Media council urges Saeima to slow amendments and retain broadcaster brands

Latvia’s Public Electronic Mass Media Council has urged parliament, the Saeima, to drop the fast-track process for amendments to the public media law and preserve the Latvijas Radio and Latvian Television (LTV) brand names, LSM reported.

The council sent proposed amendments to the Saeima’s Human Rights and Public Affairs Committee and all parliamentary factions, and informed the president. Most participants in a forum of Latvian Public Media (LSM) staff supported the council’s call to remove the urgency procedure.

The council said changes governing public media require careful assessment, taking into account guarantees of editorial independence, Council of Europe recommendations on public media governance and the principles of the European Media Freedom Act. It said there were no circumstances justifying urgent adoption or indicating an immediate, irreversible threat.

Removing the fast-track procedure would allow a higher-quality legislative process and give the president a full opportunity to assess the adopted rules. The president cannot do so under the current procedure because more than two-thirds of MPs backed urgency in a parliamentary vote.

The council’s proposals would preserve the Latvijas Radio and LTV brand names while avoiding uncertainty about LSM’s future. The staff forum was established in July, with representatives from each LSM unit, in response to employees’ concerns about retaining the two names. The forum’s findings were not available when the amendments passed their first reading.