Forcible subscription for state-run newspapers started (Photo of document)
- 14.11.2008, 10:24
A copy of the “Plan of the subscription campaign concerning printed media for the first half of the 2009” has been received by journalists.
The document enumerates organisational arrangements aimed an increasing circulation of regional state-run newspapers, and prevention republican and local newspapers’ circulation decrease, the Belarusian Association of Journalists informs.
In particular, officials of the Brest region are prescribed to hold consultations with directors of enterprises and institutions dedicated to organising a subscription campaign in labour collectives. In their turn, heads of enterprises and organisers of all forms of ownership must “prevent reducing of circulation of main republican newspapers, state-run regional and district newspapers”.
The plan has a paragraph which obliges directors to make provisions for subscription for printed mass media by every employee “with the aim to expand the informational space and to support spiritual and moral development of the population”
Workers of the post offices have been given a task to “report” the ideology department about the progress of the subscription campaign to every week. And besides they are to give the statistics about enterprises and organisations which hasn’t subscribed or where subscription figures are lower to the regional executive committee.
“It is not a novelty that during the subscription campaign authorities use administrative leverage in order to support the state-run press. This document is characterised by detailed list of responsibilities of different structures,” the plan of Brest ideology workers is commented by the BAJ chairperson Zhana Litvina.
“Such documents were popular in Soviet time, when the regime feared any dissent. For me it is a sign that a lots of problems exist in the country today. In order to hide these problems, the regime is trying to keep the mind of the nation under control.
And if we recall that in fact more than a dozen of independent socio-political newspapers are deprived a right for distribution, the subscription campaign in Belarus looks dismaying indeed”.