Dusseldorf Due to the invasion of Ukraine, more and more tech and media companies are stopping their services in Russia. The US streaming service Netflix announced on Monday night that it would suspend its offer.
As of Monday, customers in Russia will no longer be able to sign up for Netflix, existing users can watch the content until their next monthly payment. A few days ago, the streaming giant announced that it would no longer show Russian TV channels on the platform.
The social network Tiktok is also restricting its services. Users in Russia will no longer be able to live stream or upload new content to the video service. In view of the new legal situation, there is no other choice, the Chinese group wrote on Sunday evening on the short message service Twitter.
The tech companies are reacting to a change in the law that the Russian parliament passed on Friday. With this, the dissemination of alleged false information about the Russian armed forces can be punished with high fines and up to 15 years in prison.
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For example, media companies are forbidden from using terms such as “attack”, “invasion” or “declaration of war” in reporting on the war against Ukraine. According to the Russian interpretation, the procedure is a military “special operation”. With the law, the Kremlin is trying to restrict access to information and suppress reports of bombed cities and civilian casualties.
The German Association of Journalists (DJV) condemned the procedure: “Journalists in Russia are threatened with draconian penalties if they report truthfully and do not want to spread Putin’s propaganda lies,” DJV boss Frank Überall told the “Augsburger Allgemeine”. The law violates all UN conventions.
ARD and ZDF also react
As a result of the tightened media law, western media had already announced at the weekend that they would withdraw their staff from Russia. The two public broadcasters ARD and ZDF have suspended their reporting from the Moscow studios. Deutschlandradio announced on Sunday that the Russia correspondent would initially report on the war in Ukraine from the Warsaw studio.
International broadcasters and agencies have also completely or partially stopped working in Russia. The US broadcasters CNN and CBS News announced that they would stop broadcasting there. The Bloomberg news agency and the British BBC are also suspending their reporting from Russia.
Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait said the amendment to the law appeared to aim to turn any independent journalist into a criminal. This makes it impossible “to continue any semblance of normal journalism in the country”. The BBC said it was not prepared to put employees at risk of prosecution just for doing their job.
Local correspondents can better verify sources and provide media with first-hand information. Independent news about the war is made more difficult by the withdrawal, and publishers and TV stations do not want to expose their employees to the risk of prosecution. At the weekend, the journalists’ association DJV asked all German foreign reporters in Russia to leave the country as quickly as possible. The federal government must help with the evacuation, according to DJV boss Everywhere. Freedom of expression is not only restricted in reporting. According to the civil rights organization OWD-Info, thousands of peace demonstrators have been arrested so far.
At the same time, media services are actively censored: access to the social network Facebook is completely blocked, and access to Twitter is restricted. The government in Moscow justified this by saying that Russian media had been “discriminated against” on the networks.
More: Russia’s censorship law is another turning point in the search for truth.