At Thursday’s meeting of the European Parliament’s Committee on Culture and Education (CULT), Slovenian Member of the European Parliament, Zala Tomašič, highlighted three key areas of concern: the erosion of media freedom in Slovenia, the (non-)objectivity of artificial intelligence, and censorship on social media.
At Thursday’s meeting of the Committee on Culture and Education (CULT), Zala Tomašič, a new MEP of the Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS), highlighted some of the pressing issues she faces in her daily life, both in Slovenia and elsewhere. The politician agrees that freedom and pluralism of the media are two fundamental rights, but she still pointed out some pressing issues related to the topic. She wrote the following on the social network X: “At today’s meeting of the Committee on Culture and Education (CULT), I raised three issues: 1. the state of media freedom in Slovenia, 2. the (non-)objectivity of artificial intelligence, 3. censorship on social networks.”
Golob is abusing the national media outlet, RTV Slovenia
“My question is, what happens when this is not respected in practice?” Tomašič pointed out that several MEPs had already mentioned that there is a big problem with media pluralism in their countries (which also applies to Slovenia). She also drew particular attention to the abuses that the government of Robert Golob had indulged in in the case of Slovenia’s national media outlet, Radio-Television Slovenia (RTVS).
In this specific case, MEP Tomašič wanted to know what the Commission intended to do, especially in view of the fact that the issue has been raised many times before. She went on to highlight the bias of AI responses and asked what was being done to bring about positive change in this area (she specifically mentioned ChatGPT).
What should we do about censorship on social networks?
Finally, she highlighted the worrying issue of censorship on social networks and asked how to tackle it. She pointed to the disappearance of comments, the removal of individual posts, the unavailability of Facebook’s editorial staff to help in cases of concern, etc. “What will the Commission do about freedom of speech and also about citizens on social networks?”
Domen Mezeg
