ZAGREB, Sept 17 (Hina) - Preparations for amendments to the Law on Croatian Radio-Television (HRT), in keeping with conclusions set by the government, are being worked on at the Ministry of Culture. This information was confirmed from
Minister Vujic's cabinet on Tuesday.
ZAGREB, Sept 17 (Hina) - Preparations for amendments to the Law on
Croatian Radio-Television (HRT), in keeping with conclusions set
by the government, are being worked on at the Ministry of Culture.
This information was confirmed from Minister Vujic's cabinet on
Tuesday. #L#
As part of the preparations of the bill, last week Vujic sent a memo
to the heads of HRT in which he requested for their evaluation of the
implementation of the current Law on HRT, as well as their proposals
and suggestions on what should be changed in the Law.
The president of the HRT Council, academician Vlatko Silobrcic,
convened an extraordinary session of the HRT Council for Thursday,
with an agenda that includes an opinion on the Culture Ministry's
request. The same topic will be put on the agenda of the next meeting
of the HRT Steering Council, which is scheduled for next Wednesday,
HRT spokesman Kresimir Macan said.
In the memo, of which Hina received a copy of on Tuesday from the
Culture Minister's Cabinet, it is noted that more than a year has
gone by in the application and implementation of the Law on HRT. "We
consider it necessary to ascertain to which extent the HRT has been
transformed into a public television/radio," the memo said.
Discussions about the implementation of the pending law on the
media resulted in a lot of criticism regarding HRT's institutional
and programme activity, the memo said.
The discussions focused on: undefined relations and authorities
between HRT bodies, disharmony between programme and business
functions, the decline in professionalism, particularly in news
programmes, partiality in political comments instead of the need
for objective reporting, the privatisation of certain programme
segments, disregard of professional criteria upon selection of
editors, the lack of a civilisationally confirmed evaluation of
certain events, the transformation of certain bodies into the
mouthpieces of political options, the commercialisation of certain
parts of the programme outside the legally stipulated limits, etc.
The memo notes some concrete doubts which will be discussed
relating to proposals to improve legal solutions.
These include the make-up and authorities of the HRT Council and
Steering Council, their mutual relations, as well as their
relations towards the director of this public institution, the
editor-in-chief, and editorial board in general.
Also to be debated is the authority of the directors of Croatian
Radio (HR) and Croatian Television (HTV), their relations to the
editor-in-chief and the editorial board.
As the current law foresees the division of HRT into two public
institutions, it is necessary also to consider and to discuss the
possibility of rationalising the activities of HR and HTV, as well
as the possibility of jointly organising certain functions and
tasks and, when needed, to restructure certain sections of the
existing HTV.
Culture Minister Vujic sent his memo to the president of the HRT
Council and Steering Council, the director and his assistants, and
the editors-in-chief of HTV and HR.
(hina) sp/ha sb