To commemorate the International Right to Know Day, Transparency International Lithuanian Chapter is proud to present its website, STIRNA.info, inviting the Lithuanian public to discover information about the owners of their favourite media channels in a speedy and convenient manner. The website also presents the links between media and business from 1996 to 2013.
The information collected on the website also visually depicts how some media channels are related to Lithuanian politicians. For example, the owner of the holding company of the newspaper “Širvintų kraštas” (The Country of Širvintos) in 2012 was Živilė Pinskuvienė, who at the time was a member of the Labour Party and sat on the Municipal Council of Širvintos. The holding company of the newspapers “Dzūkų žinios” (Dzūkai News) and “Dainavos žodis” (Dainavos Word) belonged to the mayor of the Lazdynai municipal district, Artūras Margelis, a Conservative. Alvydas Šedžius, while serving as the representative of the Social-Democrat Party to the Šiauliai Municipal Council, owned – and continues to own – “Šiaulių apskrities televizija” (Šiauliai District Television), the broadcasting company responsible for “Šiaulių televizija” (Šiauliai Television).
Until now, information on the ownership of television programmes, the press, web portals, radijo stations and news agencies was available on the websites of the Ministry of Culture and the Radio and Television Commission of Lithuania. However, according to TI Lithuania, the information was presented in an inconvenient fashion, in different formats and sporadically throughout the sites. A considerable amount of time and effort was needed in order to understand just who owned media channels and how the channels were related to each other.
“We seek to make the Lithuanian public aware of who owns their favourite media channels and what networks form between business and the media. We hope that the website will make the Lithuanian media market more transparent and will encourage the Lithuanian public to take a more active interest in the actions of media channels”, said Sergejus Muravjovas.
According to TI Lithuania representatives, the country’s institutions still do not present data in an open format, a measure that would lighten the burden on data collection considerably and increase transparency. “At the moment, state institutions present data in an inconvenient fashion, sometimes containing errors, so it is often necessary to transcribe PDF and Word documents by hand in order to analyze and use that data – which makes the work much more difficult. Most countries around the world have already understand that data needs to be provided in an open format – so that their citizens could reuse it and create products valuable to society. This is also needed in Lithuania”, stated Rugilė Trumpytė, the TI Lithuania project coordinator responsible for the initiative.
The information provided on the website is collected from the data held by the Ministry of Culture and the Radio and Television Commission of Lithuania.
The name of the website is an acronym formed from the initial letters of “spauda” (the press), “televizija” (television), “interneto portalai” (web portals), “radijas” (radio) and “naujienų agentūros” (news agencies).
You may visit the website here .