TUT.BY portal registered as online news outlet
TUT.BY Editor-in-Chief Maryna Zolatava / Facebook
Belarus' Ministry of Information has registered TUT.by as an online news outlet, reports the press office of the Information Ministry. Under the December 2018 amendments to the media law, online news outlets are entitled to the same rights and responsibilities as the ones of media organizations.
The editor-in-chief of the TUT.BY online news outlet is Maryna Zolatava.
The 2018 amendments in the media law envisage voluntary registration of online platforms as media outlets. A special term 'online publications' was introduced in the law. The workers with unregistered online news platfroms are not treated as journalists. State bodies and officials have the right to refuse accreditation to them.
Apart from TUT.BY, only three websites have registered with the Ministry of Information as 'online publications': sb.by (the website of Presidential Administration's newspaper Belarus Segodnya), zviazda.by (the website of state-run Belarusian language newspaper Zviazda) and the private news aggregator belnovosti.by.
In January 2019, the Office of Prosecutor General filed the case of TUT.BY Editor-in-Chief Maryna Zolatava with the Minsk City Court. She is charged with the crime of ommission in the so called 'BELTA case.' Zolatava is facing a fine or up to five years in prison.
