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#4 - JRL 6536
RUSSIAN PRESS MINISTER CALLS TO UNIFY CRISIS COVERAGE
RULES
MOSCOW, November 5. /RIA Novosti/ - All media outlets are to proceed from unified rules in crisis coverage, Mikhail Lesin, Russia's Minister of the Press and Television and Radio Broadcasting, said to a crisis journalism roundtable.
It is thoroughly wrong to reduce the problem to one recent emergency-hostage taking in Moscow's Theatre Centre in Dubrovka, October 23-26. The coverage problem emerged long before last month's ordeal-suffice it to turn to media accounts of anti-terror action in Chechnya, said the minister.
He came down on newshounds who were saying whatever they liked in the initial hours after the theatre seizure, and could not care less about hostage lives.
Agonising instances like that demand unified rules of treatment, and an HQ to control media coverage. That's a globally established practice, pointed out Mr. Lesin.
"Outrageous!" he said with reference to certain television companies showing troop movement in the suspense-laden October days-they never cared that the broadcasts might have provoked terrorist cruelty toward hostages.
Press Ministry recommendations on crisis journalism have come up as proposals for all media people to debate. Those proposals have due publicity as they offer editors certain premises to proceed from, said the minister.
All Russian media bosses are to urgently blueprint shared principles of crisis coverage, and they ought not to sign directive documents before such principles are worked out, remarked Mikhail Lesin.
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