From BiH: Association of Independent Electronic Media of Bosnia and Herzegovina

– Individual Before Common Interests

 By: Amel Baftic

For a long time, the large number of electronic media which had appeared in Bosnia and Herzegovina since the signing of the Dayton Agreement back in 1995 had no institution to represent their common interests thus allowing for a better integration of the Bosnian media space. The lack of legal regulation in their status until 1998 surely contributed to an almost casual approach in establishing new electronic media. Thus, almost anyone who had at least a bit of technical capacities, a bit of money and, inevitably, a bit of acquaintance among the local authorities, established new radio or television stations almost overnight. This was to an extent also assisted by the representatives of the international community, who often distributed the equipment required for broadcasting almost without any criteria, thus “enriching” the media space of this country with media houses which met not even minimum professional requirements, either in terms of staffing or equipment, in order to be able to do a serious business of either television or radio broadcasting. 

Having established that the number of electronic media in Bosnia and Herzegovina had exceeded the number which a country of some over three and a half million population realistically needs, back in 1998, the Office of the High Representative (OHR) founded the Independent Media Commission (IMC), which from that moment on was assigned an awkward task to regulate the media operations on the territory of the Federation and the Republic of Srpska. At the moment when this commission started functioning, the number of electronic media in Bosnia and Herzegovina approximated a figure of some 250 registered radio or television stations, a number at which this country would be envied (or maybe not after all?) even by some of the much more developed West European countries. 

The Independent Media Commission started with the regulation of the Bosnia and Herzegovina broadcasting domain in 1999, when it also started issuing temporary operating licenses. It is actually to this time that an attempt rather than a process dates back of joining the independent electronic media in this country together into associations that would represent their interests and strategy of approach before this commission. It was in this year that the Association of Independent Electronic Media of Bosnia and Herzegovina (AEM BiH) was founded with an intention to have this organization represent the common interests of its members. In this same year, under the auspices of the InterNews, the Association organized its first assembly meeting, which adopted the common platform of approach before the Independent Media Commission. 

The second phase of regulating the Bosnian broadcasting domain began in 2000, when the Independent Media Commission first changed its name into the Communications Regulatory Commission (CRA), and then announced a tender for issuing long-term licenses for electronic media in the Federation and the Republic of Srpska. 

Same year, the AEM BiH organized its second assembly meeting in Neum, this time under the auspices of USAID, and adopted the Statute which, among other, set the following goals for the Association:

• Strengthening and promoting the activities of production, transmission and broadcasting of TV and radio programs, 

• Representing and protecting the common member interests before domestic and foreign institutions, 

• Coordinated market researching and public surveying. 

The successful work of this Assembly meeting was to an extent obstructed by the fact that in its Statute adopted in Neum the previous year, as a legal grounds for its work the AEM BiH took Article 9 of the Law on Associating of Citizens of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which by no means granted legitimacy to the members coming from the Republic of Srpska. In addition, the Statute also stated that the AEM was an association of citizens, which again, given that this was an association of media houses, represented a legal contradiction thus preventing this organization from legally registering itself as a representative of its members’ interests. 

The impossibility of the legal regulation of this organization’s status unfortunately is still there even today, and this probably represents one of the major reasons that their third in the row assembly meeting held June 15 through 17 this year in Teslic, can not be called successful. Namely, while the AEM has been existing for three years now, its legal status has not been resolved as yet. The common members’ interests are evident ones: for instance, if they coordinate their single advertising prices on all stations, or a common approach in negotiating with the CRA or with the authorized copyrights agency in BH ‘Sine Qua Non’, the AEM members can negotiate from a much stronger position. However, unfortunately, this assembly was dominated by the interests of individual stations, who had used the session primarily to seek guarantees from the CRA that the process of long-term broadcasting licensing will be a transparent one, and then to promote their own interests, more exactly, their media houses, as well. 

Namely, the whole work of the Assembly was under the shadow of the issues related to long-term licensing tender for electronic media broadcasting, which is hanging over the heads of all the stations in BH like the sword of Damocles, because their survival depends on the CRA decisions. Of the 13 regions in which the CRA has announced its frequency allocation tender, this process has been brought to end in two only (Tuzla and Brcko), and license awardees are only known in these two. This fact should certainly be an incentive more for coordination of the common approach of the other AEM members before the CRA commission, but, due to representation of individual interests, pride and various other reasons typical of this environment, this was not the case in this Assembly meeting. Thus the negotiations with the CRA commission members more looked like participants’ individual presentations of their own media than like a constructive dialogue that would ensure a better position for the AEM members in their approach to the CRA. Being aware of this, the CRA representatives got an opportunity to show a big dose of arrogance in attitude towards the participants of this meeting. The rare sensible questions asked of them, such as the one on granting the license for broadcasting in the Tuzla region to an emerging radio-station thus remained unanswered. 

The fault for such an approach of the Assembly participants also lied in its presidency, which acted with complete lack of coordination and almost complete lack of interest in representing common interests. 

There was also a similar course of negotiations with the representatives of the copyright agency ‘Sine Qua Non’, who have approached the participants of the Assembly meeting with such a monopolist attitude to be envied even by some much more powerful organizations involved in telecommunications in this country. Namely, this agency, registered back in 1996 as a shareholding company, came up with the proposal of paying authors’ fees to the association members, which not for a single moment seemed to be a result of negotiating with anyone, but more of an ultimatum to the Assembly meeting participants. The participants responded to this ‘proposal’ by leaving the conference room en masse. A final ironical element was supplied by the presidency members who had put the strategy of approach towards the copyright agency on the Assembly agenda list only after the negotiations with the Agency representatives were finalized. 

What remains is the fact that this huge number of electronic media in Bosnia and Herzegovina really need a roof organization to coordinate their joint approach, but it is also evident that the AEM BiH, such as it currently is – that is, disorganized and, let us be honest, incoherent and vague – does not constitute the best solution for representing the interests of its members. Finally, the author would only like to express condolences to the American agency IREX PRO MEDIA, which had sponsored this altogether and paid for it the amount of 32,000 KM, intended as assistance to electronic media in Bosnia and Herzegovina, now spent as a contribution for tourism strengthening in Teslic. 

Amel Baftic is a free lance journalist from Sarajevo (BH). ©Media Online 2001. All rights reserved.
http://www.mediaonline.ba/mediaupite/upit3/tekstframe.htm?tekst=/mediaonline/tekst_eng/2761.htm&sifra=2761 

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