Journalist and editor of Hantsavichy independent newspaper warned
On 26 April junior counselor of justice Siarhei Dzezhka, prosecutor of Hantsavichy district, issued an official warning to Aliaksei Bely, editor-in-chief of the ‘Hantsavitski chas’ independent newspaper and the paper’s journalist Katsiaryna Kurlovich, for allegedly publishing false information on the local council elections in the paper’s issue of 16 April 2010, the press-service of the Belarusian Association of Journalists reports.
According to the prosecutor, the article signed by Ms. Kurlovich misspelled the name of one of the candidates and gave a wrong date of the end of the period for the nomination of candidates (25 March instead of 15 March).
Apart from that, one of the photo captions in the article – ‘The result of the election often depends on the election commission members, rather than on electors themselves’ – ‘does not contain any reasoned information concerning the statement and is not confirmed by the data stated in the article.’
