04. 09. 2008

PREVENT MONOPOLES IN THE NAME OF DEMOCRACY

Mandatory registration ought to reveal the owners of RTV stations and the printed media

Belgrade, September 4, 2008 (Danas) - According to the draft law on prohibited unification and the transparency of the public media ownership, an owner of a radio and television station with a broadcasting permission on the territory of the Republic of Serbia cannot be a shareholder of another electronic or print medium, or a news agency. Also, the law will impose a register of print or electronic media, which has never existed in Serbia so far.

“This law regulates the measures for preventing prohibited unification of the public media ownership, the measures for ensuring the transparency of the public media ownership, the way of supervising the unification of the public media ownership, as well as penalties for breaching the regulations of that Law, in order to protect the best interest of the public, prevent a dominant or overwhelming influence on the public on the basis of the public media ownership, and allow a free exchange and variety of information, thoughts and ideas”, states the draft law.

The public debate on the Draft Law on Media Ownership Concentration will be held in September.

Let us remind you that the Minister of Culture, Nebojša Bradić, has recently announced that the new Laws on Radio Diffusion, the Media and Media Ownership Concentration could enter the parliamentary procedure in October. Bradić said that those Laws ought to regulate those spheres and added that the existing laws were not perfect and “were not implemented enough so that they could have effect”.

Rade Veljanovski, the president of the workgroup for drafting the law on prohibited unification of the public media ownership says for Danas that the aim of all the regulations for media ownership concentration is to prevent a dominant influence on the public.

- When a single person owns several public media, it is not good for democracy – claimed Veljanovski and added that Serbia needed transparent public media ownership. According to him, the registration will be mandatory for all the media, “and those responsible for not registering their public media ownership will be penalized; however, the media in question will not be closed”.

Deputy Minister of Culture in charge of the media, Dragan Janjić, said for Danas that the aim of the law was to enforce “more order into the transparency of the public media ownership”. He added that, according to the draft, the Law on Media Ownership Concentration would comprise two parts.

- The first part refers to the media register, which would contain the data on the public media ownership, while the second part regulates the prohibited unification of the public media ownership – Janjić explained, saying that he could not claim for sure when the law would finally be passed.

In his opinion, there is no media monopole in Serbia; “still, in order for the Law to function properly, it must be fully implemented”.

Slobodan Kremenjak, a media lawyer, explained for Danas that the Law on Media Ownership Concentration was much needed in Serbia, because the Law on Radio Diffusion contained a regulation on the prohibited concentration of electronic media, “but the Serbia legislative system did not mention the prohibited concentration of print media”.

He said that it was necessary to legally regulate the sphere, because the media monopole actually meant the ability to form the public opinion.

The Draft Law states that the public has the right to the information on the print media circulation, as well as on the public media, their founders, ownership structure and the identity of natural and legal persons who could, directly or indirectly, on the basis of their partial or full ownership or some other way, influence the editorial policy of the public media.

The Council of Europe gave a number of suggestions to the workgroup drafting the Law on Prohibited Unification and the Transparency of the Public Media Ownership. One of them was not to give publicity to the acquired data on the media ownership, because that did not conform to European rules, according to which the authorities were bound to respect other interests as well, such as the regulations on personal data privacy, when considering the publicity of the collected registered data.