BELGRADE, 28.12.2019. – Four years of implementations of competitions for co-financing media content of public interest has revealed a number of shortcomings, majority of which are a result of the lack of regulation and legal loopholes that allow misuse. If the model introduced in 2014 is to meet its purpose, experts say, it is necessary to resolve these shortcomings as soon as possible.
In May 2018 a Coordination Body was established by the Government of Serbia with an aim to solve current problems in the media sphere in consultations with the representatives of media and journalists associations, gathered in the so-called Team for Dialogue. Implementation of the competitions was one of the key issues tabled to the Coordination Body. Responding to this, it was announced that the work on amending the Rulebook of Co-financing of Projects for Achieving of Public Interest in the Area of Public Information would start in October 2018. It didn’t happen.
The government was given a deadline – December 31st 2018 – to send written answers to the demands of the Team for Dialogue. Unless this happens, five journalist associations announced, they would suspend the dialogue with the Coordination Body[1].
“We point out that the negotiation process between Team for Dialogue and the Government’s Coordination Body is in a deep crisis and that the specified demands of the media and journalistic associations, ought to be met by the end of this year, remain unanswered,” is stated in the press release issued by the associations.
At the moment of closing this article these answers have not yet been sent.
In addition to this process, in September 2018, the Independent Journalists Association of Serbia (IJAS) sent six recommendations[2] that could improve the system of project co-financing of the media content of public interest to the Government of Serbia, the Ministry of Culture and Information and the Working Group tasked with the development of a new Media Strategy.
According to IJAS these recommendations are necessary starting points that can lead the system of competitive co-financing of media content in the right direction – informing citizens about topics of public interest.
Recommendations deal with several key problems related to the way citizens’ money is being spent – from identifying what the general public interest is, problems with the commissions allocating funds, prevention of abuse and making the whole process more transparent, to the position of minority and vulnerable groups in it.
Is anybody concerned with the citizen’s interests?
In 2017 three local municipalities in Serbia analyzed what citizens and other stakeholders are interested in and what topics they want to read about, watch or listen to in their local media.
This was done through a joint project with the Independent Association of Journalists of Serbia[3] which introduced a model that facilitates citizens’ participation in nominating and defining topics of public interest to be covered from the municipal budget through competition. Cities and municipalities of Sabac, Svilajnac and Paracin were joined by the City of Pirot in 2018[4].
For example citizens of Svilajnac were interested in topics such as dual education in schools, youth entrepreneurship in agriculture, city business initiatives, improvement of the care of young couples and birth rate, support to persons with disabilities, promotion of volunteer enthusiasm, programs for improving tourism industry, encouraging sports, supporting cultural creativity, popularizing youth employment programs, etc.
The largest number of local municipalities still does not have a practice of analyzing the specific needs of their citizens prior to the announcement of the competitions for co-financing of media content of public interest.
The analysis of current practice shows that the citizens’ money is being distributed without their participation: they are mostly excluded from defining the problems and are not consulted regarding what they want to get from the media financed through the local budget.
“Those who receive money and those who allocate money are in some kind of communication. People from the local administration would hold informative meetings where they would bring the final text of the competition and discuss only technical details with the media representatives and some citizen associations,” Dragan Djordjevic from the Human Rights Committee of Nis says.
Although the Law on Public Information and Media stipulates that criteria for each competition can be further defined, and the Rulebook of Co-financing of Projects for Achieving of Public Interest in the Area of Public Information clearly states that the public competitions should contain a defined local public interest that will be co-financed, most local governments use only general provisions of the Law or the Rulebook.
Experts believe that the process of identifying the public interest should not only involve communication with citizens, but also a very serious research at the local level about the reality of problems and needs of citizens, and that only by combining serious research and communication with citizens public interest can be defined.
“If the public interest is not identified, the question of purpose of the local government decisions is raised, as well as to whose interest they serve. Decisions are made on the basis of speculation, on political ideas and, unfortunately, on political party views on how a society should function without any consultative process with citizens,” says Mladen Jovanovic from the National Coalition for Decentralization from Nis. Jovanovic believes that funding of media content of public interest should be completely different.
