OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia (FYROM) and Kosovo International Assistance to Media A Report by Mark Thompson Vienna 2000¨

174. The countries and region considered in this report are all transitional. Most of them are recovering from war. The peace settlement in one of them (Kosovo) is certainly not final; the settlement in another (Bosnia) is probably not so. The principle or doctrine of the separation of powers is still, except in Slovenia, exotic or at best untested.

175. "Without the elimination of incitements to hatred, a viable solution to the crisis in the former Yugoslavia will be impossible to achieve." This was the conclusion reached more than five years ago by Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Special Rapporteur to the UN Commission on Human Rights. It bears repeating today, when such incitements have not been eliminated from at least three parts of the former federation, Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo, which have not yet solved their separate and interlocking crises. From an editorial in a widely read Kosovar newspaper, Bota sot, 7 February 2000: "All Serbs, with no exception, who are living today in enclaves (as Kouchner would like to call them – Serb cantons) have their hands stained with the blood of Albanian children."

176. Intergovernmental involvement with the local media has been a reluctant embrace in slow motion. The first phase in Croatia and Bosnia showed a complete confusion between public information, media relations and media development. The United Nations, which sometimes seems like a fortress of institutional unaccountability, was quite unprepared either for the sophistication of the Balkan media and public, or for the determination of the various authorities (regimes) to keep their grip on what in Tito's era was called "the public information system".

177. According to the Secretary-General's recent report on the massacre of Bosniaks by Serb forces at Srebrenica in Bosnia in 1995: "The [Security] Council obviously expected that the 'warring parties' on the ground would respect the authority of the United Nations and would not obstruct its humanitarian operations. It soon became apparent that, with the end of the Cold War and the ascendancy of irregular forces -- controlled or uncontrolled -- the old rules of the game no longer held." (Annan, Paragraph 493.) Disrespect for the authority of the UN was felt in the sphere of information no less than in other areas, and in Croatia as much as in Bosnia. The motivation of the Croatian, separatist Serb and Yugoslav authorities in obstructing the work of the Division of Information was always clear at the time, and logical in its own terms. These authorities were extremely reluctant to share their unparalleled access to the public with an international body whose basic objective (a peaceful settlement achieved by negotiation, requiring compromise) they did not share, or shared only in part.

178. "The UN has failed to position public information as a 'strategic' component in UN peacekeeping operations, generally speaking." This was one of the conclusions of a UN Lessons Learned conference in 1997, reviewing the missions in the Balkan among others. The UN failed to apprehend that public information, traditionally understood, was on the way down, while media relations were on the way up. The UN institutional concept of public information was developed at a time and in cultural contexts that were remote from the Balkans in the 1990s. It was an approach that belonged to the era of 'classic' peacekeeping operations, when the genuineness of "the consent and co-operation of the parties" could be taken more or less for granted. With the end of the cold war, such consent became a dependent variable, altering according to the host government's momentary calculation.

179. Federal Yugoslavia had the most sophisticated media environment of any communist country. The audience was sophisticated, too; former Yugoslavs were skilled and sceptical dissectors of media messages. In this region, 'public information' is seen as a relic of the communist era with little if any bearing on democratic governance. Hence UNPROFOR's media production often seemed comically simplistic or fatally evasive. In blunt terms, UNPROFOR's lack of self-belief was matched by its lack of belief in the capacity of ordinary people in the mission area to respect the truth when they heard or saw it. Never again should a peacekeeping or peacemaking operation be able, or required, to ignore the politics of media control and freedom of expression in the country of its deployment.

180. For about two years (1992-94), the United Nations relied on ex officio prestige to impress the leaders and the public in Croatia and Bosnia. The UNPROFOR mission seemed unaware that openness and directness, or the plausible simulation of these qualities, was vital to its credibility. The next resort was to set up 'rival' media of its own that would bypass the locally controlled media. This met with no greater success. Other IGOs then tried to assist independent media that might, whether singly or in newly formed networks, neutralise the propaganda carried by the pro-regime media. Yet this approach also proved inadequate to the task of democratising the media sphere. Independent networks could not compete for reach and influence with the controlled media.

