Several times I was outraged by the tone, says Babinets on the authorities' attempts at censorship
After the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the team of independent journalists at Slidstvo.Info has faced pressure from the authorities or the military, who persuaded the reporters to take down certain information.
Editor-in-chief Anna Babinets spoke about this in her interview with IMI.
"As for government censorship, yes, we do make trips to the frontline, and sometimes, when a report is released, they start texting us, calling us: "Take down this, edit out that." We have separate meetings for this, where we discuss whether we made a mistake somewhere or whether we failed to take something into account. But we never did those things. That is, every now and then we feel the pressure: 'Edit this out, it spoils the image of the Armed Forces,'" said the editor-in-chief.
According to her, despite the pressure, the journalists do not take down their reports, because Ukrainian legislation does not provide for such takedowns. Journalists write official requests to those authorities, organizations that take issue with the content of their reports, and offer to explain their position officially.
"We receive no response to such requests. A demand to take content down is unlawful, and we ask them to explain their position, what is the problem. Often instead of explaining it, they try to act through power, force, threaten to revoke our accreditation, but I think that no one will really take such course of action. It would be a scandal. No one needs that. Several times I was outraged by the tone and the way they talk to us. But we don't make a scandal out of this, we do our job, and at least so far we haven't had to take anything down," said Anna Babinets.
At the same time, according to her, their sources and readers/viewers who are dissatisfied with the actions of the authorities or the military also approach them. In these cases she suggests they provide evidence. If there is any, the team will work on the subject. If not, then the team will not base their reports on information from their sources only.
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