“Let’s say that one year, one local community sets as its priority to strengthen, for example, fight against violence in schools. This is a classic local priority that needs to be addressed at the local level. The moment it comes out as a priority, the idea would be to have media projects that would follow this topic, and to have competitions that will ask of media to come up with projects that will, in the best way, influence the decrease of violence in schools,” explains Jovanovic.
He believes that the recommendation to impose obligations on public authorities to conduct periodic analysis of media needs is very important because it could show whether a media product is really in line with what the public interest.
The problem of “media experts” in competition commissions
Who and by which criteria someone is a “media expert” competent of evaluating media projects that will receive citizens’ money remains unclear. This issue, according to experts, significantly influences the quality of co-financing system.
“Currently, it resembles a circus. We should start with what journalists’ associations have already proposed – introduction of the evaluation point system and biography templates candidates who apply should use,” says Dragan Djordjevic.
In his opinion, one of the ways to improve the selection of experts who participate in competition commissions is to design a specific type of form for CVs, or biographies. In this way, it would be easier to check whether a person has necessary knowledge in production of certain media content and what are his/her competencies.
In many cases, commission members found themselves in a direct conflict of interest by evaluating projects of the media in which they had previously worked or of private production companies they owned.
A research about members of competition commissions published by Cenzolovka at the end of 2017 pointed out the phenomenon related to the Association of Electronic Media of Vojvodina (AEMV)[5].
Data showed that by the end of November 2017 AEMV representatives were members in commissions for competitions for co-financing media content in 21 out of 42 local municipalities. Of these, 13 commissions with AEMV representatives allocated 39.1 million dinars to productions owned by members of AEMV and Sremska TV in which some of them worked.
In order to reduce abuses, IJAS recommendation emphasizes that due to these problems it is necessary to define terms “media expert” and “conflict of interest” in the context of commission members.
How much money should be allocated for the competitions and where are the minority groups?
Previous experiences have pointed to another problem that needs to be addressed in the future: the maximum and minimum amount of money to be allocated through the competition. This decision is made in the – pre-competitive phase.
“On the case of City of Niš, nobody can cite the criteria local government used to allocate 24 million dinars for media projects in one year, and 60 million dinars in another. We do not have any indicator for this decision of local government, we haven’t received any explanation whatsoever about decision to spend more money in one year and less in another. All this remains on the level of good will of people who lead the City or some speculation about why this is being done,” says Dragan Djordjevic.
An IJAS recommendation states that it is necessary to conduct economic analysis that would provide indicators for determining the minimum and the maximum amounts of funds to be awarded through public competitions. This would make evaluations of the expenses media has in the production of content of public interest more realistic.
Budget planning and spending is connected to the need to separate general media competitions from those related to production of media content intended for national minorities – informing people with disabilities and other vulnerable groups through “affirmative action”, says one of the recommendations by IJAS.
“In real life there is very little content that is adequately accessible to people with disabilities. I am not talking about themes that concern them – people with disabilities do not have to be just a subject of media content, they should equally be its part” says Djordjevic.
He points out as a good example the way the Ministry of Culture and Information announces its competitions, but also notes that there are often problems with the lack of funds. For example, in Municipality of Medvedja, where a very small amount of the money is allocated to the media in general, it is impossible to expect any special allocations.
Vague responsibility for the implementation of the competitions
Mechanisms for controlling the way media competitions are implemented are still insufficiently defined, while in practice there are no clear consequences for those who do not comply with the law. Therefore, one of the recommendations by IJAS states that it is necessary to further develop cooperation among the competent authorities, and extend the competences of the Administrative Inspection.
Nemanja Nenadic, program director of Transparency Serbia, believes that this is a starting point, but is necessary to define this recommendation more precisely, so it can be applied in practice..
Nenadic believes that “it would be better if the Ministry of Culture would monitor the observance of the rules that the Ministry itself had proposed, for which they would need additional funds” instead of addressing the Administrative Inspection.
In addition, he says that it is necessary to further specify the legal obligations regarding media competitions.
