27. 01. 2011

WORKSHOP FOR ANEM MEMBERS

„Media Funding from State Budget Funds and Media Market Functioning"

The way in which the majority of local self-governments fulfill their legal obligation to take care and ensure the conditions for public information in their local environment, greatly contributes to the difficult position of local media. Since there is no clearly defined legal way to allocate funds aimed at local media, local governments determine their own way of meeting this obligation. The practice has shown that these funds have been often allocated in a nontransparent way, which creates a basis for unlawful competition on the media market as well as for pressures on local media and it substantially influences the quality of informing on the local level.

The abovementioned problems related to media funding from state budget funds, as well as potential ways of their solving, were the main topics of the workshop that ANEM organized for its member stations, on January 27, 2011, in Belgrade, with the support of the Civil Rights Defenders. The aim of this workshop was to enable the representatives of ANEM stations to better understand regulations, to share local experience in this field, and, together with competent panelist and representatives of competent authorities, discuss recommendations for strategic solving of this issue, especially in the context of preparing the Media Strategy. The workshop panelists were: Slobodan Kremenjak, ANEM lawyer and expert for media laws and Nemanja Nenadic, Executive Director of NGO "Transparency Serbia". The workshop was also attended by the representatives of the Public Procurement Office, Ministry of Culture and local self-governments from cities of Kragujevac, Pirot, Pancevo and Valjevo, as well as the Standing Conference of Towns and Municipalities (SKGO/SCTM). Twelve representatives of ten ANEM radio and TV stations participated in the workshop: Radio Ozon (Cacak), Radio OK (Vranje), Radio EM (Knjazevac), RTV Pancevo, RTK (Kragujevac), TV Valjevo, Radio Uzice, Radio Far (Alibunar), JP TV Smederevo, Sremska TV (Sid).

In the first part of the workshop, representatives of ANEM radio and TV stations had an opportunity to obtain information from competent speakers on anti-corruption legislation relevant for this issue, on ways of media funding from state budget funds that were recognized in the domestic legislation, ways of conducting control of illegal competition on the market in cases of allocation of state budget funds to media that were stipulated by law, problems in practice due to the lack of legally defined way of allocating budget funds to media, because of which it was strategically important (to the media and for the quality of local informing) to regulate this field (especially in the context of the preparation of the Media Strategy). In the second part of the workshop, the representatives of the stations discussed the ways the budget funds aimed at media were distributed in their local environments, as well as on problems and their possible solutions. The present representatives of local self-governments and state organs also took active participation in the discussion.

The entire report is available here
PPT presentation of Nemanja Nenadic is available here