In Praise of serious journalism William Horsley's CFOM blog: September 4 2009
Amidst the talk of journalism's decline, bankruptcy and loss of purpose, I sense a fightback. Journalism is rediscovering the serious role it must play in an open society. On the really big issues -- war, the facts of history, and the biggest economic crash in living memory -- journalists, it turns out, are necessary. Essential, in fact.
And all this at the height of the midsummer "silly season".
It is precisely the loss of public trust in elected politicians and the media, in Britain and other countries, which has thrown into relief the vital role of inquiring, fact-based journalism. I read the events of high summer as a time when the value of serious journalism won new recognition because recent events have shown the urgent need for it.
* In August, at a stormy public meeting in the Society of Friends meeting house in London organised by Action for UN Renewal and others, participants spoke with fury about deceptions used by the British governments to justify the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. Special venom was reserved for the "metropolitan media" in London, which was accused of parotting official falsehoods about the evidence for Iraq's possession of WMD. Robert Fox of The Evening Standard accused his own tribe of allowing Tony Blair's chief spin doctor, Alistair Campbell, to dominate the "information space".
Very true. Yet a maverick journalist working for the BBC, Andrew Gilligan, did puncture the government's carefully constructed "Iraq story" in a live radio broadcast. He paid for it with his job, as did the BBC's chairman and director-general. Was most of the BBC's coverage of the occupation too unquestioning? Or that of UK newspapers? It didn't seem like that. The new Chilcot inquiry into the war will again test the media's ability to get at the facts of the judgements and mistakes of all sides.
* Then, on 1 September, it was the key facts about the outbreak of the Second World War that became the stuff of headlines, when the political leaders of Poland and Russia each used the 70th anniversary of Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland at the start of the war to make rival points.
Poland's President Lech Kaczynski tried, as he saw it, to set the muddied historical record straight. At the gathering of world leaders in Gdansk he described the Soviet Red Army's occupation of eastern Poland later in September 1939 as a "knife in the back of Poland". He used the accusing words that "we are here to remember who in that war was the aggressor and who was the victim, for without an honest memory neither Europe, nor Poland, nor the world will ever live in security."
Vladimir Putin, now Russia's prime minister, took what was seen as a rather moderate line, denouncing the Nazi-Soviet Pact which paved the way for the double invasion of Poland, and declaring that "huge numbers of mistakes were made by all sides." It was a positive step that the Russian leader attended the ceremony in Gdansk. Poland's foreign minister Radek Sikorski praised his courage in doing so.
But from Russian officials, historians and media in Moscow has come a fresh campaign of falsification and misinformation about the circumstances at the outbreak of war, which seems to raise a grave danger that today's Russians may accept a one-sided and partly false record of those hugely important events. The thrust of the campaign, on TV, in print and in briefings given to journalists, is that the Poles were Hitler's "first ally", or even secretly plotted some kind of combined invasion with Germany of Stalin's Soviet Union, so they somehow brought their subsequent national tragedy upon themselves.
President Kaczynski faced some criticism at home for the stridency of his remarks. But in Russia, as the Council of Europe and the OSCE have documented in detail, journalists face growing pressures and even coercion if they challenge official orthodoxies. Killings of independent journalists and human rights defenders mean that Russia has become one of the most dangerous places in the world for champions of free speech.
Critics of the Russian authorities now say that the powerful state-dominated media in Russia are again being instrumentalised to spread biased and distorted accounts of the war and the Soviet subjugation of eastern Europe that followed. In the light of the selective treatment of the historical record it is no surprise to find that in a Levada opinion poll in July of this year, 61 percent of Russians did not even know that Soviet troops invaded eastern Poland in September 1939. Serious distortions of big historical events harm the chances of good relations between countries today, especially if cover-ups are enforced by state power.
There are present dangers too. After the killing in Chechnya in July of Natalia Estemirova, to stop her doing her vitally important work documenting human rights abuses there, her organisation Memorial said it was being forced to close its operation in Chechnya. Facts must be respected; and journalists as well as historians must defend them.
* The big story affecting most people now and over the past year is the financial crisis and economic downturn. It's another theme that excites heady emotions.
The BBC's Business Editor, Robert Peston, presented his own powerful testament on why inquiring journalism matters in a lecture on 29 August at the Edinburgh Television Festival entitled "What future for media and journalism?".
His starting-point was that the traditional model of news provision is being wrecked and needs to be overhauled.
And in a riposte to James Murdoch's pugnacious claim that the only reliable guarantor of independence in journalism is "profit", Robert Peston set out his grounds for saying that society needs a choice of high-quality news providers, and that a raw commercial model could not meet that important need.
He acknowledged that parts of the media had acted as cheer leaders for the orgy of profits and debts run up by licentious money-men. The media had at best been "myopic while the authorities were blind". But he identified the core issue raised by the whole saga as the ability -- or inability -- of the media to challenge orthodoxy -- to ask the big and hard questions.
Robert Peston invoked Walter Bagehot, the 19th century British constitutionalist and lucid writer on economics, who defined democracy as government by discussion. "You can't," he concluded "have a good chinwag without the facts."
No good discussion without the facts. It sounds like a sound basis for re-building and advancing the reputation of journalism in Britain, after the obvious lapses in the reporting of issues surrounding the Iraq invasion, as well as the fantastic deceptions woven by some of those bankers.
It is encouraging, after so much doom and gloom about the media, to hear journalists themselves, and others, insisting on the need for the media to challenge authority as their right and their duty.
That's the difference between a society with open and plural media, and one where criticism or even simple questioning of those in high authority can easily bring negative and direct consequences.