181. The 1990s saw the emergence of media from under the umbrellas of 'public information', 'human rights' or 'democratisation'. It is all of these, and none of them. Yet the current confusion in Kosovo suggests this lesson has not been drawn from Bosnia and Croatia. The media issue is often not given enough weight by mission leaderships even in Bosnia, where, if anywhere, a new model has evolved. In Bosnia, media reform and development have been herded together by the High Representative (ultimate authority), SFOR (enforcement), the IMC (regulatory and licensing competence), and the OSCE. It may not be a streamlined arrangement, and it is under-resourced, but it has lately shown that it can be effective -- when diplomats and generals allow it to be.

182. The great powers gave much more thought and care to the role of media in Germany and Japan after 1945 than for post-war Bosnia and Kosovo in 1995 and 1999. What price the 'information revolution' at Dayton or Rambouillet? The Western powers wanted nothing to do with media reform until hard experience showed them that they could not achieve their primary objectives, including "exit conditions", without delving more deeply into the media. Hence, reform of state media was addressed last instead of first. This back-to-front approach has made for slow and halting progress.

183. An international strategy emerged piecemeal, without quite being articulated. It envisaged the creation of a mixed public-private media sphere with public service broadcasting (PSB) as the hub or axis, balanced by a strong private sector, and protected by liberal laws and regulations. This normative model is something new in the region; it represents a shift from the "Soviet Media" model to the "Social Responsibility" model (McQuail). The model was to be established through full-scale intervention in Kosovo, extensive intervention in Bosnia, and decisive guidance in Croatia and Macedonia. A learning-curve can be discerned. Where UNPROFOR created 'rival' media to counteract propaganda, the OHR and OSCE supported the Open Broadcast Network and FERN, both dependent on local journalists. These efforts were still centred on the short-term goal of improving news output during election campaigns. But abuses of media before elections were no different in kind from the abuses being perpetrated the rest of the time. Belatedly, the IGOs closed in on the heart of the problem -- the unreconstructed state or regime broadcasters.

184. Only the Slovenians democratised their media unaided. IGOs have done much to help the process along in Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia. Kosovo is at the beginning. (Serbia has regressed almost to the media bronze-age.) Yet it would be mistaken to think that great progress has been made in reforming the views or presumptions of politicians. The principal newspaper controlled by the ruling Bosniak party in Bosnia recently attacked the IMC as the unaccountable organ of a protectorate and the very principle of regulation and public service licence-fees ("all that money is the domain of the state budget"). (Dnevni avaz, 5 January 2000.) The political elite of Bosnia's other "entity", Republika Srpska, is even less enlightened. As for Kosovo…

185. The accumulation of international bodies, mandates and officials dealing with media issues in Bosnia and Kosovo is unavoidable, the Balkans being what they are and the media involving as they do political, technical, legal, professional, financial, coercive (military), governmental, intergovernmental and non-governmental remits. This has two drawbacks. It makes political coherence and the appearance of coherence harder to attain. Secondly, the implementing states take different views of what constitutes media freedom and have different models in mind. Public service broadcasting (PSB) means something different on each side of the north Atlantic. In Europe, PSB is still a pillar of civil society. In the USA, it has become an adornment. A common position took time to achieve, and has sometimes been difficult to preserve.

186. Little attention has been paid to the paradox of trying to erect PSB in transitional and sometimes war-torn countries during the very decade when PSB faced unprecedented challenges in established democracies. Viewing the matter historically, it is easy to argue that the conditions to create genuine PSB do not exist in Bosnia, Kosovo or Macedonia, let alone in Serbia. This does not mean the attempt is vain or mistaken. On the contrary, it highlights the lack of an alternative. The state sector has to be reformed. Mere deregulation would solve nothing, and be a blessing to the entrenched regimes. At the same time, the nationalism, conservatism and, however strange this sounds, underlying egalitarian culture of these societies, not to mention their relative poverty, work in favour of public-service, including the universal licence fee. What is more, the digital revolution is unlikely to produce a great expansion of local-language channels, for reasons of market-size. Terrestrial analogue broadcasting will dominate the scene for the foreseeable future. The erosion of the foundations of PSB will occur much more slowly in these countries than in Western Europe.

