Moscow’s Top Shrink Proposes Doomsday Censorship
MOSCOW, December 18 (RIA Novosti) – Moscow’s top psychiatrist backed on Tuesday a recent bid to legislate human emotion by imposing a limit on “negative information” in the media, starting with Apocalypse rumors.
Reports about the upcoming doomsday and other soul-crushing news breed hopelessness and increase depression and suicide rates, said Boris Tsygankov, who supervises psychiatric help at the city’s healthcare department.
Doomsday reports which have snowballed ahead of December 21, the latest date for the expected Apocalypse “make expecting the end of the world inevitable,” Tsygankov said. “People decide that life’s just not worth it.”
“There’s a reason why they propose limiting negative information on TV,” Tsygankov said at a press conference in the capital.
He was apparently referring to a proposal by federal legislator Oleg Mikheyev, a member of the leftist A Just Russia who filed a bill earlier this month to limit “negative information” in media, such as reports about disasters and terrorist attacks, to 30 percent of the total coverage of a media outlet. Above-the-limit negativity is to be punished with up to six years in jail.
Neither the shrink tsar nor the legislator who, on an unrelated note, faces possible expulsion from the State Duma over fraud accusations elaborated on their censorship proposals.
It remained unclear at present whether news articles such as this one qualify as “positive” or “negative” news.