Culture and Media Minister Nina Obuljen-Korzinek said on Wednesday that the new Electronic Media Act would introduce provisions requiring media outlets to be transparent about their ownership and financing sources.

Speaking in an interview with Croatian Radio, Obuljen-Korzinek said that the new bill would be sent to Parliament for a second reading and would require media outlets to make public their financing sources.

“We will finance a system that will ensure daily updates of media ownership data,” the minister said.

On the subject of user-generated content and user comments, Obuljen-Korzinek said that users would have to register and would be responsible for any violations of the law. She added that raising the level of public speech and public communication was in everyone’s interest.

As for social networks, she said that they were not subject to media laws, but to laws concerning the public sphere. She added that the EU was considering a legal framework on social networks and stressed that it must be a European pact.

Obuljen-Korzinek also announced setting up a task force to deal with so-called SLAPP lawsuits against media outlets.

“The existing law is quite good as it is and does not need changing much. There should be much more self-regulation and co-regulation and we will see whether we will set up a media council as a regulator to oversee the enforcement of the law, but this requires a greater engagement on the part of journalists and editors,” the minister said.

She said that it was in everyone’s interest that any unacceptable content was addressed by the journalistic profession, in which case there would be a lot fewer lawsuits.

Obuljen-Korzinek said that media publishers were in a difficult situation because the present crisis hit the media harder than other sectors.