12. 09. 2010

SECRET MEDIA OWNERS

Belgrade, September 12, 2010 (Politika) - Owners of some media are known to public, while the identities of some are either suspected or will never be revealed. This, the most sensitive, issue will be particularly important in the public debate on the Media Strategy, which would be organized by the Ministry of Culture, OSCE Mission to Serbia, British Embassy in Belgrade and Delegation of the European Commission in Serbia.

Namely, ANEM, IJAS (NUNS), JAS (UNS), IJAV (NDNV) and Local Press stressed this as the most important issue, believing that the changes in the legal framework might ensure the transparency in the media ownership and the accessibility of such data to the public. The associations considered the revoking of the legal provision that prohibited foreign majority ownership over the media in Serbia, since the foreign companies had already been majority owners of some media and the said provision had been manipulated with. The associations also proposed continuous monitoring of the changes in ownership structure over media in order to prevent the possibility of avoiding the transparency provisions.

IJAS President Vukasin Obradovic pointed out that the lack of transparency of ownership was just a model of manipulating the media. "Interest groups and tycoons create the public opinion but do not want to publicly say that they are behind it. The amendment of the law, but also the Media Strategy, should provide for permanent resolving and monitoring of this issue. As for the prohibition of illegal ownership concentration, in other words, monopoly, this is hard to put into practice since it is impossible to find out when the companies are also founded on Virgin Islands", Obradovic said.

Assistant Culture Minister Natasa Vuckovic-Lesendric said that the Ministry had responded to the joint stands of the media associations, agreeing with the position that the ownership transparency in media was very important, but noting that "having access to the name of the founding company registered abroad is a mission impossible". However, the majority ownership of foreign citizens was plausible demand, and it would be defined after the public debate", Lesendric said.