Last week, people's deputies voted in the first reading for the bill " One of the provisions of the document refers to the fact that the National Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting should become the regulator of all types of media.. Media lawyer of the Institute of Mass Communication Roman Golovenko explained the main tasks of the regulator in the article “The draft law “On Media”: a set of risks and opportunities”.

“Unfortunately, the National Council was a very passive regulator in 2014-2022. His reaction to the wave of pro-Russian propaganda, xenophobia and manipulation by a number of TV channels was sporadic, although circumstances required an order of magnitude more activity.. The authority for this at the regulator is somewhere more, somewhere less.. The same channels close to Medvedchuk had many chances to receive sanctions from the National Council, but instead were eventually closed by presidential decree,” the author writes..

Therefore, as Golovenko explained, the essence of the existence of the National Council as an independent constitutional body is not to issue licenses and monitor compliance with quotas on the air (for this, a non-departmental body is not needed). The National Council is primarily a tool to prevent abuse in the information space (now only on TV and radio).

In this context, on the one hand, the bill provides really faster and more powerful tools to combat Russian propaganda.. But on the other hand, it provides for purely decorative norms regarding the quality of domestic content, for violations of which there is no liability (in particular, with regard to objectivity / balance).

“If it’s so scary to leave these powers with the National Council, then it would be possible to give them for co-regulation, the mechanism of which is introduced by the project in other areas. It's like a proposal for the second reading,"

The author also suggests mentioning the wording with which the European Union requires us to adopt this project: " Plus the introduction of the anti-oligarchic law. And what is in this bill with the influence of the oligarchs? The same complete freedom to “lick” the right politicians on the air and “wet” competitors.

“In conclusion, it is worth paying attention to one more point of criticism: the weakening of the norms for limiting Russian influence on the information space. Quotas of songs in Ukrainian, which are currently 35%, will grow to 40% in October. The bill provides for punishment for the media in the form of an order in case of violation at the level of up to 10% of the quota (that is, 4% of the total volume of songs, if the quotas are 40%). For five prescriptions, the violation goes into the category of significant and is punished more seriously. Therefore, it turns out that quotas are growing, but their observance will become more flexible and will be less controlled by the National Council,” the author added..

According to Golovenko, the draft approach to the formation of lists of Russians who threaten our information space raises many questions.. In my opinion, too narrow criteria are proposed there, and these six months have shown us all the chauvinism of the Russian Federation, not only as a state, but also as a society.

At least for the period until the restoration of the territorial integrity of Ukraine, we need to limit the dissemination in the media (as far as possible with the help of editorial control) of content whose creators are citizens of the Russian Federation or live in it for a certain time. The Russian language can also be a criterion for identifying content from the Russian Federation by presumption if there is no data on the creators.

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The bill " In May 2020, the Parliament sent this draft for a second first reading.

The bill should replace several existing media laws. It proposes to introduce the regulation of online media, the activities of bloggers and various web platforms such as Facebook. The document also provides for the expansion of the powers of the National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting..

The adoption of this law is one of the requirements for Ukraine's accession to the EU..