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The Public Information Ethics Association sent the petition to the President of the Republic of Lithuania, the Prime Minister, the Minister of Culture, the members of the Seimas Committee on Culture, the members of the Seimas Human Rights Committee and the Media Council.
Here is the text of the appeal.
This Wednesday, the Culture Committee of the Seimas debated the issues of the transposition of the Audiovisual Media Services Directive into national legislation. During the meeting, it was clear that the Commission’s draft resolution, without the knowledge of the majority of the people invited to the meeting, included modifications to the Public Information Law presented by the LRT. The public broadcaster asks Seimas that possible violations of the LRT ethics in the future can no longer be evaluated by the Public Information Ethics Commission (hereinafter, the Commission).
The Public Information Ethics Association (hereinafter the Association), which unites the majority of Lithuanian media organizations, notes that the amendments were known to a very small circle of people, they were not published in the Committee’s agenda and, therefore, there was no opportunity to hear and express an opinion. Such proposals were not even mentioned in the Human Rights Committee, which considered amendments to the law as an additional committee. According to the association, the practice of providing a substantial amendment to a law in secret, without public debate and hiding from the media, points to a particularly dangerous phenomenon that powerful media can ignore the normal rules of a democratic society. needs.
The LRT administration motivates its request by the fact that after the entry into force of the new wording of the LRT Law, the Comptroller of Ethics will work in this institution after the establishment of a new position, who will supervise compliance with the established in the Code. In addition, according to the current direction of LRT, the delegated members to the Public Information Ethics Commission belong to commercial media organizations, whose members supposedly compete with LRT, so there could be competitive decisions unfavorable to LRT, and there are no LRT representatives on the Commission. The position of the LRT was also supported by the president of the Culture Commission V. Juozapaitis, pointing out that if the institution’s internal auditor appeared, the Commission’s supervision would be excessive.
The association strongly disagrees with this position. The fact that, according to the new wording of the LRT, the public broadcaster has an internal ombudsman on ethics, should be welcomed, but such an official, supported by the LRT budget, could have been even without modifications to the law. It is a matter of internal order of the media.
The Association draws attention to the fact that the amendments seek to establish a public institution maintained by the taxpayers of the Republic of Lithuania in terms of other media, and not in terms of content, genres or opinions, but in relation to viewers and / or other users of the information.
The main function of the Public Information Ethics Commission, established by the Public Information Law, is to investigate people’s complaints about possible violations of the Code of Ethics.
It should be noted that the Public Information Ethics Association, which has been in operation since 2015, has never been mentioned about the possibility or desire to see an LRT representative in the Commission. The public broadcaster also did not present such proposals to the legislator.
At present, the Law on Public Information establishes a uniform system of responsibility for all media and journalists by law, by publicly disclosing information that violates ethics in the same media that broadcast it. The LRT Ethics Comptroller is only required to monitor compliance with the Code, but does not establish a mechanism on how and what liability would be applied for violations. As a result, there would be no equivalent oversight mechanism for the LRT Ethics Ombudsman instead of the Public Information Ethics Commission.
It should also be noted that in the Commission decisions on infractions and liability are made by a collegiate body, which is currently made up of 8 experts from different media fields, and the Ombudsman for Ethics would be the sole decision-maker, whose work would be the responsibility of the LRT itself.
The members of the Media Council were also unaware of this reform of the law, although representatives of the LRT participate in this institution.
In the opinion of the Association, the LRT’s attempts to link the activities of the Public Information Ethics Commission as an autonomous and independent institution with the interpretation of the Constitutional Court that neither by its nature nor by the functions provided in the Law Public Information may interfere with the activity of the media. The Public Information Ethics Commission only evaluates publications that have already appeared in the public space after receiving complaints from natural or legal persons of the Republic of Lithuania.
Ethical standards for journalists are universal and must apply to all those who engage in this activity without exception. It would be strange if the ethics were not tied to your standards but to the physical workplace.
The self-regulatory systems of the media in European democracies are developed and improved in accordance with good practices and guidelines provided by UNESCO, the Council of Europe and the OSCE Press Freedom Office. The desire expressed by the LRT administration to the Seimas Culture Committee to avoid oversight of public ethics standards is a dangerous trend, which can not only damage the reputation of a public broadcaster and the transparency of accountability. . This is a clear attempt to create exceptional privileged conditions to replace public accountability with closedness and lack of transparency by allowing the public to be entrusted with the creation of more than € 50 million worth of content.
The Public Information Ethics Association urges the Seimas, the president and other organizations that make up the LRT Council of Public Broadcasting to responsibly observe the self-regulatory system of the media in the country and not create opportunities for public broadcasting ignore ethical standards and public oversight.
The Association invites members of the Seimas to reject the proposed amendment as an unjustified and destructive self-regulatory system. At least some amendments to the OS are currently being considered, so this topic could be considered in isolation from the others, as it is a fundamental change that affects the entire media ecosystem.
Read more about the proposed amendments to the law, according to which the activities of the LRT could not be evaluated by the Public Information Ethics Commission, read here.
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