ZAGREB, 6 Feb 2022 - 20 years since its introduction, project Free Electronic Books had more than 4 million users at the end of 2021 and nearly 300 titles, of which more than 250 are written by contemporary Croatian authors.

In 2021, a record 31 titles were published as part of the project. Of the 298 titles published to date, 264 are currently available on the project website.

Last year's titles were published with the financial support of the City of Zagreb, the City of Rijeka and the Ministry of Culture and Media.

According to data provided by the Google Analytics service, in 2021 the project website registered 243,250 users, who read 1,208,869 e-books online and downloaded another 68,629 e-books. This means that users read and/or downloaded a total of 197,498 e-books in 2021.

The most read fiction book in 2021 was the novel "Sloboština Barbie" by Maša Kolanović (4,599 readers), followed by Henry David Thoreau's "Walden" (3,788) and the novel "Tuđi život" (Someone Else's Life) by Marina Vujčić (3,014).

The most read poetry book was "Tri jeseni" (Three Autumns) by Anna Akhmatova (2,357).

As many as 48 titles had more than a thousand readers last year, said the Society for Promoting New Media Literature.

At the end of 2021, the project surpassed 4 million users, which is nearly 200,000 per year, and books were read and/or downloaded 2,336,009 times, which means that each title had over 7,800 users on average.

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ZAGREB, 24 July, 2021 - The final electronic media bill has acknowledged the criticisms that were made, so users will be punished for hate speech in their comments, not the media where the comments are generated, Jutarnji List daily said on Saturday.

Compared with the first draft, which was widely criticised last winter both by media professionals and the general public, the final bill brings several significant changes, and the attempt to crack down on hate speech on web portals is likely to draw the most attention.

The Culture and Media Ministry has accepted the criticisms made by journalists, editors and media owners, so exorbitant fines will not be paid by the media but users whose comments break the law.

The first draft of the bill said the electronic publication provider was accountable for all content, including content generated by users. That meant that the media would have been held fully accountable and could have been brutally fined, including for racist comments and those inciting to violence, comments that are mostly anonymous. The envisaged fines ranged from HRK 100,000 to one million.

The ministry changed the article in question, so that in future the real writers of those comments will be held to account. In return, media owners, if they wish to avoid fines, will have to completely change the rules of the game for their readers. They will have to register users and warn them in a clear and easily noticeable way about commenting rules and breaches of regulations.

Jutarnji List said the government could endorse the final bill at next week's meeting.

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ZAGREB, 5 April, 2021 - The Agency for Electronic Media (AEM) has released an analysis of the use of the Fund for the Promotion of Electronic Media Pluralism and Diversity from 2016 to 2019, from which a total of HRK 147 million was allocated to publishers.

In the analysed period, radio broadcasters received the most, HRK 69.5 million, while television broadcasters got HRK 65.5 million. Electronic publications (web portals) received about HRK 6.5 million, and non-profit audiovisual producers about HRK 6.1 million, the AEM said.

Broken down by type of publisher, the average annual subsidy for the 2016-2019 period was HRK 132,817 per radio broadcaster, HRK 819,924 per television broadcaster, HRK 72,392 per electronic publication and HRK 117,235 per non-profit audiovisual producer.

Analysing the Fund's subsidies as a percentage of publishers' revenue in 2019, 46.6% of radio broadcasters received subsidies amounting to 10% to 19% of their revenue, and 35% of radio broadcasters received subsidies in the amount of 20% to 40% of their revenue and more.

Also, 45% of television broadcasters received subsidies amounting to 19% of their revenue, and another 45% received subsidies between 20% and 39% of their revenue, which indicates that television broadcasters depend more than radio broadcasters on the fund's subsidies to produce non-commercial programme content.

Most funding for public information service, culture and children

Overall, over 86% of publishers said they were satisfied or generally satisfied with the Fund, 9.74% were neither satisfied nor dissatisfied and 3.9% were generally dissatisfied. No one was very dissatisfied with the Fund.

An analysis of all eight public tenders launched by the Fund in that period shows that of the HRK 147,895,684 distributed, as much as 51.47% was allocated to three of the Fund's 16 programme categories.

Public information received 31.92% or about HRK 47.2 million, culture and heritage 11.01% or about 16.2 million, and children and young people 8.54% or more than HRK 12.6 million.

The next five categories: gender equality, upbringing and education, national minorities, cultural events and health promotion received 28.95% of subsidies or over HRK 42.8 million.

The remaining eight categories: Croatian dialects, art development, people with disabilities, environmental protection, Homeland War, media literacy and gender issues received 19.58% or slightly more than HRK 28.9 million.

"The analysis of the social impact of the Fund for the Promotion of Pluralism and Diversity for the 2016-2019 period has shown that the Fund's existence is more than justified," the AEM said.

(€1 = HRK 7.569509)

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ZAGREB, 17 March, 2021 - Culture and Media Minister Nina Obuljen Koržinek said on Wednesday the Electronic Media Act would be liberalised and that one of the options was allowing the vertical concentration of the media in Croatia.

