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Recent Decisions: Chamber for Information Disputes One of the new press-related institutions important to track in Russia is the new Presidential Judicial Chamber for Information Disputes, a transformation of the special tribunal established during the December elections. The Chamber was created by President Yeltsin’s December 31st decree, reproduced with commentary in Issue No. 4 of this newsletter. On February 17th, the Chamber ruled on two complaints relating to rights to information: one by the Guild of Parliamentary Journalists against closure of a February 3rd session of the Russian Council of Ministers and the other by the Mayak radio service against a banking official’s refusal to release information. The Chamber concluded that the government’s February 3rd action infringed upon the rights of citizens to obtain reliable and prompt information, contained in Articles 38-40 of the 1991 Law on Mass Media and President Yeltsin’s December 31, 1993 decree “On Supplementary Guarantees of Citizens’ Rights to Information” [reproduced in Issue No. 4]. To our knowledge, the Judicial Chamber’s February 17th decisions are the first official application by a judicial or quasi-judicial body of these provisions. Article 38 of the mass media law states that citizens have the right to obtain reliable information about the activity of state agencies through the mass media. Under Article 40, a request to supply information may be denied only if the information contains “a state, trade or other secret specially protected by law.” President Yeltsin’s December 31st Right to Information decree establishes similar norms. In Section 3, it states that the activity of state bodies shall be carried out “on the principles of information openness”, as expressed in access to information of public interest or of personal interest to individual citizens. Similar considerations underlay the Judicial Chamber’s second decision, which had the added feature of singling out an individual public official for reprimand and further possible sanctions. Lydia Afanasieva, director of the deposits and transactions department of the Russian Savings Bank, had refused to supply information to Mayak journalists who sought to learn more about the bank’s mechanism for indexing bank deposits. The Judicial Chamber ruled that her act violated the Russian Constitution, the Law on Mass Media, and the December 31st Right to Information decree, though the bank may be a private entity. According to Anatoli Vengerov, Chairman of the Judicial Chamber, such a violation could result in various sanctions, including dismissal. Article 58 of the Law on Mass Media stipulates that public officials who impede transfer of non-privileged information to the mass media may be subject to criminal, administrative, disciplinary or other sanctions in accordance with other Russian Federation laws. The Chamber is expected to consider petitions from the Russian Constitutional Court and the Russian Academy of Sciences, both of which claim that certain journalists’ reports lacked impartiality, and from the Russian Women’s Union and the Jurist Union’s Commission for Women’s Rights. The latter two organizations claim that certain newspaper practices, such as job announcements barring female applicants, violate the rights of women. Peter Krug |
Last Updated: 11/20/99 |
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© 1999 Post-Soviet Media Law &
Policy Newsletter |