The summer's "silly season" is over and a new political season has begun. Despite their imperfections, the UK media go on day after day probing current issues -- like the layers of truth behind the release of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, and plans to reform parliament and the financial system after a year of ripping scandals.
We badly need serious journalism. That means journalism that gets at the facts -- especially when they are unwelcome to those who wield power and would like to airbrush them out.
Friday, 4 September 2009
Tuesday, 26 May 2009
The "very British revolution" is a big one for the media
by William Horsley, International Director of CFOM
The Daily Telegraph's multiple scoop about British MPs expenses claims may not quite have the political explosive power of the Watergate or the Pentagon Papers stories. But it has led to what's been nicely dubbed a very British revolution, which may or may not end up changing the basic machinery of British political life. That's not bad as scoops go.
Will Lewis, the Telegraph's editor must take the lion's share of the credit. It could have blown up in his face. The risk was apparently judged too big for a couple of other newspapers which turned down the offer of the story of the year. Heather Brooke, an American investigative journalist, gets top prize for getting the story revved up and ready to break by relentless use of the Freedom of Information Act.
But the episode shows the British media as a whole in remarkably robust health and spirits, despite recent laments about threats to the survival of the mainstream media from economic pressures, the spin doctors' toxic medicines and the loss of public trust.
Consider these pugnacious comments by leading BBC presenters: I can't see or hear them being uttered by their counterparts in many (any?) other countries as part of a public debate on programmes of a national broadcaster -- that is, TV and radio channels paid for by public funds.
Evan Davis to a government minister at ten past eight on the popular BBC Radio 4 Today Programme one morning last week. The minister tried to argue that the present government would be competent to see through an adequate reform of the expenses system for British MPs. Davis: "But you don't have the moral authority, do you? You're all responsible for a complete screw-up!"
The language may be unparliamentary, but it's definitely Anglo-Saxon.
And here's Gavin Esler, known as a fair but incisive presenter of "Newsnight" on BBC 2 TV. Note that the date was April 14 this year, and the issue was the disclosure -- via the political blogger who styles himself Guido Fawkes -- of the action of Gordon Brown's special adviser, Damian McBride, in sending out e-mails slandering opposition politicians in preparation for a concerted online smear campaign based apparently on gossip and inneundo.
A senior government minister, seeking to defend Gordon Brown's decisive action in sacking Mr McBride at once, argued on live TV that the Prime Minister knew nothing of what his adviser was up to.
Esler: "They say that a fish rots from the head. People sitting at home want to know the truth about a prime minister whom we haven't had the opportunity to elect, and if it's true that he has a "dark side" - isn't he responsible?"
What does the encounter say? And the language used? Everyone can make up their own mind. To me, it is further evidence of a de facto rule, a fact of life about the British -- call it a "Britishness test".
That rule says that, presented with an argument between a TV interviewer and a politician, and provided that the interviewer is demanding more forthright information or an apology while the politician is seeking to evade the issue, the majority of British people will back the journalist. They will say that politicians and public figures must answer the question.
Obvious, you may say. But actually quite rare.
Consider the case of Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister of Italy, convicted more than once on corruption-related charges in lower courts but each time (so far) able to escape the consequences, thanks to the statute of limitations or changes in the law enacted by a government headed by... Silvio Berlusconi.
Right now Mr Berlusconi faces a challenge from a critical newspaper, La Repubblica, which has started a "ten questions campaign". The paper has published ten questions directed at the prime minister about his relationship with an 18-year old model on whom he lavished an expensive gift on the occasion of her birthday party. Soon afterwards Mr Belusconi's wife Veronica demanded a divorce.
The ten questions include this: "Is it true that you promised Noemi you would help her career in show business or in politics?"
Italy's prime minister, far from submitting to any probing or critical interviews on television, has furiously attacked the newspaper. He has gone a long way towards branding the Italian press as an enemy, just as he had earlier declared "war" on judges, accusing them of a vendetta against him and calling them a "scourge".
Latest word is that Mr Berlusconi's soaring popularity with voters has taken a bit of a knock. But on past form he has reason to believe that he can brazen it out, counting on sympathetic coverage on the television channels he owns or controls, as well as the loyalty of the members of parliament whom he leads, to turn the tide of public opinion.
Or take the case of Hungary. Three years ago the then prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcany, was the improbable survivor of a political storm after a recording was leaked of a speech he had made to supporters in which he admitted gross economic mismanagement, saying (according to his own website) "No country in Europe has screwed up as much as we have", and adding "we lied morning, noon and night".
How long did it take for that story to come to light so that Hungarian voters could read about it in their newspapers? Five months. The speech was made in May, and its contents were at last revealed in October of 2006.
Or take another extraordinary case from Germany, a country where many journalists have cosy links with senior politicians, and almost all senior figures in the powerful public broadcasting system depend on support from one or other of the main political parties to secure their jobs as editors or reporters. In November 1999 the former Chancellor Helmut Kohl was forced to admit that over a period of several years he had operated a system of secret and unlawful bank accounts for party funding purposes for his favourites within the conservative CDU party. Unproved allegations linked the secret accounts with alleged under-the-counter payments related to large industrial or military contracts.
All those years and none of those well-placed journalists knew enough to blow the whistle? At the very least it was a miserable defeat for the media as a force for disclosing fishy politics. Helmut Kohl was investigated. He refused as a matter of "personal honour" to divulge the number or amounts of cash in the slush fund accounts. The case was soon dropped on the grounds that it would not be in the "public interest" to take it further. Mr Kohl's reputation was irreparably damaged, but the secrets have stayed with him.
