WARSAW, September 17. /TASS/. It is unacceptable to persecute media outlets that hold positions different from that of countries’ governments, Kirill Ignatov, a senior official at the Russian Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media, said at the annual Human Dimension Implementation Meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on Monday.
"Today, foreign media outlets operating in a number of OSCE member states are persecuted only because their position differs from that of those countries’ governments," Ignatov said, pointing to the "unprecedented scale of violations of freedom of expression and the persecution of Russian and Russian-language media in Ukraine."
"In our view, as far as Russian media workers are concerned, the Ukrainian authorities have been blatantly violating their obligations in relation to freedom of expression and the need to create conditions for journalists, which must be strongly and unequivocally condemned," the Russian official said. "Our journalists have to deal with wrongful acts in other countries as well," he added.
Ignatov paid particular attention to the fact that Western countries "seek to clean up their information field, getting rid of alternative media outlets, citing the fight against fake news." "I would like to point out that traditional journalism means varied points of view. However, governments now tend to brand opinions they don’t like as fake news and use it as an excuse to eliminate them. It is not a secret that a number of Western countries usually slam information provided by Russian media outlets as fake news, which is nothing but the manipulation of public opinion," he noted.
"We once again call on OSCE member states to put an end to the persecution of journalists and the practice of driving unfavorable media outlets out of the information field," Ignatov concluded.