At a meeting in Rosokhrankultura they discussed the problems of countering the incitement of national and religious hatred in the media

On February 21, the Federal Service for Supervision of Compliance with Legislation in the Sphere of Mass Communications and the Protection of Cultural Heritage (Rosokhrankultura) held a meeting on the topic: "The inadmissibility of abuse of freedom of the mass media. Methods of public opposition to violations of the legislation of the Russian Federation on the mass media." Here is a report from the press service of the Slavic Legal Center about the meeting:

"The head of Rosokhrankultura, Boris Boyarskov, noted that recently the department entrusted to him began to react more harshly to the facts of inciting interethnic and interreligious hatred in the media, as well as in connection with the propaganda of pornography. Boyarskov stressed that it is necessary for everyone to discuss together what to do to improve the situation .

The danger of inciting hostility in the media was also noted by the senior prosecutor of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation Valentina Zamyshlyaeva, according to whom the prosecutor's office is currently paying special attention to such cases.

A specific example of an incorrect portrayal of a clergyman was given by Professor Mikhail Gorbanevsky, Chairman of the Board of the Guild of Linguists-Experts in Documentation and Information Disputes. According to him, one of the publications published a cartoon of an Orthodox priest who, at the end of Lent, takes beer from the refrigerator and drinks it. The best and most qualified organization that systematically collects information about the facts of manifestations of interethnic and interreligious hostility, Mikhail Gorbanevsky called the information-analytical center "Sova" and its website.

In addition, Mikhail Fedotov, secretary of the Union of Journalists of Russia, and Alexei Simonov, president of the Glasnost Defense Foundation, spoke about the need for public control over compliance with media legislation.

Anatoly Pchelintsev, editor-in-chief of the magazine "Religion and Law", proposed to create an expert council under Rosokhrankultura of the most authoritative specialists in the field of philology, religious studies and psychology. According to Pchelintsev, in Russia there is an acute problem of evaluating certain publications, and at the same time the need to raise the status of linguistic and religious expertise. The courts, in fact, do not know now who to turn to for expertise, and the work of specialists remains without coordination. It is necessary, as Anatoly Pchelintsev noted, to engage in education in order to avoid conflicts. A positive example is, in particular, conducting religious studies courses for employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tatarstan. In addition, there are practically no positive programs on television about various national and religious traditions and about the country's largest religious associations."

Sources

• At a meeting in Rosokhrankultura noted the growth of intolerance and incorrect publications in relation to believers in the Russian media // Slavic Legal Center. 2007. February 22.