RESTRUCTURING THE MEDIA IN POST-CONFLICT SOCIETIES:
FOUR PERSPECTIVES
THE EXPERIENCE OF INTERGOVERNMENTAL AND NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS

A Background Paper for the UNESCO World Press Day Conference in Geneva

May 2000

Edited by Monroe E. Price
Co-director, Programme in Comparative Media Law & Policy
Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford

[*1]INTRODUCTION

THE CASE STUDIES: KOSOVO

Stacy Sullivan

INTRODUCTION

          When NATO forces moved into Kosovo, putting an end to the province's 15-month war, the United Nations was vested with administering the region, essentially making Kosovo a protectorate. Officials of the UN-led mission would have the authority to govern until elections could be held. Taking control of all state functions included management of the state radio and television apparatus and exercise of the regulatory power concerning media.

          From the outset, the international administration looked to the very recent post-conflict experience in Bosnia to determine what mistakes, made there, could be avoided. It concluded that, there, ­ NATO's implementation force ("Ifor") and its successor, the stabilisation force ("Sfor") had, in the beginning, failed to assert and use their authority to reform the media. This policy had to be altered, in Bosnia, after existing Muslim, Croat and Serb television stations undermined the peace process by broadcasting nationalistic and incendiary reports. Having made this observation, the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo ("UNMIK") planned, from the outset, vigorously to regulate the media so as to accomplish the post-conflict goals.

          Despite these efforts to learn from previous efforts at peace implementation and media reform, and for complex reasons local to the new post-conflict environment, many of the same mistakes that were made in Bosnia were being repeated in Kosovo.

BACKGROUND

          The post-conflict issues in Kosovo are so intertwined with what went on before, though obviously incomplete. In Bosnia, propaganda and nationalistic and incendiary television broadcasts were whipped up intensely in the run-up to the conflict. In contrast, the media war in Kosovo was waged steadily and less overtly over a period of eight years. As a result, the hatred between Albanians and Serbs had a different psychological formulation, perhaps making it deeper seated and more difficult to overcome. Kosovo did not have the same multiethnic structure as Bosnia-Herzegovina, and as a consequence, the tradition of a multi-ethnic community was not so rooted. The battleground in Kosovo was not limited to the regions of the former Yugoslavia, but unfolded also in Albania, Switzerland, Germany and the United States, in which Kosovar Albanian émigrés had established communities that were far bigger and better organised than émigré communities from Bosnia-Herzegovina. Finally, in Bosnia, the belligerents signed a peace agreement with the force of international law to end a war in which all sides were worn down after three and a half years. In Kosovo, in contrast, "a vague United Nations resolution formally concluded hostilities, leaving the status of the Serbian province in limbo and a weak United Nations mission in control of the Albanians and Serbs seeking revenge against one another."^[1]

          [*30] The possibilities for post-conflict journalism partly depend on the nature of the indigenous journalistic pool, as this was molded since the Serbian regime of Slobodan Milosevic abolished the autonomy of the province in 1989. In July 1990, the authorities took over the provincial broadcasting station, Radio Television Pristina ("RTVP"), and dismissed all Albanians who worked there, replacing some of them with Serbs. Almost over night, the radio and television began broadcasting predominantly in Serbian. This output labeled those who supported an independent Kosovo "terrorists," "traitors" and "enemies of the state." The broadcasters continued to provide some programming in Albanian, but it was merely translated from what Serbian authorities produced, and few Albanians in Kosovo watched it. Produced in Belgrade, this programming had no credibility among Kosovar Albanians.

          At the same time, the Serbian regime prohibited Albanians from gaining access to any new television or radio frequencies. With no reliable electronic media in their own language, Albanians came to rely on foreign broadcasts and the printed word for news and information. In time, the province was saturated with satellite dishes and Albanians tuned to Euro News, German programming and Sarajevo-based Bosnian television. But these foreign broadcasts reached only those who spoke foreign languages or had a good command of Serbo-Croat and many in Kosovo's predominantly rural regions speak only Albanian. Later in the decade, a group of enterprising Albanian journalists started a radio programme on the Internet called Radio 21, but only those few with computers, modems and telephone lines were able to tune in to it.

          The main source of news for Albanians became the Albanian-language newspaper Rilindja (Renaissance), which had a circulation of 8,000 and was essentially the mouthpiece of the "government" of the self-proclaimed independent "Republic of Kosova," which the Albanians elected in 1992.

