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28. 12. 2012

ANEM RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE DRAFT LAW ON PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING

One of the laws being developed by the Working Group of the Ministry of Culture and Media is the Law on Public Service broadcasting. ANEM submitted today to the Ministry and the Working Group for the development of media laws its written recommendations regarding the basic guidelines ANEM believes to be in the interest of the media sector and should be taken into consideration while working on the Law on Public Service Broadcasting.

Before all, ANEM noted its belief that it was not necessary to pass a separate law governing public service broadcasting as all these issues had been chiefly determined by the law dealing with electronic media. However, bearing in mind that the Media Strategy provides for such a possibility, and starting from the strategic commitment of the state to withdraw from ownership in media and to limit media financed from public sources down to existing public service broadcasters, ANEM pointed to the basic guidelines that should be taken into account in drafting the legislation:

1) In exercising public interest in the field of public information, it is necessary to insist on the programming aspect and not necessarily on creating new, institutionally organized public service broadcasting - reasons: the lack of clear criteria for the establishment of new regional public service broadcasting institutions; regions currently do not exist in the constitutional order of the Republic of Serbia, so the assumption is that three different criteria have been used for determining regional public service broadcasting institutions (the capital city, the centers of administrative districts and minority rights, where the selection of one minority and ignoring the others is controversial), which creates uncertainty in this area; lack of guarantees that selected centers are true representatives of a "region"; due to the characteristics of the forthcoming digital broadcasting, a larger signal coverage and overlapping areas of distribution is possible, which may affect the concept of financing of public service broadcasting, due to discrepancy of the allotment with the territory of administrative district; the Media Strategy has not sufficiently defined important issue of transparency in the operations of public service broadcasters, as well as the issue of ensuring public control over the manner of election of management bodies and manner of spending funds - these are also shortcomings in the functioning of existing public service broadcasting institutions, which the Strategy refers to as a model; in determining regional service broadcasting, an analysis of needs and effects has not been performed, i.e. the assessment whether existing local media are realizing public interest in the field of public information in a satisfactory manner and if there is a need at all to create new organizational forms, as well as whether the economic sustainability of public service broadcasters at the regional level has been ensured and, in particular, how their establishment will affect the survival of other media in that area that are not public service broadcasters;

2) The selection and termination of the function of a member of the Managing Board and General Manager (Director) must be transparent and in line with the rules prescribed by the law itself, and correspondingly to the solutions proposed in the Pre-Draft Law on Electronic Media, ANEM has recommended that: 1. the RBA elects members to the Managing Board on the basis of a public competition, with clearly specified election procedure as well as conditions that the candidates must meet; 2. the RBA elects members to the Managing Board based on nominations of authorized nominators, with clear defining of authorized nominators and giving greater power to media associations and civic organizations; 3. The Managing Board shall elect General Manager/Director on the basis of a public competition and qualified majority vote, whereas the director must meet the same requirements as the members of the Managing Board; termination of the function of a Managing Board member or General Manager must be foreseen in two ways: 1. Termination of function based on the law itself 2. Termination of function by dismissal, preceded by the decision of the authority that has made the selection, clearly specifying the reasons;

3) Transparency and public control must be reflected in the following: a financial plan and a work plan for each year must be made available to the general public, with the possibility to comment the documents; to prescribe a legal obligation to submit reports (for both the general manager and the managing board, each within the scope of authority); to clearly stipulate the liability in the event of failure to meet the plans and improper use of funds;

4) The technical aspect is necessary to be regulated exclusively by the law governing electronic communications operators, while imposing a must carry must not be disproportionate;

5) The financing of public service broadcasting must be based on the principle of separating revenues from TV subscription fees and revenues on other bases, while respecting the principle that increasing the fee collection rate reduces the possibility of obtaining funds through advertising and other sources - the main source of funding for public service broadcasting should be subscription fee; commercial revenues (revenues from advertising and other commercial revenues), in the case of an increase of collection rate, must be proportionately reduced; financing from the budget has to be an exception, which should be interpreted very restrictively and which can only be used for the purpose of achieving the public interest; full and consistent implementation of state assistance is necessary (for revenues from the budget and revenues from subscription fees, which is also the public revenue); accounting separation of income on various bases is necessary, which should also be applied as a principle in the financial plans and reports, which must be made available to the public;

6) The responsibility of management body for achieving public interest in the field of public information - to predict responsibility for the drafting of work plans, implementation of these plans (reports), as well as liability for failing to meet obligations (general and specific to public service broadcasting); greater control of public service broadcasters by regulatory bodies competent for the field of broadcasting is necessary, in terms of exercising functions of a public service broadcaster and programming obligations.

ANEM plans to actively participate in the public debate on the Draft Law as well, in order to contribute to better solutions in the interest of the media sector and the public.