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UPDATES
ON MEDIA LAW REFORMS
I. Russia to
change media policy.
By Anna Dolgov, The
Associated Press
The Russian government plans to change its policy
toward the news media and stifle “aggression”
by the press, the head of the country’s recently
established media ministry said Wednesday.
With
parliamentary and presidential elections looming, Russian
liberals have been worried that the government would curb
media freedom. The worries grew this summer after the
creation of the ministry to oversee the press.
“The
information policy of the state as regards the mass media
should be changed,” Media Minister Mikhail Lesin
said Wednesday, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.
“There is much aggression in the activities of the
mass media now. This is the result of ill-considered
policy toward the mass media.”
President
Boris Yeltsin, who established the ministry, has been a
firm supporter of media freedom in the past. But he
hasn’t commented on the work of the new ministry,
despite appeals to him by prominent journalists.
Russian
news media tend to be owned by powerful business leaders
who have a strong interest in gaining political
influence. The Kremlin has an equally strong interest in
seeing that some of these forces do not gain power in the
new elections, and in bolstering others more favorable to
the presidential entourage.
News
media have been publishing accusations against their
owners’ political foes, and Lesin’s reference
to “aggression” appeared to refer to the
Kremlin being exposed to the mudslinging.
He
didn’t specify what the new policy would be, but
indicated there were too many media outlets. He invited a
meeting of regional governors to “set the ball
rolling” on dealing with the problem.
Since
it was formed in July, the new ministry—formally
called the Ministry for Press, Broadcast and Mass
Media—has made ominous statements about the need to
protect the state from the press.
Last
month, the ministry suspended the license of a major
television network for its critical coverage of a
political group. The St. Petersburg Television and Radio
Company was allowed to go back on the air the next day,
after it apologized and promised to avoid future
“violations” of government media rules.
When
the government develops a new policy on the media, it
will be sent to parliament to be possibly codified in new
laws, Lesin said, without further elaboration.
II. Poland to ban
all tobacco promotion by 2001.
The Polish parliament on Friday voted to ban all
tobacco advertisements and sponsorship by the end of
2001, severely tightening laws against cigarettes in this
nation of heavy smokers. Cigarette advertisements in
print and on billboards are to be banned by the end of
next year, while all sports sponsorship and promotions by
tobacco companies will be outlawed by the end of 2001.
Television advertisements are already forbidden. The
change, which must still be approved by the
parliament’s upper house, will put Poland ahead of
the European Union in anti-tobacco legislation. The EU
has voted to ban all tobacco promotion by 2006. About 25
per cent of Poland’s 39 million people smoke some 90
billion cigarettes annually. The Health Ministry
estimates that around 70,000 people die each year from
smoking-related illnesses, a figure that includes about
40 per cent of all adult male deaths. “This ban is a
very important step in our battle to improve the health
of Poles,” said Ewa Sikorska-Trela, one of the
parliamentary sponsors of the tighter law. “I am
hoping that this ban will have the strongest effect on
the young,” said Tadeusz Parchimowicz from the
government’s Department of Public Health. (Central
Europe Online / Reuters, September 13, 1999)
III. Jordan eases
press laws.
Parliament in Jordan has amended the country’s
press law, scrapping some clauses which have been
criticised as restricting freedom of expression. They
include a ban on coverage of the Jordanian royal family
that could be considered disparaging. Curbs have also
been lifted on reporting of the armed forces and on other
matters once deemed detrimental to national unity. King
Abdullah has urged wider press freedoms since he came to
the throne earlier this year. However, the new law still
requires journalists to be objective and reasonable, and
there are heavy fines on those who violate it. (BBC News,
September 07, 1999)
IV. Jordan:
Amendments to the 1998 Press Law leave loose ends.
Jordan’s parliament endorsed amendments to the
1998 Press and Publications Law on September 7, annulling
14 vaguely-worded restrictions and reducing the penalties
for violations of other articles in the law. This was the
fifth time in six years that legal provisions covering
the print media in Jordan had been changed. However the
significance of the changes has been questioned pending
the introduction of any parallel alterations to
Jordan’s Penal Code.