          Aware that the printed media did not have nearly the impact of electronic media, Milosevic left it alone. Much of this journalistic initiative became associated with Ibrahim Rugova, the "president" of the independent "republic" and head of the Democratic League of Kosovo ("LDK"), the political party with overwhelming support among Kosovar Albanians. Rugova instilled in his population the importance of speaking with one national voice against the "Serbian occupation" of Kosovo. The Albanian population rallied behind Rugova, and Rilindja became the main source of news and went essentially unchallenged save for a few other small newspapers or newsweeklies that more or less toed the Albanian party line. Then, in May 1993, the Serbian regime cracked down on the state printing press and closed down all Albanian-language publications.

          After negotiating with the regime, Serbian authorities allowed the Albanians to print a newspaper at the state printing apparatus, and Rilindja was reborn as Bujku (Farmer). Bujku remained the mouthpiece of Rugova's political party and was the most influential newspaper in Kosovo for years. It often carried stories reporting that Kosovo's independence was imminent by distorting the remarks of Western leaders about Kosovo's status. Its editorial content thus raised false expectations among Kosovo's Albanians that foreign governments would soon recognise Kosovo as an independent state. At the same time, it exaggerated the abuses the Serbian regime was committing against Albanians.

          [*31] Surprisingly, Bujku was able to publish largely without censorship, though Serbian authorities never gave it official legal status and could thus have shut it down whenever they desired. The paper did not have its own bank account and its journalists were largely paid from the proceeds of its foreign distribution, some 15,000 copies in Switzerland and Albania where tens of thousands of Kosovar Albanians had resettled after fleeing the Serbian regime.

          Several Albanian-language publications sought to publish independently of the regime, but most of them did not survive, partly because Serbian authorities still controlled distribution agencies and partly because there was simply not enough money in Kosovo's ever worsening economy to keep them afloat. From December 1990 until June 1991, the newsweekly Koha (Time) began publishing in Kosovo. It went out of business for lack of funds in 1991, and Bujku again became the almost sole source of news for Albanians.

          After the fall of Albania's communist regime in 1991, Kosovo's parallel government arranged for a segment on Kosovo to be included in TV Tirana's nightly two-hour satellite broadcast. Although the programme had no feed from Pristina, Albanians across the province turned into the nightly broadcasts in huge numbers. Naturally, the content reflected the LDK agenda, exaggerating both Rugova's international status and Serbian abuses just as Bujku did. Meanwhile, Kosovo's Serbs, who comprised just under ten percent of the population, continued to tune in to the RTVP which broadcast incendiary Serbian propaganda about how the Albanians of Kosovo were creating a jihad and posed a great danger to the region's Serbian population. Abuses against Albanians by Serbian forces were never mentioned. The rift between the two communities grew.

          In line with his foundation's general policy to support civil society, and realising the media even within the Albanian establishment was stifled, philanthropist George Soros provided funding for two newsweeklies. In 1993, Zeri (Voice) began publishing. Its roots went back to 1945 when it was started as an organ of the Socialist Youth. In its new incarnation, it was relatively independent. Unlike Bujku, Zeri was read mostly by a young, well-educated, urban audience, surviving through by the monies generated from its foreign circulation. Then, in 1994, Koha resumed publishing. It was by far the most critical, objective and professional publication in Kosovo, reporting on the shortcomings of both the Serbian and Albanian regimes. It was staffed by the best journalists in the province and, like Zeri, it also appealed to a younger, mostly urban and educated readership. It was printed in a small, independent printing house in Pec^[2] and had a circulation of 4,000 in Kosovo and 5,000 abroad, mostly in Albania and Macedonia. In April 1997, with help of Soros' Open Society Institute, Koha was recreated as a daily with Veton Surroi as its editor. Under his leadership, Koha began to criticise the Rugova's leadership, thereby putting to rest the idea that Kosovar Albanians must always speak with a common voice vis-à-vis the Belgrade regime. The paper thus energised the stifled journalistic establishment in Kosovo and its circulation skyrocketed from 7,000 to 27,000.

          [*32] That same year, A biweekly newspaper called Gazette Shiptare (Albanian Gazette) began publishing, serving to further diversify the media landscape in Kosovo. When the KLA began to emerge in 1997, Bujku echoed the voice of Rugova and repeatedly claimed that the guerrilla force did not really exist, but was a ploy created by Serbian authorities to portray Albanians in a bad light and to undermine confidence in Kosovo's pacifist resistance movement. Koha, by contrast, was more objective. But in time, it began exaggerating the strength of the KLA and during the war often ran nationalistic headlines proclaiming KLA victories. This may be due in part to Surroi's political ambitions. Koha's editor never made a secret of his desire to involve himself in the region's politics; many have speculated that his newspaper's reporting on the KLA was partly designed to curry favour with the guerrilla army so that Surroi would receive the political support of the KLA after the war. Still, his newspaper continued to publish the most accurate account of events until NATO began bombing the region in March 1999, and his staff was either exiled or pushed into hiding.

