In dealing with the right to short reporting, this IRIS plus once again discusses a subject in respect of which the legislators have the task of achieving a balance between general socio-political interests and the economic interests of private companies. While there is a need to ensure that all audiovisual media are in principle able to report on every event of high public interest, account needs to be taken of the interest of rights holders in marketing such events as profitably as possible, which generally means that only those who pay money to the rights holders have access. The focus is on sports, and the sums paid for television transmission rights and other ways for the media to exploit events such as football matches, the Olympic Games or Formula 1 racing, have risen enormously in the last few decades, thus considerably increasing the refinancing pressures on those who pay them. Short reporting rights that limit expensively acquired exclusive rights and are granted to fellow competitors on the media market are a sensitive issue.
LEAD ARTICLE
Short Reporting Rights in Europe
European Legal Rules and their National Transposition and Application.
The right to short reporting is enshrined both in the Council of Europe's European Convention on Transfrontier Television and in the EU's Audiovisual Media Services Directive, and both legal bases are discussed in the lead article. The Directive provides for the EU member states themselves to detail the conditions to be met for the practical exercise of this right. The transposition of this EU law and the criteria that it establishes for the right to short reporting in European states are discussed in Part II.
