Ipi Congress Report 2

SALZBURG IPI CONGRESS REPORT 2www.freemedia.at003

IPI WORLD CONGRESS & 52nd GENERAL ASSEMBLY IPI Congress Report

CONTENTS

Programme ...... 1

Editorial...... 4

Opening Ceremony ...... 6

Pluralism, Democracy and the Clash of Civilisations ...... 14

INTERNATIONAL Analysing the World Summit PRESS INSTITUTE on the Information Society...... 24

Chairman SARS and the Media ...... 30 Jorge E. Fascetto Chairman of the Board, Diario el Día La Plata, Argentina IPI Free Media Pioneer 2003 ...... 38

Director Congress Snapshots ...... 40 Johann P. Fritz Media in War Zones

Congress Coordinator and and Regions of Conflict ...... 42 Editor, IPI Congress Report Michael Kudlak The International News Safety Institute...... 52 Assistant Congress Coordinator Christiane Klint Media Self-Regulation: A Press Freedom Issue ...... 56 Congress Transcripts Rita Klint The Transatlantic Rift ...... 64

International Press Institute (IPI) The Oslo Accords Spiegelgasse 2/29, A-1010 Vienna, Austria – 10 Years On...... 74 Tel: +43-1-512 90 11, Fax: +43-1-512 90 14 E-mail: [email protected], http://www.freemedia.at Farewell Remarks...... 77 Cover Photograph: Tourismus Salzburg GmbH • Layout: Nik Bauer Printing kindly sponsored by Heidelberger Druckmaschinen Osteuropa Vertriebs-GmbH Paper kindly provided by UPM-Kymmene (Contents printed on Toccata Matt 135g/m2; cover printed on Toccata Matt 200g/m2) Resolutions ...... 78

1 PROGRAMME

SATURDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER SUNDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER

Residenz Palace Salzburg Congress Centre

OPENING CEREMONY SESSION I SESSION III Residenz Palace “Pluralism, Democracy and the “SARS and the Media” Chairperson Clash of Civilisations” Chairperson Wolfgang Vyslozil Alfred Payrleitner Managing Director, Austria Press Agency (APA) Chairperson Columnist, Kurier, Vienna Vienna Gudrun Harrer Foreign Editor, Der Standard, Vienna Keynote Speaker Maria Cheng WELCOME STATEMENTS Keynote Speaker Benita Ferrero-Waldner Spokesperson, Communicable Diseases Section, World Health Organisation (WHO), Geneva Jorge E. Fascetto Austrian Foreign Minister, Vienna Chairman of IPI; and Chairman of the Board PANELISTS Diario El Día, La Plata, Buenos Aires PANELISTS Kavi Chongkittavorn Wilfred D. Kiboro Hasan Cemal Assistant Group Editor, Nation Multimedia Group, Chairman, IPI Kenya Host Committee Columnist, Milliyet, Istanbul Bangkok and Group Chief Executive, Nation Media Group Bart Dijkstra Simon K.C. Li Ltd, Nairobi Director, Communications Assistance Foundation Assistant Managing Editor, Los Angeles Times, (CAF/SCO), Hilversum, The Netherlands Johann P. Fritz Los Angeles, CA Anthony Heard Director of IPI Bo Maltesen Former Editor, The Cape Times, Cape Town; Editor-in-Chief, Politiken, Copenhagen and Special Adviser in the Presidency, South Africa SPEAKERS Russell Mills Bernard Margueritte Dean, School of Media and Design, Algonquin Heinz Schaden President, International Communications College, Ottawa; and former Publisher, Ottawa Mayor of the City of Salzburg Forum, Warsaw Citizen, Ottawa Mogens Schmidt Wolfgang Schüssel Director, Division of Freedom of Expression, Federal Chancellor of Austria Democracy and Peace, UNESCO, Paris PRESENTATION OF THE “FREE MEDIA PIONEER 2003” DINNER AT THE SESSION II AWARD RESIDENZ PALACE awarded to the Media Council of Tanzania “Analysing the World Summit on the Information Society” Jenerali Ulimwengu Vice President, Media Council of Tanzania, Chairperson Dar Es Salaam Ilse Brandner-Radinger Secretary General, Presseclub Concordia, Vienna DINNER AT THE Opening Statement STIEGL BREWERY James Ottaway Chairman, World Press Freedom Committee; Senior Vice President, Dow Jones & Co., New York, NY

DISCUSSANTS Raymond Louw Editor and Publisher, Southern Africa Report, Johannesburg Alain Modoux Senior Adviser to UNESCO for the WSIS, Geneva