          Journalists for all of these publications were routinely harassed, beaten, arrested and imprisoned. At least three Albanian journalists were killed for their writings. More than twenty-five were sentenced to jail with sentences ranging from one to twenty-eight years and another twenty were imprisoned for one to six months.

          Aside from the main newspapers in Kosovo, Albanian émigrés abroad began taking part in the media war. In Switzerland, the Albanian community printed Rilindja—named after the newspaper in Kosovo that was shut by the Serbs—and distributed it to émigrés there and in Albania. In the United States, the émigrés published newspapers in New York and Boston and hired the public relations firm Ruder Finn to draw attention to their plight abroad. And most of the content emanating from the publications and PR companies abroad propagated the line of the Rugova's government.

          To be sure, there were few voices in Kosovo's pre-war media establishment that called for any kind of reconciliation with the Serbian regime. Both Tirana TV and Bujku served to inflame relations, often exaggerating the extent of Serbian abuses against Kosovo's Albanians. While Zeri and Koha were more reliable, Koha tended to take a nationalistic tone during the war and his paper tended to exaggerate KLA's strength and victories. However, while none of the Albanian-language media outlets were particularly helpful in promoting reconciliation with Serbs, neither were they intensely incendiary in the style of Serbian media in Kosovo, Bosnia or Croatia.

THE POST WAR MEDIA SPACE

A. Overview

In sharp contrast to the situation before the conflict, when NATO peacekeepers moved into Kosovo following the Serbian withdrawal of military and police forces, there was essentially no existing media in the province. Close to a million Albanians, roughly half of Kosovo's population, had either fled or been expelled from the province and those who remained in Kosovo during the bombing had gone into hiding. Two-thirds of the province lay in ruins and there were virtually no functioning institutions.

          The basic political framework influencing media policy was also radically different. In Bosnia there were existing regimes that were to interact with the international peacekeepers and the civilian [*33] administration that came with them. In Kosovo the United Nations and NATO's peacekeepers came to create what was essentially an international protectorate. The United Nations became the de facto government and its chief administrator, Bernard Kouchner, was named head of the UNMIK and the Kosovo Administration Council. Koucher's basic mandate was to promote "the establishment, pending a final settlement, for substantial autonomy and self-government," and meanwhile perform "basic civilian administrative functions."

          UNMIK was to work with four organisations to achieve its mandate: the United Nations High Commission for Refugees ("UNHCR"), which would be in charge of humanitarian aspects, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe ("OSCE"), which would be in charge of organising elections and building democratic institutions, and the European Union, which would be in charge of reconstruction. The UN itself would have a division of civil affairs that would establish a functioning public administration.

          Media reform fell under the OSCE's mandate, and as soon as the war ended, the organisation sent in a team of experts to Kosovo who had worked on media reform in Bosnia to Kosovo to provide an assessment of what was needed. Keen to avoid earlier mistakes made in Bosnia, the team recommended to the OSCE that it start out with a strong mandate to regulate the press, as well as the broadcast sector, and to reduce the international supervision over time.

          "We don't want to make comparisons between Bosnia and Kosovo, because each is a very different case," said Doug Davidson, the American diplomat in charge of the OSCE's media affairs department in Kosovo. "Still, the international community entered Bosnia in 1995 and has learned lessons there on how to promote free and independent media and we are now using this experience to avoid repeating mistakes."^[3]

          Pointing out that building a free and independent media is integral to creating an open and civil society as well as fostering peace and reconciliation, the OSCE almost immediately developed a plan that would enable it to take temporary responsibility for licensing of television and radio stations. This plan included a regulatory regime that would have the power to penalise, fine, or shut down media outlets that violated internationally established reporting standards. Prior to and during the conflict, both television and radio had been controlled by Belgrade.

          Now, UNMIK and the OSCE announced that they would launch RTVP, the provincial radio and television network in Bosnia, and would turn it into a public service broadcaster modelled after European standards. At the same time, the OSCE would provide financial assistance and training for local media outlets and their journalists as well as start its own news service that would be staffed jointly by locals and internationals.

          The OSCE has not been able to achieve most of its goals in Kosovo. It has been dogged by international protests to its mission concerning implementation of its plan. These protests provoked UNMIK to restrict the OSCE mandate. In addition, there have been funding shortages, local resentment and bureaucratic obstacles overwhelmingly difficult to overcome. Nine months after the OSCE mandate began, [*34] local media outlets were still spreading propaganda and lies as virulent and incendiary as those published before the war. Though the media cannot be held accountable for the fact, and tensions between the region's Albanians and Serbs remained high, as evidenced by fighting in Mitrovica and continued revenge attacks on and expulsions of the province's Serbian population.

