Media Landscape and the State of the Freedom of Media in Selected ENP and EU Countries
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Media landscape and the state of the freedom of media in selected ENP and EU countries Media analysis Warsaw 2019 Media landscape and the state of the freedom of media in selected ENP and EU countries Dominik Cagara, Michał Kobosko, Ewa Stasiak-Jazukiewicz, Roxane Farmanfarmaian, Anatoliy Martsynkovskyi, Natalia Moghilda Editors Dominik Cagara, Michał Kobosko Technical editor Marcin Sobala Published by College of Europe Natolin Campus Nowoursynowska 84 02-797 Warsaw, Poland This publication has been produced with the assistance of the European Union. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of the College of Europe, Natolin and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union. Unless otherwise indicated, this publication and its contents are the property of the Natolin Campus of the College of Europe. All rights reserved. College of Europe Natolin Campus ul. Nowoursynowska 84 PL 02-797 Warsaw, Poland www.coleuropenatolin.eu 2 ENP SOUTH Dr. Roxane Farmanfarmaian Social and political dimension of journalism (popular topics, EU journalists about ENP and ENP journalists about EU, how well are the regions covered amongst each other, trends, gaps, cultural differences in information expectations, sources of information) Regional overview: The restricted environment for political and investigative journalism in the region is a key issue for EU journalism, which focuses generally on practices of self-censorship, government manipulation of media, constraints on reportage, and protection of journalists. National and economic developments receive good coverage; EU reportage is less nuanced and informed about local and less mainstream mass media such as radio. It is particularly unskilled at assessing Islamic media popularity, influences and impacts, including both locally produced and regionally produced programming. It likewise tends to under-represent the reasons for, and nature of reality TV, gameshow, and talent shows as areas of major media growth and factors in audience social and political engagement and cultural value 33 relations . In the region itself, original media coverage is focused on local political and social affairs, with regional developments being the second most important (including significant coverage of African news). Although political and territorial issues divide southern Mediterranean states, the level of shared news, language, culture and 33 http://www.mideastmedia.org/industry/2016/tv/ College of Europe Natolin Campus ul. Nowoursynowska 84 PL 02-797 Warsaw, Poland www.coleuropenatolin.eu 80 social norms makes for much more positive, and frequent regional coverage than might be imagined, with regional news dominating international coverage, and cultural stories of hardship, economic and personal achievements, and political developments common to all. Shared entertainment programming is common across the region, including soap operas and dramas produced in Turkey and broadcast throughout the Arab world in translation. Interestingly, in the pan-Arab satellite world, Algeria and other Maghreb countries are perceived even by their own citizens as less close to ‘the centre of Arabism’ when compared to the Middle-Eastern or Mashreq countries. As Algerians often put it, ‘We can understand them, but they cannot understand us’. Atiqa Hachimi labels this the ‘Maghreb–Mashreq language ideology’: an old cultural hierarchy that acquired new contingency through its media exposure. One of the reasons for the persistent symbolic hegemony of the Arab East, beyond its significant capacity to invest in disseminating regional broadcasting, is the popularity of its cultural industries in the fields of television products or music. On the opposite side, the Maghrebi productions, even in the case of the locally successful music industry, never managed to `sell’ much in the rest of the Arab world34. On balance, coverage of the EU is light, and will often reproduce agency reports, and tends to focus on sensational social and cultural stories. Individual country coverage will reflect political relationships with different EU states (e.g. Morocco and Algeria will cover France in terms of current political developments between their own governments and Paris), e.g. ‘Horror In France Stemming From 34 Hachimi A (2013) “The Maghreb-Mashreq language ideology and the politics of identity in a globalized Arab world”, Journal of Sociolinguistics 17(3): 291; see also, Athique A (2014) “Transnational audiences: Geocultural approaches”, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 28(1): 4–17. College of Europe Natolin Campus ul. Nowoursynowska 84 PL 02-797 Warsaw, Poland www.coleuropenatolin.eu 81 Algeria’s Resolve To Import Russian Wheat’, by