MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th March, 2020) Russia's Foreign Ministry expressed strong criticism against the French newspaper Le Monde for its refusal to publish the ministry's response to disparaging information circulated on its pages earlier this year.
In a statement published Wednesday, the ministry said that Le Monde released an article titled "Sergey Lavrov: Putin's Permanent Diplomat" on January 27 in which the newspaper reported that Moscow was denying visas and canceling accreditation for foreign journalists.
The Russian Embassy in France immediately made its protestations known and forwarded a letter from the ministry to the paper denying the claims and relaying Moscow's stance. The foreign ministry had also demanded that Le Monde publish the letter so that the other side of the story was covered, but received no response.
The statement went on to say that the editorial board responded only weeks later saying that it "read the letter with great interest" but did not wish to publish it.
"With this gesture, the publication not only simply denied the ministry of foreign affairs of a foreign state the right to publicly refute false information but also violated a key principle of journalistic ethics. Failure to provide an interested party with the opportunity to respond to inaccuracies or distortions made to it on the pages of a publication is a violation of a number of international documents," the ministry said.
The statement added that it would have no choice but to repeat the appeals until its demand was met.
The electronic version of the article has since been removed from Le Monde's website.
