Democracy and Culture Alice Bah finally starting to get on the train where very many media houses and journalists have been in a few years. Structural change, disruption, digitization, of newspapers.
You could call it different things, but the Minister of Culture and industry representatives agree on one point: if the train derails, it is a serious threat to democracy. Hot in the sense that lots of journalists have already lost their jobs, local editorial offices have been closed and the lack of scrutiny of authorities and municipalities are becoming clearer. This in turn leads to an information poorer Sweden.
The expectations of the new culture minister was high when she took office in October. And we’ll surely be honest and say that she is in her first interviews did a fairly pale impression, especially when she was asked about media policy. If we are going to be even more honest, we can also conclude that her predecessor, Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth achieved very little in the media policy during his two terms in office. The press subsidy investigation that she initiated and presented last year, for example, was met with fierce criticism, not least from its chairman Hans-Gunnar Axberger as reservations against some of the proposals.
If we are to continue along the same, a little nasty way, one can say that the politicians have been as little amused by developing a constructive media policy for the 2010s by the media themselves have been of addressing in its own restructuring. You’ve waited and hoped that somewhere along the way should probably this turn. But deep down knows both the industry and the politicians that when a train had begun to rail it is very difficult to stop.
After eight weeks on the post of Democracy and Culture is now taking Alice Bah two interesting and practical initiatives. She puts forward a bill on press subsidies and presents Directive to a broad media political investigation – both in advance of the likely additional election of 22 March next year.
As for press subsidies is likely that the stopper contains proposals to limit for subscription is lowered from the current 70 percent to 51 percent. This means that newspapers can work with such free distribution in some areas to attract new subscribers while increasing its advertising reach without losing the press subsidies.
But the most interesting in her promises are the media policy investigation. She promised at a debate at the National Press Club this week that the goal of the investigation is a number of concrete proposals to help the industry through structural change. Abolishing advertising and a lowering of digital VAT is expected actions, digital conversion support one another.
From the professions is one positive while the call for Culture Minister is clear: Do not let the investigation take time, because out here in the real world running amok, that said, the train in very high speed.
No comments:
Post a Comment