[Media Caucus] Media paragraph in CS benchmarks

[Steve Buckley]

Dear all

Sorry to have missed the last two days in Geneva. Some great outputs from 
civil society, but...

Please could someone explain how the proposal that state controlled media 
should be privatised, found its way into a civil society statement of 
"non-negotiables". This has never been a position of the media caucus.

The form of words also weakens the media caucus commitment to media 
pluralism. The form of words agreed at Prepcom 3 was "pluralism and 
diversity of media ownership should be guaranteed through appropriate laws 
to hinder the abuse of media ownership concentration". The new texts only 
suggest "efforts... must be encouraged to avoid excessive media concentration"

Who submitted this proposal and with what authority? It sounds like a 
statement from the private sector. Was it sent to the media caucus list for 
comments, or to the civil society content and themes list?

See below.

Steve


9.2     Media
While allowing for government information services to communicate their 
message, state-controlled media at the national level should be transformed 
into editorially independent public service media organisations and/or 
privatised. Efforts which encourage pluralism and diversity of media 
ownership must be encouraged to avoid excessive media concentration

Full text (Civil society benchmarks) www.geneva2003.org




------------------------------------------------------------
            steve at commedia.org.uk
------------------------------------------------------------
         http://www.commedia.org.uk
------------------------------------------------------------