According to experts, radio and television are turning back to political control, which was abandoned in the post-cold war era by the Eastern and Central European leaders for the sake of European integrations. These analysts emphasise that the media values seem to be "lost in the bland excesses of the reality television formats, lost in sweet programmes that distract, lost in the news that never investigate and never take a stand, lost in the routine political control by self-interested cliques."
Mark Thompson of the Open Society Foundation Media Programme takes this process to be some sort of "counter-reform".
"Why refraining from the exercising of the political control over these very important institutions when there are no penalties?", Thompson has posed the question in Brussels during the recent research presentation which included the media scene in Albania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Macedonia, Romania and Slovakia.
Thompson emphasised that the European Commission hasn`t insisted on the estimates of the freedom of the press in countries that were obligated to fulfil that condition before their association to the EU, but that the EC has to be more rigorous with "Croatia, Macedonia and other candidates waiting for the next round to enter EU".
While Eastern and Central European countries were heading toward the European Union, it seemed that their political leaders were showing good will to refrain from the media influencing. But the situation has changed, for they are all trying to retrieve political control over media by appointing those who have demonstrated their loyalty to the authorities.
The research shows that Poland, Romania and Slovakia stand as the best examples in which the politisation of media is the most evident, but that process is present in Lithuania and other countries. The authors of the report see the Polish Telewizja Polska (TVP) as the "cockpit of political struggles for more than a decade."
This report alleges that the only criteria respected in choosing members for the TVP Supervisory Board is political affiliation, with the absence of any professional experience in this area. Among the members there are a hippodrome owner, a close associate of the major of Warsaw, a retired attorney, and a former Prime Minister`s mother`s herbalist.
Politicians in Czech Republic argue that national television CT Council`s members should be elected and controlled by parliamentary parties, while the authors of the report accuse Slovakian Government for interfering in National Television`s general director appointment, as well as the influences on management structure of STV.
Romanian National Television SRTV may also stand as a good example of an evident political influence, whose general director is Alexandru Sassu, a member of Social Democratic Party which happens to be the ruling coalition`s partner. He is the first politician appointed on that function since the breakdown of the Communism in Romania.
The situation within private TV and radio stations is quite the same, particularly when it comes to the editorial independence. Polish private media owners behave no differently than politicians, as it is underlined in the report, using their assets as their weapon to pursue their business interests.
Private media owners in Macedonia use their electronic media as the assets to satisfy not only their personal and business interests, but the interests of their political connections. But despite the political influence Romanian Television bears, Romanian public broadcasting service reports far more authentic in comparison with private media which focus on scandals and sensationalism, emphasising their tabloid nature.
This situation, however, is not present only in Eastern and Central European countries, whether they have associated the EU or not.
The situation concerning digital broadcasting in Italy is described as black humour, because Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi owns more than 90 percent of commercial emitters and at the same time controls the public service broadcaster RAI. Although the regulation on RAI independency waits to be adopted, Berlusconi has decided to pull out this legislation from the agenda as soon as he returned on the political scene becoming the Prime Minister for the third time.
The reform, which was about to reduce the political influence on public broadcasting services, has failed in Albania and Lithuania.
Although our country was not included in this report, Serbian media face the similar problems. Laws that were adopted by Serbian Government may be treated as a proper basis for the media independence, but most of these regulations are not respected in reality, and so the media still depend on politicians and media owners.
Dragana Nikolic-Solomon, Head of the Media Department of the OSCE Mission to Serbia, stresses that the transparent ownership is the major precondition required for the media independence, because it can provide authentic information which is the basis of the good communication.
During the recently held "The improvement of legal and professional media standards in Serbia" round table, Nikolic-Solomon has announced that the beginning of the discussion on the Law on Digital Broadcasting is expected, which is now "examined" by the Serbian Ministry of Culture`s working group.
"Privatisation has also appeared as one of the immanent problem Serbian media deals with, for they are facing with tough economic situation, which is why our country must assist them, not own them," Nikolic-Solomon said, stressing that this problem is noticeable on a local level, "where the links between media and local self-governments lead to disinformation of the citizen and the usurpation of the public statements, which is against the democratic principles."
The Director of the Legal Forum Vladimir Todorovic believes that the pressure of the advertisers and the suspension of the local media privatisation represent an obstacle on a media independence path.
"One, however, needs to understand that the large number of advertisements is being realised with the assistance of agents, and that fact points the importance of the transparency of that issue. Theoretically, if there is a political pressure or political control of the advertisement market, there will be an indirect, yet very efficient media monitoring," Todorovic explained.
Media transparency was also supported by Sasa Mirkovic, the president of the Association of the Independent Electronic Media, which points out that, according to Strategic Marketing Agency survey, 956 million euro was spent for the purposes of the advertisings in the course of 2007, 82 percent of which was directed to the television advertising.
Beside the problems which last for many years, 160 local, 40 regional and five national TV stations in Serbia face with the economic crisis which threatens their survival.
According to Aidan White, general-secretary of the International Federation of the Journalists, European Institution must seriously take the complexity of the media crisis into consideration.
"The future of the media must be at the core of the new commissions` agenda, at the core of the new parliament`s agenda," said White, adding that the new media strategy is what Europe requires at the moment.
White thinks that the reconsideration of the European media scene is also needed, and that it should include the questions of content, politisation, public relations and financing.
* Nenad Radicevic is a foreign affairs journalist with Politika daily. (Photo: European Communities, 2009) CEV Magazine is an online publication of the Centre for European Values.