LUNCH AT THE SHERATON HOTEL

2 MONDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER TUESDAY, 16 SEPTEMBER

Salzburg Congress Centre Salzburg Congress Centre

SESSION IV SESSION VI PANELISTS “Media in War Zones “Media Self-Regulation: Franziska Augstein and Regions of Conflict” A Press Freedom Issue” Editor, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich Gilbert Grellet Chairperson Chairperson Director, External Relations, Agence France Presse Christian Rainer Hubert Feichtlbauer (AFP), Paris Editor-in-Chief, profil, Vienna Former Chairman, Austrian Press Council Daniel Hamilton Director, Center for Transatlantic Relations, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International PANELISTS PANELISTS Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Jonathan Baker Robert Pinker Washington, DC; and former U.S. Deputy Assistant World News Editor, BBC, London Privacy Commissioner and former Acting Chairman, Secretary of State for European Affairs Hanoch Marmari Press Complaints Commission, London Stuart Loory Editor-in-Chief, Ha’aretz, Tel Aviv Keith Spicer Editor, IPI Global Journalist; and Lee Hills Chair Reese Schonfeld Director, Institute for Media, Peace & Security, in Free Press Studies, University of Missouri School of Journalism, Columbia, MO Co-Founder and former President, CNN, Atlanta University for Peace, Paris; and former Chairman, Canadian Radio-Television Victor de la Serna Peter Preston and Telecommunications Commission, Ottawa Director, Guardian Foundation, London Deputy Editor, El Mundo, Madrid Joerg Steinbach Chairman, Complaints Commission, German Press Council, Bonn SESSION V SESSION VIII Jenerali Ulimwengu “The Oslo Accords – 10 Years On” “The International Vice President, Media Council of Tanzania, News Safety Institute” Dar Es Salaam Chairperson Andreas Unterberger Viktor Hermann Chairperson Editor-in-Chief, Die Presse, Vienna Deputy Editor-in-Chief and Foreign Editor, Claus Reitan Salzburger Nachrichten, Salzburg Editor-in-Chief, Tiroler Tageszeitung, Innsbruck DINNER AT Speaker Speaker ST. PETER’S ABBEY Yossi Beilin Rodney Pinder Former Justice Minister and former Deputy Foreign Minister of Israel Director, International News Safety Institute (INSI), Brussels SESSION VII Farewell Remarks “The Transatlantic Rift” Gerfried Sperl LUNCH AT THE Chairman, IPI Austrian National Committee; Chairperson and Editor-in-Chief, Der Standard, Vienna SHERATON HOTEL Eugen Freund Special Correspondent, Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF), Vienna FAREWELL LUNCH IPI GENERAL ASSEMBLY AT THE SHERATON HOTEL for IPI Members only Introductory Remarks Sir Peter Ustinov

3 EDITORIAL From Nairobi to Salzburg and back

Michael Kudlak press release the decision to cancel the Nairobi ified panel of experts, including Austrian For- Congress Coordinator & Editor, IPI Congress Report congress. Although an unjust blow to the peo- eign Minister Benita Ferrero-Waldner, discus- ple of Kenya in general and the Kenyan organ- sed, among other things, the role of the media he first warning came on 28 November ising committee in particular, “IPI believed in consolidating pluralism and democracy T 2002. A car bomb attack on an Israeli- that it was only prudent not to go ahead with around the world. owned hotel in the Kenyan coastal city of the meeting in Nairobi.” At the same time, IPI Panelists in the next session, “Analysing the Mombasa killed three Israelis and 12 Ken- expressed the hope that it would be able to hold World Summit on the Information Society yans. On the same day, two surface-to-air mis- a future congress in Kenya in the near future. (WSIS)”, discussed the serious threats to press siles narrowly missed an Israeli passenger jet This left the Secretariat with the option of freedom and the free flow of information on taking off from Mombasa airport. either cancelling the 2003 IPI World Congress the Internet posed by the UN-sponsored WSIS, In May 2003, only weeks before the IPI altogether or finding an attractive alternative to be held in Geneva and Tunis in December World Congress was scheduled to begin in venue and putting together a full and com- 2003 and November 2005, respectively. Nairobi on 1 June, carefully coordinated sui- pelling programme in just a few months. After In the session, “SARS and the Media”, cide bombings were launched within days exploring a range of possible venues, it was panelists discussed the role of the media, as against foreign targets in Saudi Arabia and decided to hold the congress in Salzburg, well as China’s culture of silence, in the recent Morocco. Suicide bombers attacked expatriate Austria, just 269 kilometres west of Vienna. spread of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syn- housing compounds in Riyadh on 12 May, Over the summer, the Secretariat set about drome (SARS). killing 35 people, including nine Americans. looking for sponsors and recruiting prominent Two related sessions, “Media in War Zones On 16 May, at least five blasts in Casablanca politicians, experts and media representatives and Regions of Conflict” and “The Interna- killed 45 people and left at least 100 others to take part in panel sessions ranging from “The tional News Safety Institute (INSI)”, analysed injured. The suicide bomb attacks were aimed Clash of Civilisations” and “The Transatlantic the grave dangers facing journalists in so many at a Jewish community centre, a Spanish res- Rift” to “SARS and the Media” and “The parts of the world, including Iraq, where news taurant, a five-star international hotel and the World Summit on the Information Society”. organisations had in place both journalists Belgian consulate. Despite severe time constraints, the IPI “embedded” with U.S. and British troops and The final blow came when British Airways, World Congress was opened on 13 September non-embedded or “unilateral” reporters who among other airlines, suspended indefinitely at the Residenz Palace, the former official res- operated under very different circumstances. all flights to and from Kenya after the U.S. and idence of Salzburg’s prince-archbishops. The desperate need for promoting good prac- British governments issued travel advisories Opening speeches by the Mayor of the City of tice in the provision of safety training for warning their nationals not to travel to Kenya Salzburg, Heinz Schaden, and the Federal journalists was stressed, and Rodney Pinder, because of the threat of “imminent” terrorist Chancellor of Austria, Wolfgang Schüssel, the director of INSI, introduced the new attacks on foreigners and commercial aircraft. were followed by an impassioned appeal by global safety network – a joint initiative by Over the next few days, the IPI Vienna Wilfred Kiboro, the Chairman of the IPI IPI and the International Federation of Secretariat received dozens of emails and tele- Kenya Host Committee. “We feel let down by Journalists – to the IPI membership. phone calls from anxious IPI members. Many the attitude of the U.S. and British govern- After the session on “Media Self-Regula- said they were reluctant to travel to Kenya ments in the issuance of those travel advi- tion”, in which panelists discussed the role of with their spouses or family members. Others sories. We seem to have given in to the terror- self-regulatory media bodies as possible bul- told us that their flights had been cancelled ists and let them win the war,” he said. “We warks of press freedom, the congress ended and they were unable to make alternative trav- hope that you will give us the opportunity to with two political sessions. el arrangements at this late stage. wish you a warm Kenyan welcome at an IPI The strained relationship between the After consulting with the IPI Executive congress in Nairobi in the near future.” United States and Europe, exacerbated by the Board and the Kenya Host Committee, the In the first session “Pluralism, Democracy Iraq conflict, was the topic of the session “The Secretariat officially announced in a 19 May and the Clash of Civilisations”, a highly qual- Transatlantic Rift”, in which the UN Goodwill