The lesson I take from this catalogue of stonewalls and cover-ups is that disgraceful collusion between journalists and politicians is commonplace. Exposure of very high level abuses of power through determined media investigation is the exception not the rule. "National security" was cited by the Blair government in the UK when a Serious Fraud Office investigation into alleged bribery in connexion with a huge BAE Systems arms deal with Saudi Arabia was dropped in 2006.
In Britain the political journalists belonging to the exclusive and privileged club of "lobby correspondents" at Westminster has been exposed to sharp criticism and some ridicule for not digging out at least some of the dirt about MPs expenses long ago, despite the great stink the story has created now that it has been exposed.
There are those, too, who think the Telegraph and the rest of the media have got above themselves, that they are behaving like hypocrites, and that the natural order will re-assert itself in time. The order of secrecy about high politics, that is.
Perhaps. But this season of Saturnalia in British public life will never be forgotten. And for now at least elected politicians have learned, in the words of the London Times, to understand that they are meant to be "the servants of the people", not the other way round.
As was demonstrated by the case of Conservative MP Anthony Steen, who attacked the media after it emerged that he had claimed some £87,000 over a period of years to cover the cost of maintaining his "very, very large house" in Devon, including the cost of inspecting hundreds of trees on his property. "What right does the public have to interfere in my private life? None", he said in a BBC interview.
The British public seems to have decided, resoundingly, that they do have a right to know about such things when they are being paid for from public money.
Mr Steen has shown, incidentally, that in his case, too, the "Britishness" test works.
The Daily Telegraph's multiple scoop about British MPs expenses claims may not quite have the political explosive power of the Watergate or the Pentagon Papers stories. But it has led to what's been nicely dubbed a very British revolution, which may or may not end up changing the basic machinery of British political life. That's not bad as scoops go.
Will Lewis, the Telegraph's editor must take the lion's share of the credit. It could have blown up in his face. The risk was apparently judged too big for a couple of other newspapers which turned down the offer of the story of the year. Heather Brooke, an American investigative journalist, gets top prize for getting the story revved up and ready to break by relentless use of the Freedom of Information Act.
But the episode shows the British media as a whole in remarkably robust health and spirits, despite recent laments about threats to the survival of the mainstream media from economic pressures, the spin doctors' toxic medicines and the loss of public trust.
Consider these pugnacious comments by leading BBC presenters: I can't see or hear them being uttered by their counterparts in many (any?) other countries as part of a public debate on programmes of a national broadcaster -- that is, TV and radio channels paid for by public funds.
Evan Davis to a government minister at ten past eight on the popular BBC Radio 4 Today Programme one morning last week. The minister tried to argue that the present government would be competent to see through an adequate reform of the expenses system for British MPs. Davis: "But you don't have the moral authority, do you? You're all responsible for a complete screw-up!"
The language may be unparliamentary, but it's definitely Anglo-Saxon.
And here's Gavin Esler, known as a fair but incisive presenter of "Newsnight" on BBC 2 TV. Note that the date was April 14 this year, and the issue was the disclosure -- via the political blogger who styles himself Guido Fawkes -- of the action of Gordon Brown's special adviser, Damian McBride, in sending out e-mails slandering opposition politicians in preparation for a concerted online smear campaign based apparently on gossip and inneundo.
A senior government minister, seeking to defend Gordon Brown's decisive action in sacking Mr McBride at once, argued on live TV that the Prime Minister knew nothing of what his adviser was up to.
Esler: "They say that a fish rots from the head. People sitting at home want to know the truth about a prime minister whom we haven't had the opportunity to elect, and if it's true that he has a "dark side" - isn't he responsible?"
What does the encounter say? And the language used? Everyone can make up their own mind. To me, it is further evidence of a de facto rule, a fact of life about the British -- call it a "Britishness test".
That rule says that, presented with an argument between a TV interviewer and a politician, and provided that the interviewer is demanding more forthright information or an apology while the politician is seeking to evade the issue, the majority of British people will back the journalist. They will say that politicians and public figures must answer the question.
Obvious, you may say. But actually quite rare.
Consider the case of Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister of Italy, convicted more than once on corruption-related charges in lower courts but each time (so far) able to escape the consequences, thanks to the statute of limitations or changes in the law enacted by a government headed by... Silvio Berlusconi.
Right now Mr Berlusconi faces a challenge from a critical newspaper, La Repubblica, which has started a "ten questions campaign". The paper has published ten questions directed at the prime minister about his relationship with an 18-year old model on whom he lavished an expensive gift on the occasion of her birthday party. Soon afterwards Mr Belusconi's wife Veronica demanded a divorce.
The ten questions include this: "Is it true that you promised Noemi you would help her career in show business or in politics?"
Italy's prime minister, far from submitting to any probing or critical interviews on television, has furiously attacked the newspaper. He has gone a long way towards branding the Italian press as an enemy, just as he had earlier declared "war" on judges, accusing them of a vendetta against him and calling them a "scourge".
Latest word is that Mr Berlusconi's soaring popularity with voters has taken a bit of a knock. But on past form he has reason to believe that he can brazen it out, counting on sympathetic coverage on the television channels he owns or controls, as well as the loyalty of the members of parliament whom he leads, to turn the tide of public opinion.
Or take the case of Hungary. Three years ago the then prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcany, was the improbable survivor of a political storm after a recording was leaked of a speech he had made to supporters in which he admitted gross economic mismanagement, saying (according to his own website) "No country in Europe has screwed up as much as we have", and adding "we lied morning, noon and night".
How long did it take for that story to come to light so that Hungarian voters could read about it in their newspapers? Five months. The speech was made in May, and its contents were at last revealed in October of 2006.
