Romania

[RO] CNA Annual Report 2010

IRIS 2011-6:1/31

Eugen Cojocariu

Radio Romania International

The Consiliul Naţional al Audiovizualului (National Council for Electronic Media - CNA) published on 18 April 2011 its Annual Report for the year 2010 (see inter alia IRIS 2010-1/38 and IRIS 2010-9/34).

The CNA awarded in 2010 a total of 102 audiovisual licenses (four for radio, 17 for television and 81 for electronic communications networks), 40 audiovisual licenses were extended (35 for radio, five for television) and 57 transferred.

In 2010 the Council imposed 388 sanctions, including 142 fines, for audiovisual legislation infringements. The sanctions amount to RON 1,923,000 (EUR 456,800). The CNA also issued 232 public warnings and three decisions that obliged broadcasters to interrupt their programmes in order to broadcast for a period of ten minutes the text of the sanctioning decision. The majority of sanctions were imposed on the commercial television stations OTV, Antena 1, Antena 3 and Realitatea TV. The public service broadcaster Societatea Română de Televiziune was sanctioned eight times. As for radio, more than half of the sanctions were imposed on the commercial stations Radio Zu, Kiss FM and Radio 21.

Overall, sanctions were imposed in the majority of instances due to infringements concerning child protection, the protection of human dignity and of the right to one’s own image, breaches of audiovisual sponsoring, advertising and teleshopping rules and to a lack of pluralism and correct information.

The Council monitored more than 19,000 programmes - mostly for television - due to complaints and own initiatives.

At the same time, the Council, in partnership with the Romanian Academy, continued the programme for improving the quality of the Romanian language used in television and radio programmes. The result of this was a decrease of the number of errors. The CNA also monitored the quality of the Hungarian language used in audiovisual programmes; Hungarians being the largest minority in Romania.