Estonia: Toom says will continue giving interviews to Russia's Sputnik

TALLINN - Estonian MEP Yana Toom has declared that she will carry on giving interviews to the Russian propaganda channel Sputnik, but will avoid some other Russian television outlets.

"I will definitely not be subjected to media bans, that is out of the question! I also told that to [chairman of the Center Party and Estonian Prime Minister] Juri Ratas and other colleagues. I am a former journalist, I can see who is lying and who is not," Toom on Monday told BNS.

Toom added that she will not be cooperating with journalists who manipulate with what she has said, but Sputnik has not done so.

"For example, I do not give interviews to [the Russian television channel] NTV, because I have experience with them where they cut my interview into pieces and glued them together with some other things -- in other words, they turned it upside down. And there are a couple of TV show hosts who we don't talk to," Toom said. "I do not go to one TV show in the [Russian television channel] Pervy Baltiysky Kanal in Moscow, because I know that it is not a respectable place," she said.

"As to the Estonian Sputnik -- totally okay! In principle, I am not speaking of that group not being meant for exerting influence, it is. But that they would have been lying, twisting or violating journalistic ethics -- this has has not happened, no complaints have been made. No complaints during the year that they have been operating [in Estonia]. Not in court or the Estonian Press Council. Sorry, those are the facts," MEP Toom said.

"I can understand Juri [Ratas] -- it is his own free choice. But I cannot imagine that I can say 'go away' to my former colleagues, who tomorrow may be working in [the daily] Postimees. Because as you know, Russian journalists, same as Estonian journalists, are a colorful bunch," Toom said.

The topic of members of the Center Party giving interviews to Sputnik was last raised on May 9, when MP Olga Ivanova gave an interview to the Russian propaganda channel. Estonian Prime Minister and leader of the Center Party Juri Ratas condemned the actions of Ivanova and announced that the party has forbidden its members from giving interviews to Sputnik. A similar scandal arose in February when Minister of Education and Research Mailis Reps in an interview to Sputnik spoke on the topics of the Holocaust and Soviet deportation, after which the prime minister advised state officials to avoid communicating with Sputnik.