MOSCOW, March 15 (RIA Novosti) - The Russian parliament’s lower house, the State Duma, passed in the second reading on Friday a bill stipulating fines for the use of foul language in media.

The bill, which still has to be passed by the Federation Council and signed into law by the president, envisages a fine of up to 200,000 rubles ($6,400) for the use of foul language.

One of the bill’s co-authors, Sergei Zheleznyak, a State Duma deputy with the ruling United Russia party, said there are currently laws regulating the use of dirty language in public places, but not in the media, which can be also viewed as a sort of public place.

Zheleznyak said earlier that media outlets would even be held accountable for swearwords left in reader comments on their websites.

Gazeta.ru reported late last year, citing several media industry professionals, that filtering readers’ comments for verbal abuse would be nearly impossible.