site.btaCEM Members Meet Leaders of Equality and Freedom from Discrimination for Roma Programme

Members of the Council for Electronic Media (CEM) have met with executives of the Equality and Freedom from Discrimination for Roma (EQUIROM) programme of the Council of Europe and the European Commission, which involves Bulgaria, Romania, Greece and Italy, CEM said Wednesday.

The occasion for the meeting was an EQUIROM event held on October 8 in Sofia, where a case study on Roma coverage in TV programmes was presented. CEM members stressed that they considered the importance of the topic as paramount. In their words, the topic is part of the monitoring that the Council carries out within its powers under the Radio and Television Act. Findings in monitoring reports in recent years show that Bulgarian media service providers comply with ethical rules when covering events involving representatives of Roma ethnicity, CEM further noted.

During the meeting, the advisers expressed some reservations about the methodology applied by the programme's representatives in preparing the study for Bulgaria, which as a result has led to generalizations based on single cases of discriminatory treatment, the media regulator's team said.