B. International Regulation

          The OSCE's plan to regulate the media included the creation of a Media Regulatory Commission, modelled in part on the Bosnian precedent and on the functions of the Federal Communications Commission. This commission was supposed to write and administer a "Broadcasting Code of Practice" and a "Temporary Press Code" for print journalists, as well as to monitor compliance and instigate enforcement mechanisms. The Regulatory Commission would have the power to censor material judged dangerous or incendiary, fine stations and or newspapers for violations, and order certain journalists or stations off the air. Because there were no standing courts in Kosovo and the existing laws were written prior to 1989 by a socialist government, the UNMIK planned to appoint an "international appellate body" to which local journalists could appeal the commission's decisions. The intention was that the OSCE would accomplish these goals with the advice of a UN-appointed committee of local journalists and civic leaders.

          Even before the OSCE mission began, it drew the ire of international media watchdog groups who claimed that the organisation's plan to regulate the Kosovar press was a violation of press freedom. A summary of the OSCE's plan was circulated to various member countries who were asked to nominate personnel. It found its way to both to the World Press Freedom Committee ("WPFC") and The New York Times. The WPFC issued a strong protest and wrote a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan protesting the OSCE's media plan on the grounds that it was tantamount to censorship and would enable a group of internationals to infringe on freedom of information in Kosovo. The letter urged the Secretary General to revoke the OSCE's mandate.

          On August 16, Steven Erlanger, The New York Time's Balkans correspondent, wrote an article entitled "NATO Peacekeepers Plan a System of Controls for the News Media in Kosovo." In it, he quoted Ronald Koven, the WPFC's European Representative, accusing the OSCE of fostering a "colonial mentality" and trying to impose on Kosovars unfair standards of codes and conduct. The Times followed Erlanger's article with an editorial on August 30, entitled "Kosovo's Incipient Media Ministry," in which it stated that Kosovo's Albanians did "not need another group of outsiders to tell them what they can and cannot say." The paper accused the OSCE of trying to establish an unnecessarily large bureaucracy to do something that did not need to be done. The editorial concluded: "The best way to combat hate speech is not to ban it, but to insure that Kosovo's citizens have access to alternate views. There is added danger if the regulations are broad enough to bar other ideas the international community does not like. It is risky to … attempt to regulate ideas and expression in a region where these powers have been so tragically misused."

          Both Erlanger's article and The New York Time's editorial had a significant impact on the future of the OSCE's mission in Kosovo because it set off a debate within the United Nations about what kind of authority the OSCE should have. The Times articles also sounded the alarm bell for local [*35] journalists who immediately became wary of the OSCE's plans. Many of the region's best journalists, including those at Koha Ditore, had not objected to the intended media reform, and in fact welcomed the OSCE mission with the hope that it would put an end to the proliferation of slanderous and often dangerous allegations circulated in the local press. But the criticism from abroad was enough to put a hurdle in the path of the OSCE. In large measure, UN headquarters agreed that the organisation should not have so explicit and punitive a mandate to regulate Kosovo's media. Kouchner announced that the OSCE would continue with its mandate of media development, but that the power to sanction journalists and their media outlets would be significantly limited. The OSCE was thus constrained in its objective to reform the press without the authority to punish even the most overt violations of international journalistic standards.

          The OSCE proceeded to create the Media Board, comprised of independent intellectuals who would be responsible for advising the OSCE, and it has begun preparing a code of conduct for broadcast media. In the wake of the controversy over the Media Regulatory Commission, the OSCE was vested with the authority only to "encourage journalists to voluntarily establish an ethical code." The sanction of shutting down or censoring newspapers deemed irresponsible was rescinded, though the organisation still hopes to develop a mandate that will give it some authority over the broadcast media.

          The limitations of the OSCE became apparent almost immediately. In October, 1999, Kosova Press, a KLA-funded news service, launched written attacks on Veton Surroi and Baton Haxhiu, the founder and editor of Koha Ditore, respectively, after their newspaper condemned the revenge attacks Albanians were committing against Serbs. Surroi wrote a column in August accusing certain Albanian elements of descending into fascism. He criticised the Albanian leadership in Kosovo for not condemning the attacks and equated the systematic intimidation of all Serbs to the racist policies of the Belgrade regime. Haxhiu pointed out similar criticisms in an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel. Kosova Press, which claims to be independent from the KLA but often espouses the KLA line, called Surroi a "traitor," and concluded, "[s]uch criminals and enslaved minds should not have a place in the free Kosovo." Later, the news agency referred to both Surroi and Haxhiu as "bastard ragtags," "ordinary mobsters," and "the garbage of history."