4 Ambassador, actor, author and raconteur Sir Peter Ustinov opened the discussion with his usual witty and thought-provoking remarks. In the session, “The Oslo Accords – 10 Years On”, former Israeli justice minister Yossi Beilin presented – exactly ten years after the historical signing of the Declaration of Principles by Israel and the PLO in Oslo, Norway – a very personal evaluation of the Middle East peace process. Two and a half months after the Salzburg congress, Beilin, together with former Palestin- ian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo – who was forced to decline his participation in Salzburg after the collapse of the Palestinian government on 6 September – would launch an alternative, unofficial peace plan for the Middle East, known as the Geneva Initiative, at a ceremony in Geneva, Switzerland, on 1 December. Although rejected by the Israeli government and the Palestinian Legislative Council, many see the symbolic accord as a promising foundation for peace that will advance dialogue between the two sides. Dialogue was also the focus of a meeting organised in conjunction with the Salzburg congress by the IPI affiliate, the South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO). As was the case in Ljubljana in 2002, SEEMO held one of its “Dialogue Meetings”, thereby continuing IPI’s long tradition of organising bilateral meetings intended to achieve understanding among journalists, and so among peoples. This time, the meeting was held between editors and leading journalists from Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Vojvodina, Serbia. In the end, the Salzburg congress proved to be a great success, with much praise coming from the delegates. During the four-day event, the lively and engaged response from the participants was reflected in full halls and the exceptionally wide media coverage. However, it was not just the panel sessions that proved to be popular. As in previous years, the IPI World Congress provided a valuable meeting place where delegates could exchange information, make new contacts and meet old friends. The 2004 IPI World Congress will take place in Warsaw, Poland, from 15-18 May. And everyone attending the Salzburg congress agreed that in 2005 IPI should convene in Kenya in order to express solidarity with our African colleagues and demonstrate that IPI will “not give in to terrorists.” ■

Photo: Tourismus Salzburg GmbH 5 SATURDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER 2003

OPENING CEREMONY

Residenz Palace

Chairperson Wolfgang Vyslozil AP Photo Managing Director, Austria Press Agency (APA), Vienna

Welcome Statements A Decline in Jorge E. Fascetto Chairman of IPI; Chairman of the Board, Diario El Día, La Plata, Buenos Aires Wilfred D. Kiboro Chairman, IPI Kenya Host Committee; Group Chief Executive, Nation Media Group Press Freedom Ltd, Nairobi Johann P. Fritz Heinz Schaden Between 2001 and 2003, there was a seri- Director of IPI Mayor of the City of Salzburg ous decline in freedom as countries representing over 100 million people slipped from the Speakers adies and Gentlemen, your organisation free press category to partly free. Heinz Schaden L stands for the promotion and defence of You are all quite aware of the fact that this press freedom, and you meet here in Salzburg is a consequence of the so-called “global war Mayor of the City of Salzburg at a time when the degree of press freedom is, against terrorism”. Under the pretext of in- Wolfgang Schüssel unfortunately, lower than in the years before. creased security concerns, restrictions of civil Federal Chancellor of Austria The New York-based Freedom House re- liberties have occurred in many countries, in- ported that only 20 per cent of the world’s 6.2 cluding the Western democracies. It is the task billion people live under free press conditions; of organisations and institutions like IPI to in 47 countries, particularly in the so called monitor carefully and to protest vehemently if democracies in transition, there are only part- further deterioration of democratic standards ly free conditions; and in 68 countries there is should occur. The media must also be watch- no freedom of expression at all. dogs in this respect. ■

6 Working Together

Jorge E. Fascetto Chairman of IPI; Chairman of the Board Diario El Día, La Plata, Argentina

