-chief Tikhon Dzyadko also announced Wednesday that he and “several other staff members” had left the country pending the court ruling out of concern for their safety”, NPR news report reads.
Meanwhile, Google, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter amongst other have joined European Commission to ban Russia state controlled Media outfits.
Google confirmed on Tuesday that it had removed Russian state-funded publishers such as RT from its news-related features, including the Google News search tool, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and various sanctions against Russia.
Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs, said earlier Tuesday in a blog post that “in this extraordinary crisis we are taking extraordinary measures to stop the spread of misinformation and disrupt disinformation campaigns online.”
RT Deputy Editor-in-Chief Anna Belkina said in a statement on Tuesday that technology companies that have cut her outlet’s distribution have not pointed to “a single grain of evidence that what RT has reported over these days, and continues to report, is not true.” This was stated as reported by Reuters.
“This collective ‘establishment’ seems to be terrified of a mere presence of any outside voice for the fear of losing their historically captive audience, if that audience encounters a different perspective,” RT Deputy Editor-in-chief said.
In what look like a retaliation to Russian media, Russia Airstrikes on Tuesday bombed Ukrainian Tv tower in Kyiv, the Ukrainian state capital.
Information from Ukraine indicated that the airstrike or bombing of the TV tower has caused a broadcast outage in parts of Ukraine.