Hassan Houicha, was a story headlined recently in a mass Algerian newspaper, “Echorouk”35. There is little local coverage of the ENP, except in the form of economic partnerships and slights against the states’ national sovereignty; stories on the EU as a bloc institution are sparse and noncommittal, most recently, covering Brexit, and migration, where the orientation is on the plight of locals in the Mediterranean, or Europe’s position on irregular migrants (e.g. Morocco World News, “‘The European Dream Is a Lie: Spain Tells Morocco to Curb Migration”36). Stories linking Europe and the region are more common, the current EU efforts to accommodate Iran in the face of looming US sanctions being an example – though many of these reproduce agency reports. An October 2018 meeting of the EU in Beirut was covered by Lebanon’s National News Agency, but the brevity is noteworthy and typical, the entire story being: ‘NNA - The European Union (EU) mission announced in a statement issued this Wednesday that "the European Union and Lebanon have held high-level meetings in Beirut on October 2 and 3 dwelling on various topics, including human rights, democracy, governance, security and justice, within the framework of the EU- Lebanon Association Agreement concluded in 2006 and the partnership priorities agreed between the two parties in November 2016. Both sides agreed to strengthen their partnership so as to address common challenges, including those arising from conflicts in the Middle East. The parties undertook a full and frank political dialogue and committed themselves to strengthening their cooperation”37. A similar report was offered on mainstream television LBC news that night. It was not picked up by alternative media, such as Al-Manar or the Daily Star. 35 “Echorouk”, www.echoroukonline.com, 10.03.2018. 36 https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2018/10/254563/european-dream-curb-migration/. 37 http://nna-leb.gov.lb/en/show-news/95812/EU-Lebanon-meetings-on-human-democracy- governance-and-justice. College of Europe Natolin Campus ul. Nowoursynowska 84 PL 02-797 Warsaw, Poland www.coleuropenatolin.eu 82 Morocco EU Media coverage: EU reporting on Morocco is quite politicized. On the one hand, the media is a clear focus of EU reportage, often utilized to reflect the larger political and social environments: lack of political freedoms, monarchical control, and social disorders (e.g. in Le Monde, three successive pieces on Morocco published in March, May and June 2018 were entitled respectively: ‘The Royal Palace confronts social anger’, ‘From Tangier to Paris in the footsteps of lost children’, and ‘The Boycott [of Danone and el Afriquia Petrol stations] Disturbs the Government’). Issues of freedom of expression, investigative journalism, the protection and incarceration of journalists, and centralised political control over the media frequently dominate news by EU journalists, who often consider they are filling a gap, as such coverage is deemed unrepresented within the country itself. This to a certain extent is true though it gives an inaccurate impression that no negative social coverage is available locally in Morocco, when in fact, regularly carries stories on areas such as rape, demonstrations and poor prison conditions (see below). For EU journalists, important additional topics of interest include terrorism, migration, gender inequalities and civic unrest. On the other hand, the EU media tends positively to cover Morocco’s economic sector, providing an at times rosy picture of investment, corporate expansion, and cooperation by the government with Western business, EU financial regulation, and banking. In this way, it is considerably more supportive of the government’s position, in that the Moroccan state has made a significant effort to prioritise the economy as a subject worthy of media coverage. Trade shows, agency launches and large government-to-government partnerships are common media themes, as are the work of Moroccan designers and artists and the brands they College of Europe Natolin Campus ul. Nowoursynowska 84 PL 02-797 Warsaw, Poland www.coleuropenatolin.eu 83 develop (see for example, HuffPostMaghreb (in Arabic) ‘AMDIE: A "super agency" for the promotion of the Morocco brand’,38 and ‘German-Moroccan Energy Partnership’39). A common subject for European coverage is also tourism, and Morocco’s continued attraction as a European destination after the Arab uprisings. In this context, the place of Morocco within the ENP gathers a certain degree of coverage. In 2017, the Huffington Post, through its European Horizons programme, for example, carried a three-part report on the European Neighbourhood Policy, pointing out that Morocco would benefit from better roads and other infrastructure as a result of the partnership, and stating, ‘Putting money on the line