"Covering 23 countries, the volume highlights and explains key issues of debate and current tendencies in media policy and provides basic statistics relating to each case study.The chapters are written by an expert from the country concerned. Most of these are members of the Euromedia Research Group
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, a research collective that has been active for more than 20 years and has produced a series of assessments of media policy developments in Europe." (Publisher description)
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"The survey analyses the reporting on violence in Slovene print and television programmes. The results have shown that POP TV programming contains a significantly greater share of violent content and content depicting accidents than the programming of SLO 1, reflecting an obvious difference in the e
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ditorial policies. Slovenske novice, the highest selling Slovene daily, shows a 19 per cent share of violence in its content. Disregarding the supplements, the content of which is virtually always neutral or non-violent, violence makes for 29 per cent of the entire content of Slovenske novice. The front pages of Slovenske novice show an astonishing 66,7 per cent share of violent content. Comparatively, Dnevnik contains 8,6 per cent of violent content, while Delo contains 3,1 per cent. Even though the survey has shown an overwhelming amount of violence in the Slovene media, the author feels it inappropriate to resort to censorship, seeing that in a world, interwoven with electronic systems and networks, it is impossible to dam the flow of information." (Summary, page 79
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"In this study Sandra B. Hrvatin analyzes the public institution RTV Slovenia and the main problems related to it - funding, public control and fulfilment of the public role - and draws comparisons with other public broadcasters across the world. She concludes that RTV Slovenia is in crisis and sugg
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ests that it cannot be successfully resolved unless certain questions relating to the role and significance of contemporary public service broadcasters are answered first. "To support PSB today means to support the option of an open communication space in which all citizens, no matter what their material wealth or communication competence, will have access to communication channels and a chance to influence programming and content." (Summary, page 6)
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"In Making Her Up, the authors try to elucidate the precise ambivalence of the image of the modern woman, which is (un)wittingly created by the producers of women’s magazines in co-operation with capitalistic advertising mechanisms and, not least, their own readers. Through the discourse and conte
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nt analysis of a diverse selection of Slovenian women’s magazines (Cosmopolitan, Jana, Modna Jana, Glamur, Naša žena, and Moj malcek), the writers have uncovered a few representative topics: the contradictory contents of ‘universal women’s culture’; the phenomenon of subtle advertising, with its inexhaustible options among the various types of magazines; fashion as the main theme of each and every one of these magazines; the disciplining of a woman’s mind through the disciplining of her body; cosmetics advertisements; medicine, pregnancy, birth, and the cult of motherhood, which still prevails over the image of the independent, successful, emancipated woman." (City of Women)
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"In this study the author presents self-regulation as a part of a wider subject, that is, freedom of speech, arguing that self-regulation does not intrude on this freedom beyond the limits set by democracy, and that, compared to legislative solution, it is a much more friendly way of implementing th
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e principle that one person's freedom is limited by another person.s freedom. What is important is that the media are aware of the power they enjoy. The author gives several examples that illustrate where abuse of that unruly power can lead and argues that it is much better if media themselves hold it at bay and thus avert state.s interference with an intention of compelling them to do so. The book recapitulates various views on media accountability and mechanisms reinforcing it, already widely discussed in public. It also looks into the current state of affairs in Slovenia despite the risk that time and further developments in this field may soon cancel out present conclusions. The frame of debate on the establishment of a press council in Slovenia could serve as a useful example for others. The existing Ethics Commission in Slovenia, whose past performance could have paved the way for an elaborate form of self-regulation, unfortunately proved to be an obstacle. The idea about a tripartite press council arose in some a feeling that a press council would be set against the ethics commission itself, even though, to the contrary, it could primarily advance the present work of this commission. The study therefore does not argue that existing ethics commission is needless, but rather points to the ideas about co-regulation that have recently emerged in the EU. They could lead to the shifting of the center, meaning that voluntary self-regulation, which advances media accountability and through it also professional conduct, could be taken away from the media and placed in the hands of users. The protection of professional standards would thus be transformed into the protection of consumer rights." (Summary, page 7)
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"This study analyzes the Slovenian media writing about the Roma in autumn 1997 when the villagers of Maline set up a village watch to prevent the settlement of a Romani family who bought a house in their village. The prevalent mood of the coverage could be summed up with a single word - “problems
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. Moreover, when writing about the Roma, the media invariably use the expressions “Romani issues” or “Romani problems”. The media are not interested in their difficulties unless they turn into a conflict that also threatens to affect the majority population. Out of 131 accounts in newspapers, on television and radio, only one falls short of our hypothesis that the media write about ethnic minorities only when they are involved in some conflict." (Summary, page 7)
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