The influence of a person on broadcasters can be limited depending on the audience share of the TV channel or radio station and on the share on the capital market. Such a proposal was submitted by the Broadcasting Coordination Council (BCC) member Mariana Onceanu-Hadarca in the public debate “Diminution of the media consolidation phenomenon. Recommendations of the EU and civil society” that was staged by the Independent Journalism Center. According to her, a mechanism should be worked out to calculate these shares and to make the limitation of the influence of one person on the broadcaster possible, IPN reports.
The given proposal is based on the Romanian broadcasting regulation model. Mariana Onceanu-Hadarca noted that to prevent the concentration of media ownership, the number of licenses issued to a legal entity must also be limited, but the number of licenses can be only one of the criteria for assessing the concentration and the dominant position in forming public opinion.
According to the BCC member, a legal entity can have two licenses – one for a generalist TV channel and one for a news TV channel, but only in a particular area. “From my viewpoint, an owner can have all the five licenses if this has a sports TV channel, a music TV channel, a children’s channel, etc. The same applies to the radio,” stated Mariana Onceanu-Hadarca.
The Independent Journalism Center formulated a number of recommendations for the new Broadcasting Code as regards the prevention of media convergence. These include the limitation of the concentration of media ownership and extension of the audience share to levels that can ensure economic efficiency, but will not generate the appearance of dominant situations in the formation of public opinion and unfair competition.
The Center’s director Nadine Gogu said things are not clear as regards the persons who hold elective posts in the administrative bodies of a party and are simultaneously founders or own shares in a broadcaster. “The current Code provides that a political party cannot run a broadcaster, but says nothing about the case when a politician is in such a situation,” she stated.
The head of the parliamentary commission for culture, education, youth, sport and mass media Vladimir Hotineanu said the new draft Broadcasting Code is being prepared for examination in Parliament. The problem is that the authors are not MPs, but ministers and these cannot present the bill in Parliament. A decision should be thus taken as to who will play this role.
