Latvian committee replaces wording on minority-language broadcasts

Latvia’s Saeima Human Rights and Public Affairs Committee has decided to replace the word “specific” with “such” in a provision governing minority-language content on the public media, LSM reported Tuesday.

The wording concerns how Latvijas Sabiedriskais medijs, Latvia’s public media, must implement a Constitutional Court ruling on the use of minority languages. The choice of wording will affect the exceptional circumstances in which public media may use Russian, including to rebut misleading or false information.

The law on public electronic mass media and their governance already includes, at its second reading, a provision allowing public media, in accordance with the principle of proportionality, to produce programmes, excerpts and other services in sufficient minority languages. The provision is intended to reduce national security risks, provide information to as broad an audience as possible during an emergency or state of emergency, and deliberately rebut such information when it is misleading, false and threatens democracy and Latvia as a whole.

The committee’s lengthy discussion on Tuesday focused largely on the single word “specific”. The Council of Public Electronic Mass Media had submitted a proposal to remove the word from the bill altogether.

Some lawmakers expressed concern that removing the word would mean returning to an earlier situation in which the public media regularly broadcast news in Russian.

Independent lawmaker Didzis Šmits said the wording had a “specific context”, arguing that the public media had for years ignored the Constitution and the legislature’s intentions and had been forced by the Constitutional Court ruling to make changes. He said any step back could raise concerns that the wording was leaving the door open to broader interpretation.

During the committee meeting, lawmakers also expressed substantial distrust of the public media.