Journalists versus officials

On April 11, the Presnensky Court of Moscow dismissed the Mediazona website in a lawsuit against the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Journalists refused to provide information about the contacts of Foreign Ministry employees with members of Donald Trump's campaign headquarters

The court reacted with lightning speed. The media wrote about the lawsuit itself in the morning, and already in the afternoon they explained in court that the document was not accepted, since it was to be filed within the framework of civil proceedings, and not administrative.

Of course, the next day, paying another 300 rubles. - state duties and 147 rubles. for a valuable letter - I sent a new lawsuit to the court. However, Damir Gainutdinov, a lawyer for the Agora international human rights group, was surprised by the first refusal - he filed a lawsuit, exactly checking the law.

In general, the idea to sue departments that do not comply with the norms of the law and do not respond to journalists' requests came to us in the first months of Mediazona's work. I am sure many colleagues would also do it with pleasure. It has long been no secret to anyone that in most responses to journalistic inquiries, departments either write some kind of empty reply or do not respond at all. But the most ideal way is to redirect requests to other departments, which is what the security forces usually do. Did you write to SC? So contact the prosecutor! No, the prosecutor's office does not have the necessary information, you are most likely in the Ministry of Internal Affairs. And so on, in a circle.

On the very first day, the representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova, accused us of allegedly promoting ourselves. Well, I must admit, to a certain extent it is. It is unlikely that so many publications would write about a request to the Federal Penitentiary Service of some Volga region about the fate of a prisoner who, for some reason, is in strict conditions of detention with a broken arm. And the response of the Federal Penitentiary Service would certainly be boring: there is no data.

And the Foreign Ministry, in response to a painful question about relations with officials of the Trump administration, answered us that it is not customary to talk about this in a decent society. (“The schedule and content of such contacts do not belong to the category of public information and, according to diplomatic norms and the usual rules of good taste, cannot be made public without the consent of all their participants,” the Foreign Ministry said in a response. - NT) Although the only formal reason for not responding to a request There may be state secrets in the media, and I believe that the court decision, if it takes place, of course, will contain something like this wording.

Although it would seem that the time for an answer about contacts with Trump officials is the most appropriate - relations are worse than under Obama, President Vladimir Putin admitted this. Here you have the flag in your hands - tell us which Trump officials are bad and how they deceived the Russian ambassador to the United States Kislyak: they promised him one thing in case of victory, but did another. But no, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs answers in its usual manner, which Maria Zakharova reinforces with her boorish intonations.

In general, I can hardly imagine how it is possible to conduct a dialogue with an agency whose representative in the UN behaves like a gopnik of the early nineties. Therefore, Zakharova can only be answered with quotes. And it’s not so important whose, I chose Stalin’s answer to the French Havas agency about the reasons for concluding the 1939 pact. Stalin writes about lies fabricated in a cafe-chantan. Probably, next time I will have to quote Sorokin's letters to Martin Alekseevich.

Although it would seem that the time for an answer about contacts with Trump officials is the most appropriate - relations are worse than under Obama, President Vladimir Putin admitted this. Here you have the flag in your hands - tell us which Trump officials are bad and how they deceived the Russian ambassador to the United States Kislyak

Although it would seem that the time for an answer about contacts with Trump officials is the most appropriate - relations are worse than under Obama, President Vladimir Putin admitted this. Here you have the flag in your hands - tell us which Trump officials are not good and how they deceived the Russian ambassador to the United States Kislyak. I will not say that I really hope to win in court. But officials who answer journalists with replies or simply ignore requests should be ready for the courts. Maybe their personal presence there, preparation, work with lawyers will make them understand that sometimes it is easier to take and answer a journalist's question.