          Kosova Press went on to allege that Surroi and Haxhiu collaborated with Serbian paramilitaries during the war and that they were now spies on behalf of the international community. It added, "[i]t would not be surprising if they (Surroi and Haxhiu) became victims of possible and understandable revenge acts." Given the tense post-war atmosphere in Kosovo and the KLA's history of killing Albanians believed to have collaborated with Serbs, the allegations were extremely dangerous. Indeed, the editors of Koha Ditore reported receiving threatening phone calls and death threats.

          Koha Ditore responded to the attacks by republishing Kosova Press' text, accompanied by an editorial accusing the agency of "calling for murder." It further alleged that because Kosova Press was the mouthpiece of Kosovo's new interim government, such accusations amounted to more than hate speech, but could be interpreted as a "call to action," and that it therefore had a particular obligation to act more responsibly. The editorial went on to [*35] reiterate Surroi's earlier column, arguing that "the systematic persecution of a human being because of his ethnic or racial group is fascism, and the Albanian nation, as a victim of fascism, should not tolerate the attempt of the commentary to persecute those who don't think the same, which falls into the same category."

          The OSCE was slow to react and when it finally did, a full month later, its actions were limp at best. The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media in Vienna issued a statement at the OSCE Permanent Council on October 7, expressing "serious concern" about Kosova Press' commentary and demanded that UNMIK take action to prevent such hate speech in the future. The OSCE's media coordinator in Kosovo, William Houwen, called Kosova Press' wording "shocking," and said, "Goebbels couldn't have done it better." He added that his organisation was planning to regulate the electronic media but that the OSCE was not empowered to regulate the print media. Houwen also pointed out that UNMIK believed the bitter editorial exchange was something for the courts to rule on, but added that Kosovo has no judicial system that could enforce libel or defamation laws, even if they existed.

          The editorial battle between Koha Ditore and Kosova Press was finally put to rest, but the media war in Kosovo continues. Almost all of the newspapers in Kosovo have a nationalistic bent and often print incendiary and dangerous reports based on false information. In one particularly dangerous example, the newspaper Bota Sot (The World Today), whose content is extremely nationalistic and anti-Serbian, printed an article stating that an American representative from Human Rights Watch was a homosexual after he issued a report condemning Albanian revenge attacks against Kosovo's Serbs. In the swaggering, macho and homophobic culture of Kosovo, such allegations cannot only undermine a man's credibility, but also leave him vulnerable to attack. The newspaper also accused journalist and human rights advocate Fron Nazi, who writes for the Institute on War and Peace Reporting as well as Press Now, of being a Russian spy, another life-endangering allegation. It has referred to NATO peacekeeping troops as the Serbs' "international body guards," and has equated the UNMIK with "the communists" who ruled Kosovo in times past.

          Faced with the prospect of the nationalistic and sometimes hostile media undermining its mission, but still unwilling to give OSCE the comprehensive and restrictive mandate it sought, UNMIK's executive, Kouchner, promulgated a regulation prohibiting hate speech on February 1, 2000. The regulation allows the possibility of a multi-year prison sentence or a fine for anyone who publicly incites or spreads hatred, discord or intolerance between national, racial, religious, ethnic or other such groups in Kosovo. Specifically, in order for hate speech to be punishable, it had to be directed at a group, not an individual, so the regulation would not have been applicable to any of the aforementioned press attacks.

          Not surprisingly, most media establishments in Kosovo condemned the new hate speech regulation. Kosova Press accused Kouchner of infringing on journalists' right to freedom of speech, then went on to accuse NATO peacekeeping force ("Kfor") of ruining Kosovo's economy and creating a military regime. Equally predictably, Koha Ditore and the more moderate Zeri, came out in favour of the hate speech regulation, deeming it necessary during this period of Kosovo's development.

          [*37] In the weeks since the hate speech regulation was enacted, Kosovo's media outlets found ways to spread hatred and incite violence without violating the terms of the new law. Several newspapers have begun publishing the names of Serbs they believe to have committed war crimes, not necessarily "hate speech" in itself, or speech that might incite violence. But context is important and these names were published along with home addresses and places of employment. Often, the sources of the allegations are anonymous and seldom is any proof of the crimes provided. The OSCE, again incapable of fining or shutting down the perpetrators, issued a statement that read: "The OSCE considers this behaviour to be highly dangerous and irresponsible, and contrary to internationally accepted standards of journalistic professionalism and ethics. It only serves to deepen divisions in a society already torn by ethnic violence."

