Posted 4 февраля 2022,, 08:23

Published 4 февраля 2022,, 08:23

Modified 24 декабря 2022,, 22:38

Updated 24 декабря 2022,, 22:38

Deutsche Welle journalists banned from entering State Duma

Deutsche Welle journalists banned from entering State Duma

4 февраля 2022, 08:23
Фото: DW.com
The State Duma of the Russian Federation banned journalists from the German television and radio company Deutsche Welle from entering its building, they were also warned about the refusal of accreditation to the events of the State Duma.

According to Interfax, citing the press service of the lower house of parliament, restrictions on German journalists were adopted "in response to the ban on broadcasting the RT DE TV channel in Germany on behalf of State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin".

On the eve of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation issued a statement that in response to the ban on broadcasting in Germany of the RT DE TV channel (German-language TV channel Russia Today) in Germany, Russia is taking mirror measures and stopping the broadcasting of the German television and radio company Deutsche Welle.

The Russian authorities are closing the Russian office of the German television company and depriving all employees of the Russian bureau of Deutsche Welle of accreditation, and in relation to the TV channel itself they are starting the procedure for recognizing it as a foreign media agent.

The Chairman of the State Duma expressed solidarity with the decision of the Russian Foreign Ministry and spoke in favor of even tougher measures.

Volodin, commenting on the statement of the Russian Foreign Ministry, said that he supported this decision, and expressed the opinion that these measures could be even tougher.

Deutsche Welle, in turn, reported that the DW ban in Russia caused an uproar in Germany.

“An attack on media freedom, an act of arbitrariness, Russia’s withdrawal into self-isolation was called in Germany the Kremlin’s decision to ban Deutsche Welle broadcasting in the Russian Federation. Chancellor Scholz is required to achieve the cancellation of this decision at a meeting with Putin”, - the newspaper notes.

The deputy head of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) faction in the Bundestag, Alexander Lambsdorff, also pointed out that "DW, unlike Russia Today, is not a state television channel, but provides independent broadcasting". “This step shows once again that the government of the Russian Federation is increasingly moving away from such universal values as democracy and freedom of opinion, and is going deeper and deeper into self-isolation”, - the politician said. According to him, given the current conditions, DW needs to expand coverage of events in Russian on the Internet.

On the eve it became known that, following Germany, the French authorities launched an investigation into the local RT bureau. The verification procedure for RT France (formerly Russia Today) was initiated by the French media regulator in response to complaints from local associations that pointed to inaccuracies in the coverage of certain events in the country and abroad.

RT France employees called the actions of the French regulator a “planned action” and an act of censorship.

Information about the beginning of the investigation appeared on the network immediately after it was announced that RT DE was banned from broadcasting.

Problems with the broadcasting of the Russian TV channel RT in Germany arose on December 16, when Youtube suspended the channel's German-language account for violating terms of use.

And in September, YouTube blocked two RT channels in German, RT DE and Der Fehlende Part. The Google press service explained that the RT DE channel received a warning for distributing content with "false medical information about the coronavirus infection", after which the service suspended the rights of the channel to publish the video.

After that, the owners of RT DE created a second channel to get around the restrictions. Then both channels are blocked due to violations of YouTube's terms of use. Note that RT channels had over 600 thousand subscribers and more than half a billion views.

RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan called the incident "a real media war declared by the state of Germany against the state of Russia".

During an investigation into the RT Deutsch TV channel in Germany, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced that counter actions would be taken if the Russian TV channel was banned from broadcasting. On February 2, it became known that the ban on broadcasting was nevertheless imposed, and the very next day the Russian government banned Deutsche Welle broadcasting in the Russian Federation. It was announced that the DW office was closed and the accreditation of employees was cancelled.

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