MINSK, 3 November (BelTA) - Berlin's "media storm" in response to Minsk's restriction of access to Deutsche Welle contrasts deeply to the German government's complete indifference to the indefinite removal of two channels of RT's German-language projects by YouTube. This "acrobatic flexibility of perception” is striking, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in her Telegram channel, TASS has reported.
Commenting on Minsk's decision of 28 October to block access to a number of internet news resources, including the German media outlet Deutsche Welle for publishing links to the materials recognized as extremist, the diplomat recalled that a month ago the German political establishment reacted "with impenetrable calm, if not ostensible indifference to the indefinite removal" of the RT DE channel by YouTube.
"Back then, no one in the German government was particularly concerned that such a big decision (that deprived more than 700,000 subscribers of access to the very popular sources of information) was taken by a transatlantic company in an arbitrary manner and even in violation of its own sacred ‘internal community rules',” she stressed. “The German democracy was not moved, not even a bit, either by the statements by RT, or the protests by the Russian Foreign Ministry, or the indignation of the users,” she added.
Yet, the diplomat said, the case with the German broadcaster, when the charges against it "are based on the specific norms of the Belarusian legislation, of which they (in Berlin) were well aware," has caused "a true media storm, on the verge of a cytokine storm”. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Andrea Sasse and German culture commissioner Monica Grutters are fuming branding Belarus a ‘dictatorship'. Am I right to understand that Berlin will refer to the USA, the Baltic states and Germany itself as such now?” Maria Zakharova continued. “After all, U.S. internet companies are blocking media outlets, Latvia is pressing criminal charges against journalists, Lithuania is officially banning Russian media operators from broadcasting, Estonia is actually closing Sputnik threatening it with prison sentences, and Germany is preventing them from opening.”
Maria Zakharova expressed amazement at "the truly acrobatic flexibility of how the German political and media beau monde perceive the reality. “The information and political gargoyles continue spewing angry words, trying to defend what has long been gone, namely the lofty Western standards of freedom of speech," Maria Zakharova noted. “It's funny and sad to see #that'sdifferent section grow larger and larger."