          If those who published the names of the alleged war criminals had the intent that may reasonably be attributed to them, it seems unlikely that an OSCE press release affirming the dangerousness of their acts will dissuade publishers from doing more of the same. At the end of February, the OSCE announced that it had been encouraging professional journalists to voluntarily establish an ethical code and that it was holding regular roundtable discussions with Kosovo's journalists and international donors on media development policies. Recently, Kosovar journalists formed a professional association in which most news outlets have a representative.

          The newly established organisation established a board of directors and a code of conduct. In the spring of 2000, the OSCE media affairs department began writing letters to the board's president about serious media violations, but usually to no avail. Moreover, newspapers affiliated with a political party—some of the worst perpetrators—were not permitted in the association and were thus not subject to its code of conduct. Thus, it seems unlikely that the OSCE's efforts, even when combined with UNMIK's hate speech regulation, would be sufficient to curb rampant abuses, threats, and incendiary reports in the print media.

C. Creating a Public Broadcasting Network

          The situation with respect to the electronic media was somewhat different. By spring 2000, the scope of the OSCE's regulatory mandate was still being debated. The OSCE was working to establish a Code of Practice for broadcast media as well as establish a Media Regulatory Commission that it would be able to monitor and punish abuses of radio and television broadcasts.

          When NATO forces first arrived in Kosovo, there was no functioning radio or television in the province. UNMIK decided to accept OSCE's suggestion to re-establish Radio Television Pristina and turn it into the equivalent of a public European broadcasting network with the new name, Radio Television Kosovo^[4] ("RTK"). In this way, the mission would make a virtue of necessity. All of the employees of RTK in the post-1989 period were Serbs, and most had left the province with NATO's arrival, so UNMIK needed to start from scratch. UNMIK felt confident that if it resurrected the station under its supervision, it could ensure that RTK adhered to professional journalistic standards.

          [*38] The decision to turn RTK into a public broadcasting service network—with the subcontracted help of the European Broadcasting Union and using local journalists under its supervision—also ensured that the international community would not repeat the same mistakes it did in Bosnia where it tried to create a new television station that simply could not compete with the pre-existing nationalist stations run by the Serb, Muslim and Croat governments of the country.

          The Bosnian project was to involve the participation of local Serb, Muslim and Croat-run stations already operating. But that ambitious project took months longer than anticipated and was not working in time to have a significant impact on the OSCE-organised elections in 1996, one of its primary purposes. Moreover, it was perceived by all parties in the Bosnian war as something imposed from the outside and simply could not compete with the nationalist government-controlled television stations already broadcasting in the region.

          RTK, on the other hand, would be the only television station on the air, at least until others interested in creating television stations could apply for frequencies, raise necessary funding and create or purchase programming, and until the terrestrial transmitter network was rebuilt.

          But creating public television proved far more difficult than foreseen. As in Bosnia, UNESCO provided technical assistance. The OSCE called on UNESCO to provide advice in the drafting of a country-wide public service broadcasting law. The draft law provided would guide PBS in the Province, most notably regulate RTK and any other public broadcaster in case they should exist. There were problems with staff. To begin with, almost all of the Albanians who worked at the station prior to 1989 wanted their jobs back. The way they saw things, they were employed by the station prior to the Serbian takeover, and now that the Serbs were gone, they could resume working. However, in 1989, the station was a large state bureaucracy that had employed some 1,700 people. Moreover, many of the former employees—journalists, technicians, camera operators—had not worked in radio and television for more than a decade and were unfamiliar with work at a modern, European broadcasting network. "If the Albanians had it their way, they would all get their jobs back and produce mediocre programming. What is needed is international management and real journalistic standards," said one official who asked not to be named. UNMIK and the OSCE did not have the funds to rehire all of RTK's former employees, and they also believed the station needed new blood. Thus, UNMIK appointed an internationally-recognised administrator, Erik Lehmann, former chairman and president of the Board of the Swiss Broadcasting association, as the General Director and tasked him with hiring a staff of competent journalists. In the short term, the OSCE envisioned that Lehmann would hire two other international directors and appoint local deputy directors who would be groomed to replace the internationals. Eventually, the station would be run entirely by Kosovars.

          By appointing internationals as managers, and hiring Kosovar Albanians from the émigré community abroad who had training in the West instead of those who worked at the station prior to 1989, RTK has created tremendous resentment in Kosovo. OSCE officials are somewhat hostile towards the station's pre-1989 employees. The Kosovar returnees, on the other hand, feel that the OSCE has come in and imposed a new television station without consideration for their livelihoods. At a [*39] recent count, of its 80 employees, which includes drivers, mechanics and security, only about a dozen were previously employed by RTVP.

