CULT

CULT
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Committee on Culture and Education (CULT):

Working with the watchdogs: responding to recent concerns about media regulation in the United Kingdom and Hungary, how should European decision-makers in tandem with the ‘fourth estate’ achieve free and pluralistic media that sustain European democracy?

Committee Article

New media laws have recently been passed in several Member States, such as Hungary, which might represent a threat to the right to freedom of expression and create a system of media content regulation with a powerful Media Authority at its heart. With this, press freedom is once again put on the agenda of the EU and needs urgent addressing. At the same time, the EU is also working on European news sources targeted specifically to sustain European democracy and bringing the people of Europe closer together. There are multiple European news sources and media in place, such as Euractiv, Euronews and even EUparlTV which webcasts the European Parliament, but the ambitions of the EU go much further than that. In 1989, the EU set in place a directive that asked TV channels of Member States to ensure some of the time is spent on European matters. The question is how much of this has become reality, considering how amendments to the directive indicate this not being the case, whilst European broadcasters spend over 60 per cent of their broadcasting time on European affairs. At the same time, we can investigate the weight given to news stories from other European countries in national media, which is very low. Does the media make a purely commercial choice in this aspect and can we change that?

Links:

  • The “Television Without Frontiers” Directive (TVWF Directive) is the cornerstone of the European Union’s audio-visual policy. It rests on two basic principles: the free movement of European television programmes within the internal market and the requirement for TV channels to reserve, whenever possible, more than half of their transmission time for European works: http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/audiovisual_and_media/l24101_en.htm
  • Common European rules for media such as the protection of minors in the “Audiovisual Media Services Directive”: http://ec.europa.eu/avpolicy/reg/tvwf/index_en.htm
  • More about the media regulations in Hungary by the Center for Media and Communication Studies: https://cmcs.ceu.hu/resources-new-media-laws-in-hungary-0

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