German Journalism Lost in Translation
Here’s another “brilliant” example of ze German journalism, an item from the #1 German news agency dpa:
Belarus to cut off home computer internet access nationwide:
Minsk - Belorussian Ministry of Communications officials on Friday announced new laws effectively banning home access to the Internet.
A policy statement from the national telephone monopolist Beltelekom defining legal internet access limited potential users of the Internet to companies and government organizations and specifically omitted private individuals.
Belorussian internet domain operators not associated with a company or government agency would be cut off and in case of repeated violations could face heavy fines or even jail, the statement said.
The Belorussian internet is in terms of size in its infancy, with some 1,300 domains, almost all non-commercial, and 14,000 users.
The Beltelekom policy if put into effect would nevertheless drastically reduce Belarusian’s access to international media, as Belarus’ state media is heavily biased towards the country’s authoritarian President Aleksander Lukashenko.
Internet aside, the only other source of uncensored information in Belarus is foreign radio broadcasts, which are at times jammed by the Lukashenko regime.
Lukashenko is widely expected to win a third term in office in national elections this March.
His administration and the country’s KGB has cracked down on potential opposition groups in the run-up to the vote, targeting among others Polish ethnic groups and western NGOs.
© 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
For the information of the dpa journalists, they got it totally wrong. Nobody is going to ban home internet access in Belarus.
Here’s what happened actually. In Belarus, most of the people have slow dial-up connections, and fast DSL connections are very expensive (probably for economical, but maybe also for political reasons). Our smart computer “hackers” figured out that they could buy one expensive DSL link, and then create a Local Area Network with their neighbours, thus sharing the bandwidth and the costs.
Ministry of information and Beltelecom learned about those home LAN’s and got a bit upset, but there was no legal basis for persecuting those people. So they finally found a possible legal pretext for doing that. Those LAN’s are typically found in high-storey buildings, connecting people from different floors. In order to connect their computers, those people usually use the common area shafts, the so called “riser pipes” where telephone and other cables are laid. So, the ministry issued a warning to those people saying that they are not allowed to use the shafts in the common area for their own cables.
That’s it. As you can see, the German dpa reported completely false information, exaggerating the problem beyond any measure.
And this in addition to a number of other factual mistakes:
1) The correct English spelling and pronunciation is Belarusan or Belarusian. (”Belorussian” is the obsolete and misleading Soviet adjective form preferred by the Germans)
2) “The Belorussian internet is in terms of size in its infancy, with some 1,300 domains, almost all non-commercial, and 14,000 users”. — FYI, Belarusan internet is as developed as the Internet in many other countries (just one number: 50% of all the internet-related crimes in former USSR has its origins in this small country). The number of regular internet users is at least 15% of the total population, or 1,500,000 people. I wonder how they screwed up the number so badly. Probably, they meant the number of DSL users. But this is totally different.
3) “Belarus’ state media is heavily biased towards the country’s authoritarian President Aleksander Lukashenko.” — It is not biased, it is totally controlled by Lukashenka.
4) “The only other source of uncensored information in Belarus is foreign radio broadcasts, which are at times jammed by the Lukashenko regime.” — (A) There are still several independent newspapers, although they barely survive, being under extreme pressure. (B) President Lukashenka never jammed radio transmissions.
5) “Lukashenko is widely expected to win a third term in office in national elections this March.” — Everybody knows that it will be falsified. That’s what USA, EU, OSCE already said. The correct statement would’ve been “Lukashenka is widely expected to falsify the actual results of the March elections.”
Na ja… Nothing’s new really, just another journalstic story from the White Holland, in addition to many others. (Here’s another recent one — how German journalists covered Milinkevich’s meeting with Angela Merkel).
February 12th, 2006 at 10:02 pm
I wonder why You are writing the name of the Belarusian President like that “LukashenkA”. As far as I know he has always been and is still LukashenkO.
February 12th, 2006 at 11:14 pm
Anna: In Russian, it’s LukashenkO. And in Belarusian it’s LukashenkA. And in English both are used. Probably, Russian version is used more often…
See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Lukashenka
February 13th, 2006 at 4:23 am
Bravo! I’m in complete agreement with you on this one! But when I listened to RFE\RL transmissions in Belarus, sometimes it seemed to me they were being jammed. But I guess you know it better.
February 13th, 2006 at 4:32 pm
Wow, I totally got the wrong idea then. (Not that I would put it past Lukashenka to try to thwart freedom of access.)
So how does one properly pronounce Belarusan/Belarusian? Yesterday, while watching the Olympics, I heard an American commentator pronounce it “Belo-russian” and I immediately thought of you…though there’s really no surprise that an American sports commentator would be culturally ignorant. (The sport was the 20km biathlon, btw.)
February 14th, 2006 at 3:13 am
Today talked to an EU high-ranker from one of your Hollands. Throughout the dialog, he was saying “Byelorussia,” while I was saying Belarus… Seemed like we talked about two separate countries.
He wished all the best to us and assured of the EU support for our transformations, but at the same time, he said our prospects for accession to the union were very bleak even if we followed all the rules and regulations, amended our laws, and became a democracy… It’s just that the EU’s gotta digest the current new members. The same thing’s about Ukraine.
February 15th, 2006 at 11:07 pm
Maybe you could get into Nato before you join the EU?
As for reporters’ ignorance, the Swedish activists who were apprehended in Grodno/Hrodna the other day were reported to have been so by “Russian” security police.
Generally, it seems getting the facts right is less important the smaller the country one reports about.
Tobias Ljungvall
Stockholm
February 16th, 2006 at 6:25 am
Or rather less significant… (?)
February 21st, 2006 at 7:38 pm
Lol.. the use of routers, switches and hubs to split up one internet link accross mutliple computers / homes is a relative common thing globally I think :) Hell, my router even has the ability to do the reverse and use multiple internet links and bond them together via load balancing ^_^ rawr. Some providers here allow it, others refuse it. Rather obvious there’s a state warning about it in Belarus… since there’s pretty much just one telecom company (Beltelecom) Tracking such activity is relatively easy… as the amount of traffic would be far higher than it should be with one user… also overlapping instances of the same applications would occur. To be honest… anyone trying to stop people from doing such activities is fighting a losing battle. Both the equipment as the knowledge on how to set it up is widely available.
>> Endrus
Today talked to an EU high-ranker from one of your Hollands. Throughout the dialog, he was saying “Byelorussia,” while I was saying Belarus… Seemed like we talked about two separate countries.
Well atleast he was trying (using a Russified English version of the word)… most people here continue to call it “white russia”… :(
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