The
Press and Publications Law introduced in 1993 was widely
praised for being generally more liberal than similar
laws in force in neighbouring states. In May 1997,
however, ahead of that year’s elections, the
government introduced amendments to the law that would
enable it to clamp down on weekly newspapers that had
campaigned against Jordan’s internally-controversial
normalization with Israel. In all, 13 weeklies were
forced to close, but later resurfaced when the High Court
ruled in January 1998 that the government’s
amendments were unconstitutional and must be revoked. The
government’s response to the High Court ruling was
simply to issue a new, more draconian law, which was
ratified in August 1998.
The
1998 law reintroduced steep capital requirements for
local newspapers, allowing them only three months to
comply, and gave the Press and Publications Department
power to close newspapers or impose steep fines. When
King Abdullah acceded to the throne early in 1999, he
made reform of the press law a high priority and urged
the government to draft amendments to remove some of the
most onerous restrictions. Convening a second
extraordinary session of parliament in mid-August, he
called for the press law—and ten other bills aimed
at reforming the economy and making the judiciary more
independent—to be discussed and dealt with inside
the coming six weeks.
The
amendments have indeed been made within the deadline but
their importance has been questioned, with journalists
protesting that the country’s Penal Code can still
be called on to deal with matters previously covered by
the Press and Publication Law. Among the most contentious
articles in the 1998 law were those forbidding
publication of information that insults the king or royal
family, insults or degrades the armed forces or security
forces, insults religious sentiments, or incites
hatred, dissension or civil unrest. Penalties for such
acts under the Penal Code may include imprisonment.
Recent
legal cases against journalists working outside the
government-owned press have also shown that provisions of
other laws, including the Jordanian Companies Law, can be
used to pursue media personnel. Riyad Hroub,
editor-in-chief of Al-Arab al-Yawm, an independent daily
with a circulation of around 70,000, was arrested on
September 18 for alleged financial corruption. Al-Arab
al-Yawm, launched in April 1997, has made a name for
itself by investigating local corruption. It exposed a
major water scandal affecting Amman in the summer of 1998
and irregularities in the sale of an oil pipeline. This
record has led some observers to regard Hroub’s
arrest on embezzlement charges as an attempt to silence
the paper by alternative means.
V.
Egypt: Columnist calls for media reforms.
The most dangerous threat to a democracy is state
control over the media, especially when media officials
lack the proper political awareness and professional
efficiency, regardless of the number of satellites the
media community possesses. Hence, it is probably
imperative to abolish the Ministry of Information and
privatize all television channels apart from one, which
would represent the official views of the government.
A
higher council should also be founded to represent the
various trends and organs of the media and supervise
television and radio broadcasts according to specific
regulations (the French system).
As
for the press, the laws governing its work should be
reconsidered and more freedom should be granted to
publishing, in accordance with the market mechanisms.
Moreover, gradual solutions should be found for the
privatization of national newspapers, abolishing the
penalty of imprisonment in publishing crimes, and
replacing it with fines and compensations. (“The
political crossover with Mubarak,”
‘Al-Ahram’, Cairo, 23 September 1999)
VI. Vietnam:
Senior official defends new amended press law.
The law on amendment and supplement to some articles
of the press law has been approved by the National
Assembly. It officially came into effect on 1st September
1999 at the order of the state president. This makes
media activities in Vietnam more favourable. Voice of
Radio of Vietnam brings you an article by Mr Do Quy Doan,
director-general of the press department of the Ministry
of Culture and Information on the law:
When
the law was approved, some people, particularly Western
media, held that the Vietnamese state wanted to
“tighten” the press operation. This, in fact is
purely an arbitrary assumption. The amendments are
designed to improve the law to help meet the rich and
diverse development of the press, and to create better
conditions for media activities, thereby ensuring their
own development and better managing the press. The law on
amendment and supplement of some articles of the press
law has acknowledged and included a new medium, namely
online paper [publications] on the Internet. The
supplement relating to this type of media is highly
appropriate for the time and the future development of
the media. The specific stipulations relating to accurate
coverage of domestic and international news in the
interests of the country and its people while maintaining
the purity and primacy of the Vietnamese language and
other ethnic minority languages, essentially serve to
clarify the rights and obligations of the media agencies.
