REPRESENTATIVE ON FREEDOM OF THE MEDIA Freedom and Responsibility YEARBOOK 2002/2003 Vienna 2003 The cover is a drawing entitled Des Schreibers Hand (The Writer’s Hand) by the German author and Nobel prize laureate (1999) Günter Grass. He has kindly let our Office use this as a label for publications of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media. The drawing was created in the context of Grass’s novel Das Treffen in Telgte, dealing with literary authors at the time of the Thirty Years War. © 2003 Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Office of the Representative on Freedom of the Media Kärntner Ring 5-7, Top 14, 2. DG, A-1010 Vienna Telephone: +43-1 512 21 450 Telefax: +43-1 512 21 459 E-mail: [email protected] www.osce.org/fom The authors retain rights on the essay texts. Design: WerkstattKrystianBieniek, Vienna Printed: Die Drucker, Vienna Freedom and Responsibility What We Have Done, Why We Do It – Texts, Reports, Essays, NGOs Contents Jaap de Hoop Scheffer Preface 9 Freimut Duve Introduction 13 I. Internet Felipe Rodriquez and Karin Spaink Rights and Regulations 23 Hans J. Kleinsteuber The Digital Age 31 II. Views and Commentaries Mass Media in Central Asia Central Asian Journalists Speak about Media Freedom and Corruption 41 Jacqueline Godany The War in Iraq and its Impact on Journalists and Journalism 45 Freimut Duve Freedom and Responsibility Media in Multilingual Societies 63 Milo Dor Conference Address: Media in Multilingual Societies 71 Johannes von Dohnanyi The Impact of Media Concentration on Professional Journalism 75 Freimut Duve The Spiegel Affair 79 Achim Koch Mobile Culture Container 83 Freimut Duve In Defence of our Future? 89 Besnik, age 17, Mitrovica Growing Old Young 93 Sevji, age 16, Bitola As If Nothing Had Ever Happened 97 III. Our Work – What We Think, Why It Matters Personal Reflections by Staff Members Jutta Wolke The Caffeine Factor: News from the Coffee House 103 Alexander Ivanko Hate Speech: To Prosecute or not to Prosecute, that is the Question 111 Christiane Hardy Investigative, Undercover and Embedded Journalism 123 Hanna Vuokko The Transformation or Homage to Kafka 135 Ana Karlsreiter The Value of $20,000 141 Christian Möller First Amendment Freedom Fighters? 149 Andrey Kalikh The Eye of the Storm 159 IV. Overview – What We Have Done Mandate of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media 171 Reports and Statements to the OSCE Permanent Council and Other OSCE Fora 175 Report on the Media Situation in Chechnya 224 Joint Declaration by OSCE, UN and OAS London, 10 December 2002 279 Projects 2002/2003 Freedom of the Media and Corruption Fourth Central Asian Media Conference, Tashkent, 26-27 Sept. 2002 282 Freedom of the Media and the Internet Workshop, Vienna, 30 November 2002 284 Public Service Broadcasting: New Challenges, New Solutions Meeting, Ljubljana, 10-11 March 2003 285 War: Images and Language – Coverage of Conflicts in the Media, 1991-2003 Round Table with UNIS, Vienna, 17-18 March 2003 288 Media in Multilingual Societies Conference, Bern, 28-29 March 2003 291 Freedom of the Media and the Internet Conference, Amsterdam, 13-14 June 2003 292 Principles for Guaranteeing Editorial Independence Round Table, Berlin, 16 July 2003 295 Media in Multicultural and Multilingual Societies Fifth Central Asian Media Conference, Bishkek, 17-18 Sept. 2003 297 Libel and Insult Laws Conference, Paris, 24-25 November 2003 299 Visits and Interventions in 2002/2003 302 Media NGOs in the OSCE Region 311 Books Published by The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media 314 Authors 317 Jaap de Hoop Scheffer Preface From the outset, the Netherlands has been closely involved in the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, later the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Throughout this time, the Netherlands’ attention has focused, in particular, on human rights issues and the human dimen- sion of the OSCE’s work. Against this background the Nether- lands endeavoured to take an active stance while holding the Chairmanship of the OSCE in 2003. In the past year the OSCE has witnessed a number of innovative developments and activities where the Chairman- ship could act as facilitator and, sometimes, as initiator. Let me mention a few of these. The first Annual Security Review Conference was held in Vienna in June 2003. This was the first time that the participating States had reviewed the fulfil- ment of OSCE commitments in security policy and arms con- trol. We are also looking into ways of improving the func- tioning and effectiveness of the organization’s field opera- tions. We all realize that the OSCE’s strength lies in its work at field level and we should lose no opportunity to improve these operations still further. But there is more. Last year the Porto Ministerial Confer- ence