Angela Arama, co-author of the Broadcasting Code: “It is not the Code that needs changing, but the political class”

In the context of recent weeks’ discussions on the dangers of media ownership concentration in the hands of a limited group of people, we asked for the opinion of Angela Arama, co-author of the Broadcasting Code. According to her, the Code that the parliament voted in 2006 includes a number of provisions that discourage monopoly on the broadcasting market, but they are not complied with. At the same time, some changes to the Code, such as the ones made in 2010 to article 66, according to which an individual or a legal entity can hold five broadcasting licenses (!) instead of two, as it was initially, have “legalized monopoly on the Moldovan broadcasting market.”

Here is the opinion of former MP Angela Arama for Media Azi:
“Unfortunately, since 2009, amendments to the Broadcasting Code were not aimed at improving legislation; on the contrary, they created contradictions and attended to obscure interests. I don’t think that a new Code would solve the problem, because a law can function only if there is mature political will that considers national interests, which is completely absent in Moldova, as the things are looking now.
Pluralism and discouragement of monopoly on Moldova’s broadcasting market have been provided by several articles of the law. Article 7, which is ignored by the sector’ regulator, directly says that “to protect pluralism and political, social and cultural diversity, ownership concentration is limited to the extent that would ensure economic efficiency but would not generate emergence of dominant positions in creation of public opinion.” Also, article 23 stipulates exclusion of the possibility to create conditions for the institution of monopoly and ownership concentration in broadcasting.

In general, the Broadcasting Coordinating Council (BCC) should have developed the strategy of territory coverage with broadcasting services in compliance with the National Plan of radioelectric frequencies and should have acted strictly in compliance with it, but it still hasn’t happened now, nine years after adoption of the Broadcasting Code. This fact deprives the BCC of plenary, perspective vision and makes it manage broadcasting in a chaotic manner, without taking into consideration elementary things, but only considering private interests of corrupted politics.
Beyond that, the modifications made in 2010 to article 66 of the Code, according to which an individual or a legal entity can hold five broadcasting licenses (!) in one administrative-territorial unit, clearly indicate at the lobby for Mr. Plahotniuc, which thus legalized his monopoly over the Moldovan broadcasting market. At the same time, if the parliament and the BCC had at least some honest-mindedness, this provision should have been left in its initial form (which provided for two licenses) and supplemented by clear regulations about market shares, entirely avoiding the situation in which a single owner concentrates (monopolizes) 70% of Moldova’s broadcasting market!
In short, no law, however carefully all sorts of mechanisms it stipulates, can guarantee satisfactory practical regulation of the field if it is applied by a diseased, corrupted, conspicuously mafia-style political environment. It is not the Code that needs changing, but the political class.”

Source of photo: tribuna.md