State Broadcasting Committee Public Council proposes controls on harmful information

The Public Committee attached to the State TV and Radio Broadcasting Committee has passed a resolution entitled “How to protect morality in the interests of children and the public as a whole. The public’s opinion” This proposes amendments to legislation in order, it says, to protect children from harmful information.

Most of the members of the Council are against adoption of the new version of the Morality Act. Instead they recommend that draft laws be drawn up and tabled in parliament which would make amendments to acts regulating protection of public morality in various specific spheres.

They propose amendments to: the Law on Television and Radio Broadcasting to prevent access to programmes which can harm minors without special coding or at particular times where there is no such coding; the Laws on Advertising and on the Printed Pressure establishing special conditions for circulating press containing information which could harm minors and others.

Katerina Kotenko, Executive Director of ITK suggested drawing public attention to the need to introduce a new system for classifying audiovisual material “Watch intelligently” (keijkvizer). With the support of the OSCE, a working group has been created from members of the National Broadcasting Council and NGOs which is analyzing the Dutch experience with this classification. The Public Council delegated two of its members to this working group (O. Pohoryelov from the Association of Printed Press Publishers and M. Vasin from the Institute for Religious Freedom).

From a report at http://telekritika.ua/news/2011-12-13/68032