f somebody had told me earlier in the Between 1960 and 1961, IPI, through its conference in Mexico City that resulted in I summer that I would be addressing an IPI publication, IPI Report, strongly denounced the Chapultepec Declaration, IAPA’s main World Congress in September, I would never the dispossession suffered by El Día, which lar- document on press freedom in the Western have believed it! gely influenced the liberation of our newspaper. Hemisphere. During IAPA’s Assembly in In the three short months since we were Incidents of this kind mark the history of Chicago next October, the Boards of both sadly forced to cancel the Kenyan Congress, our society. How many newspapers in countries organisations will meet for the first time and IPI has been able to find a new venue and cre- ruled by authoritarian regimes have recovered I have no doubt they will propose measures ate a new Congress. their right to be independent? How many jour- which will be important for the future of I believe that this is due to the IPI Secre- nalists jailed for expressing their opinion have both IPI and IAPA, and will surely help tariat, who, without the assistance of a Host been freed and how many of them have had towards the development of a free and inde- Committee, have made this Congress possi- their lives saved thanks to IPI’s permanent and pendent press. ble. I would like to thank them for their hard courageous fight for freedom of expression? work. Without them there would have been Last year, IPI was in Venezuela on a joint- Last year, IPI was in Venezuela no IPI World Congress in Salzburg. mission with the Inter American Press Associ- on a joint-mission with the Inter Since its foundation, almost 60 years ago, ation (IAPA) in order to study the situation of American Press Association (IAPA) IPI has been struggling to defend and promote the Venezuelan press, which is going though in order to study the situation press freedom wherever it is threatened. one of the most difficult periods in its history. Personally I feel deeply identified with IPI, Wilfred Kiboro of the Nation Media Group of the Venezuelan press, which beyond my position as chairman of the organ- and Mitja Mersol of Delo, both members of is going though one of the most isation. I cannot forget what IPI meant for our IPI from outside the American continent, difficult periods in its history newspaper, El Día of Argentina, during the formed part of this mission and contributed difficult times of [President Juan Domingo] to a great degree to its success. Let us hope both organisations will someday Perón’s dictatorship when, in 1951, after grave This made us realise how important it would be able to fulfil their only unfulfilled dream, financial pressures, extortion and threats, the be for IPI and IAPA, two of the most significant which is to eradicate forever every method used newspaper was confiscated. It was only seven organisations defending freedom of expression, by dictatorships or pseudodemocracies to hin- years later that our newspaper was legally to work closer together in initiatives aimed at der the full exercise of press freedom. ■ returned to its legitimate owners, thanks to protecting this fundamental human right. strong international pressure, in which IPI Before the joint mission to Venezuela, IPI played a significant role. actively participated in 1994 in the free speech

7 SATURDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER 2003 Giving in to the Terrorists

Wilfred D. Kiboro Chairman, IPI Kenya Host Committee; Group Chief Executive, Nation Media Group Ltd, Nairobi

n behalf of the Kenyan IPI Host Com- ments in the issuance of those travel advi- convinced that Kenya is more unsafe than Omittee in particular, and on behalf sories. We seem to have given in to the terror- many other conflict areas of the world. of the Kenyan public in general, may I ists and let them win the war. As we speak, Kenya is gearing up to host express my deep disappointment that I am We all know that terrorists aim to disrupt over 8,000 delegates to the 13th International not addressing this gathering in our wonder- our lives and strike fear in people all over the Conference on HIV/AIDS and Sexually ful city of Nairobi, but rather in Salzburg, world and by these cowardly actions we let Transmitted Infections in Africa (ICASA) in Austria. them get the upper hand. Nairobi from 21-26 September. Of course this is not to say that I am not As journalists, our role is to be at the fore- happy to be here, but just to explain that I am front of fighting against such matters. Did we, We seem to have given in to the saddened by what transpired to bring this in our cancellation of the Kenya Congress, show terrorists and let them win the war Congress here today. that the media will not go to areas of conflict? As chairman of the IPI Kenya Host Com- As much as we know that we have to take due I am gratified that my good friend Philip mittee and despite our being a country with care, we feel that this was too punitive. Mathew from India did not cancel his trip to meagre resources, we all looked forward to Ladies and Gentlemen, if travel advisories Kenya despite the cancellation of the IPI hosting this Congress in Kenya and had been suggest that some countries are too unsafe to Congress and together with his family had a in preparations for over two years. go to, then we see hypocrisy in the action wonderful time not only in Kenya but in our Unfortunately, that came to nought after taken by the U.S. and Britain against Kenya as neighbouring country, Tanzania, as well. I am the United States and Britain issued some they do not issue any travel advisories to their sure if you gave Philip an opportunity, he travel advisories followed thereafter by the citizens against travelling to destinations such would share with you his wonderful memories banning of British Airways flights to Kenya. as some cities in Israel, including Jerusalem and image of our peaceful nation. This led to the cancellation of the Congress and Tel Aviv. Their citizens can still freely May I conclude by inviting you all once just three weeks from its scheduled dates. travel to these areas where there are almost again and hope that you will give us the Our own perspective is that terrorism is a constant daily conflicts. opportunity to wish you a warm Kenyan global phenomenon and we feel let down by We see no justification in the travel bans welcome at a Congress in Nairobi in the near the attitude of the U.S. and British govern- that were imposed on Kenya as we cannot be future. ■

