Council of Europe Adopts Community Media Declaration

The Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted on 11 February 2009 the Declaration on the role of community media (CM) in promoting social cohesion and intercultural dialogue, you will find the text in English and French attached.

The Community Media Forum Europe http://www.cmfe.eu has been working as an observer with the Group of Specialists on Media Diversity (MC-S-MD) of the Steering Committee on the Media and New Communication Services (CDMC) of the Council of Europe since December 2007 and contributed actively to the drafting of this Declaration, cooperating closely with AMARC Europe.
We are pleased to see the positive results of this work and are convinced that the declaration can support the further development of CM across Europe. This declaration surely helps strengthening the position of CM in national regulatory and legislation processes, e.g. concerning financial support and access to communication infrastructures. It also strengthens the presence of CM on European policy level.
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Please help distribute the document to CM and CM-federations in your countries! The Council of Europe and the Ministers of Culture of the 47 member states need and deserve attention for this positive outcome. Please inform CMFE on publications, either on websites (links) or in newsletters, so we can then inform the Council of Europe.
http://www.cmfe.eu/article.php?id=81
For questions:
Pieter de Wit, President CMFE + 31 24 3550559 mobile: + 31 6 34150581 mailto: _cmfepdw@me.com
http://www.cmfe.eu

Community Media Study Released by Council of Europe

The Council of Europe recently released a study, 'Promoting social cohesion. The role of community media', authored by Peter Lewis.
The pdf is located at: http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/standardsetting/media/MC-S-MD/H-Inf(2008)013_en.pdf
In the report, it is suggested that the Council of Europe should encourage member states to:
• create legislative infrastructure, without which community media cannot develop;
• preserve analogue frequencies that may in some countries continue to be needed after the digital switchover, and to ensure that community media are not disadvantaged in the digital environment;
• recognise the social value of community media and its role as a form of local public service by committing funds to support the sector, both directly, with schemes such as the French levy on the commercial audiovisual sector (FSER), the allocation of a portion of the licence fee (Ireland, some German Länder) or by lowering the cost of licences, and indirectly, through funding
projects as part of government programmes directed towards health, community development, education, social inclusion, support for minority ethnic communities, etc.
• commissioning studies of best practice in community media, surveys of emerging needs such as multicultural programming
and audience research on the Australian model;
• supporting a trans-European network to monitor policy, a community media observatory;
• encouraging training schemes as part of lifelong learning and media literacy;
• supporting programme exchange within the European community media sector and beyond, with regions which are the “homelands” of diasporic communities;