Russian state media firm: Lithuanian, Latvian ban on Russian broadcasts "political" move
MOSCOW. April 7 (Interfax) - The three-month suspension by Lithuania and Latvia of broadcasts to their territory from Russian television channel RTR-Planeta is "indisputably a political decision that is beyond the common sense of journalism," said the head of international relations at Russian state television and radio company VGTRK, Pyotr Fyodorov.
Fyodorov told the Vesti.ru website that the decision is questionable from a legal point of view because RTR-Planeta holds a European Union license for broadcasting in the Baltic countries.
"Here is an attempt, accusing Russia of one-sided coverage of events, to do the same by only leaving access to information from Ukrainian media or from the media of those Baltic states, whose sympathies are obvious to us," he said.
Fyodorov said neither the authorities in Lithuania nor those in Latvia had accused RTR-Planeta of a single instance of lying. "It's more the tone of information that is the issue. To put it simply, they are trying to attach intonation to their indictment," he said.
On Monday, the Vilnius District Administrative Court satisfied an appeal from Lithuania's Radio and Television Commission to suspend for three months broadcasts of RTR-Planeta programs that have not been made in the European Union.
The commission argued that a March 2 news program on the Russian channel could have incited ethnic strife and militarist sentiments.
The National Electronic Mass Media Council of Latvia also slapped a three-month ban on RTR-Planeta broadcasts on April 3.
One of the council's senior managers, Dainis Mjartans, told Baltic News Service (BNS) that RTR-Planeta's information was inauthentic, unbalanced and partially propagandist, and that the ban was also purported to make clear that the regulator was monitoring the channel.