          RTK began transmitting two-hour evening broadcasts in Serbian, Albanian and Turkish on 19 September, 1999. However, only 30 minutes of the evening programme is locally produced, and the rest is purchased from Euronews, the Associated Press or taken form the archives of RTVP. And even to produce this, the OSCE had to lease equipment from the European Broadcasting Union because the equipment at RTK was outdated. It also had to transmit via satellite, an extremely expensive way of broadcasting, because the terrestrial transmitters had been destroyed during the 1999 bombardment. Despite spending $2 million in the first nine months, consensus among Albanians in Kosovo is that RTK, known as UNMIK TV, is of poor quality and has the air of something created by foreigners.

          The OSCE hoped to be able to purchase new equipment and utilise it as a training facility to train more journalists in modern broadcasting, but this has yet to happen, partially because donor nations have been slow to provide their promised funding. The Japanese government recently promised to provide $14 million in equipment for the station, but the OSCE says it is extremely short of cash and has not yet managed to raise the funds it needs to continue broadcasting. Thus, some of the internationals the OSCE brought in to run the station have to spend much of their time trying to raise money to keep RTK operating. The contract with EBU expires in June and the station is in need of $4 million just to keep broadcasting for the rest of the year 2000.

          Still, international officials working with RTK say they are acutely aware of the mistakes made in Bosnia and are making efforts to have local journalists produce more of their own programming. They are also trying to develop a business plan that will allow the station to be self-sustaining in four to five years when international donors begin to pull their money out of Kosovo. They foresee raising revenues through advertising and licensing fees as well as receiving government subsidies.

D. Other Electronic Media

          Long before the international administration in Kosovo could get RTK on the air, municipal radio stations began broadcasting. At least one television station in Albania, TV Klan, began transmitting into Kosovo, and Serbian Radio and Television transmitted to large swathes of the province from Serbia. Currently there are between 35 and 40 stations on the air. They are not under effective regulation by the international community or any other official body. In Kosovo's post-war atmosphere, in which relations between the region's Serbs and Albanians are still tense, these unregulated radio and television broadcasts have at times fuelled inter-ethnic tensions. Thus far, the OSCE, which is still trying to establish a mandate that would enable it to intervene to stop incendiary broadcasts, has been powerless to do anything about them.

          The problems began as soon as some of the municipal radio stations went on the air. The Kosova Protection Force, the successor to the KLA, called on stations to broadcast information about a boycott of Serbian-produced goods. Many of the stations began airing nationalistic songs and calling on Albanians to carry out revenge attacks against their Serbian neighbours. In the town of Gnjilane (Gjilan in Albanian), Radio [*40] Gjilan was apparently broadcasting content so egregious that American troops from the Kfor cut off the station's electricity and arrested almost all of its personnel. To prevent the station from resuming transmission, Kfor announced that it needed the station's location, the top floor of the town's highest building, for its sniper unit. The station remains off the air and was reportedly looking for another location to set up its studios. The incident served to reinforce the already existing animosity between the Albanians and Kosovo's international administration. At the same time, Kfor appealed to the municipal stations to broadcast its own messages and has even paid for airtime to do so.

          In an effort to bring some order to the airwaves, the OSCE announced that existing and future radio and television stations would have to apply for broadcasting licenses. The OSCE would, it has stated, approve or deny such applications principally based on the proposed station's ability to produce and finance its programming. When they received their licenses, however, the stations would be obliged to sign a code of conduct that the OSCE is currently developing. Various businessmen, publishers and potential politicians began drawing up plans for their own television and radio ventures as soon as the war ended. For example Koha Ditore Zeri, Kosova Sot, Bota Sot, Rilindja and Radio 21 have plans for television stations to accompany their radio and publishing empires.

E. Other Media Ventures and the Work of NGOs

          Aside from its attempt to regulate the media and transform RTK into a public broadcasting network, OSCE attempted to start a web-based news service called Kosovo Live, staffed by local journalists with some international training. The service, as it is currently envisioned, will issue its reports in both Albanian and English and will function partly as a service for people outside of Kosovo, containing a media digest summarising stories in the local press as well as original reporting. Led by an American on leave from Newsweek, Kosovo Live does not plan to draw from the existing pool of journalists from Kosovo's newspapers, but rather recruit and train young, new journalists. The OSCE estimates that the service could be self-sustaining in one year. It is currently trying to raise the necessary funds.

· The OSCE also organised a course for Serb and Albanian journalists from the embattled town of Mitrovica to receive training together in Italy. Some sixteen journalists participated in the course in mid-January.

· Press Now and Internews have been providing training on how to cover an election to local radio journalists. The three NGOs concluded that Radio Kosova, because it reaches the entire population of Kosovo, was the best medium on which to focus. Together, they have purchased equipment to create a training facility in the radio building, but they plan to move the facility to the journalism faculty of the University of Pristina in the future. All three organisations will continue to provide follow-up training to local radio journalists.

