[ SEE books ]

From Balkan Academic News comes this new book: Media and Minorities in South East Europe, published by the South East Europe Media Organisation / Oliver Vujovic & Thomas A. Bauer (ed.).

As a first of its kind, the book covers the situation of minorities and the
media in: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus,
Greece, Hungary, Republic of Macedonia - FYROM, Moldova, Montenegro,
Romania, Serbia / Kosovo, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey and Ukraine. SEEMO has
tried to report on both officially recognised minorities in this region and
those that do not have an official minority status in some countries.

The book includes presentations by some minority media outlets, as well as a
contact list of selected media. There are also special reports on the
minority media of Roma and Aromanian in the region. Other special reports
cover the legal framework and the education of minority media
representatives. The book also gives an overview of minorities and the media
and reviews of several important international and regional conventions,
declarations, guidelines, instruments, conclusions and recommendations
regarding minorities, languages and media.

(...)
The introduction by the Representative on Freedom of the Media of the
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Miklós
Haraszti, states: "The essence of the democracy assumes the full inclusion
and integration of all peoples into the life of the nation, no matter what
language they speak." About minority media he said: "We have identified some
key problems holding back the development of the minority media: Minority
media outlets are hardly ever economically viable; Low training in diversity
reporting; Lack of collegial solidarity between journalists from different
ethnic backgrounds. The results of our projects have also shown that,
despite all differences that are determining the working environment of the
minority media in the different countries, the following factors have
universal validity: 1. The role of public service broadcasters is still
vitally important. The private sector alone cannot guarantee per se a
pluralistic media landscape. 2. Support from the government is of crucial
importance for the survival of minority media. The practice of direct state
funding always leaves room for state control over media and should be
avoided. Following the examples of some multilingual democracies, mechanisms
of indirect support, such as tax benefits, reduced postage costs or
cross-subsidies, should be considered in order to enable minority media to
operate independently. 3. The media, both mainstream and minority, should
promote mutual understanding in multilingual societies by reflecting the
multi-ethnic and multilingual society instead of focusing only on their own
community.”