23/05/2013 Culture, Science, Education and Media
London, 23.05.2013 - The question of how far media should regulate themselves or be regulated by the state was debated this week by participants at a London conference on the role of national parliaments in media regulation in Europe.
The conference, bringing together parliamentarians, experts and NGO representatives, was organised by PACE's Committee on Culture, Science, Education and the Media with financial support from the Open Society Foundation Media Programme, and hosted by the House of Commons.
British Culture Minister Ed Vaizey said the United Kingdom was moving towards a system of stronger independent self-regulation in the wake of the Leveson Report prompted by the UK's phone-hacking scandal. Earlier, Commons Speaker John Bercow said finding a balance between media freedom and protection of the public interest was an age-old question, adding: "Media freedom and media license are not the same."
Rapporteur Gvozden Flego (Croatia, SOC) stressed the vital importance of protecting freedom of the press, describing it as "an index of human freedom". Sir Roger Gale (United Kingdom, EDG), a former journalist, said dwindling circulations and the advent of 24-hour instant news was putting huge pressures on modern media, driving down standards.
Agnes Callamard from Article 19 suggested governments could not be impartial enforcers of media standards because they themselves were so often the subject of media attention, listing the key elements that any effective self-regulation system should have. Rachel Craufurd Smith of Edinburgh University suggested the Council of Europe could look at why press self-regulation works in some countries and not in others.
Other participants included the heads of parliamentary committees dealing with media freedom from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Hungary, Republic of Moldova, Romania and Serbia.
Other themes tackled at the conference were violence in audivisual media and its consequences on children and society, the impact of new information and communication technologies on democracy, and media responsibilities and ethics in a changing environment.