“For example, there is currently no obligation for local municipalities to even announce a competition for production of programs of public interest, nor to allocate a certain part of the budget for that purpose. If they announce the competition, they can choose whatever topics of public interest they want, and others can be completely neglected, “says Nenadic.
He also explains that there is no effective legal remedy for annulment of the competitions that had been set up in a discriminatory manner or if projects were arbitrarily assessed.
“Everything should be changed to make this process more accountable and control would be more meaningful and effective, whoever does it.”
Transparency remains a challenge
System of co-financing media projects is designed to go through several phases – the pre-competitive phase, when its necessary to determine what are the topics of public interest, the competition phase that represents the implementation of the competition itself, and finally the post-competition phase in which projects are evaluated through the delivery of narrative and financial reports.
The practice so far has shown lack of transparency in each of these phases, so IJAS proposes to advance this through conducting public debates, publication of documentation such as reports, as well as the introduction of compulsory analysis of whether the stated objectives were achieved through competition.
Nemanja Nenadic says that the procedure is much more transparent than it was before the introduction of the competition rules, but that certain stages need to be made even more open.
“The problem is, as IJAS well noted, lack of transparency in “pre-competitive” phase, when it is determined how much money will be allocated and what topics of public interest are priority for financing,” Nenadic says.
In his view, with regards to decision-making itself, there is not enough transparency even when the decisions of the commissions are published.
“Since the projects are not evaluated in a comparable manner, the published explanations do not in fact provide the public with an insight into the reasons why the commission considered one project better than the other. Transparency is low here, but not because someone is hiding the document, but because the reasons for deciding are not presented in the document in an adequate way,” explains Nenadic.
In the opinion of experts the post-competitions phase may be least transparent; there is almost no local authority that publishes financial and narrative reports of projects that had received citizens’ money.
For example, the City of Belgrade publishes certain analysis and results of the conducted competitions on the City website[6] but they contain poor narrative descriptions of projects which don’t show concrete results or the way public money was spent.
Unclear chain of responsibility and lack of transparency in implementation of competition contributes to ambiguity of the mechanisms for evaluating projects that receive citizens’ money
“We need to have an evaluation that determines irregularities and envisages a consequence: for example, if irregularities are found, maybe that media should not have the right to compete next year, or if a serious violation is in question, the right to apply may be suspended for a longer period,” says Mladen Jovanovic.
In his opinion, it is necessary to introduce a mandatory financial audit by independent auditors.
“We have challenges here also – how to get someone to audit a project when, for example, Municipality of Medvedja is giving only 50 thousand dinars. But there can be levels, we can say projects above million dinars are subject to a mandatory audit, so you can predict 3% for that purpose,” says Jovanovic.
In his opinion, audits are the only way to prevent unintentional spending of public money, but one must be careful not to misuse such types of evaluation.
“It turned out that any additional regulation of state and media relations has contributed to the fact that independent media are practically the ones affected and their working space is narrowed. On the other hand, regime media get bigger space and a better position on the market, because the rules simply do not apply to them,” explains Jovanovic.
[1] http://nuns.rs/info/statements/40230/medijska-koalicija-tekst-medijske-strategije-predat-vladi-situacija-u-medijima-nikada-gora.html
[2] http://www.nuns.rs/info/activities/38672/predlozi-nuns-a-za-unapredjenje-sistema-projektnog-sufinansiranja-medija-.html
[3] http://www.nuns.rs/info/activities/33173/gradjani-da-se-pitaju-o-javnom-interesu-u-informisanju.html
[4] http://www.plusonline.rs/odrzana-debata-o-utvrdivanju-tema-od-javnog-interesa-za-grad-pirot/
[5] https://www.cenzolovka.rs/drzava-i-mediji/medijske-komisije-u-vojvodini-udruzeni-medijski-poduhvat/
[6] http://www.beograd.rs/lat/gradska-vlast/2052-sekretarijat-za-informisanje_2/
This article has been produced as a part of the project Western Balkan’s Regional Platform for advocating media freedom and journalists’ safety with the financial assistance of the European Union. The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of the Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia and its authors, and can in no circumstances be regarded as reflecting the position of the European Union.