Lithuania demands two Russian TV channels to admit to biased broadcasting

Two Russian TV channels have been asked to admit to violating journalistic ethics by Lithuania’s Radio and Television Commission (RTCL), Delfi news agency announced this week. The request was made on Wednesday, when the Lithuanian organisation demanded that the Russian television channels RTR Planeta and NTV Mir Lithuania admit to broadcasting biased information about events in Ukraine relating to two broadcasts aired in November 2014.

“We would want them to acknowledge that their information was biased, and to issue a public apology,” RTCL chairman Edmundas Vaitekūnas said. He added that the RTCL will notify the European Commission of the violation while negotiating with the two channels. If the negotiation fails, RTCL will take action to ban the two channels from broadcasting in Lithuania for one year.

A report by RTR Planeta on President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Australia and NTV Mir Lithuania’s broadcast of the Ukraine crisis were singled out by the Lithuanian organisation for breaking impartiality principles. Both broadcasts were accused of spreading non-factual information when reporting on the events in Ukraine.

Deividas Velkas, a representative for the Lithuanian Journalist Ethics Inspector Zita Zamžickienė, told the RTCL meeting that both channels stressed the idea that Ukrainian armed forces and not Russian separatists are responsible for the violence against Ukrainians, while failing to ever critique Russia’s political or military actions.

This is not the first time that Russian channels have come under fire for biased coverage of the Ukraine crisis by media watchdogs. Last summer, five major Russian broadcasters were banned in Ukraine by the National Television and Radio Broadcasting Council of Ukraine, a move followed by the block of the First Baltic Channel in Lithuania last October.