Enabling Environment for Social Accountability in ... - SASANet

movies. The Council member who had raised this question indicated during a dissemination interview
that she was subjected to “black PR” when she tried to sue to prevent the new director from taking office,
with newspaper articles accusing her of being of Chinese ancestry, which in Mongolia is considered
slanderous.
As of July 1, 2005, the new law also significantly reduced PRTV’s access to advertising to 2 percent of
airtime and completely eliminated it from January 1, 2006 (Finding MEDIA 2). In their original budget
estimates for 2005, PRTV estimated that it would raise 12.9 percent of its total revenues from advertising,
almost all of which was targeted toward programming. As a result, the new system will make it
particularly difficult to maintain program quality, although the precise implications of these changes
remain to be seen. Under the new arrangements, the transmission system will be split off from PRTV,
leaving the former to be managed by the government.
According to an MP interviewed during the dissemination of this study, there is some discussion of
reintroducing advertising on public broadcasting. The MP attributed the elimination of advertising to
heavy lobbying by commercial broadcasters of political leaders, in particular the former president who
vetoed the bill in February 2005, because he objected to provisions for limited advertising.
Various stakeholders also noted that the PRTV has an exceptionally large staff in comparison to
independent broadcasters, who use digital technology. Although this could be redressed through an initial
outlay by the GoM, a National Council member also recommended that state funding for PRTV be
stabilized through five-year budgets as annual submissions that are time consuming and make it difficult
to plan programming in advance. This would also enhance the autonomy of PRTV as it makes its
transition from state to public broadcasting.
There is no provision in the law on Radio Waves to address content issues in broadcasting, despite serious
problems relating to quality (see below), and to political bias in the media. Although CRC staff members
claimed that local broadcasting was not an issue in Mongolia, given the large number of radio stations
outside of Ulaanbaatar, a leader of the Press Institute noted that there is a need for local public media,
which is not covered by the new legislation, save one minor reference. She believes that this could be
readily addressed through legislation parallel to the new law on national public broadcasting.
REGISTRATION OF NEWSPAPERS
Print media outlets are required to register with the Ministry of Justice and Home Affairs. Applications
are considered by the board of the ministry, a high-level internal body—and a recommendation is then
made to the minister, who makes the final decision. Ministry staff indicated that ultimately no applicant
has ever been refused, although MoJHA does review proposals to ensure that they do not pursue illegal
goals. Proposed names have been rejected on the basis that they are either already taken, or that they fail
to conform to rules on the use of the Mongolian language.
This process, however, is open to political abuse and numerous allegations have been made that the
registration system is used as a means to control newspapers (Finding MEDIA 3). In at least one case,
during the 2005 presidential election, a newspaper was closed due to a dispute over ownership and over a
special requirement for all newspapers to reregister (see box 3.2.3, section on Voice). Nonetheless,
various stakeholders expressed during dissemination interviews the need to maintain media registration to
identify publishers so that they may be held accountable for the content and quality of their reporting. As
the president of Globe indicated, “the public should know who is behind the media, who is the ‘real
owner.’” To avoid having registration become a means to restrict content and further self-censorship (see