Roskomnadzor, the Russian government’s media watchdog, has issued a formal warning to the men’s magazine Maxim over obscene language that appeared in an interview with the Belarusian musician Siarhei Mikhalok. The interview was published in the magazine’s May 2015 issue.
This is the second government warning issued to Maxim in the past 12 months, meaning that Roskomnadzor now has the legal right to ask a court to revoke the magazine’s accreditation certificate.
In October 2014, Roskomnadzor issued a warning to Maxim over an article that appeared on the magazine’s website titled “How to Take Bribes Properly.” State officials threatened to add the article’s Web address to Russia’s Internet blacklist, which would have required Russian Internet operators to block access to the story and possibly Maxim’s entire site. Maxim says it deleted the story before ever receiving Roskomnadzor’s warning.
Also on June 8, Roskomnadzor issued a warning to the magazine Time Out for publishing what the agency says are pornographic materials, flagging an article published in October 2010. Time Out later deleted the story, which contained an image of three women and two men standing together nude wearing paper bags over their heads. The image is partially archived at Web.archive.org. This is Time Out’s first warning in the past year.