The new media law that is currently under discussion, proposed by the Ministry of Culture, only gives away more hints that Slovenia is turning away from democracy and media freedom. Under the guise of “transparency of state advertising”, the law also provides for government approval of advertising campaigns.
The regime’s media-bashing is not yet over with the media “depoliticisation” project. The Ministry of Culture, headed by the far-left Asta Vrečko of the Left party (Levica), in its newly presented media law, also foresees government consent for advertising. It is not hard to see how they will regret passing this law after the change of government.
The fact that the commissioners of state advertising have to obtain the consent of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia to carry out advertising campaigns is stipulated in Article 47 of the amended law (the article on state advertising). According to the newspaper Delo, the above-mentioned proposal applies to all companies in which the state has at least a minimum shareholding, i.e. only one share, or even an ownership stake of less than one per cent.
This leads us to the conclusion that this is anything but equal treatment of the owners by the state, but it would also give the state direct control over the media, as the government would have the possibility to directly influence the distribution of advertising money and thus the funding of the media through the aforementioned consent. Hence, it would also have an influence on the independence of the media.
“You must be misinformed, we are not in North Korea,” the president of the management board of a major company in which the Republic of Slovenia owns a small share told the newspaper Delo when asked how he assessed the draft media law.
It should also be pointed out that the criteria will be decided by the ministry or its “expert committees” and that they have so far not proved to be impartial and objective. Not only in the case of the approval of advertising campaigns, the same will also be the case when it comes to the distribution of public funds. It was the national media outlet Radio-Television Slovenia that recently received a generous financial injection, trying to get additional millions from the government, while the owners of the existing print media had already been warning for quite some time that they would not be able to survive if they were not co-financed by the state – with taxpayers’ money, of course. And the Minister has finally heard the requests of “her” people, as the new legislation is supposed to bring some financial relief.
T. B.