Or take another extraordinary case from Germany, a country where many journalists have cosy links with senior politicians, and almost all senior figures in the powerful public broadcasting system depend on support from one or other of the main political parties to secure their jobs as editors or reporters. In November 1999 the former Chancellor Helmut Kohl was forced to admit that over a period of several years he had operated a system of secret and unlawful bank accounts for party funding purposes for his favourites within the conservative CDU party. Unproved allegations linked the secret accounts with alleged under-the-counter payments related to large industrial or military contracts.
All those years and none of those well-placed journalists knew enough to blow the whistle? At the very least it was a miserable defeat for the media as a force for disclosing fishy politics. Helmut Kohl was investigated. He refused as a matter of "personal honour" to divulge the number or amounts of cash in the slush fund accounts. The case was soon dropped on the grounds that it would not be in the "public interest" to take it further. Mr Kohl's reputation was irreparably damaged, but the secrets have stayed with him.
The lesson I take from this catalogue of stonewalls and cover-ups is that disgraceful collusion between journalists and politicians is commonplace. Exposure of very high level abuses of power through determined media investigation is the exception not the rule. "National security" was cited by the Blair government in the UK when a Serious Fraud Office investigation into alleged bribery in connexion with a huge BAE Systems arms deal with Saudi Arabia was dropped in 2006.
In Britain the political journalists belonging to the exclusive and privileged club of "lobby correspondents" at Westminster has been exposed to sharp criticism and some ridicule for not digging out at least some of the dirt about MPs expenses long ago, despite the great stink the story has created now that it has been exposed.
There are those, too, who think the Telegraph and the rest of the media have got above themselves, that they are behaving like hypocrites, and that the natural order will re-assert itself in time. The order of secrecy about high politics, that is.
Perhaps. But this season of Saturnalia in British public life will never be forgotten. And for now at least elected politicians have learned, in the words of the London Times, to understand that they are meant to be "the servants of the people", not the other way round.
As was demonstrated by the case of Conservative MP Anthony Steen, who attacked the media after it emerged that he had claimed some £87,000 over a period of years to cover the cost of maintaining his "very, very large house" in Devon, including the cost of inspecting hundreds of trees on his property. "What right does the public have to interfere in my private life? None", he said in a BBC interview.
The British public seems to have decided, resoundingly, that they do have a right to know about such things when they are being paid for from public money.
Mr Steen has shown, incidentally, that in his case, too, the "Britishness" test works.
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
Who will save the world's media?
William Horsley, CFOM International Director, 3 April 2009
The spectre of a global economic crash may have motivated world leaders at the G20 summit in London to seek new rules to replace a postwar system that failed. What about the great information system built by the world's traditional news media? That too enjoyed its long heyday in the same period, but now face what looks increasingly like self-destruction, brought on by the Internet revolution, the collapse of demand from the global public, and the credit crunch.
Who will save the media -- or is it already too late? The Open Society Institute has published a massive and alarming report -- "Television across Europe: more channels, less independence". It chronicles the retreat of freedom of thought and impartiality of information in post Cold War Europe, and most of all it blames governments for seeking to manipulate the most potent medium of all: broadcasting.
So should the world's elected leaders really be concerned to shore up democracy's defences by reviving the health of television as a guardian of freedom of expression? That is what Jean Seaton, in her foreword to the OSI Report, says they need to do. This eye-opening study should be on the desk of every politician and international agency concerned about Europe's future, she says.
The OSI examines just nine countries, from Poland to Italy. But the now-familiar patterns of political interference and control, rank populism and declining revenues have betrayed the hopes of people on both sides of the Berlin Wall when it fell, that a new era of free choice and accountable politics, kept clean by inquiring and dynamic media, was about to begin.
The Soros-funded report says the crisis of public broadcast funding across Central and Eastern Europe may also be prophetic for Western Europe. Indeed, with French broadcasters scarred by their dispute with the government over what they allege is a political power grab, that shadow is already darkening the landscape all the way from the Atlantic to Moscow and beyond.
Europe's representative journalist organisations are also sounding the alarm, The European Federation of Journalists, with over 260,000 members, has written to the Commission President and the heads of the political parties in the European Parliament with an unprecedented warning that media markets are "collapsing", with a dramatic and negatiive impact on the democratic life of Europe.
The EFJ asserts that private and public media are also at acute risk in the UK, Germany and the Nordic countries. It calls on the political leaders, as well as civil society organisations and the media themselves, to engage in an urgent debate in order to revive commitments to public service values in media and to ethical journalism.
It seems to be asking a hell of a lot for governments to come to the aid of the big creatures of the media jungle, especially now when they are hardly any more beloved by ordinary people than investment bankers.
It has indeed become commonplace for government leaders to treat the press openly as an enemy. The Slovak prime minister Robert Fico openly insulted journalists as "hyenas". Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has urged his supporters to boycott newspapers that write critically about him. And less than two years ago Tony Blair, before leaving office in the UK, famously attacked the media as "feral beasts".
But Europe's politicians should curb any instincts they may have to gloat or to join in the weakening of their troublesome and inquisitive media. Serious surveys such as those by the OSI, Freedom House, Reporters Without Borders and the Association of European Journalists all provide evidence that the fourth estate is at risk of losing the ability to hold the powerful to account.
Instead elected politicians could do as they have been asked by the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, and start treating the condition of their media as a key indicator of the health of each nation's democracy. Its proposal is that every parliament in Europe should conduct a regular independent audit of the media, supporting media professionalism and diversity and the independence of public broadcasting.