"We will liberalise that law in the part concerning the regulation of concentration. However, in that case we are considering certain other instruments which generate or ensure media pluralism. I mean the 'must offer' or 'must carry' concepts, but an agreement is yet to be reached on this," she told the press.

The news and programming director of the N1 commercial TV, Tihomir Ladišić, yesterday accused the government of leading to a market monopoly of the two telecoms, A1 and HT, by failing to amend the Electronic Media Act.

His comment came after news that A1 decided to remove N1 from its offer and that it was certain that HT would follow suit.

Asked if the government would allow vertical media concentration, enabling a media publisher to also be a media content operator, which is banned under the current Electronic Media Act, the minister said that was one of the options, adding that the law explicitly banned an operator from also being a media content publisher.

Other media pluralism mechanisms will be introduced

"We are one of the last EU states to have that explicit ban. If we go towards lifting the ban, then some other mechanisms ensuring media pluralism will be introduced," she said.

These mechanisms will enable a company that is both publisher and operator to offer the channel for which it obtained a concession to itself as an operator and to someone else under the same terms.

The minister said such vertical concentration was "what the public can rightfully be afraid of."

She reiterated that A1's decision to remove United Media Group's channels, including N1, from its offer, was strictly a business matter between the two companies, not a matter of legislative regulation.

The minister has a number of times dismissed the argument that the Electronic Media Act did not allow N1 to broadcast on its own platform, saying the law regulates only publishers which have a concession and are established in Croatia.

"N1 is a pay channel which is not established in Croatia and does not have a concession," the minister said.

She would not say what it meant for media democracy in Croatia that N1 was being phased out because two operators decided to remove it from their offers.

"Two days ago I said I believe it's in the public interest that all channels which interest the Croatian public should be available on all operators and I stand by that."

Following news that A1 was cancelling its contract with N1, MPs today called for regulating the telecommunications and media market and resolving contentious issues as soon and as precisely as possible with a new electronic media law.

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ZAGREB, Sept 26, 2020 - Culture and Media Minister Nina Obuljen Korinek has said in an interview for Hina that her department will see to it that the culture and creative industries and the media sector get out of the corona crisis with as few scars as possible.

Commenting on the fact that the world media was added to the official name of her department after she was reappointed the minister in late July, Obuljen Korzinek recalls that since 2002 the ministerial department of culture has been authorized to cover the sector of media. Adding the word media to the official name of the ministry was made with the purpose of highlighting that sector, the minister explained.

Bill on electronic media on government's agenda soon

Considering concrete steps that the ministry is taking to enhance the status of the media sector, Obuljen Korzinek says in the interview published on Saturday that the draft law on electronic media is being fine-tuned by the relevant ministries and is expected to be on the government's agenda in October.

The ministry is preparing activities to release the media legislation for public consultation, she said.

Following the government aid schemes made available in April and May, and enabling the media sector to have access to credit lines for which the government provides collateral, we are considering some other measures to support the media sector within the European Union's funds for recovery, she says.

"We are conducting dialogue with professional associations to finds modalities for assistance aimed at enhancing the status of journalists," the minister said.

"All those assistance measures should be carefully prepared so that they remain neutral and do not affect the independence of media."

 Asked about a growing number of defamation suits against reporters, the minister reiterated that politicians and office-holders should refrain from taking libel suits against journalists and media.

"I am strongly for the preservation of media freedoms as an important pillar for the development of democracy."

In parallel, every citizen who feels to have been defamed is entitled to the court protection, she said recalling that in the first term of the Andrej Plenkovic cabinet abolished the criminal libel act.

Web portal with criteria for the assessment of epidemiological risks for music events

Considering the music industry in the times of the COVID-19 pandemic, the minister says that the authorities in cooperation with the Croatian Musicians Union are hammering out the project of the support to this industry.

One of the steps in the preparation of a web portal for the assessment of epidemiological risks for music events which will standardize the criteria for all kinds of events, she says.

Restoring quake-damaged listed buildings to take a lot of times

Commenting on the damage caused by the 22 March quake to monuments and listed buildings in the capital city and its environs, the minister said that immediately after the earthquake, the ministry experts and representatives of the department of Zagreb's city planning system toured the damaged sites and held consultations so as to immediately respond to the situation.

Conservators and restorers have been engaged in making a list of the damaged buildings and we were also actively involved in the preparation of the law on the removal of the consequences of the earthquake and on preparing the documentation for the European Solidarity Fund, she says underlining that the restoration of the registered sites of heritage significance would take a lot of time.

It will require a complex multi-disciplinary approach with the aim of improving the urban standards in Zagreb, alongside preserving the historical center, she explained.

Damage done by the quake to listed buildings is estimated at 7 billion euros.

Commenting on the achievements of her first term in office, the culture minister says that that the outlays earmarked for the ministry rose both in the absolute figures and their proportion in the total budget, reaching now a 1% share.

This has been achieved through a rise in the original sources of funding from the budget as well as through the better absorption of the EU funds, she added.

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