8 Strange Things Are Happening Nowadays

Johann P. Fritz Director of IPI

riday, 13 June 2003, was our first dead- • In addition, we had to accept that the conferences or seminars which IPI organises F line for the decision on holding the IPI given dates were impossible for certain groups, every year, and just two days after Salzburg we World Congress in Salzburg. However, as the like the Norwegians, because of elections, or would be holding, in cooperation with the financial situation was not yet cleared, we had the Swedes, because of their referendum on Council of Europe, a major event in Bucharest to continue negotiating for another week. We the EURO, or for academics, who have to pre- with directors and editors from over 50 public finally mailed out the official announcement pare the start of their new courses. Our Turk- service broadcasting organisations in Eastern on 20 June, after reaching the following eval- ish IPI Committee had organised, for the and Western Europe. uation of the situation: same weekend, an international event for • With Salzburg, we had found an attrac- ombudsmen and members of press councils, Have the United Nations – the tive location, and a safe one – an important and the Russians will have, just a few days dream of an international system element during times like these. after Salzburg, an important All-Russian based on permanent rules, reliable • We had managed to organise an interest- media conference in Baku. ing programme. Once again, many thanks to Strange things are also happening within procedure and equally distributed all speakers and panelists, who reacted so the various preparatory committees of the power – been nothing but another spontaneously to our requests. UN-sponsored World Summit on the Inform- post-Cold War bubble? • There were still not enough sponsors in ation Society. order to bring this conference close to the • Moreover, we were reminded that the U.S. Thus, instead of having the usual 300-500 break-even point. However, if we waited long- government had issued an Orange Alert warn- participants for the IPI World Congress, or er, we would lose additional potential partici- ing in connection with the anniversary of Sep- even 700 at such attractive spots like Moscow pants, since in most countries the peak season tember 11 and that this coincided with the in 1998, we hoped to get about 200-250 par- of holidays was about to begin and mailings to period of travelling to Salzburg. ticipants – a rather good guess, as it turned out. our network of members in over 120 coun- • Finally, the Salzburg dates conflicted with For the programme, we planned the dis- tries take up to three weeks, even when sent our own programme of events, since the cussion of some timely topics, for example by special delivery. World Congress is only one of at least ten Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS.

9 SATURDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER 2003

Because of the culture of secrecy in China, So we have to ask ourselves: Will America preceding it, never even got off the ground. effective counter-measures could not be taken rise up as the world’s judge and policeman in A hopeless situation? Yes, because strange in due time and this epidemic produced hun- the 21st century? Have the United Nations – things are unfortunately happening nowadays! dreds of victims and devastating economic the dream of an international system based on And strange things are also happening effects in certain regions. On the other hand, permanent rules, reliable procedure and within the various preparatory committees of the English-language China Daily reported equally distributed power – been nothing but the UN-sponsored World Summit on the that by May of this year, Western democracies another post-Cold War bubble? Information Society. had donated approximately US$ 31 million. As I said before, strange things are happen- Jim Ottaway, the chairman of the World Humanitarian aid is one thing, but rewarding ing nowadays! Press Freedom Committee (WPFC), is trying a political regime that caused global problems In terms of sheer numbers, the war in Iraq to coordinate the efforts of the international and effectively blocked the WHO’s intention was perhaps the best-covered conflict in histo- media organisations, since until now the to help fight SARS in Taiwan is another. ry. Over six hundred journalists were embed- organisers have essentially ignored the impor- Well, strange things are happening now- ded with coalition forces and several hundred tance of press freedom for the future of new adays! independent or “unilateral” reporters roamed technologies. We then decided to discuss the “Transat- Iraq and surrounding countries; their experi- Finally, we had to put the issue of “Media lantic Rift”, a crisis between Europe and the ences in covering the war differed vastly. Self-Regulation” on the agenda. Several press United States due to some basic foreign poli- councils in Europe, including the Austrian cy differences, but also to a lot of cheap pos- Strange things are also Press Council, had been facing difficulties. turing, bitterness and mud slinging on both happening within the various In the UK, a sub-committee of the House of sides. Much of this is a misconception. preparatory committees of the Commons threatened to diminish the role of The Austrian Foreign Minister Benita the Press Complaints Commission. And Peter Ferrero-Waldner, who is here tonight, recent- UN-sponsored World Summit Beattie, the Premier of Queensland, referred ly stressed in an interview not only the com- on the Information Society to the Australian Press Council as a “toothless mon system of values, but also the many other tiger” that was slow to act and irrelevant. He fields of common interests, in particular eco- Charlie Brennan of the Rocky Mountain raised the issue of media concentration, in nomic interests. Did you know that the Euro- News in Denver reported that most embedded particular in communities in which there is pean Union is the biggest investor in the Uni- journalists found very quickly that “… assess- insufficient competition. In an age of budget- ted States and that 45 per cent of all U.S. in- ing a war from the bottom of a ditch, while conscious demographic-driven media organi- vestments are in countries of the EU? But under threat of imminent attack, was as fruit- sations, he said, a near monopoly is not a free above all, the exchange of goods between the ful as imagining a completed puzzle by study- press, at least in the traditional political sense U.S. and Europe amounts to over a billion ing a single piece. Unilaterals, or non-embed- of the term. It remains free from government EURO per day! So, one would think that ded journalists, believed that they would be in censorship, but there is no mechanism left to rebuilding this strained relationship would positions to cover the war on a much broader expose and correct bias within the media. certainly have priority. On the contrary, the scale. They were right, although some of them “Can democracy flourish amid the lack of conflict lingers on. paid the ultimate price for that coverage.” competition within the media, or is there a Yes, strange things are happening nowa- And the situation of about 150-250 jour- risk that the media will demand accountabili- days! nalists who stayed in Baghdad was best des- ty of others, but itself stay above scrutiny,” he The global situation could presently be cribed by Robert Collier, a reporter for the asked. described as a “Clash of Civilisations”. San Francisco Chronicle, who wrote, “Wait- Well, despite the existence of media watch The Spanish paper El País commented, ing in Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel for Amer- groups, ombudsmen and press councils, the “One essential element should by now be ican missiles and bombs to come raining old question is back again in the political imprinted on the collective subconscious. down on the city was an act of extreme faith arena: Who guards the guardians? Washington can dictate its law wherever and in American military technology. Aim accu- As I said before, strange things are happen- whenever it wants. At any time the U.S. would rately, please.” ing nowadays! be able to deploy anywhere in the world a With regard to the other hotspot in the Ladies and Gentlemen, I hope you will en- force impressive not for its size but for its Middle East, IPI was of course reminded that joy the proceedings of our conference and that destructive power, its technological superiority the Oslo breakthrough in the peace negotia- these “strange things” will result in discussions and its aggressiveness.” And an editorial in the tions happened exactly 10 years ago. We had that turn the Salzburg IPI World Congress Egyptian weekly, Al-Ahram, mentioned, “The dedicated several seminars and even our 1996 into an interesting and memorable event. ■ American view of the world is still ‘embedded’ World Congress to the Israeli-Palestinian in the Reagan administration’s definition of peace process. Now came the “road map” and allies and rogue states. After September 11, some experts, like Henry Siegman, Senior this was enhanced by the doctrine of ‘If you Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, are not with us, you are against us’.” argue that this plan, like the many initiatives

