Roskomnadzor accused The New Times of violating the law “On Mass Media” for hyperlinks

The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor) accused The New Times website https://newtimes.ru/ of violating Art. 4 of the Law "On the Mass Media", which prohibits the distribution of materials containing obscene language. This violation provides, in accordance with Article 13.21 of the Code of Administrative Offenses, a fine for an individual in the amount of up to three thousand rubles, for officials - up to 20 thousand, for a legal entity - from 20 to 200 thousand rubles. The decision on the protocols drawn up (including the amount of the fine, if the court agrees with Roskomnadzor) will have to be made by the justice of the peace of the Tverskoy district of Moscow.

Roskomnadzor, according to the protocols drawn up by him, as a result of an unscheduled inspection of newtimes.ru, discovered as many as three such violations. And not a single one - directly on the site newtimes.ru. All three violations were contained in hyperlinks* to texts posted on other resources.

The first protocol was drawn up due to the publication “Chichvarkin in a video message criticized Sobchak’s possible presidential nomination” dated October 12, 2017. There was no obscene language in the text, but a hyperlink to Yevgeny Chichvarkin's Facebook page was indicated as a source of information.

The reason for the protocol number 2 was the answer of the wife of Ksenia Sobchak. The news on the site newtimes.ru was called "Vitorgan answered Chichvarkin for Sobchak obscenities" (it also came out on October 12). The text on the site also showed no signs of any violation, but the hyperlink led to the page of Sobchak's spouse, Maxim Vitorgan, on Facebook, where the owner of the page posted his video response to Chichvarkin.

Finally, the reason for the third protocol of Roskomnadzor was the publication “The battle between Oksimiron and the American rapper Dizaster ended” dated October 16. And again, in the text itself on the site newtimes.ru there was no violation and not a word from the list of prohibited obscene vocabulary. There was only an active link to a Meduza article about the past rapper competition.

The protocols of Roskomnadzor note that, according to the recommendations to the law “On the Mass Media”, “obscene words and expressions include four well-known words starting with “x”, “p”, “e”, “b”, as well as those formed from them words and expressions.

At the time of the publication of this text, Roskomnadzor limited itself to protocols of violations, but did not issue warnings to The New Times editors, which could potentially lead to a forced cessation of the activities of the media in court. In the past, the department has issued warnings several times because of the publication's materials, both to the NT website and the magazine, which have different media licenses.

The first warning in January 2016 was issued by Roskomnadzor to the printed version of The New Times because of the article “January of Our Anxiety”, which, among other things, spoke about the Ukrainian organization “Right Sector” ** banned in Russia, without mentioning that its activities were banned on the territory of the Russian Federation , although earlier the magazine gave such a link more than once.

Coincidentally, the warning was issued after the article "The Country's First Daughter" about the eldest daughter of the President of Russia, Maria Faassen, was published, and a cartoon of Vladimir Putin "No Money" was published on the cover of The New Times magazine .

The first warning to the site newtimes.ru was issued due to the use of an obscene word starting with “b” in the material “Everyone has feelings, and everyone is responsible for them” , used in a direct speech by one of the heroes of the report. Both the site and The New Times received another warning for publishing the article "From Kaluga with Jihad." The text was about an ethnic Russian, a former left-wing activist, who converted to Islam and went to fight in Syria on the side of one of the Sunni groups: the newly converted supporter of Islamic socialism explained in detail the reasons and motives that led him to such a radical change of views, places of acquisition and employment. Despite the fact that the Russian official authorities, including President Putin, have repeatedly said that several thousand Russians are fighting in Syria, including in the ranks of the banned IS *** and other formations in Russia, Roskomnadzor saw signs of justifying terrorism in the publication. . The New Times challenged Roskomnadzor's warning in court, and the case is ongoing.

According to the mass media law, if one publication receives two warnings from Roskomnadzor during the year, the federal service can go to court and demand that the media outlet cease its activities.

The New Times is not the first publication to be accused of violating the media law because of hyperlinks. In October 2013, Roskomnadzor issued two warnings to the editors of the Rosbalt Internet portal due to obscene language in videos. The videos were removed, but Roskomnadzor filed a lawsuit demanding that the agency be deprived of the media registration certificate. The Moscow City Court sided with the department, Rosbalt challenged the decision in the Supreme Court and retained the media registration certificate.

In 2017, several high-ranking employees of Roskomnadzor became defendants in a criminal case on fraud on an especially large scale. They were suspected of hiring fictitious workers in the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Main Radio Frequency Center” subordinated to Roskomnadzor and the subsequent withdrawal of salaries. Roskomnadzor press secretary Vadim Ampelonsky, head of the agency's legal department Boris Edidin, and chief of staff Alexander Veselchakov are currently under house arrest. Also in the case is Anastasia Zvyagintseva, general director of the radio frequency center, who is under house arrest.

According to The New Times lawyer Vadim Prokhorov, the publication intends to challenge the new charges: “We are being punished for actions that we did not commit in principle, only, following the rules of copyright and protection of intellectual property rights, they referred to news sources.”

* Hyperlink - a graphic image, video or text on the site that establishes a link and allows you to navigate to other objects on the Internet.

** Right Sector is an organization banned in Russia as extremist.

*** IS, ISIS, DAESH is an organization banned in Russia as a terrorist organization.