The Chairman of the IMC, Mr. Jeton Mehmeti, was today a panelist in the presentation and launch of the website of the Monitoring of Media Ownership in Kosovo. According to the organizer, the Balkan Network of Investigative Journalism-BIRN, the main goal of this platform is to contribute to better media education, where every citizen has the right to be informed about media ownership in order to make a decision on how much pertains to news consumption.
In the panel "Challenges related to the transparency of the media sector in Kosovo", the Chairman of the IMC Mr. In his speech, Jeton Mehmeti presented his views on the topic of media ownership and the current challenges that the media environment faces in this regard. Chairman Mehmeti said that the issue of ownership of audiovisual media according to the current regulation requires that any important change of ownership has prior approval from the IMC. But the current regulation will change very quickly, until the end of this year, because it is a deadline also defined in the National Program for European Integration 2023 and the IMC will adopt a Regulation on the ownership and concentration of IMC licensees. The new regulation according to the ownership regulation is designed based on the legislation of the European Union, namely the AVMS Directive and will greatly help in increasing the transparency of ownership and preventing media concentration in Kosovo. On this occasion, the Chairman Mr. Mehmeti appealed to all licensed media not to change the ownership of ARBK without the approval of the IMC, as required by the IMC rules, because they will face the legal consequences, as has already happened for some of the media that have acted in that form.
Also regarding the prohibition of ownership change without prior approval, he said that IMC is in the process of reaching an agreement with ARBK, so that such ownership changes do not happen as they did.
While in terms of increasing transparency in terms of media ownership, the IMC has worked during this year on creating a digital platform of media ownership registers, i.e. the current data in the public media registers that the IMC has published, will to be digitized, refreshed and with content for the public.
Within this panel with the theme "Challenges related to the transparency of the media sector in Kosovo" the participants were: Jeton Mehmeti, IMC; Ardita Zejnullahu, AMPEK; Alban Zeneli, University of Pristina; Aferdita Saraçini - Kelmendi, RTV 21; Kreshnik Gashi, BIRN.