· The Institute for War and Peace Reporting created a Balkan Media Resource Center with the Internet provider IPKO and a grant from the Ford Foundation to provide free Internet access to all of Kosovo's journalists for research and reporting in Pristina. The centre also provides a kiosk of local and [*41] international publications and an archive of press releases and other published reports on Kosovo. In addition, IWPR works with local journalists to create its news service, one of the most valuable in the region.

· The International Organisation for Migration ("IOM") and the United States Office in Pristina ("USOP") established the Kosova Information Assistance Initiative ("KIAI") at the Pristina National and University Library as well as six other centres in Prizren, Pec, Mitrovica, Ferizaj, Gnjilane and Gjakova, which provides free Internet access to anyone who wants it. The United States sought contributions from the American private sector, including Apple Computer Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Gateway and Silicon Graphics Inc. to undertake the venture.

SOME CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

          Overall, the post-war media situation in Kosovo is bleak and the international community has been not only slow in reacting to it, but also seems intent on making many of the same mistakes it made in Bosnia. Bickering between the United Nations and the OSCE over an appropriate mandate to regulate the press has stymied the OSCE's operation and delayed necessary reform of Kosovo's media landscape.

          Aside from all of the problems mentioned above, there is simply a lack of talented and professional journalists in the region, and those who fit that description are often lured into taking more profitable jobs with international organisations. Journalists, especially those who speak English, can earn more working as drivers or translators for the United Nations than they can working for any of Kosovo's media outlets. Thus, international organisations and donors should consider subsidising journalists' salaries to keep talented people in the profession.

          Both Kosovo's International Administration and the NGOs involved in media reform need to rethink and redefine the meaning of "independent." Conventional wisdom is that independent journalism means objective reporting by an outlet that is not attached to political party. But financial independence is also extremely important. As evidenced by the crisis at the Open Broadcast Network in Bosnia as a result of donors pulling out, media outlets need to develop business plans that can sustain their operations in the years after international organisations and foreign governments pull their funding out of Kosovo. Both the OSCE and NGOs should provide assistance in writing business plans and developing funding strategies for the future. Doing so will help prevent many of the nascent media outlets from either closing down or being co-opted by political parties in the future.

          Both the OSCE and the NGOs working on media reform have focused the bulk of their activities in Pristina. Free web access and other media training in the capital are good things, but in some ways, the training courses are tantamount to preaching to the converted. There needs to be more of an effort to focus on rural areas where there is a true lack of information. This mistake was made both in Albania and Bosnia.

          Realising that television is by far the most influential journalistic medium, almost every media establishment in Kosovo seems to want to create its own television station, including the newspapers Koha Ditore, Zeri, Kosova Sot, Bota Sot, Rilindja and Radio 21. Kosovo is a tiny province of about 2 million people and there is no way that six [*42] independent television stations, in addition to RTK, Serbian television and TV Klan from Albania can survive. Some of the proposed independent stations should be encouraged to partner with one another to pool resources or to create joint stations. Perhaps some of them should be encouraged to limit their ambitions to creating a television news programme that is aired on existing stations.

          Both the Albanians and the internationals involved in media reform must work together to lessen the developing animosities between the two sides. There is a limited amount of funding that will be provided for media development in Kosovo and both locals and internationals are competing for it. Both groups will be better served by working together. Efforts should be made to ensure that journalists who worked at RTVP prior to 1989 are included in any international training programmes that might bring their skills more up to date. While the OSCE and NGOs on the ground should hold local journalists accountable to international standards, they should not produce content themselves, but rather leave the Kosovars to do it so that RTK and other establishments with an international component are not viewed as ventures imposed on the population by the international community.

          Finally, the United Nations should reconsider its decision about lessening the strength of the OSCE's mandate to regulate both the print and broadcast media. From the vantage points of New York, the editorial board of The New York Times may think the OSCE's ability to impose fines on journalists or shut down media outlets that do not adhere to internationally accepted standards of journalistic conduct amounts to an infringement of press freedom. But freedom of speech is far different from the freedom to incite violence or call for someone's death. The allegations frequently being printed or broadcast in Kosovo's media are dangerous and detrimental to creating peace in the region. The New York Times suggested that there was a healthy and vibrant press in Kosovo before the war and that, left to their own devices, Kosovars would simply recreate this. However, this conception of the pre-war media space is mistaken. The OSCE should be vested with a more vigorous mandate to put an end to incendiary broadcasts and nationalistic mudslinging currently taking place in the Kosovo's media space because such words are detrimental to the peace process.

PART II: THE CASE STUDIES: BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA

PART III: CONCLUSIONS AND AREAS FOR FURTHER DISCUSSION

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