Belarus’ first media portal VIDEOBEL.BY goes online

The new platform will offer access to all the social and political contents of the leading Belarusian mass media. The new resource will offer streaming channels and important live broadcasts, in particular, from the events attended by the head of state. It will provide a selection of top five news headlines for those who want to keep up-to-date but spend the minimum time studying the media space. This is a one-stop media portal for users to get the best and most relevant content.

All video materials will be accompanied by time codes. In fact, this is a breakdown of entire programs into thematic segments, which will make it easy to navigate and save time.

A responsive design of the media portal means that all its contents can be accessed from any device, be it a smartphone or a TV screen.

BelTA director general on VIDEOBEL.BY: It is a joint project of leading Belarusian mass media

Talking to the media, BelTA Director General Irina Akulovich said that the portal will first be focused on the most important social and political content of the leading Belarusian mass media. “We retain copyright. I can say that there are about 1,000 time-coded videos on this platform. A team has been set up to manage and update the portal round the clock. We will do our best to post materials as quickly as possible,” Irina Akulovich said.

Speaking about the convenience of the portal, Irina Akulovich noted that it will give access to all the programs and broadcasts of TV channels online. The BelTA director general emphasized that there will be no competition with state TV channels: “The audience of these channels will certainly stay loyal to them. I mean those who like to watch ONT, STV, BT.”

“We are in favor of information security. We understand perfectly well that no one likes the truth. They cut it out, try to block it, shut it down, including entire projects and channels. Our task is to protect ourselves in the information environment. We are not competing. This is not an analogue of YouTube, Facebook or Instagram. This is a Belarusian media portal, designed for people who are interested in everything that is taking place in our country. Our task is to protect it. This is what the president said: everyone needs to do their jobs. We are doing our job here,” she said.

BelTA director general added that the project will be further developed: “It is highly likely that in a few years we will see regional mass media here. We will move on. This is the first step, and it was important for our Belarusian state to make it. We have made it today.”

When asked why BelTA was chosen to manage the platform, Irina Akulovich said: “First of all, BelTA is a major provider of news. The task of our journalists is to keep track of your projects [projects of leading Belarusian mass media] and do their best to promote them. We, in general, know all the projects that our colleagues are working on. We know the entire information space. If earlier we covered your projects in letters, now this work will be done in both letters and video. This is not BelTA’s project. It is a joint project of the leading Belarusian mass media,” BelTA director general said.

‘Bold yet advanced solution’. BelTA deputy director general on the choice of colors for the platform

“We really wanted to stay current and not repeat the classic 'news' colors. When we decided on this color, we realized that it looked similar to Propaganda [a show on ONT TV channel]! We thought it would be another element of promotion. This is probably a very unexpected color for a news portal or resource. It is a bold yet advanced solution. It seems to all of us, our big team, that this is an advanced solution,” BelTA Deputy Director General Tatyana Biruk said. “You can find anything on the portal. You can find the content you are interested in columns, keywords. I would like to reiterate that we are talking about this portal - VIDEOBEL.BY – as a resource to learn about social and political events. It will host social and political content produced by our national media about the events taking place in the country and worldwide.”

Tatyana Biruk noted that the truth is in demand abroad as well: “We can see this trend on our own platforms. I think TV channels and newspapers see it as well. Our content and our narratives that are promoted online are relevant and topical for the internet audience.

The BelTA deputy director general added that the time codes that accompany the videos on the portal help get familiar with the video content. “We realize that we are talking about content with a very large time frame. Time codes save the user's time. It is a kind of lead paragraphs. It is a very fashionable thing worldwide, but Belarus, for some reason, do not all use it widely,” Tatyana Biruk said.