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AEJ Media Freedom Workshop in Dublin brings freedom threats into focus
London, 14 November 2007 The AEJ’s Media Freedom Workshop was held on 10 November as the final session of the Dublin Congress. About 100 members debated the growing threats to journalistic freedom from undue interference and censorship. The OSCE’s Media Freedom Representative Miklos Haraszti welcomed as “excellent” the AEJ’s 20-country Survey Goodbye to Freedom? William Horsley, the Survey’s editor, was in the chair. PART ONE of the Workshop, called Watchdogs or Lapdogs?, focused on political, legal and commercial pressures on the media. Here are some highlights: Miklos Haraszti said murders and assaults against journalists are the paramount danger to media freedom in the OSCE area. All European governments should protect journalists by de-criminalising libel laws. Ireland should enact a “shield” law to protect journalists from prosecution when they publish sensitive information. Two senior journalists on The Irish Times now face the threat of jail for refusing to reveal their sources. Paul Gillespie, Foreign Policy Editor of The Irish Times, said the paper had acted in the public interest when it published its controversial article about payments made to Bertie Ahern, the Prime Minister, as minister of finance back in 1993. If the paper were to reveal its source its credibility would be severely damaged. Manana Aslamazyan, President of Internews Europe and co-author of the Russia Report in the AEJ Survey, ran a foundation in Moscow which trained 15,000 Russian journalists before the Putin government closed it down. Russian journalists, she said, feel isolated and need much stronger support and solidarity from their colleagues in other parts of Europe. Teodora Stanciu from Romania drew attention to the case of Rodica Culcer, the head of news at Romanian public TV, who was dismissed from her post after broadcasting a video showing a government minister apparently accepting a bribe. The government later passed a new law providing for sentences up to seven years in jail for journalists who use secret filming to investigate corruption allegations.	PART TWO of the Workshop, entitled Media for Sale? explored what the media can do to stop the corruption of independent-minded journalism and maintain high professional standards. John Horgan, the newly-appointed Press Ombudsman of Ireland, said journalists should resist pressures to write stories that are biased or unethical. And journalists should develop a keener sense of responsibility to avoid careless acts of defamation and intrusions into privacy. Tomas Vrba from the Czech Republic pointed to a danger of self-censorship by journalists who lack the courage to confront public figures with questions about abuses of power or corruption. And the trend towards “dumbed-down” journalism in many parts of Europe was already undermining the media’s claim to be working in the public interest. Kyriakos Pierides and Hasan Kahvecioglu, who jointly produce a bi-lingual radio programme on Cyprus, warned that free journalism is being crushed in a propaganda war between rival political forces after decades of conflict and antagonism. They asked for international support for their joint efforts to investigate the fate of missing persons from the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities. Miklos Haraszti said the great structural threat to media freedom in the former Soviet Union was the lack of media diversity as the old state monopolies still dominate the scene in new guises. In western Europe new dangers have appeared from new media owners seeking to use the media unscrupulously for partisan interests. Régis Verley from France cited examples of open censorship of newspaper stories by owners and attempts by state power to interfere in journalists’ work. Michel Theys from Belgium said the lack of minimum pay and standards for journalists, and the new economic climate in which the media are treated as a commercial commodity, threaten the survival of high quality journalism. William Horsley, the AEJ Media Freedom Representative, received unanimous support from AEJ members for plans to lead the Association in more active research, exchange of information and campaigning on media freedom issues in cooperation with the Council of Europe and the OSCE’s Media Freedom Representative. ________________________________________________ The newly-formed AEJ Media Freedom Network, made up of active members in all national sections, will follow up on the successful Survey through projects on selected topics and themes. They will form the subject of further special AEJ meetings and a follow-up debate at the 2008 AEJ Congress.
See also Survey page and the news item, European journalists’ report