Recently, the E.U’s Audiovisual Observatory came out with a 30-page downloadable document to review the “Sanctions law against Russian and Belarusian audiovisual media.” It is a questionable document because, when reading between the lines, one can detect a pro-Russian bias.
The document is introduced by Maja Cappello, head of the Department for Legal Information at the European Audiovisual Observatory, and her “foreword” is promising: “The author, Andrei Richter, Professor Researcher of the School of Philosophy at the Comenius University, Bratislava [Slovakia], reports on sanctions on broadcasters as a specific instrument to cease propaganda and disinformation from Moscow and/or Minsk.”
The disclaimer placed on the credit page makes it clear that “Opinions expressed in this publication are personal and do not necessarily represent the views of the Observatory, its members or the Council of Europe.” The Strasbourg-based Audiovisual Observatory is a public service organization (part of the Council of Europe) that was set up in 1992. The Observatory collects and analyzes data about the audiovisual industry in Europe.
In his introduction, the 63-year-old Richter, who was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, which is near the Russian border, explains: “Sanctions were not invented by the Council of the European Union in 2022, but — in the context of the Russian aggression in Ukraine — had previously been tested by Ukraine and other countries of Eastern Europe.”
Now, pro-Ukraine media wouldn’t use the word “aggression” to refer to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. After a lengthy description of several phases of imposed sanctions, he concludes: “Regardless of whether they are temporary or not, the sanctions represent a form of prior restraint of the media by some states against other states.
What is already clear today is that the scale of such restrictions is unprecedented in contemporary Europe.
“Instead of tracing the origins of falsehoods and then proving malicious intent to disrupt national security or public order in long and painful court procedures, the authorities seem to have chosen the easier path of stopping all messages from an adversarial source through new legislation and the subsequent rulings of the national media regulators.”
Now, Professor Richter’s position doesn’t reflect the concept of “sanctions,” which are basically imposed in order to deprive a rogue nation such as Russia of any resources with which to assist in their war efforts. Justifying any exceptions would be equivalent to helping the Russians continue killing Ukrainian children and the elderly.
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