Media Law Institute considerscreation of the Ministry of Information Policy to be an extremely wrong andanti-democratic act as an idea itself, regardless who is heading this Ministry.

There is no democratic country inthe world with a separate Ministry of Information, Ministry of Propaganda orCounter-Propaganda.

Such kind of Ministries exist inthose countries, where under the “shape” of the Ministry of Information aprocedure for controlling on media and censorship is created; for example, Kazakhstan,where country imposes fines on media for certain “violations”.

In Ukraine, creation of such a Ministryleads to the belief that pressure on the media is imposed. The idea of creationof the Ministry of Information Policy did not pass any discussion with civilsociety and public. Instead, the appointment Yuri Stec to the Minister ofInformation Policy was voted by the parliament in the overall package, despitethe protests of community media and of some MPs.

The day after the voting, the newlyappointed Minister of Information Policy Yuri Stec provided a draft ofRegulations of the Ministry, which had not been discussed with the public previously,and hadn’t been even published beforehand.