10 Wolfgang Schüssel Federal Chancellor of Austria

Information and Insecurity

am happy to welcome you here in Salzburg den’s foreign minister Anna Lindh was mur- feelings like hope or hatred; they are projec- I and from experience I can tell you that you dered in a department store in the afternoon. tion screens for almost messianic expectations. could not have chosen a better place. Salzburg The world mourns the loss of this bright and Combined with the excitement that is always is European history. Salzburg is also music yet high-minded woman who represented a very present in times of a campaign, these emo- to be written. It is a place where new visions likeable and warm Europe. Nobody knows the tions can become an explosive mixture. and worlds evolve – in music, in theatre, in motive of the killer. Actually, it is almost im- Extreme feelings lead to extremes – in the architecture and painting. Therefore Salzburg possible to imagine why anybody should have worst case to a tragedy like the one we saw is an ideal place to think about connections thought about doing Anna Lindh any harm. three days ago. The IPI Congress is a perfect and interdependencies that affect us all. Half a year ago, on 12 March 2003, the forum to think about this development that For this reason, every summer I invite per- Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic was poses a threat to every open democracy. sonalities from the arts, economy and politics. shot. On 6 May 2002, a fanatic killed the On the surface, it may seem that informa- We share our thoughts on various issues; this right-wing populist Pim Fortuyn in Hilver- tion and insecurity are contradictory, that year we discussed the phenomenon of “Inse- sum in the Netherlands. The first reaction information is a cure for insecurity. Actually, curity in an Uncertain World”. always is to demand tighter security measures I have the impression that we are living in a The recent events bitterly demonstrate that for politicians. However, this does not touch media world where things are turned upside the issue of insecurity and “Angst” is present the heart of the problem. Politicians have down, where information can be the cause for in our everyday lives. Three days ago, Swe- become the incarnation of strong emotional insecurity.

11 SATURDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER 2003

Apart from the questions of security and straints, as the competition among the various however, we have always seen the chances of a bodyguards, we recognise a broad feeling of media is tougher than ever. Who has the story re-united Europe. Austria is benefiting a lot insecurity and uncertainty throughout the first is the challenge of all journalists. from being back in the heart of Europe. Now world. Ask a New Yorker about safety and he On the other hand, we all deal with com- the next phase begins. Nobody knows exactly will think of 9/11. Ask a German worker and plex issues that often cannot be easily explain- how the “new” Europe with 25 members and he might tell you about his fear of losing his ed. Think of pension reform or health care. more will work and what dynamics will evolve job. Ask somebody from an Arab country and Our system in Austria has been changed so out of that new constellation. I strongly be- he will give you his perception of Iraq, Iran many times that only experts can actually lieve that it will be something new, that you and the Middle East conflict. understand what the consequences would be cannot compare it to the European Union we The question of insecurity and uncertainty if we changed this or that part of it. The prob- got used to in the last decades. is also extremely relevant for the media. We all lem is rather clear. We fortunately live longer, live in a global news village. Everyday we are have more and more sophisticated medical I am convinced that the almost overwhelmed by news from all over the means but less children and therefore less peo- media will use all its creativity world, be it a bomb explosion in Iraq, be it a ple financing the growing costs for our pen- and competence to achieve natural disaster somewhere in Europe, be it a sion and health care system. But there are no political discussion in our own country about easy and simple answers for these problems. the high goal of turning reforms or government initiatives. What the Politics and the media have created a ritu- an information society into an media coverage usually has in common is a al that the German president Roman Herzog informed society negative tone, an almost pessimistic view of the has described like this: world that is actually confirmed by the “triple In the beginning there is an initiative that Therefore, we have to get rid of some old C” of today’s news – crises, conflicts and cata- will hurt at least one interest group. The me- patterns of thinking and develop a clearer view strophes – that make it to the headlines. dia reports a “collective outrage”. During the of what we want of Europe and what policies next hours and days alternative proposals, it should stand for. We have to discuss the On the surface, it may seem events, even demonstrations, collections of frontiers and means of the European Union that information and insecurity signatures for or against several proposals, openly. This is not a hypothetical discussion. polls, etc., create a complete chaos. Nobody It means to deal with questions like: What are contradictory, that information knows anymore what is really on the table. does a European foreign policy look like? How is a cure for insecurity. The citizens react with confusion and frustra- can we achieve a sound balance between Euro- Actually, I have the impression tion. In the end, the problem is often post- pean and national policies? that we are living in a media world poned. No consensus is possible, the status Next month the Intergovernmental Con- where things are turned upside quo remains untouched. Everybody waits for ference (IGC) will start in Rome to discuss down, where information can be the next proposal. the European constitution. I very much wel- Sometimes we seem trapped in this vicious come the draft that has been written by the the cause for insecurity circle. I am ready to admit that politicians members of the convention. It is a solid basis including myself can always do a better job in for the IGC but there is always room for im- Public attention is the currency of our mo- communicating the reforms and why they are provement. Europe has always been a work in dern societies. But more news does not neces- necessary. It is the job of the media to ques- progress, but we owe it to our citizens that we sarily mean that our citizens are better in- tion proposals and to check the consequences. define the guidelines that give them security. formed. Surveys and polls on certain issues However, on both sides of the table we should What we need is the courage of the former usually show a lack of understanding of what always try to get back to substance and solu- seafarers. We need to inject microbes of confi- is really going on. We should take that seri- tions. dence. The challenges are out there – for poli- ously, as politicians and as media people. It We should take that broad feeling of inse- ticians as well as for journalists. I am absolute- cannot be in our interest that our society feels curity seriously, because “Angst” blocks cre- ly confident that we can tackle the problems. insecure; we all share the vision of independ- ativity and innovation. In Austria, we tend to In Austria we have shown that we can move in ent and self-confident citizens who make up describe first why something cannot work the right direction and that the citizens accept their minds and decide freely within the dem- before we even start to develop a new idea. reasonable reforms. And I am convinced that ocratic rules. You cannot be innovative without taking the media will use all its creativity and com- Supposedly every journalist has heard risks. This is as true for the economy as it is petence to achieve the high goal of turning an about the “Kiss” principle during his career, for politics. information society into an informed society. meaning the effort to “keep it short and sim- Take Europe for example. For the first time I wish you fruitful and encouraging discus- ple”. Today a 60-second-story on TV is al- in history the continent is re-united in peace sions during your congress. ■ ready the long version of the usual news flash, and without the hegemony of any country. forcing the reporter to tell his story in a cou- A dream is to come true within a few couple ple of words. Even more difficult, this story of months. We did not exactly know what the has to be produced under extreme time con- risks of enlargement were in the beginning;

