Commissions
The Audiovisual Heritage Commission works around the setting up of projects devoted to the promotion, the safeguard and the digitization of the audiovisual archives of the Euro-Mediterranean broadcasters, with the purpose of preserving and enhancing the
audiovisual heritage of this region.
The main achievement of this Commission was the successful realization of the Med-Mem: Audiovisual Mediterranean Memories project, the first website in three languages – Arabic, English and French – made of radio and TV archives and created to promote the rich Mediterranean heritage among the general public from the two shores.
The working group is also the promoter of a
second multilateral project, Balkans’ Memory, aiming at raising awareness among the decision-makers from the Balkans region on the safeguard, the digitization and the management of their own cinematographic and audiovisual heritage.
professional meeting on the topic “Developing and sustaining your film festival“ was organised by COPEAM in 2014, together with ESAV Marrakech and with the support of the Euromed Audiovisual III programme of the European Union.
This Commission works in favour of a balanced presence of women and men in the media, and against stereotypes as for the gender representation in the content production.
It acts in synergy with the other Commissions or in partnership with international organisations such as UNESCO, in several domains: design and coordination of projects intended to promote gender equality in the media; conception of international communication campaigns and organisation of debates related to gender matters; support to monitoring and research in
the field of the female representativeness and representation in the Euro-Med audiovisual sector.
The News Exchange Commission builds its activity around the Mediterranean regional exchange ERN-Med, which was created in 2002 from the need – born within COPEAM news exchange commission – to enhance intercultural knowledge between the Northern and Southern shores of the Mediterranean.
Managed by the EBU-Eurovision central desk in Geneva and coordinated by the Algerian national broadcaster EPTV, the ERN-Med allows its public TV members to mutually draw on a varied Euro-Mediterranean agenda, as well as
to offer a diversified number of news of regional interest dealing with cultural events – festivals, religious feasts, traditional celebrations, international conferences, etc.
With a quantity volume of about 1000 items exchanged per year, the ERN-Med has become today a very useful tool for the participating broadcasters and their news coordinators, with ever-growing quality standards and geographical widening as well.
This has made been possible thanks to the increasing trilateral cooperation between EBU, COPEAM and ASBU (Arab States Brooadcasting Union) and the confirmed involvement of the latter’s Programmes Exchange Centre, also based in Algiers.
The ERN-Med Prize
In 2016, the news coordinators, together with the three sister Unions, decided to launch a new initiative: the “ERN-Med Prize”, which awards every year the best exchanged news item regarding a topic of common interest related to gthe last annual conference of COPEAM. The Jury (composed by representatives of the three networks) evaluates the competing news according to specific criteria that are the editorial weight and journalistic value, the technical quality, the promotion of dialogue and their regional dimension.
Since its institution, the Prize has met its goals of further stimulating the participation of the member televisions and of rewarding their best efforts in both quantity and quality terms.
The Radio Commission is very dynamic in favouring cooperation in the radio sector, notably through its permanent action of networking the COPEAM member radios.
It coordinates international co-productions on
topics of general interest, such as the latest series devoted to the “Mediterranean marine parks”, as well as regional-oriented magazines like Kantara, Mediterradio and MusicaMed, weekly programmes respectively on the Mediterranean and insular current affairs and on contemporary music of the Region.
Moreover, this Commission also endorses – through its members’ participation - important international initiatives, such as “The Binmen of
the Mediterranean”, through the media coverage of an annual cleaning operation of the coasts in the countries of the involved radios; or the World Radio Day promoted by UNESCO.
This mission is entrusted to the TV Commission,
whose main activity consists in coordinating multilateral co-productions achieved thanks to the cooperation between the professionals from the involved TVs and to the elaboration of shared working methodologies.
Among the concrete results of this Commission, the COPEAM-ASBU coproduced documentary series Inter-Rives, at its fourth edition devoted to “Sports without borders” and Joussour, a
collection of 12 docu-mags co-funded by the EU and dealing with the environmental best practices in the cross-border maritime Mediterranean regions.