The
law also clarifies the responsibilities and tasks of the
management agencies of the press. Besides the tasks
defined in the 1990 press law, the amended law adds the
following: directing the press agencies to carry out its
tasks, orientations and plans of activities, organizing
press machinery, building media personnel, monitoring
activities of press agencies and facilitate their
activities. The new law defines the rights of the
journalists in discovering, receiving and delivering
information, in receiving adequate training to improve
their professional skills and in being protected by law
in pursuit of their professional activities. It also
points to their obligations in defending the lines and
policies of the party and the laws of the Vietnamese
state, discovering and emphasizing the positive and
helping the fight against ill-intended thinking and wrong
doings. The journalists are also obliged to be
self-trained and self-disciplined and to make corrections
and apologies for any incorrect or inaccurate reporting.
The
amendments and supplements to the press law concerning
state management over the press is expressed through the
supplement of new provisions. They define more clearly
the state’s responsibilities for issuing new
policies giving financial support to the press, and the
line agencies to generate the necessary financial
resources for press activities. The press agencies are
allowed to conduct business which is suitable to their
function and tasks to generate resources for
re-investment in their own activities. They are also
given privileges in terms of tax waivers, and fees for
the publication and distribution of media products. The
new law revises some provisions in the granting of permit
for press activities and the setting up of representative
offices and press agency bureaus.
The
amendments and supplements of the press law underline the
fact that the Vietnamese state and society attach great
importance to the role, position, and impact of the
press. At the same time, they enhance the tasks and
obligations of journalists concerning their professional
behaviours and further the development of the press in
Vietnam.
To
facilitate press activities as defined by law, and to
make the law enter into life, the Vietnamese government
is preparing to issue a decree guiding the implementation
of the newly amended press law. (Voice of Vietnam, Hanoi,
22 September 1999)
VII.
Argentina: Decree introduces more changes to
broadcasting act.
A national executive decree amending Broadcasting
Act 22.285 goes into effect today. The decree, issued for
reasons of necessity and urgency, authorises, among other
things, the establishment of multimedia groups, a maximum
of 14 minutes of advertising per hour for radio stations
and of 12 minutes for television.
The
purpose of the new decree, which takes effect today, is
to “adapt” current regulations, issued by the
last de facto government, “to the sweeping
transformations taking place in the economic, social and
technological fields.”
According
to the new regulations, an individual or corporation will
be able to obtain up to 24 radio or television
broadcasting licences throughout the country and may
operate one radio station, one television channel and one
complementary radio service in a single location.
The
only restriction that Decree 1005/99 imposes on the
possibility of forming a media “pool” is that
if the licensee is operating a television channel and a
radio station in one location, there must be at least one
other private television and radio operator. In this way,
the norm decreed by the executive branch, headed by
President Carlos Menem, seeks to remove previous
restrictions on cross-media ownership, but attempts to
prevent a single company or individual from monopolising
the dissemination of information in one district.
With
regard to advertising, the decree modifying the
Broadcasting Act stipulates that radio stations will be
able to broadcast a maximum of 14 minutes per hour, while
in the case of television channels, that segment cannot
exceed 12 minutes. If a station is broadcasting around
the clock, the licensee will be allowed to condense all
advertising into six-hour blocs, while if a service runs
for 20 hours, the advertising segments may be
concentrated in four-hour blocs.
This
decree, which modifies Article 71, stipulates that if the
service broadcasts for 12 hours, “the airing of
advertising can be accumulated in three-hour blocs,”
while in the case of six, eight, or 10-hour broadcasts,
advertising can be spread over two-hour blocs.
Among
the requirements established by the new decree for
obtaining broadcast operating licences, whether for radio
or television, is that the applicant cannot have “a
legal partnership or any other obligations to foreign
media or broadcasting company.”
Article
45 of the new policy also excludes from the range of
possible licensees, judges, legislators, public officials
and military and security personnel on active duty.
Decree
1005/99 stipulates that broadcasting services “must
contribute to the cultural enrichment of the
population” and seek to be “morally uplifting
to the people.” It also establishes that they should
instil respect for “freedom, social solidarity,
personal dignity, human rights and the institutions of
the Republic,” as well as promote the
“strengthening of democracy and the preservation of
Christian ethics.”
The
policy indicates that there are currently 1,391 FM
registered radio stations, 117 AM stations and
“approximately 1,400 licensed operators of
complementary broadcasting services distributed
throughout the country.”
The
decree also deems it “appropriate to eliminate the
concept of non-transferability of licences” and,
therefore, stipulates that transferring the title to a
licence must be subject to approval by the National
Executive or the Federal Committee for Broadcasting
(Comfer) within 180 days. (Telam news agency,
Buenos Aires, 28 September 1999)
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