16. 08. 2014

EXPERTS ON MEDIA LAWS

After a long delay and much procrastination, Serbia got a new set of media laws, among these the most important being the Law on Public Information. If the media strategy, adopted in 2011, is one of the conditions for receiving a candidate status, it could be said that the set of media laws is one of more important conditions of Brussels for Serbia's progress towards EU membership.

In both cases, back in 2011 and now, the owner of the news agency FoNet, Zoran Sekulić, was in the working groups preparing the important media documents on behalf of professional associations. Previous Law on Public Information had not passed the test with the Constitutional Court, or with the journalists, while the new law will, according to Sekulić, create at least better conditions for the work of the media. With the Copernican revolution it brought, Sekulić adds:

„This law for the first time, maybe in 50 years, stipulates something that used to be unthinkable until recently, and that is withdrawal of the state from media ownership. We are talking about the situation in which the state in Serbia owns fully or partially 81 media outlets and subsidizes them with a total of 25 million EUR."

After more than 20 years in the market with the news agency FoNet, Sekulić knows best how difficult it is to survive in the conditions of unfair competition which dominates the Serbian media scene:

"I think that the biggest change will take place and the real effects will show in a year, when the process of state media privatization should be completed, and when the media should switch to so-called project-based financing. Namely, the principle is that the state should not finance salaries in the media, but it should finance media content which is in the public interest".

Jovanka Matić from the Institute of Social Sciences says that the latest research in the countries of the region (Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia, Albania) showed that there is an identical problem everywhere - the lack of media integrity and the lack of opposition to various centers of power. The key problem is the same in the whole region - media financing is most often non-transparent and is used as means of subtle pressure:

"The essence of our media system is that the media do not support themselves through the market. As the market cannot ensure the survival of all the existing media, it therefore does not decide on the economic fate of the media. Namely, the sources of financing are outside the market, in a grey zone."

In a poor media market with too many media, the state influence is decisive for the survival and operation of many media outlets. As Jovanka Matić thinks, the law will improve the media situation in Serbia to an extent, but not this very important domain:

"What will not improve is what sources of financing participate in supporting the operation of the media. The state is a very important source of financing here. And not only as the owner of some media outlets - that problem will be solved. The state is a source of advertising here, as well, which is not covered by these laws. Therefore, the Law on Advertising should be changed, but it is not a part of the set of reform media laws".

Finally, as is the case with other important laws - their implementation has shown to be the most important aspect of the regulation, and political will, unfortunately, is the key to the solution of the problem:

"The laws are an improvement, but the general political and social ambience will also, to a great extent, influence the quality of our journalism. And I am not grantying amnesty to editors and journalists", Sekulić says.

With the adoption of new media laws, the term „project-based financing" has come into use and it presents a possible solution to the problem of media financing through the new system of state investment into media. However, as our sources say, for project-based financing to make sense, it is necessary to define it by law in a much clearer and more precise manner. These are possibly details which will be „ironed out" during negotiations between Serbia and the EU.