17. 07. 2013

MEDIA COMMUNITY AT THE SESSION OF THE CULTURE AND INFORMATION COMMITTEE

Following the ANEM monitoring round table held on July 10, 2013, where media reform in Serbia was discussed and which was attended by the Secretary of the Serbian Parliament's Culture and Information Committee, representatives of the media community had been invited to the session of this Committee scheduled for July 17.

At the session, the Committee considered the Information on Work of the Ministry of Culture and Media for the period April-June 2013 and discussed the adoption of media laws. According to the information coming from the Ministry, the Draft Law on Public Information and Media has been forwarded to other ministries for their opinion and is expected to be adopted in September; the Draft Law on Electronic Media is ready for a public discussion at the end of August, while the Draft Law on Public Service Broadcasters has not yet been completed.

The Media Community, represented by ANEM, UNS, NUNS and Media Association, repeated its complaints over the delay in adopting the laws, which was jeopardizing the implementation of the Media Strategy, as well as restated the key objections to the Draft Law on Public Information and Media related to the lack of legal solutions on project financing, media concentration, media register, media privatization and the correlation of this law to other laws, whose provisions were in conflict with the provision it prescribed. Representatives of the Media Community have stated that they would provide their remarks and suggestions on the final text of the Draft Law after its release, and advocate for their adoption and for overall improvement of legal solutions in the parliament.

ANEM representatives have pointed to the consequences that disrespecting of the deadlines for the adoption of the media laws might have on media reform and survival of the media. ANEM also elaborated on the shortcomings of the Draft Law on Public Information and Media, in particular, the shortcomings of the provisions of the Draft pertaining to: the project financing, highlighting the need to uniformly prescribe rules that will apply regardless of who is the provider of the assistance, in order to avoid differences in the practice, especially at the local level, as well as the abuse of state aid as a means of influencing the media and stressing the importance of a transparent legal determining of the budget financing cut-off date; the privatization of media, particularly pointing out the necessity of prescribing privatization model and a binding deadline for its completion; the media concentration, where it is necessary to clearly define in which situations the ministry for public information is in charge of this issue, and in which it is a regulatory body (RBA). ANEM particularly emphasized the necessity to prescribe transitional provisions of this law, which would determine the end of validity of specific provisions of other laws that were in direct conflict with the Strategy and this Draft Law as they provided for state ownership in media.