With 40 panels and almost 200 speakers, Medientreffpunkt Mitteldeutschland is one of the biggest annual media conferences in Germany.

Media experts, media managers and journalists as well as politicians gathered in Leipzig from 4 to 6 May to exchange experiences and opinions.

Focus of a panel discussion on media transparency in Eastern Europe was the political and economic influences on the media in the region. Christian Spahr pointed out that the crisis of confidence in this sector is increasing. According to current surveys of the KAS Media Program South East Europe, only 17 percent of Bulgarians and 28 percent of Romanians believe in free media reporting. Spahr gave an example for these negative trends with the current press freedom ranking of Reporters Without Borders (RWB). According to the RWB report, only three countries in the region made progress recently. Spahr expressed concern that media freedom is not sufficiently recognised as a critical theme for the European integration of the Balkan countries.

The experts agreed that media ownership, especially of the print media, has to become more transparent. Political influences could also be better regulated if the state discloses the own spending on media advertisements.

Afterwards, the speakers discussed further aspects of media freedom in Eastern Europe with the audience.

A presentation of Christian Spahr on this topic is available here.