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SARAJEVO, June 26 (FENA) - Secretary General of the European Alliance of News Agencies (EANA) Alexandru Giboi opened today the second panel within the conference 'Media Freedom and Shaping the Future of Media' organized by the Federal News Agency (FENA), which was dedicated to copyright in the media.
He underlined that media freedom is not just a phrase that is used, but is based on important foundations, and one of them is copyright protection, which enables the media to achieve financial independence, which at the same time leads to increased media freedom.
In this sense, understanding European copyright is very important, since it is a system developed by the European Union through the Directive on the protection of copyright, the aim of which is to protect creativity and entrepreneurship as well as national copyright.
The media-related part of the Copyright Regulation came into force in 2019 and was subsequently extended to include the digital environment and news agencies that were not originally covered by it, in which EANA played a significant role.
"Not immediately and not only because the Directive needs to be included in national legislation, which created problems because it is not mandatory for member countries and therefore each country can apply it in accordance with its specificities, which led to differences in implementation," says Giboi.
He also presented several examples from practice that arose from the entire copyright saga, and they concern the dispute that France and Spain had with Google. They are also indicators that the use of the EU Regulation enables the media to achieve a certain level of understanding with large platforms.
"The law empowers the media to have a better position in negotiations with platforms. In European countries, if you do not have a legal background, you cannot have agreements with platforms because the first question they ask is on what basis payment for news is requested," explained Giboi.
Speaking about the Law on Media Freedom in Europe, he stated that trust in the media is to the greatest extent a consequence of knowing who writes what and who pays for what, and that is why the European Law on Media Freedom represents a step forward in this sense, which ultimately leads to a strengthening of trust in the media.
This law is intended to protect the freedom and pluralism of the media, but also to increase the transparency of media ownership, as all media companies are obliged to publish their imprint, sources of funding and potential conflicts of interest.
"This enables the public and legislators to better understand who writes and who pays for what is written in order to make better decisions. Another purpose of that law is to limit the ownership of the media, because transparency of ownership allows the public to think critically and understand things better," underlined Giboi.
He is of the opinion that media literacy is a solution and a long-term solution because legal regulations cannot solve problems in the media by themselves since laws are often not respected, the public does not understand them and do not see their purpose.
"However, if you help the public and journalists to increase media and digital literacy in a sustainable way, you will reach a point when journalists will know why it is wrong to steal other people's news, and the public will understand that what is not signed should not be trusted," says Giboi.
He concluded the address by saying that the laws are useless without media literacy, which should be part of the education system to ensure that in 10 years there will be no current topics about disinformation, fake news and manipulation of the public.
(FENA) A. B.
