CNN is halting its broadcasts in Russia after the government on Friday passed a censorship law designed to impact independent reporters not working for state-run media by criminalizing “false news” about the Ukraine invasion.
“CNN will stop broadcasting in Russia while we continue to evaluate the situation and our next steps moving forward,” a CNN spokesperson said in a statement.
The news comes shortly after BBC announced its journalists based in the Russian federation would “temporarily suspend” their work for their own safety — but that the network would continue to operate from outside of Russia.
Bloomberg also said Friday that its reporters would cease working in Russia for the time being.
“We have with great regret decided to temporarily suspend our news gathering inside Russia,” editor-in-chief John Micklethwait said in a statement. “The change to the criminal code, which seems designed to turn any independent reporter into a criminal purely by association, makes it impossible to continue any semblance of normal journalism inside the country.”
Earlier on Friday, Russia’s parliament unanimously passed a law banning fake news — or news that they don’t agree with and not approved by Moscow — with a punishment of up to 15 years in prison. The law targets specifically information about the distribution of “false news” about military operations in Ukraine.
The censorship legislation has forced some of the last independent Russian media to shut down, including the TV station Dozhd and the radio station Ekho Moskvy, and other sites have either been blocked or access to social media networks appears to have been slowed down in the country.