NISH'S WORD

The Russian Media

I read an article on www.nytimes.com (sorry I don't know how to link but it's a Oct.30 article and it was just put up 14 minutes ago) about the Russian Constitutional Court overturning part of a law that was limited news coverage of election campaigns to basically nonexistent. The original law was made by the Central Electoral Commission, this law allowed "authorities to shut down news media outlets after two warnings for anything deemed as biased campaign coverage." This type of law basically restricted all reporting of the elections period in Russia. However, recently on Thursday this law was overturned, "the court ruled that a journalist can now be accused of unlawful bias only if the intention to support a particular candidate is proved in court." Most of the people who were for the law "acknowledged that perhaps it went to far."

Perhaps it went to far!!! If we had that type of restrictions in the U.S no one would no anything about the scandal going on in the Oval Office. I'm glad they finally changed that law and realized thier mistake. There is no way you can prove the intentions of a journalists. Actually this didn't surprise me. Russia has always been government controlling and politically behind the U.S. But that particular law was too far. Especially after I just read chapter 22 and discovered that journalist have so much freedom and not as many limitations as other professions. Like the fact that they don't have to have a license. That's cool. I think journalism is a very important profession and like art cannot be limited or restricted without losing its creativivty.