The State Duma wants to equate bloggers with the media

This is reported by Vedomosti with reference to the data of State Duma deputy Yana Lantratova, who is one of the authors of the bill.

According to Lantratova, today some bloggers are ahead of the journalists of the official media in terms of the efficiency of distributing exclusive information. However, their rights to receive data are limited. In particular, government agencies can prepare responses to citizens' requests for a long time — up to 30 days. At the same time, according to the law, they are required to respond to media requests four times faster — within a week.

Polls show that the audience in the Russian Federation trusts telegram channels twice as much as the official media.

In order to eliminate such an injustice, a new mechanism was proposed in the Duma. It involves the voluntary registration of bloggers' pages in social networks as media.

«They, like the media, should be able to send official requests to government agencies, be accredited for socially significant events, and have access to documents, » the deputy believes.

Lantratova warned that at the same time as obtaining additional rights, registered bloggers will bear increased responsibility for the accuracy of the information disseminated.

This, according to the authors of the bill, will help the state to actively combat the spread of fakes on the Web.

Unlike the authors of a number of news telegram channels who supported the bill, the Ministry of Finance has not yet approved the idea of State Duma deputies, saying that the initiative «needs additional elaboration».