CFOM came into being this year, bringing together senior journalists and editors with leading media researchers at the University of Sheffield, because we recognised the urgent need for all countries to comprehend the dangers that this haemorraging of mainstream news media presents for the values of open societies and for the post Cold War system of rules-based international relations.
The OSI Report and the EFJ's warning point to the same sources of danger. One is the dramatic attrition of established media of all kinds caused by the economic downturn and the flight of advertising to the Internet. The other is a pervasive climate of neglect and seeming indifference regarding media freedom and independence which has been described as a "meltdown of OSCE commitments".
That phrase was coined by Miklos Haraszti, the respected Representative on Freedom of the Media of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
At CFOM's founding conference at Chatham House in London on February 3 Miklos Haraszti publicly called for public figures and journalists everywhere to show their commitment to the OSCE values of real democracy and freedom of expression, by speaking out against harsh political pressures and the murders of journalists and human rights campaigners in Russia and elsewhere.
His demand was backed up by Lionel Barber, the editor of the Financial Times, who described as "shameful" the silence of many leading European politicians over the cold-blooded killing of the Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006.
Jens Reich, a co-leader of the New Forum pro-democracy movement in the former communist East Germany, expressed dismay at the "state of terror" in which other journalists in Russia have also faced intimidation, violence or death when they have challenged powerful interests.
He reminded the audience of diplomats, public figures and journalists that the fall of totalitarian communism in 1989 was made possible by the people's determination then not to accept political propaganda in place of truth.
Today two things are evident: first, that the explosion of free information on the Internet has not so far led to a better system of holding political leaders to account. Freedom of information laws and the blogosphere have breached some old taboos about privilege and secrecy, but in many countries a new threat has grownup -- what Julian Petley aptly calls the "fusion of political and media power".
Secondly, the high-minded international mechanisms that were supposed to guarantee media freedoms and human rights across the whole of Europe have fallen into disrepair or even, unfortunately, into disrespect. They are principally the OSCE, which grew out of the Helsinki accords concerning European security and human rights in the 1970s; and the Council of Europe, whose European Convention on Human Rights was first signed sixty years ago this May.
So yes, it is high time for Europe's leading media and its top political leaders -- including those meeting in London's ExCeL Centre in April -- to concern themselves with the consequences of the neglect of those high ideals in the two decades since the collapse of communism.
A broad coalition of media professionals and concerned groups is now working to raise awareness about the crisis for media independence in Europe and beyond, and to encourage political authorities to play a constructive part in repairing the damage. Prof Jackie Harrison and I from CFOM took part in a timely conference in London on April 7 examining the growing pressures on Freedom of Expression in the Media. It was organised through the Clemens Nathan Research Centre; more details on that wesbite and this CFOM site soon.
On May 1 I shall be chairing a public debate marking World Press Freedom Day at the Frontline Club in London, sponsored by the UK National Commission for UNESCO and the UK Press Freedom Network. The topic for debate is "Governments at War are winning the Battle of controlling the international Media.
And later this year (date TBA) CFOM will hold an inaugural lecture event at the University of Sheffield, as a follow-up to our launch conference on February 3 which took the theme "Twenty Years after the Fall of the Wall: What Became of Press and Political Freedoms?"
Transcripts of the presentations at the CFOM-Chatham House conference in February can be read on this website.
If you would like to comment on this or other blogposts please send an e-mail to william@cfom.org.uk
The spectre of a global economic crash may have motivated world leaders at the G20 summit in London to seek new rules to replace a postwar system that failed. What about the great information system built by the world's traditional news media? That too enjoyed its long heyday in the same period, but now face what looks increasingly like self-destruction, brought on by the Internet revolution, the collapse of demand from the global public, and the credit crunch.
Who will save the media -- or is it already too late? The Open Society Institute has published a massive and alarming report -- "Television across Europe: more channels, less independence". It chronicles the retreat of freedom of thought and impartiality of information in post Cold War Europe, and most of all it blames governments for seeking to manipulate the most potent medium of all: broadcasting.
So should the world's elected leaders really be concerned to shore up democracy's defences by reviving the health of television as a guardian of freedom of expression? That is what Jean Seaton, in her foreword to the OSI Report, says they need to do. This eye-opening study should be on the desk of every politician and international agency concerned about Europe's future, she says.
The OSI examines just nine countries, from Poland to Italy. But the now-familiar patterns of political interference and control, rank populism and declining revenues have betrayed the hopes of people on both sides of the Berlin Wall when it fell, that a new era of free choice and accountable politics, kept clean by inquiring and dynamic media, was about to begin.
The Soros-funded report says the crisis of public broadcast funding across Central and Eastern Europe may also be prophetic for Western Europe. Indeed, with French broadcasters scarred by their dispute with the government over what they allege is a political power grab, that shadow is already darkening the landscape all the way from the Atlantic to Moscow and beyond.
Europe's representative journalist organisations are also sounding the alarm, The European Federation of Journalists, with over 260,000 members, has written to the Commission President and the heads of the political parties in the European Parliament with an unprecedented warning that media markets are "collapsing", with a dramatic and negatiive impact on the democratic life of Europe.
The EFJ asserts that private and public media are also at acute risk in the UK, Germany and the Nordic countries. It calls on the political leaders, as well as civil society organisations and the media themselves, to engage in an urgent debate in order to revive commitments to public service values in media and to ethical journalism.
It seems to be asking a hell of a lot for governments to come to the aid of the big creatures of the media jungle, especially now when they are hardly any more beloved by ordinary people than investment bankers.
