Home Minister says the media needs a regulatory body

Home Minister Umar Naseer has said that a decision has been made to merge the Broadcasting Commission and the Media Council to form a regulatory institute to regulate the media.

Speaking on DhiTV’s Inside News program, Minister Umar Naseer said that the government does not believe that the media in such a small country as the Maldives need two institutes to regulate the media. And he said that that the Attorney General, Mohamed Anil is working on to make the necessary change to the law to merge the Media Council and the Broadcasting Commission.

A team from the Media Council met with the Attorney General on Sunday. Editor of Haveeru News, Moosa Latheef and it’s Senior Assistant Editor, Ahmed Abdulla Saeed along with two members of the Media Council, Mohamed Amir and Ahmed Hamdhoo with the Chief Editor of Sun Online, Ahmed Zahir (Hirigaa) met with the Attorney General and discussed the importance of one singular independent body to regulate the media in the country. And said that it needs to have a majority of the media with elected members from the media.

The Attorney General agreed saying that it was the thinking of the government and are working to make the changes. And he said that the plan is to make it a five-member board with three elected media personnel and two assigned through the Parliament.

One of the reasons that the protests took to the streets on the Anti-Defamation bill was the lack of an independent media regulatory body.