12 Photo: Tourismus Salzburg GmbH SUNDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 2003

SESSION I Salzburg Congress Centre “Pluralism, Democracy and the Clash of Civilisations”

Chairperson Gudrun Harrer Foreign Editor, Der Standard, Vienna Keynote Speaker Opting Benita Ferrero-Waldner Austrian Foreign Minister, Vienna

Panelists Hasan Cemal for Pluralism Columnist, Milliyet, Istanbul Bart Dijkstra Director, Communications Assistance Benita Ferrero-Waldner of the ways in which our currencies, our econ- Foundation, Hilversum, The Netherlands Austrian Foreign Minister, Vienna omies, our political fortunes, our attempts at Anthony Heard waging war and our attempts at building Former Editor, The Cape Times, Cape Town; hen we think about the concepts that peace are, in the end, all inter-linked. It is not Special Adviser in the Presidency, South Whave shaped the world we live in dur- possible to “go it alone” in the kind of world Africa ing the past-half century, even within the past we live in, since there is no such thing as being Bernard Margueritte decade, there are many keywords that come to “alone”. President, International Communications our mind. “Globalisation”, which has many Along with the globalisation of world sys- Forum, Warsaw meanings, both positive and negative, may be tems, we also have been confronted with an Mogens Schmidt one of the most decisive concepts of all of increased movement of people, as refugees Director, Division of Freedom of Expression, these new concepts, because this term signifies and as economic and political migrants. The Democracy and Peace, UNESCO, Paris the fact that we have to learn to look at polit- demography of our world has changed and ical and economic questions in a way that in- our way of looking at the world of religious, cludes all of their global consequences. Globa- cultural and ethnic difference must now also lisation has made all of us more acutely aware begin to catch up with those changes.

