BAJ Asks State Bodies about Guidelines on Providing Information to Journalists

Best practices

Positive description was given to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Investigative Committee, the Ministry of Emergency Situations, road inspections, and some others. These state agencies either have websites updated daily or communicate via press services.

Worst practices

The survey revealed that there are quite many state bodies where it is difficult to obtain even information of great public significance – these are the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Health, the KGB. Let us remind that the Belarusian agriculture is suffering an outbreak of the African swine plague. The Ministry of Agriculture shielded itself from the public and even the Ministry’s website keeps silent about the epidemic, although many districts of Belarus have turned out to be in the state of emergency: pigs in individual households are subject to elimination (the state partially compensates the losses), it is banned to keep pigs within five-kilometer distance from big swine farms, and disobedience to take measures will be punished by fines and imprisonment. All neighboring countries stopped import of pork; and civil activists set up a public council on fighting the consequences of ASP – due to absence of official substantial information and lack of adequate response.