187. The IGOs in Bosnia and Kosovo are trying to liberalise the media, and in the former case succeeding to some extent, without benefit of the rule of law, functioning governments, administrations or economies, independent judiciaries, reliable electoral systems, professional police or depoliticised military. It is tempting to believe that liberalised media can bring unity where the dominant political class labours to separate, or bring harmony and legality where politics thrive on discord and corruption. Yet the media cannot compensate or redress on such a scale. A roof cannot stand without walls. The local authorities know this too, which helps explain why they do not give up their efforts at control. Media freedom cannot be ensured without the solid protection of other human rights. It is a hostage to international success in tackling political crime and malpractice by police and judiciary. In the mean time, it seems questionable to insist that journalists must advance the cause of media freedom by acting 'as if' they operated in a democratic society. Heroism is for the few, and must be voluntary.

188. During the 1990s, the IGOs were evolving to cope with the eruption of democracy in central and eastern Europe. Human rights generally, and media issues specifically, emerged as a key area for the new states to prove their good will. In turn, the IGOs have had to overhaul their institutional approaches to information. Under Kofi Annan, the UN Secretariat is taking a fresh look at its media strategy. In 1997, the member states of the OSCE established the Office of the Representative on Freedom of the Media. Also in 1997, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (CoE) set up a mechanism to monitor "the honouring of obligations and commitments" by eight transitional states, including Macedonia and Croatia, whose democratic commitments outstripped their performance. Although the CoE now possesses at least three levels of monitoring, from the Directorate of Human Rights up to the Committee of Ministers, there seems to be no fixed procedure for dealing with delinquent members. The level of interest in applying pressure varies according to the momentary priorities of more powerful states. Moreover, the CoE is highly reluctant to publicise the deficiencies of member states. It also relies on them to conduct their own 'follow up' after CoE experts have issued specific comments or recommendations for reform. These gentlemanly customs do not encourage rapid progress, or sometimes any progress at all.

• Whether or not public information and media relations are combined in one office within an IGO mission, the approaches need to be distinct. Missions must be equipped to operate in ever more sophisticated environments where confidentiality is hard to preserve, media are a social force in their own right, they may be both politically directed but also partly independent and professional, and audiences are proficient consumers and interpreters of media. All UN and OSCE missions with a mandate that goes beyond observation should have dedicated media development staff, with budgets to run policy and implementation programmes.

• Almost everyone consulted for this report believed that the follow-up and evaluation of projects urgently need improving. The European Commission Court of Auditors' report on assistance to Bosnia in the post-Dayton period shows how much can go wrong when projects are not kept subject to review. The efficacy of all kinds of support should be examined without fear or favour, never forgetting that the purpose is not the survival of one station or newspaper rather than another but the general provision of information, above all by public service media, that allows people to understand the motives and intentions of the political class.

• The media relations strategy of an international mission can be more successful -- more credible -- than its political strategy. But only if the mission leadership is ready to 'unhitch' the media-relations department, letting it establish credibility according to the criteria that apply in the real world of media and public opinion. A mission's lack of political or operational credibility need not mean a lack of those qualities in its media strategy. But if the media relations strategy is weak and reactive, the mission's work will inevitably be damaged.

• Political coherence and operational co-ordination among international actors are indispensable. Missions must ensure that they stand shoulder to shoulder on media reform issues, or court failure.

• Sanctions for abuses against the media need to be principled but also consistent. Bosnian Serbs rightly interpreted SFOR's confiscation of transmitters in 1997 as politically driven (backing Plavsic against Krajisnik). The public recognises immediately when international action taken in the name of undying principle is really motivated by short-term political calculation. Contrary to widespread belief, principled action for the sake of human rights can win local respect even when conducted against 'our own side'. But not if the action is opportunistic.

Conclusions for regions - go to: Slovenia / Croatia / Bosnia-Herzegovina / Macedonia / Kosovo

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