Slovenia

[SI] Ministry for Culture Announced the Regulatory Guidelines for TV Programme Scheduling

IRIS 2007-6:1/32

Renata Šribar

Faculty for Social Sciences at the University of Ljubljana and Centre for Media Politics of the Peace Institute, Ljubljana

The Slovenian Media Act stipulates, in Article 84, para. 6, that the Minister for Culture is responsible for the issuing of “visual symbols”, i.e. pictograms, and for the modes of their application. Aside from the Media Act, the ministerial document is the only legislative tool for content regulation in the general practice of television programming in Slovenia, which is aimed at the protection of children and minors from potentially harmful materials. The document is literally entitled Pravilnik o določitvi vizualnega in akustičnega opozorila za programske vsebine, ki niso primerne za otroke in mladoletnike (regulatory guidelines related to the stipulation of visual and acoustic warnings regarding television programming contents, unsuitable for children and minors) and was announced at the beginning of May 2007.

The regulatory guidelines issued by the Ministry of Culture represent the basic classification system, which has to correspond to the stipulations of the three legislative and statutory documents: Art. 84 of the Slovenian Media Act, Art. 22 of the Television without Frontiers Directive and the “Guidelines for the content of the internal ethical and aesthetical rules of the broadcasters” formulated by the independent Agencija za pošto in elektronske komunikacije (Agency for Post and Electronic Communications) and functioning as the basis for the internal codes of the broadcasters (see IRIS 2007-1: 18).

The ambivalences regarding the definition of potentially harmful content, which arise in the context of the above mentioned documents have been resolved in the regulatory guidelines by the following categorisation and scheduling: (1) informative, educational, artistic etc. broadcasts, which include scenes of violence and sexuality, are suitable for minors aged over 15 and are indicated as such; (2) informative, educational, artistic etc. broadcasts, which direct (i.e. incite) violence and sexuality may be indicated according to the broadcasters’ codes and their responsibility; according to the respective regulatory rules there are two options for such programmes: 15+ and/or adult; (3) pornography ("porno chic") and gratuitous violence, which might impair the psychical, mental or moral development of children and minors. The latter should be protected by the warning that the broadcast is suitable only for adults. In the case of the latter programming contents, the watershed system has to be applied (from 12 p.m. to 5 a.m). In the case of genre films such as "soft porn" (the broadcast of hard porn is prohibited) and "slashers" the visual and acoustic warning is not applied as the broadcasting of these contents is conditioned by technical measures (i.e. it has to be coded).