‘Pressball’ is denied accreditation for Olympics again

On 30 January the commission on media of the Ministry of Sports rejected the application of the largest Belarusian sportive newspaper Pressball at the winter Olympics in the Canadian city of Vancouver.

Meanwhile, the commission took positive decisions on similar applications that had been filed by the state newspapers Sovetskaya Belorussiya, Respublika, Sportivnaya Panorama and the BelTA information agency. The latter two will also have the opportunity to send to the Olympics their photo correspondents. Besides, a special address will be sent to the International Olympic Committee with the request to provide one more place, for a journalist of the state newspaper Zviazda.
 

To come into legal force, the denial to Pressball must be also confirmed by the executive committee of the National Olympic Committee (NOC). However, the position of the executive committee is hard to predict. According to the NOC press-secretary Piatro Rabukhin, ‘Pressball often publishes unconfirmed information. To put it mild, it reports about tales as horrors and horrors as tales.’