It has indeed become commonplace for government leaders to treat the press openly as an enemy. The Slovak prime minister Robert Fico openly insulted journalists as "hyenas". Turkey's prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has urged his supporters to boycott newspapers that write critically about him. And less than two years ago Tony Blair, before leaving office in the UK, famously attacked the media as "feral beasts".
But Europe's politicians should curb any instincts they may have to gloat or to join in the weakening of their troublesome and inquisitive media. Serious surveys such as those by the OSI, Freedom House, Reporters Without Borders and the Association of European Journalists all provide evidence that the fourth estate is at risk of losing the ability to hold the powerful to account.
Instead elected politicians could do as they have been asked by the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe, and start treating the condition of their media as a key indicator of the health of each nation's democracy. Its proposal is that every parliament in Europe should conduct a regular independent audit of the media, supporting media professionalism and diversity and the independence of public broadcasting.
CFOM came into being this year, bringing together senior journalists and editors with leading media researchers at the University of Sheffield, because we recognised the urgent need for all countries to comprehend the dangers that this haemorraging of mainstream news media presents for the values of open societies and for the post Cold War system of rules-based international relations.
The OSI Report and the EFJ's warning point to the same sources of danger. One is the dramatic attrition of established media of all kinds caused by the economic downturn and the flight of advertising to the Internet. The other is a pervasive climate of neglect and seeming indifference regarding media freedom and independence which has been described as a "meltdown of OSCE commitments".
That phrase was coined by Miklos Haraszti, the respected Representative on Freedom of the Media of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
At CFOM's founding conference at Chatham House in London on February 3 Miklos Haraszti publicly called for public figures and journalists everywhere to show their commitment to the OSCE values of real democracy and freedom of expression, by speaking out against harsh political pressures and the murders of journalists and human rights campaigners in Russia and elsewhere.
His demand was backed up by Lionel Barber, the editor of the Financial Times, who described as "shameful" the silence of many leading European politicians over the cold-blooded killing of the Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006.
Jens Reich, a co-leader of the New Forum pro-democracy movement in the former communist East Germany, expressed dismay at the "state of terror" in which other journalists in Russia have also faced intimidation, violence or death when they have challenged powerful interests.
He reminded the audience of diplomats, public figures and journalists that the fall of totalitarian communism in 1989 was made possible by the people's determination then not to accept political propaganda in place of truth.
Today two things are evident: first, that the explosion of free information on the Internet has not so far led to a better system of holding political leaders to account. Freedom of information laws and the blogosphere have breached some old taboos about privilege and secrecy, but in many countries a new threat has grownup -- what Julian Petley aptly calls the "fusion of political and media power".
Secondly, the high-minded international mechanisms that were supposed to guarantee media freedoms and human rights across the whole of Europe have fallen into disrepair or even, unfortunately, into disrespect. They are principally the OSCE, which grew out of the Helsinki accords concerning European security and human rights in the 1970s; and the Council of Europe, whose European Convention on Human Rights was first signed sixty years ago this May.
So yes, it is high time for Europe's leading media and its top political leaders -- including those meeting in London's ExCeL Centre in April -- to concern themselves with the consequences of the neglect of those high ideals in the two decades since the collapse of communism.
A broad coalition of media professionals and concerned groups is now working to raise awareness about the crisis for media independence in Europe and beyond, and to encourage political authorities to play a constructive part in repairing the damage. Prof Jackie Harrison and I from CFOM took part in a timely conference in London on April 7 examining the growing pressures on Freedom of Expression in the Media. It was organised through the Clemens Nathan Research Centre; more details on that wesbite and this CFOM site soon.
On May 1 I shall be chairing a public debate marking World Press Freedom Day at the Frontline Club in London, sponsored by the UK National Commission for UNESCO and the UK Press Freedom Network. The topic for debate is "Governments at War are winning the Battle of controlling the international Media.
And later this year (date TBA) CFOM will hold an inaugural lecture event at the University of Sheffield, as a follow-up to our launch conference on February 3 which took the theme "Twenty Years after the Fall of the Wall: What Became of Press and Political Freedoms?"
Transcripts of the presentations at the CFOM-Chatham House conference in February can be read on this website.
If you would like to comment on this or other blogposts please send an e-mail to william@cfom.org.uk
Monday, 2 February 2009
MY JOURNEY INTO CFOM
By William Horsley (International Director of CFOM)
I am writing this in London just one day before the birth of CFOM - Britain's first university-based Centre for Freedom of the Media. I await the day with excitement and some nervousness (London is lying under the heaviest snow for 18 years). What I do know is that the current age of uncertainty about political systems, economic storms and the survival of the traditional forms of media call exactly for what CFOM will be doing -- that is, forming research networks and working with others to bring a more well-founded understanding of the role that the media, broadly defined, must play for open societies to work and in letting democracies thrive.
CFOM is doing something quite new -- in the UK at least -- by joining the skills and expertise of a leading research university with the experience and understanding of leading journalists and editors to define and expose ways in which news media freedom is abused, and to examine media standards of independence and truthfulness.
In the past year I have journeyed often between Sheffield and London, and travelled to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, to Vienna and to America, still the world's media superpower, while preparing to work with my CFOM colleagues, including Professor Jackie Harrison and others in the Department of Journalism Studies at the University of Sheffield and Jock Gallagher, a former senior BBC editor with whom I worked in past years planning the annual World Press Freedom Day events in London.
The public launch is taking place on Tuesday February 3rd. We expect about 200 people to attend the birth, which we are marking with a conference at the UK's leading think-tank, Chatham House in London. The theme is "Twenty Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall: What Happened to Press and Political Freedoms?"
