There has been much debate about media legislation, media pluralism and diversity in Croatia during the past twenty years that reflects the transformation of media and media policies. As a consequence, media laws have been changed and amended several times in this period while the new amendments are also in preparation (see chapter 2.4 and 4.2.6). The current government announced within their previous mandate that a new media strategy will be created and that the new media laws will be changed accordingly, but although selected changes have occurred in the legislation field, the critique from professional associations continues. The announced National Plan for the Development of Culture and Media should tackle these issues, and the overall report on the state of the media sector has been produced
In the last couple of years, the number of media organisations and their ownership structure stabilised. According to the Registry data available on the website of the Agency for Electronic Media (AEM), in 2022 there were 31 TV channels (eleven with national concessions, four of them publicly owned), 154 radio stations, twenty-one media-on-demand service providers, 211 satellite/Internet audio-visual providers and 512 non-profit audio-visual and/or radio programme providers. The high increase of electronic publications can be attributed to the implementation of the registration of the electronic publications and its necessity for further funding provisions. According to the web data of the Croatian Post and Electronic Communications Agency (HAKOM), there were 91 providers of access to Internet services in fixed network and 14 in mobile network operating in Croatia in 2022.
Diversity and plurality of the media are particularly promoted by the Fund for the Promotion of Pluralism and Diversity of Electronic Media, established by the Law of Electronic Media provisions that included the Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMS Directive) solutions. The fund is administered by the Council for Electronic Media (VEM), and financed by 3% of Croatian Radio Television licence fees. It supports production and broadcasting of public interest programmes in local and regional radio and television channels, which serve local communities and sometimes use local dialects in broadcasting (e.g. in the Istria region). This support goes to the promotion of the production and broadcasting of electronic media content of public interest on local and regional levels, which is important for the right of citizens to public information, the rights of national minorities, promotion of cultural creativity, and development of education, science and the arts. Support from the Fund is used to promote the production and release of audio-visual and radio programmes of public interest of television broadcasters and/or radio broadcasters at local and regional level, of non-profit television, radio broadcasters and non-profit electronic publications (digital news/internet portals), as well as employment of highly qualified professionals of those broadcasters.
Although Croatian legislation includes regulations on quotas and responsibility of broadcasters and media owners with regard to the diversity of contents, systematic monitoring is restricted and therefore it is difficult to assess the extent to which the provisions of different laws are respected. The Council for Electronic Media ensures monitoring in relation to programme obligations through direct and indirect measures. According to latest available report by AEM and VEM, in 2021, it issued 24 measures to TV, radio and electronic publications in the form of warnings, penalties, and revocations of concessions.
Media production in the arts, humanities, cultural history and identity is mostly broadcast on the PBS Croatian Television First and Third Channel and Croatian Radio Third Channel (the latter completely devoted to culture). The HT1 channel has also complemented its news broadcasting by devoting 3-5 minutes to cultural information. While the daily press covers social / political events extensively, the amount of published information on cultural life has been continually diminishing. The number of specialised bi-monthly magazines that write extensively about art and culture has reduced, and reporting on cultural life has shifted mainly to selected cultural portals dedicated to different cultural fields. However, with the cuts to funding in the non-profit media, the cultural media portals are also in a precarious situation. In 2020, in order to tackle the issue of supporting the quality journalistic work in general, the Agency for Electronic Media (AEM) has opened the public call for journalistic works in electronic publications, among which cultural media portals can apply. Regarding cultural journals, according to data from March 2022, the Ministry of Culture and Media supported the publication of 66 programmes of local, regional or national (printed and online) cultural journals with 3 133 000 HRK (415 848 EUR) which is a continuous decrease as in 2019 it amounted to 3 722 000 HRK (496 266 EUR) while in 2016 it was 4 988 000 HRK (approx. 665 066 EUR) (Primorac and Obuljen Koržinek 2017).
In order to tackle the issue of disinformation and fake news, the Agency of Electronic Media together with the Ministry of Culture and Media has prepared a public call during 2022 on the establishment of a system for verifying the accuracy of information as part of the measure “Establishment of the verification of media facts and the system of public publication of data”. The call is developed and funded through the National Plan of Recovery and Resilience with the available funding of 5 972 526 EUR. The study for the preparation of the Call has been made in 2022, and Call will be executed at the beginning of 2023.
The debates in the last few years included discussions on the new Law on Electronic Media that was adopted in 2021, the issue of working conditions of journalists (in print, TV and electronic media), the quality of broadcast content in public and commercial media, and the issue of lowering of financing for non-profit (electronic) media. Especially problematic issue is the rise in SLAPP (Strategic lawsuits against public participation) lawsuits against journalists in the last couple of years: according to data by Croatian Journalists’ Association in April 2021 there were 924 active SLAPP cases (HND, 2021). After pressures from the professional community, the Ministry was prompted to establish a working group on this issue in 2022. This issue is reflected in the results from the data collection of the Media Pluralism Monitor (MPM), which are comparable to the 2020 edition of the MPM. In relation to the assessment of the risks to media pluralism, Croatia scores a medium risk for all the categories: Basic Protection (43 percent), Market Plurality (65 percent), Political Independence (63 percent), and Social Inclusiveness (62 percent) (Bilić et al., 2022). The authors conclude how the main risks to media pluralism in Croatia have been consistent over the years and have not been dealt with by strategic thinking, or new legislation and that such an approach further deteriorates media pluralism. The authors also note that the new Law on Electronic Media (NN 111/21) brought many technical changes, but none targeting detected systemic deficiencies. “Tackling all issues detected by the MPM requires coordinated and sustained communication of the Ministry of Culture and Media with all involved actors (i.e. main regulator(s), journalists’ association and trade union, industry associations, non-profit media, academic and policy experts, the general public, etc.)” Bilić et al. (2022: 24) conclude.
Comments are closed.