News Exchange Commission

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. 

Chronicle of the ERN-Med Prize (2016-2020)