Information Ministry Increases Control of Mass Media

The new department that will deal with control of the activity of electonic mass media, has been established at the Ministry of Information. The media to be controlled include FM radio stations, regional TV and radio complainies. The chair of the board is the vice-minister of information Siarhei Bulatski. The first step of the new board of electronic mass media became the list of the authors and singers which was composed in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice. According to the authors of the list the persons who were included in it could be considered Belarusians. Some of them consider Russia to be their homeland. It concerns the bands Bi-2 and Nochnye Snaipery (Night Snipers) and such singers as Yury Antonov, Aliona Sviridova and Igor Korneliuk. The composer Eduard Khanok directly states that he doesn’t want to have any relation to Belarus.

We should remind that recently the Ministry of Information has issued warnings to a number of FM radio stations for non-execution of the order for 75% of Belarusian music in ether. This problem can be solved by adding more Russian musicians to “Belarusians”.