After closing RT in March, then RTR Planeta and Rossia 24 in June, Eutelsat has to stop broadcasting a new Russian TV channel. The audiovisual and digital communications regulator (Arcom) has authorized the French satellite operator on Wednesday 3 August to broadcast NTV Mir, the international version of the NTV channel aimed at the Russian diaspora in Europe and the North Europe set America. NTV Mir is broadcast in Europe by Eutelsat’s Hotbird 13C satellite. The NTV television group is owned by the Russian gas giant Gazprom.
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Arcom accuses NTV Mir of making statements inciting hatred or violence based on various programs aired in April. “NTV Mir tends to repeatedly portray not only the Ukrainian leaders and the Ukrainian army, but above all the Ukrainian people as supporters of the Nazi ideology of the Third Reich and to represent extreme danger,” explains the agency, for which “these statements convey a particularly disturbing and ominous image of the Ukrainian population as a whole, which is likely to incite hatred against them”.
policy of neutrality
Arcom also sanctions “several serious and unfounded allegations feeding the sources of Russian propaganda” and “spreading in particular to legitimize the war in Ukraine”. Eutelsat announced late Wednesday morning that it had implemented Arcom’s request immediately, “in cooperation with the distributor who holds the contract with this station”. André Lange, one of the two co-founders of the Denis Diderot Committee, an organization set up in March to combat Russian propaganda, welcomes Arcom’s decision but says it is “marginal” given NTV Mir’s low viewership.
The committee wants to go further. He is preparing a file reporting the Rossia 1, Pervy Kanal and NTV channels to Arcom and he is still asking Eutelsat to stop broadcasting the NTV Plus and Tricolor bouquets. Together with the NGO Reporters Without Borders, the committee seized the French Ministry of Economy. But he defends Eutelsat’s policy of neutrality. The latter fears that breaching its neutrality will pave the way for numerous requests for intervention that do not comply with the legal framework to which it is subject in France and in Europe.
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On July 18, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba pleaded before the European Union’s External Council to “ban all Russian television channels from European cable and satellite networks.” “It’s not about freedom of speech, it’s about depriving Russia of tools to spread disinformation and state propaganda,” he argued. No such measure is included in the package of new sanctions adopted at the end of this meeting.