made it clear that the OSCE participating States were eager to adopt a new strategy on “New threats and challenges for the 21st century”. The OSCE is in the process of develop- ing a strategy. A great deal of preparatory work has been done to enable us to tackle some of the most intractable problems we are currently facing in the OSCE region. I refer to, among others, JAAP DE HOOP SCHEFFER 9 trafficking, particularly trafficking in human beings, and com- bating terrorism while at the same time upholding human rights. Seminars and round tables have been held to exchange views and experiences on these topics, with the active partici- pation of outside experts. Action plans have been adopted to implement the recommendations. Within the OSCE as a whole, the Office of the Represen- tative on Freedom of the Media is of prime importance. Peace- building efforts take place in a highly charged and unstable media environment. The goal of peacebuilding, after all, is to enhance the capacity of a society to manage its own conflicts without violence. In this the media play a crucial role. The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media promotes the independence of journalists and others working in the media, in particular by exposing cases of journalists arrested and sent to prison without a fair trial. The Representative also voices concern if the use of the Internet is restricted, as is the case in a number of participating States. While more and more information is being distributed over the Internet regardless of national borders, at the same time new methods of censorship are being developed and implemented. The Representative on Freedom of the Media has drawn attention to this on several occasions, culminating in the conference on Freedom of the Media and the Internet held in Amsterdam in June 2003. Given the fundamental changes that European media have undergone over the past ten years, the impact of media concentration on professional journalism is a source of seri- ous concern. New markets in the post-communist countries and media mergers in Western Europe have accelerated the trend towards media concentration all over the continent, in particular in the print media. Here again the OSCE Represen- tative on Freedom of the Media has expressed concern and provided guidance. 10 PREFACE The present OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Freimut Duve, will complete his term of office at the end of 2003. Over the past six years, Mr. Duve has played an important role as the OSCE’s media watchdog in a very dis- tinctive way. Wherever the position of individual journalists or media organizations in the region was challenged Mr. Duve was tireless in his efforts to improve their situation. I would like to take this opportunity to commend Mr. Duve for all he has done during these years. He is an inspiring example for any successor. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer is Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands and Chairman-in-Office of the OSCE 2003 JAAP DE HOOP SCHEFFER 11 Freimut Duve Our Task: Freedom and Journalistic Responsibility - Independence from Government Interference Introduction Elected by 54 governments, I was given the mandate of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media to look into the independence of media from government influence. That was a major step by the participating States to actually agree in 1997 to appoint somebody whose job it is to look in a criti- cal way at the role that these same governments played in relation to the media in their countries. No other regional organization of the UN or the UN itself had ever gone that far. Appointed in December 1997, we had good reasons to start the work and to face the great challenges in an enthusias- tic mood. In the 1990s Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia went through a brutal war, accompanied by racist and ethnic war propaganda that Europe remembered so well from the time the Nazis had set fire to our common house with racial propaganda and ethnic mass killing. These conflicts had died down in 1997. Freedom of journalism, freedom of the media – my portfolio for the next six years – showed hopeful signs in most of the participating States. Six years on, with several new conflicts behind us, we have to question whether more could have been done to pre- vent the establishment in some of our less developed Member States of an across-the-board structure of government or big business control over all spheres of life, including media. We could not prevent the cementing of control of the media by different power groups. We have not been able to stop the oligarchs of today, often the party leaders of yesterday, FREIMUT DUVE 13 from taking hostile control of the media either at the behest of senior officials or on their own.