MOSCOW, July 9. /TASS/. The Reporters Without Borders organization’s move to include Russia in its list of "press freedom predators" is lowdown crudeness, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing on Friday.
"This is lowdown, tabloid-style crudeness," she pointed out. "If an organization claims to be a professional union of journalists, it should be 100% impartial," Zakharova stressed. "We haven’t seen Ukrainian leaders on this infamous list, though three independent TV channels were shut down there within a short period of time, and Russian media outlets were driven out of the country. Nor have we seen Estonia, which unleashed its police on the Sputnik editorial staff, or Latvia, who launched a criminal prosecution against the Sputnik news agency," Zakharova pointed out.
The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman noted that the list contained no American names though the US media had said that they were facing pressure from the authorities. "Media segregation like in the US is unheard of anywhere else in the world, so why are these people not on the list? The Elysee Palace, in turn, bans Russian reporters from attending its events. UNESCO, the UN, and the Council of Europe need to draw conclusions as to the quality of the organization’s work," Zakharova insisted.