Bastunets and Radzevičius have agreed on cooperation of journalistic organizations

The lead­ers of jour­nal­ist orga­ni­za­tions agreed to hold in near­est future a com­par­a­tive analy­sis of media leg­is­la­tion in the neigh­bor­ing coun­tries, its prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion and also to share expe­ri­ence of self-reg­u­la­tion body’s work in Lithua­nia and Belarus.

«From the point of view of state reg­u­la­tion of the media activ­i­ty in our coun­tries every­thing is sup­pos­ed­ly clear: Belarus in all rat­ings and index­es of free­dom of expres­sion occu­pies the last place, Lithua­nia is far ahead. But it is only a gen­er­al impres­sion, and we’re going to test this axiom — the experts from both sides will answer the same ques­tions, which will help to under­stand the dif­fer­ence in media sphere between near­est neigh­bors. Anoth­er inter­est­ing theme is a com­par­i­son of expe­ri­ence, empow­er­ment and terms of work of BAJ Ethics Com­mis­sion and bod­ies of the jour­nal­is­tic self reg­u­la­tion in Lithua­nia. Recent­ly the issues of pro­fes­sion­al ethics as well as deci­sions of the BAJ com­mis­sion on Ethics on indi­vid­ual cas­es were con­tro­ver­sial for the jour­nal­is­tic com­mu­ni­ty and even beyond. I hope that the results of the research will be pre­sent­ed in this autumn «, — Andrei Bas­tunets said.

For ref­er­ence, accord­ing to the World Index of the free­dom of speech, «Reporters With­out Bor­ders» (RSF), Belarus ranks 153th place out of 180.

Among for­mer Sovi­et Union states, accord­ing to research, the best sit­u­a­tion with the free­dom of the press is in Esto­nia (12th place). Latvia — 28^th place, Lithua­nia — 36^th.