MOSCOW, October 26 (Itar-Tass) --- The Russian Justice Ministry placed an order at the website of state purchases for the system of monitoring and analysis of news media reports. The monitoring of at least 5,000 sources should be nonstop. The ministry intends to systematize the information about the ministry, the top officials, emergency situations and crimes. The ministry is ready to spend 3.5 million roubles from the budget for this purpose.
The Justice Ministry intends to learn at any moment what Russian media reports about political and juridical issues, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta reports. For this purpose the ministry stated about its intentions to install the system of monitoring and analysis of news reports in the media and blogs in the ministry. The ministry placed a relevant order at the website of state purchases. The requirements to the system developer sound serious. The system should gather, process, analyze and put on display text, audio and video information, which is posted in all open sources. The news wires of the news agencies, programs of federal and regional television channels and radio stations, federal and regional press, Internet media, the websites of federal and regional authorities and compulsorily the Internet blogs of Russian citizens are taken as open sources.
The contractor has already made up the list of compulsory sources, which the Justice Ministry will monitor, the Novye Izvestia writes. The list includes 284 media outlets. The monitoring database should encompass no less than 5,000 sources, including at least 500 “influential” blogs. The system should gather and analyze not only the text information, but also audiovisual information from open sources. The information should be updated immediately in the real-time mode.
Under the technical task of the Justice Ministry the materials should be grouped in themes. The materials about the Russian president should be on the top, the reports about the prime minister should be ranked second, emergency situations, legislative news reports and the law enforcement problems should go next. Meanwhile, the monitoring system should be able to separate positive from negative in the materials about the Justice Ministry, the justice minister and should be able to analyze the news reports about the judicial system reform and the European Court of Human Rights. The Justice Ministry said in advance that each “indicator of the theme” should have its color: “negative” messages should be marked red, “positive” messages – green and all the rest – grey.
“As far as I understand, the Justice Ministry was not vested with the supervisory functions over the information content, but was vested with supervisory powers over the activities of commercial and non-profit organizations and the legislation analysis,” the Novye Izvestia quoted an analytical expert of the For Human Rights movement Yevgeny Ikhlov as saying. But the Justice Ministry reported that the monitoring system is needed for internal needs, particularly the press service. However, the experts do not believe in the version of “internal needs” for the Justice Ministry, because the version contradicts the themes, which will be monitored. Some concerns arise that the supervisory agency will response to the obtained information in some special way.