(CJES/IFEX) – The Agency of National News (ANN) announced on 19 April 2006 that its correspondent Alla Tuchkova’s accreditation card to the Moscow City Duma (the city legislature, MCD) was siezed on 18 April by employees of the press service of the MCD. According to ANN, from the comments posted on its website, Alla Tuchkova […]
(CJES/IFEX) – The Agency of National News (ANN) announced on 19 April 2006 that its correspondent Alla Tuchkova’s accreditation card to the Moscow City Duma (the city legislature, MCD) was siezed on 18 April by employees of the press service of the MCD.
According to ANN, from the comments posted on its website, Alla Tuchkova reported on 5 April that “deputies of the Moscow City Duma did not want to tell the electorate how they (the deputies) vote”. In particular, the report stated that, during the work of the previous session of the MCD, journalists could not obtain information on the results of voting.
This report irritated Nikolay Figurovskiy, head of the press service of the MCD. The next day (6 April), he sent a letter to ANN’s editor-in-chief in which he demanded that a retraction of the report be published and he threatened to revoke Tuchkova’s accreditation.
ANN reports that on 18 April, during a seating of the MCD, Tuchkova was approached by a staff member of the press service and told that, since a denial had not been published, Tuchkova had to surrender her accreditation card.
ANN believes that the withdrawal of Tuchkova’s accreditation card was illegal. On its website, it quotes an excerpt from the “Rules of accreditation of journalists in Moscow City Duma” (the text of which is posted on the official web site of the MCD). The excerpt explains that a journalist may be deprived of accreditation if he or she violates these rules or distributes “information that does not correspond to reality, that defames the Duma’s reputation or that of its deputies”, but that any such violation must first be determined by the decision of a court, before the accreditation is revoked. No such process preceded the retraction of Tuchkova’s accreditation.
Moreover, the rules also stipulate that, after the press service decides to revoke a journalist’s accreditation, “the press service is obliged to inform, in writing, the relevant mass media outlet’s editorial office”. However, the ANN has not received any letter informing it that Tuchkova was deprived of her accreditation.
Commenting on the situation, Oleg Panfilov, the director of Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, said that “a strange situation is taking shape in Russia, in which not mere officials but legislators are actively violating current legislation.”
According to Panfilov, it is not only the “Rules of accreditation of journalists in Moscow City Duma” that have been transgressed, but more fundamentally the Federal Law “On Mass Media” which, in its article 48, also states that the accreditation of a journalist can be revoked only after a court’s decision to do so comes into force.
“We observe many cases like this. And if past officials in the countries of Central Asia were notable for their indifference towards legislation, now their Russian colleagues are proving to be as indifferent to the law”, stated Panfilov.
According to Panfilov, ANN now has every reason to file an application to the court of general jurisdiction, first, to restore the accreditation of its correspondent, and, second, to provide other journalists an example of how to fight for their rights.
