Putin signs 'fake' news law that would jail journalists over war reports

a reply to: bastion

We are not talking embedded journalists. We are talking about all journalists in Russia. Putin tells them what to say, if they don't say exactly what he wants, it's illegal.

originally posted by: OccamsRazor04
a reply to: bastion

We are not talking embedded journalists. We are talking about all journalists in Russia. Putin tells them what to say, if they don't say exactly what he wants, it's illegal.

Completely agreed. Forgot to state they're incredibly specific rules that were designed to protect journalists and laws on press freedoms since the Civil War days but there were rare cases of it being deliberatley misinterpreted.

Russia on the other hand have a 'kill or capture' list of a few hundred domestic and international journalists covering Ukraine. They have used the mafia to kill and threaten Russian journalists who dare write something positive about opposition parties for decades - there's never any investigtion or prosecutions for these murders due to state involvement.
Many have been jailed, raped and tortured for acting as free press and refusing to be a state run newspapers.

US is in the top 50 in press freedom while Russia is in the bottom 30 - this move will probably put them in the bottom 10 countries for press freedom as it's on par with North Korea and warlords.

Maybe Putin is getting a bit panicked by how many anti-war protests there have been in Russia and is forcing this through due to the risk of being toppled but that's a pure guess.

a reply to: bastion

It's definitely all about staying in power.

Good idea. Nothing wrong with jailing gutter journalists who knowingly and deliberately spread fake news for an agenda.

Should happen here in the UK, standards would improve.

originally posted by: baggy7981
Good idea. Nothing wrong with jailing gutter journalists who knowingly and deliberately spread fake news for an agenda.

Should happen here in the UK, standards would improve.

It's not what he's doing.

He's shut down at least 12 newspapers and jailed journalists for using sources other than the Russian military PR/Propagana statements in reporting the conflict.

Hundreds of journalists are on a 'kill or capture' list for signing an anti-war petition. Many more are being jailed and fined for using the words war, invasion or mentioning that civilians and russian troops have died.

He's not targetting fake news - he's ramping up attacks and bans on what little non-Kremlin run media there is in Russia and making it so only official state propaganda statements can be printed.

It'd be like the UK making it illegal to report anything other than Boris says or question government statements same as the US making it a 15 year hard labour jail sentence for someone to publicly question or disagree with what Biden or Pelosi say.
--------

There need to be a lot of improvements made to UK press accuracy levels and the ammount of sway advertisers have in UK news but this isn't the way to go about it.

There's already enough issues with super-injunctions and major companies in offshore tax havens actively spying on journalists so they can threaten threaten them off reporting mass money laundering, tax evasion and corruption scandals or destroy their reputation (hiring actors to label them a paedo, wife beater or alcoholic)

a reply to: ketsuko

we don't need to "guess" how much damage can be done. just look at Vietnam. where ONE lying, propaganda picture/video did quite a lot of harm to the war effort. where it supposedly showed a combatant on the American side, in full uniform, shooting an "unarmed civilian, dressed in civilian clothes, on his knees while being executed, by being shot in the head". caused quite a lot of damage, and turned many against the war. using this "war crime" as "proof" about how wrong that war was. yet it would seem it was not in fact a "civilian", but apparently an officer of the Viet Cong side, and thus not a war crime at all. but by being in "civilian clothing", classifies him as a spy, by the Geneva Convention rules. a spy that by those very same rules of war, such a spy is specifically allowed to be killed, such as execution by shooting them in the head.

a reply to: baggy7981

Russian definition of fake news is anything not approved by the Kremlin.