The opposite is happening in the EU, where people are committing a crime if they hold the russian stance.
1) that was somewhat my point: so-called liberal democracies are increasingly censoring and distributing information. Exactly the Orwellian-dystopia many of us fear.
2) If we are talking about the Czech and Slovak examples posted the other day¹ I doubt the Czech authorities, if correctly reported (they seem like extra-ordinary over-reach to me, so much so that I wondered if they were Russian psyops to make the EU look undemocratic and authoritarian), have a legal leg to stand on. The laws seem to refer to war-time. It's part of an attempt to threaten people to shut up or else. I was tempted to see this as a flare-up of anti-democratic thinking from a state long run by a Stalinist political class and only recently (2004) acceded to the EU. Like Poland and Hungary there remain serious questions about the commitment to democratic principles of such states. But then I checked myself and noted that this was unfair as the EU has issued no formal condemnation of this censorship and the public appetite for being spoon fed by their betters seems high.
To be clear: Russia is committing a war crime in invading Ukraine and must withdraw. We must support the Ukranian people without allowing the authoritarians in our own societies to destroy the very values we claim to uphold. No censorship.
Businesses in liberal democracies might be censoring on occasion, but you’re flat out wrong if you think it’s the government doing it.
And why would it be alright if a business did it?
Because it’s a free market. If the company isn’t a monopoly, it’s a slight inconvenience if you have to go somewhere else, it’s not censorship. You can still access the content and say what you want about it somewhere else.
The opposite is almost impossible to enforce. Look at book stores. They can’t sell every single book because of physical and practical limitations. You’d also be preventing niche bookstores like ones that only cater to cookbooks. You can’t force a business to accept everything anyone wants to say no matter what. In a free market businesses are allowed to create the customer experience they desire.
This Russian law is what censorship looks like. A complete banning of a word or topic — with the power to enforce that ban.
Private businesses have no jurisdiction over the decisions of another free market business.
I think the RT and Sputnik bans had the added component of being a state-owned revenue stream for Russia and therefore a not so indirect financier of the invasion. You can still access the websites for free.
You should remove the word "free". It's just a market but there is little to no freedom. Anyone holding a stance outside the acceptable one is neutered very quickly. Political parties have direct access to media leadership and effectively give orders to satisfy a narrative that are faithfully carried out.
If you’re talking about the news or opinions, it’s easier than ever for anyone to make content accessible to the masses. Create a self-hosted blog and write whatever speech you want that’s protected by the 1st amendment and promote it worldwide. There are way more independent journalists than ever before in history.
And you aren’t entitled to demand to see your views reflected in the NYT or WSJ. If your views aren’t being promoted widely enough, you can start your own opinion paper and it will succeed or fail based on the invisible hand of the market.
The problem I think is when people with very niche views want to bypass the free market and just demand that everyone else on a certain platform be subjected to their views.
You can say what you want on your own property, at your own business or in the public square, but you don’t have a right to insist that a 3rd party company promote and distribute your personal views.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/social-media-giants-agree...
There are mentions only on disreputable English language media like Breitbart, forums like Reddit that all go back to citing BalkanInsight¹,² who in turn cite a publication called TN Nova³.
1. https://birn.eu.com/news-and-events/meet-the-people-behind-b...
2. https://balkaninsight.com/2022/03/01/czechia-mulls-penalisin...
3. https://tn.nova.cz/zpravodajstvi/clanek/455893-za-podporu-ru...
This root/source one is hard to evaluate. Not speaking the language or having much of a clue about it it is hard to tell whether their other stories about e.g. 30,000 Ukranian refugees arriving and being given apartments and insurance are meant to be laudatory or stir up resentment.
But there is a website⁴ which seems to belong to the Czech Republic justice ministry if I am reading their ssl cert correctly. Using translation software suggests that this is accurate reporting of statements by their chief prosecutor:
4. https://web.archive.org/web/20220226184549/http://verejnazal...
In addition I found what seemed to be a non-fake news media platform (Radio Prague (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Prague) which reported the same interpretation in English⁵ here
5. https://english.radio.cz/chief-prosecutor-warns-against-publ...
and this Czech language one⁶ which is more detailed:
6. https://web.archive.org/web/20220226151448/https://www.irozh...
While trying to discern if this is actually Russians trying to make the EU look like a bunch of authoritarians restricting information I found this fascinating quote on wikipedia:
"Fake news outlets in the Czech Republic redistribute news in Czech and English originally produced by Russian sources. Czech president Miloš Zeman has been supporting media outlets accused of spreading fake news.[252]
The Centre Against Terrorism and Hybrid Threats (CTHH) is unit of the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic primarily aimed at countering disinformation, fake news, hoaxes and foreign propaganda. The CTHH started operations on January 1, 2017. The CTHH has been criticized by Czech President Miloš Zeman, who said: "We don't need censorship. We don't need thought police. We don't need a new agency for press and information as long as we want to live in a free and democratic society."[253]
In 2017 media activists started a website Konspiratori.cz maintaining a list of conspiracy and fake news outlets in Czech.[254] " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news#Europe
So where am I left? Uncertain. It looks like a real government website with a statement that to my probably naive eyes has been reported accurately in a few places. But I find it hard to believe that none of the big-hitter, reputable news outlets has completely refused to cover this.
If this does turn out to be true and completely unreported then it's a terrible reflection of reputable media coverage. A lot of the states recently admitted to the EU have a fragile relationship with norms around democracy, free speech, invidual sexual and reproducive rights. This, if true, would definitely indicate that the ex-Communist czech government officials are on a very different tangent to the core states of the EU.
If the story turns out not to be true then it's also a terrible reflection of media coverage in that this story is obviously out there doing the rounds and needs to be addressed and debunked.
Would love to hear from Czech speakers/readers about how I got this wrong.