01. 09. 2008

LAST-MINUTE CHANGES ON AIR

Belgrade, September 1, 2008 (Večernje Novosti) – The media sphere has been more-or-less organized by the allocation of frequencies, but the regulations on the prohibited media ownership have not been finalized yet. The print industry is also lacking order: no-one knows how many newspapers are printed in Serbia and there is no unique register with the data about the owners of all the publications. That is why a whole set of media laws is about to be rewritten or amended. The first to enter the parliamentary procedure will be the Law on Media Ownership Concentration.

- We are about to amend a whole set of laws regulating the media sphere in general for the needs of the Serbian media market – explained Dragan Janjić, Deputy Minister of Culture in charge of the media.

- In several days there will be a public debate on the Law on Media Ownership Concentration. Before that, we will discuss it with the representatives of the media industry. It will contain strict regulations as to what ownership share one could have in the Serbian media.

Janjić did not wish to evaluate whether there already existed those who were breaching the regulations of the future law. That Act will also introduce a unique register, which will contain the data about all the print media and their owners.

Next, the Law on Radio Diffusion will be amended. Additionally, the acts of the new, up-to-date Draft Law on Electronic Communications, which also refers to the Internet, are already being written by the team appointed by the Ministry of Telecommunications.

Furthermore, the Public Information Law will be amended, because it does not conform to the Laws on the Capital and the Local Self-Government. One of them insists on the full privatization of the media, while the other states that city public service could exist, for example.

- The privatization should continue, and the media should be separated from the government’s influence. Local self-government can assist by financing the program, and not the broadcaster. They could finance programs in minority languages, but not own the media – our interviewee said.

The Law on Public Services

- We are considering the idea of drafting a new Law on Public Services – Janjić divulged. – We have numerous requests to form local public services. However, we are still discussing the potential applicable models. One of the possibilities is to apply the French or British experience, i.e. that all small local services would be under the cover of the national one. We still do not know how the problem would be solved definitely.