Antsipenka: No ideological “barricades” yet ahead of elections
According to Ales Antsipenka, a member of the board of the Belarusian Association of Journalists, there is no feeling of ideological barricades yet in the Belarusian media. Media seem to have stopped pouring dirt on each other, while covering the pre-election period from various angles.
Ales Antsipenka: “There is a tendency of a calmer attitude to virtually all the participants of the electoral process. Earlier, non-state media’s message was that elections would be rigged anyway. We did not really observe such an approach at this stage”.
At the same time, Antsipenka noted this is just the beginning. The monitoring will continue up to September 27. Therefore, one could expect tougher pre-election clashes in the media.
Antsipenka: “The situation will become all the more interesting when registered candidates will be allowed to campaign. Naturally, the stances of different media will become more obvious”.
But even now the state-owned press runs unpleasant comments on the opposition. The official news agency BELTA described in one of the stories the Belarusian opposition as unserious and helpless.
The rest of information in the state-run media boils down to dry officious reports from the Central Elections Commission. Non-state media pay much more attention the process, according to the monitoring results.
Antsipenka: “Newspaper Belarusy i Rynok devoted more space to the topic of elections that, for instance, Sovietskaya Belorussia, the country’s biggest newspaper. Other non-state publications gave much more space to the electoral process than Respublika newspaper”.
The Belarusian Association of Journalists is expected to issue the next results of the media monitoring on August 18.
Photo: ru.id-as.com and BAJ
