Problems of qualification of obstruction of journalists' activities

The article considers the problems of criminal legal assessment of the constituent elements of the crime provided for in Article 144 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. In recent years, issues related to the criminal legal assessment of the elements of the said act have become more actively on the agenda of the law enforcement and judicial systems. In particular, dozens of cases of conviction under this norm (guilty verdicts) over the past 5 years are already known, that is, the number is comparable to the period 1997 - 2019. The key issue in the qualification of the crime provided for in Article 144 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation is a detailed analysis of the elements of the objective side, which should include the following: an act in the form of obstructing the legitimate professional activities of journalists; a method in the form of forcing journalists to disseminate information; a method in the form of forcing journalists to refuse to disseminate information. Each of the given objective elements of the analyzed crime is subject to scientifically substantiated and practice - oriented study, since there are no relevant explanations from the highest judicial authority for this category of cases. Special attention is paid to the issues of correlation between the scope of federal legislation on mass media and provisions of the criminal law on protection of obstruction of journalistic activity. The author shows the understanding of the direct object of this crime, which follows from the content of the criminal law prohibition, and also identifies the limits of interpretation of objective features, including the act and the method. The peculiarity in the regulation of the method of coercion of a journalist is substantiated and demonstrated as not having a precise legislative prescription, since in the context of the traditions of normative regulation, a specific method in the disposition of a criminal law norm is indicated by an open or closed list, as, for example, in Art. 133 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation or Art. 150 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The author discusses the appropriateness of such analogies in the interpretation of the provisions of Art. 144 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation for the purposes of correct and scientifically substantiated qualification. Based on the arguments presented, the author makes a number of conclusions that allow making a general conclusion about the limits of the repressive impact of Art. 144 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.