TNT painted a rainbow in the sky in the clip, fearing “LGBT propaganda”

Russian law enforcement agencies fined the editor-in-chief of Kino TV channel Rostyslav Katyshev 200,000 rubles for an article about “LGBT propaganda among minors”. This was reported by the United Courts Service of St. Petersburg. The reason for initiating a criminal case was the showing of the film “V – Means Vendetta” on the channel.

In the dystopian film by Australian filmmaker James McTeague, there is a scene in which the heroine reads the diary entries of a prisoner who was imprisoned for being a lesbian. The “Kino TV” channel showed the film with an age rating of “16+”, not “18+”, which, according to the court, allowed underage teenagers to watch it. At the same time, the film was shown on the channel from approximately three to five in the morning.

In light of new laws prohibiting any mention of LGBT+ without condemnation, the Russian mass media resort to self-censorship. On Wednesday, Internet users noted that a clip of the Korean pop group Seventeen was shown on the TNT channel. In the clip, the members of the group dance on a green lawn lit by the sun, and in the sky above them, in the original version of the clip, a rainbow is visible, along which images of musical notes fly. In the version released on TNT, the atmospheric phenomenon was repainted in serial color with the help of montage.

As noted by “Mediazon”, the owner of the channel – the company “Fonbet TV” – was fined one million rubles in July due to the lack of marking “18+” in the clip showing a kiss between two girls. In October, the Moscow court received another report on the channel on the same article.

• The State Duma adopted a law on LGBT propaganda in Russia for the first time in 2013: then they could be held responsible for spreading information about “non-traditional sexual relations” among minors. In 2022, the deputies adopted a new law. According to it, the publication and dissemination of any information that, according to the authorities, “promotes non-traditional sexual relations, pedophilia or gender reassignment” among people of all ages.
• Russian TV channels and movie distributors on the Internet are regularly fined for showing films and clips that, according to law enforcement officers, contain “LGBT propaganda”