Jens Reich, the former leader of New Forum, the East German pro-democracy movement which helped topple the communist system headed by Erich Honecker, is giving the keynote speech. Remarkably, he says that the electrifying effect of western TV broadcasts which flooded East German homes with pictures of the good life in the West was more effective even than the efforts of the anti-communist opposition in bringing about the Fall of the Wall on November 9th 1989, and with it the collapse of the communist regime in the heartland of the Soviet empire in central and eastern Europe.
CFOM's conference, organised together with Chatham House, will be the first major public event in the UK during this 20th anniversary of the 1989 Year of Revolutions. The dramatic collapse in quick succession of the Soviet-backed communist governments across the then East bloc, from Hungary and Poland to East Germany and finally Romania, is unique in history as a sweeping victory for free expression and free media, as well as free political choice.
Other speakers include the dedicated Representative on Freedom of the Media of the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe), Miklos Haraszti, talking about the "meltdown" of some member states' international commitments to media freedom as a pillar of social freedom and the rule of law. Lionel Barber, the Editor of the Financial Times, is reflecting on new forms of the age-old struggle between media authority and political power -- the "pen and the sword". Leading media and civil society figures from Russia are to share their insights and reflections on our theme.
My belief in our new creation, CFOM, arises from the plain evidence that freedom of the media and free expression are suffering harshly in large parts of the world, in spite of the astonishing opportunities offered to billions of people by the Internet and ever-faster communications. The independent American-based organisation Freedom House, which produces a thorough survey of press freedom around the world each year, has found that it has declined for each of the past six years.
CFOM will add our resources -- the combined skills of a leading British research university and a dedicated group of experienced journalists -- to the work of an extraordinary array of specialised media monitoring and human rights organisation around the world, which already chronicle many aspects of the rising threats to global media freedom and independence. Those include violence against journalists, censorship, political pressures, ownership monopolies, and the drastic decline in the ranks of professional journalists caused by what has been called "the most disruptive transition in the history of the media".
Despite many warnings and the close documentation of that decline in the capacity of the media to inform and hold the powerful to account, in most parts of the world there is still too little understanding of the often crucial role that independent media actually play in setting the political course of nations. Out of that ignorance comes mischief, and the risk of misrule and even conflict. Wars and rival nationalisms distort facts and blot out the paths to mutual understanding, and all too often the media serves as a willing or unwilling tool of official propaganda even in this new century. These are core areas for CFOM's future research and public activities
CFOM, the Sheffield Centre for Freedom of the Media has a bold ambition, to treat the media's role as a proper subject of study for political scientists. Now more than ever before the media, in their countless forms and platforms, must be seen as an integral part of the system of governance for countries, and even of wider structures of international relations.
The double murders in a Moscow street of a young Russian woman journalist Anastasia Baburova and the human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov on January 19th drew fresh attention to the risks of death and regular intimidation faced by countless journalists in troubled or illiberal societies.
Yet political and legal means to halt such corrosive abuses are in place and can be made effective when governments and their public opinion are mobilised to recognise the dangers and take action. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg has ruled many times against Russia, and many other governments, in cases where victims or their relatives have taken legal action to protect their rights in the face of government neglect or culpability.
So the contest between state power and the moral force of newspapers or other media does not have to be loaded in favour of one side alone. When national courts are corrupted or media fall under state control to do the bidding of political forces, international laws and rules are on the side of the citizen whose rights have been abused. The media must be true to its own well-aired principles in defence of free speech and the imperative to speak truth to power.
The President of the ECHR, Jean-Paul Costa, in a telling interview to the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta last year, rejected official Russian accusations of bias based on the large number of court rulings against the Russian state. There is nothing anti-Russian, he said, about the verdicts when they protect citizens of a state from abuses by their own government.
CFOM will be holding other public events and debates as part of its goal of building over time a wide community of academics, journalists and editors, and public figures in order to raise awareness and understanding of how crucial thriving and independent media are to the health of every body politic.
The Centre is also setting out to conduct original research investigating key issues such as improving Freedom of Information rules, the sometimes damaging effects of harsh national security-related laws, the impact of new media technologies and consumer behaviour on the editorial independence of public broadcasters and others, and the media's performance in countries where political freedoms are restricted.
We are encouraged by the support we have already received from the Open Society Foundation and the British Foreign Office, who have helped us with the ground-breaking London conference on February 3rd. We ask others to give generously to support our programme and our goals.
CFOM believes that the time is ripe for governments and other international organisations to recognise the fact that in the media-driven world we live in, the freedom of information flows and freedom and independence of the media need to be protected and sustained more actively than before.
The great human rights organisations of the postwar world, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have forged completely new expectations around the world that abuses including torture and imprisonment without due trial will be monitored and countered by collective action.
Now, the widespread assaults on freedom of the media in countries around the world must also be contested with new vigour and determination. CFOM will work with institutions, universities, media and other civil society organisations everywhere to help independent media to build stronger foundations for political and civil freedom.
I am writing this in London just one day before the birth of CFOM - Britain's first university-based Centre for Freedom of the Media. I await the day with excitement and some nervousness (London is lying under the heaviest snow for 18 years). What I do know is that the current age of uncertainty about political systems, economic storms and the survival of the traditional forms of media call exactly for what CFOM will be doing -- that is, forming research networks and working with others to bring a more well-founded understanding of the role that the media, broadly defined, must play for open societies to work and in letting democracies thrive.
CFOM is doing something quite new -- in the UK at least -- by joining the skills and expertise of a leading research university with the experience and understanding of leading journalists and editors to define and expose ways in which news media freedom is abused, and to examine media standards of independence and truthfulness.
