European Committee of the Regions supports independent local media prize - Hoofdinhoud

At CIRCOM conference, Swedish regional TV wins CoR-sponsored news award.

A report on the digital divide in Sweden has won a European award for the best news report on a regional issue, beating off coverage of topics ranging from asylum-seekers in Norway and homelessness in the Czech Republic to coffee production in Portugal and cocaine use in Switzerland.

The prize, which was awarded by the European Association of Regional Television (CIRCOM), was presented on 18 May to Sweden’s SVT Sundsvall by Tanya Hristova, an EPP member of the European Committee of the Regions. The prize, which was presented in the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv, was sponsored by the CoR, the EU’s assembly of local and regional politicians.

The runner-up was a report on the experiences of women in a refugee camp in Preševo by RTV Vojvodine, Serbia.

The prize, which is worth €3,000, is awarded to a report of no more than 10 minutes’ length broadcast in a regional news programme.

During an earlier debate at the CIRCOM conference, Ms Hristova, who is the mayor of Gabrovo, a town of 60,000 people, argued that public-service media can work constructively with local and regional authorities while maintaining an independent, critical approach. She said that “public-service media and public authorities may get on at different stations and enter different carriages, but they are on the same train, wanting the sustainable and successful development of their society .

She said that it was important for public authorities to ensure that citizens are fully informed, arguing that it can make the difference between the success and failure of projects that are vital to communities. She said that a major EU-funded project to modernise the sewerage system in her region had struggled until the local authorities reached out to the media.

In practice, however, efforts to provide services to the public in Bulgaria are complicated by problems in the media. “Communication between citizens and authorities is being threatened by the absence of independent media,  she said. Gabrovo’s response has been to devote more of its budget to informing the public.

Ms Hristova, a politician from the GERB party and member of the conservative European People’s Party, also said that public authorities need to respond to the “real and pressing  demand by citizens “to generate news . We need to take this popular demand “on board", she said, while trying to provide the policy context.