Rada opens its doors: journalists will be allowed to attend committee meetings

15 January 00:15

The Verkhovna Rada has supported a bill that provides for the admission of journalists to meetings of parliamentary committees. This was reported by MP Yevhenia Kravchuk, Komersant ukrainskyi reports

The decision was voted for by 286 MPs.

After the law enters into force, committee agendas and draft acts will have to be published no later than one day before the start of the committee meeting. For now, martial law allows committees to hold meetings in closed session.

Video recordings of the meetings will be published on the committees’ websites on the Verkhovna Rada website no later than one day after the meeting.

“Journalists and media workers accredited to the Verkhovna Rada do not need additional accreditation to attend committee meetings,” Kravchuk added.

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The rules on the liability of media entities and their employees were amended to include not only official media workers, but also persons performing work under a civil law contract.

“Exemption from liability for journalists is possible not only for verbatim reproduction of public speeches or messages of officials of state bodies, local self-government, MPs, but also for retelling without distortion of the essence of such speeches,” the MP wrote.

Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, MP and chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Freedom of Speech, said on the sidelines that this way Ukraine will have “a system of inclusion in informing, decision-making, as it should be in a democratic society, taking into account security issues during the war,” Espresso reports.

At the same time, the head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee added that the draft law had a component on the peculiarities of the movement of media workers during the curfew.

“But in the process of finalizing it, we agreed with our military, all those involved in the work at the checkpoints, to resolve this issue by changing internal regulations that will ensure that a journalist or a journalistic group returning from the front will have access to movement,” Yurchyshyn explained.

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Дзвенислава Карплюк
Editor