International Journal of Communications Law & Policy

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	Issue 2 (Winter 1998-99)

NORMATIVE MODELS OF MEDIA AND JOURNALISM AND BROADCASTING REGULATION IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE

By Karol Jakubowicz

Download the Paper in PDF Format: IJCLP Web-Doc 12-2-1999

Abstract

Media regulatory regimes differ from country to country, depending on the nature of media policy goals and public definitions of the media.

In totalitarian/authoritarian societies, media regulation usually serve to subordinate the media to the interests of the ruling minority. In democratic societies, regulation with a light touch is usually confined to protection against abuse of media freedom (protection against defamation, protection of privacy, regulation of court coverage, national security and order, obscenity and insult to public morals, blasphemy and racism), with most other things left to market mechanisms. Additional regulation may be introduced to guarantee media freedom (access to information). There may also be interventionist regulation serving to promote the public interest, defined, as the case may be, as enhancement of media pluralism, prevention of undue concentration, facilitation of access to the media, etc.

Public definitions of the media which, of course, encompass many dimensions (relations of media to state and society, social and cultural values, organizational and technological features, conditions of distribution, reception and use, social relationship of sender and receiver) have direct implications for, among other things, their legal regulation. There is, for example, a clear difference in this regard between „public" and „private" communication. Also such aspects as the centrality or marginality of a medium vis-a-vis politics powerfully affect the nature and scope of regulation.

One case in point is Article 10 (1) of the European Convention on Human Rights which proclaims freedom of expression, but then says „This article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises" (emphasis added). When the Convention was being adopted in 1950, the cinema was probably seen (in the light of experience in Nazi Germany and in the Soviet bloc) as central to politics. Today, film is largely perceived as a non-political medium, yet this legacy of the past (which is really dead-letter law) has remained in the Convention.

Public definitions of the media are brought into sharp relief in „press theories" and in normative media theory. These normative issues are the object of intense interest in Central and Eastern European countries. Media regulation has been undergoing profound change in those countries as public definitions of the media have changed profoundly in consequence of systemic change, and at the same time as the tensions between press theory on the one hand, and press practices and media regulation on the other hand, have intensified.

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