In the past year I have journeyed often between Sheffield and London, and travelled to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, to Vienna and to America, still the world's media superpower, while preparing to work with my CFOM colleagues, including Professor Jackie Harrison and others in the Department of Journalism Studies at the University of Sheffield and Jock Gallagher, a former senior BBC editor with whom I worked in past years planning the annual World Press Freedom Day events in London.
The public launch is taking place on Tuesday February 3rd. We expect about 200 people to attend the birth, which we are marking with a conference at the UK's leading think-tank, Chatham House in London. The theme is "Twenty Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall: What Happened to Press and Political Freedoms?"
Jens Reich, the former leader of New Forum, the East German pro-democracy movement which helped topple the communist system headed by Erich Honecker, is giving the keynote speech. Remarkably, he says that the electrifying effect of western TV broadcasts which flooded East German homes with pictures of the good life in the West was more effective even than the efforts of the anti-communist opposition in bringing about the Fall of the Wall on November 9th 1989, and with it the collapse of the communist regime in the heartland of the Soviet empire in central and eastern Europe.
CFOM's conference, organised together with Chatham House, will be the first major public event in the UK during this 20th anniversary of the 1989 Year of Revolutions. The dramatic collapse in quick succession of the Soviet-backed communist governments across the then East bloc, from Hungary and Poland to East Germany and finally Romania, is unique in history as a sweeping victory for free expression and free media, as well as free political choice.
Other speakers include the dedicated Representative on Freedom of the Media of the OSCE (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe), Miklos Haraszti, talking about the "meltdown" of some member states' international commitments to media freedom as a pillar of social freedom and the rule of law. Lionel Barber, the Editor of the Financial Times, is reflecting on new forms of the age-old struggle between media authority and political power -- the "pen and the sword". Leading media and civil society figures from Russia are to share their insights and reflections on our theme.
My belief in our new creation, CFOM, arises from the plain evidence that freedom of the media and free expression are suffering harshly in large parts of the world, in spite of the astonishing opportunities offered to billions of people by the Internet and ever-faster communications. The independent American-based organisation Freedom House, which produces a thorough survey of press freedom around the world each year, has found that it has declined for each of the past six years.
CFOM will add our resources -- the combined skills of a leading British research university and a dedicated group of experienced journalists -- to the work of an extraordinary array of specialised media monitoring and human rights organisation around the world, which already chronicle many aspects of the rising threats to global media freedom and independence. Those include violence against journalists, censorship, political pressures, ownership monopolies, and the drastic decline in the ranks of professional journalists caused by what has been called "the most disruptive transition in the history of the media".
Despite many warnings and the close documentation of that decline in the capacity of the media to inform and hold the powerful to account, in most parts of the world there is still too little understanding of the often crucial role that independent media actually play in setting the political course of nations. Out of that ignorance comes mischief, and the risk of misrule and even conflict. Wars and rival nationalisms distort facts and blot out the paths to mutual understanding, and all too often the media serves as a willing or unwilling tool of official propaganda even in this new century. These are core areas for CFOM's future research and public activities
CFOM, the Sheffield Centre for Freedom of the Media has a bold ambition, to treat the media's role as a proper subject of study for political scientists. Now more than ever before the media, in their countless forms and platforms, must be seen as an integral part of the system of governance for countries, and even of wider structures of international relations.
The double murders in a Moscow street of a young Russian woman journalist Anastasia Baburova and the human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov on January 19th drew fresh attention to the risks of death and regular intimidation faced by countless journalists in troubled or illiberal societies.
Yet political and legal means to halt such corrosive abuses are in place and can be made effective when governments and their public opinion are mobilised to recognise the dangers and take action. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg has ruled many times against Russia, and many other governments, in cases where victims or their relatives have taken legal action to protect their rights in the face of government neglect or culpability.
So the contest between state power and the moral force of newspapers or other media does not have to be loaded in favour of one side alone. When national courts are corrupted or media fall under state control to do the bidding of political forces, international laws and rules are on the side of the citizen whose rights have been abused. The media must be true to its own well-aired principles in defence of free speech and the imperative to speak truth to power.
The President of the ECHR, Jean-Paul Costa, in a telling interview to the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta last year, rejected official Russian accusations of bias based on the large number of court rulings against the Russian state. There is nothing anti-Russian, he said, about the verdicts when they protect citizens of a state from abuses by their own government.
CFOM will be holding other public events and debates as part of its goal of building over time a wide community of academics, journalists and editors, and public figures in order to raise awareness and understanding of how crucial thriving and independent media are to the health of every body politic.
The Centre is also setting out to conduct original research investigating key issues such as improving Freedom of Information rules, the sometimes damaging effects of harsh national security-related laws, the impact of new media technologies and consumer behaviour on the editorial independence of public broadcasters and others, and the media's performance in countries where political freedoms are restricted.
We are encouraged by the support we have already received from the Open Society Foundation and the British Foreign Office, who have helped us with the ground-breaking London conference on February 3rd. We ask others to give generously to support our programme and our goals.
CFOM believes that the time is ripe for governments and other international organisations to recognise the fact that in the media-driven world we live in, the freedom of information flows and freedom and independence of the media need to be protected and sustained more actively than before.
The great human rights organisations of the postwar world, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have forged completely new expectations around the world that abuses including torture and imprisonment without due trial will be monitored and countered by collective action.
Now, the widespread assaults on freedom of the media in countries around the world must also be contested with new vigour and determination. CFOM will work with institutions, universities, media and other civil society organisations everywhere to help independent media to build stronger foundations for political and civil freedom.
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