16 (Continued from Cover) that EMFA is a response to Hungary and Poland implementing public policies and measures that restricted press freedom in those countries. “The EMFA is an instrument that tries to support media freedom and prevent member states from restricting media freedom,” Kivikallio said. “In most [E.U.] member states, such as Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, etc., EMFA will have a limited impact. It remains to be seen whether EMFA will be effective in supporting media freedom in Hungary.” Alexandra Geese, Germany’s deputy in the E.U. Parliament, did not reply to VideoAge’s e-mail requests for clarifications, while her Italian colleague, E.U. Deputy Ignazio R. Marino, wrote back explaining: “the intention of the European Commission’s proposal is two-fold. Firstly, it aims to help state-owned public media access financial support, considering the fierce competition between online platforms and privately owned media. On the other hand,” he said, “it tries to limit governments’ grasp on the editorial line of public media to avoid undue interference in the independence of journalists and news.” Marino, who’s also a former mayor of Rome, added: “In other words, the E.U. Media Freedom Act does not prevent states and governments from financing media organizations such as [Italy’s] RAI and [the U.K.’s] BBC. It merely asks these governments to respect specific rules laid down in Article 5 of the [EMFA] Regulation.” One official at the Strasbourg, France-based European Audiovisual Observatory suggested reaching out to Mark D. Cole, a professor of Media and Telecommunication Law at the University of Luxembourg and director for Academic Affairs at the Institute of European Media Law (EMR) in Saarbrücken, Germany, who co-wrote the act with Christina Etteldorf, Senior Research Scientist at the EMR. Etteldorf sent back a detailed explanation, pointing out that “public service media and ‘state-owned’ media are something entirely different: something that the EMFA is specifically seeking to prevent.” She also pointed out that public service media “may no longer be financed by member states.” VideoAge’s position was that the public service media financed by the state (via taxes or license fees), or by a government (through its finance budget) seem different, but in effect are the same in the sense that, directly or indirectly, governments control public service media ownerships and set their income. And indeed, E.U. Deputy Marino aknowledged that “governments can directly finance state-owned media as the regulation is silent regarding this specific aspect. Still, it foresees in Article 6 the obligation to disclose information through the development of national media ownership databases. Article 6 is also very specific on the information to be disclosed, such as names (or legal names) of direct/indirect owners and their shares and the total amount of public funds received from public authorities and entities. Recital 31 of the regulation helps the national legislators to define the nature of these funds and how to avoid possible interference: ‘Such funding should be preferably decided and appropriated on a multi-year basis, in line with the public service remit of public service media providers, to avoid the risk of undue influence from yearly budget negotiation.’” Act co-author Christina Etteldorf also reiterated that “what the EMFA is supposed to achieve, and only that, is to guarantee the independence of public service media, i.e. their freedom from political influence regarding editorial content and decisions. Financing can indeed be an aspect of this.” She added that “[It] does not mean that financing public service media would be forbidden but rather, on the opposite, the conditions for it must be transparent. It must ensure that public service media can fulfill their public remit and must not lead to states having influence on editorial issues. Financing from the state budget is therefore still possible, but rules must be created to ensure that this does not lead to such influence being exerted. Take Germany as an example: here we have a system in which the broadcasting licence fee is set by law (as regards the obligation of the citizens to pay and the amount they have to pay), but is not paid out of taxes and thus out of the state budget, but is instead collected separately by an independent institution with sovereign authority. It is also set in an independent procedure, which would go too far to explain here. Such a constellation would be just as conceivable under the EMFA as financing from state budget with corresponding protective mechanisms for independence.” In the U.S., public service media outlets resolved the economic issue by getting finances via public contributions (donations, grants, fundraising, merchandising, billboard advertising). In the U.S., public broadcasting comprises the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), Public Television, and National Public Radio (NPR). Public Television is comprised of 350 local TV stations nationwide grouped under Public Broadcast Service (PBS), which was established in 1969, while NPR comprises 1,000 local radio stations. Created in 1970, NPR functions as a national syndicator and it is funded by radio stations’ membership fees. CPB is a publicly funded non-profit corporation created in 1967 to financially support public broadcasting. Private, tax-deductible donations also finance individual local stations. The federal government provides CPB’s $535 million a year budget, of which 95 percent goes to local stations. President Donald Trump wants to defund CPB as a punishment for its liberal bias. Designated for the hatchet job is the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), co-headed by tech billionaire Elon Musk. However, some conservative Republicans are having second thoughts, as indicated by Howard Husock, a conservative former CPB board member who noted in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that defunding CPB will put public broadcasting out of Congressional (now controlled by Republicans) supervision. Liberal financial groups, institutions, and individuals could easily compensate for the lack of government funding, and actually increase public broadcasting’s income. In VideoAge’s view, that the EMFA wants to ensure that “the editorial independence of public service media providers is safeguarded” is commendable, but unfortunately declaring that “funding procedures for public service media providers are based on transparent and objective criteria laid down in advance,” will have little, if any, effect on a government determined to control them. Finally, it has been reported that the legal basis of this regulation raises questions about the division of powers between the E.U. and the member states. The authors themselves outlined the disagreements currently existing on this point within Europe and went on to explain that Hungary has even raised a legal action before the Court of Justice of the European Union, aiming at the annulment of the EMFA. (Dom Serafini) Tarmo Kivikallio of Finland’s YLE Ignazio R. Marino, deputy in the E.U. Parliament and a former mayor of Rome, Italy VIDEOAGE February 2025 E.U. Media
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