14 It is precisely the interpenetration and prox- “very good”. Democracy is virtually the only engage with one another in and through our imity of great civilisations and cultures that political model with global appeal, no matter very deepest differences. “Pluralism”, which will be the hallmark of the 21st century. The how different the cultural background of peo- regards “otherness” not as a threat but indeed map of the world cannot be colour-coded as ple may be. as an enrichment, not as something to be to its Christian, Muslim, Hindu identity, but Yet Huntington is correct when he argues afraid of but as a chance to cooperate. Plura- each part of the world is marbled with the that cultural differences have taken on a new lism is not given, but must be created. It re- colours and the textures of the whole. People importance, forming possible fault lines for quires participation and also an active attempt of different religious traditions live together future conflict. Although almost the entire to understand each other. The language of all over the world – as majorities in one place world pays lip service to democracy, there is pluralism is that of dialogue and encounter, and as minorities in others. still no global consensus on fundamental val- give and take, criticism and self-criticism. ues – such as social tolerance, gender equality, It is the language of dialogue that we will need Democracy is virtually the only freedom of speech, and interpersonal trust – to develop further, and this also addresses political model with global appeal, that are crucial to democracy. the media. Not surprisingly, at the point of contact of This dialogue has not only to take place no matter how different the cultural two or more civilisations, there are bound to between religions and cultures but also within background of people may be be some frictions emanating from different religions, within societies and within cultures. values. We all have our own personal experi- In this dialogue, we should not disregard the Since the publication ten years ago of ences with private “clashes” – arguments with potential inherent in our religious or ethnic Samuel P. Huntington’s “The Clash of Civi- our neighbours, the missed party/concert be- minorities if they are encouraged to take part lisations” claiming that world politics in the cause of parental forbiddance, etc. The main in these discussions as bridges rather than out- post Cold War era is mainly comprehensible point is how we deal with these differences. I siders. The Christian minorities and the Jew- from a perspective of a “clash of civilisations”, think, basically, there are three ways of han- ish minorities in the Islamic countries should it has become customary when discussing dling “difference”: be such bridges and the other way around. world politics to refer to this theory. Hunt- ington, as you know, basically concludes that “ Although almost the entire world pays lip service world politics from here onwards will be increasingly characterised by clashes along the to democracy, there is still no global consensus civilisational fault lines separating them. He says, “In the emerging world, the rela- on fundamental values – such as social tolerance, tions between states and groups from different civilisations will not be close and will often be antagonistic. Yet, some intercivilisational rela- gender equality, freedom of speech, and inter- tions are more conflict-prone than others. At the micro level, the most violent fault lines personal trust – that are crucial to democracy.” are between Islam and its Orthodox, Hindu, African, and Western Christian neighbours. 1) Exclusivism, which requires the exclu- Muslims living in Europe, for example, can At the macro level, the dominant division is sion of those who are different and demands better explain to us what Islam is all about and between ‘the West and the rest’, with the most that those who are different go home: What is to their Islamic brethren what Western civili- dominant conflict occurring between Muslim foreign should leave. sation is all about. and Asian societies on the one hand and the 2) Assimilation or Inclusivism, where dif- Austria has a longstanding record in the West on the other. The dangerous clashes of ferences dissolve into a melting pot, like in the organisation of a dialogue between cultures the future are likely to arise from the interac- United States of America, adding their flav- and civilisations and has acquired some tangi- tion of Western arrogance, Islamic intoler- ours but losing their forms: People are wel- ble, political know-how. Based on the convic- ance, and Sinic assertiveness.” come to come and to be like “us”. tion that the dialogue between cultures and Despite Huntington’s claim of a clash of 3) Pluralism, where a group or community civilisations has to include the media in order civilisations between the “West and the rest', is shaped by the encounter of the many, the to reach out to the general public and to all the World Values Survey, a worldwide investi- engagement of the many, a “cultural plural- actors in the civil society, I myself have taken gation of socio-cultural and political change, ism”, where one has a right to be different, up this subject and organised last year, in the based at the Institute for Social Research of not just in dress and public presentation, but Euro-Mediterranean context, an international the University of Michigan, reveals that, at also in religion and creed, united only by seminar on the role of the media in the Dia- this point in history, democracy has an over- participation in the common covenants of logue between Cultures and Civilisations. whelmingly positive image throughout the citizenship. Another such seminar will take place on my world. In country after country, a clear major- What we have to opt and work for is plu- initiative in November in Vienna where we ity of the population describes having “a dem- ralism – pluralism not as an ideology, but again should discuss realistic chances for ocratic political system” as either “good” or rather as a dynamic process through which we “ethical conduct” in a globalised media world.

15 SUNDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 2003

I am truly looking forward to co-hosting this seminar, which will be entitled “Cultural Diversity: The Quest for Common Moral Ground and the Public Role of the Media”, together with the Jordanian Minister for Social Affairs, Rwanda Al-Mariah. The Turkish All political and religious efforts to promote such a dialogue between cultures and civilisations must reach out to the public at Hasan Cemal Ottoman Turkish encounter with a consti- large. The task we as governments, religious Columnist, Milliyet, Istanbul tutional monarchy, a parliament, and politi- leaders, teachers, writers and journalists share cal parties. In 1923, a republican order that is to give people a fair chance to understand will talk about the Turkish model, or would become secular was established. In and to appreciate different cultures and civili- I Turkey as a model, and that there can 1945, just after World War II, multi-party sations. In order to involve our civic societies be democracy and pluralism in a Muslim politics were introduced for good after two in this dialogue, we need the media, the writ- country. previous failed attempts. The impetus for ers, the poets, and the thinkers to help trans- One of the battles currently being fought these steps towards modernisation was not mit this message of understanding. in Washington over Iraq is ideological. The imposed by outside factors, but they were two sides in this battle are the so-called neo- instrumental, at least indirectly, in prompt- What we have to opt cons – the neo-conservatives – and the neo- ing the change. and work for is pluralism – liberals. The question over which much ink Indeed, outside factors do play a part in has been spilled and much more is likely to some critical turning points. The Ottoman pluralism not as an ideology, follow: How can the Arab world, Arab soci- reformation that extends throughout the but rather as a dynamic eties, modernise? How can they become entire 19th Century and the transition to process through which more democratic? This is an important multi-party rule owe a lot to the challenge we engage with one another question. Many people assume that as the of external development. Since the early Arab world becomes more democratic, the 1980s, and even today, outside factors such in and through our very context which breeds terrorism will gradual- as the Copenhagen criteria of the European deepest differences ly dissipate and the Middle East will finally Union have been a guiding light for demo- reach a degree of stability as the Palestinian- cratic reforms. Still, the republican revolu- The media, as we are all aware, are among Israeli conflict is resolved. tion from above, coming on the heels of ear- the most powerful creators and transmitters of The neo-cons believe that democracy lier Ottoman reforms, managed to force cultural images today. This places you in a should be installed with the help of Ame- feed to a largely rural Muslim society a civil- very special position. We of course do under- rican might, if need be. The examples of isation model based on the European stand that most media are also businesses and Germany and Japan in the wake of World model. therefore have to follow certain rules of the War II are constantly brought forth to sup- What did the Ottoman founding fathers market. Only the media that sell their product port this line of thinking. The neo-liberals of the Turkish Republic do? They held Islam will survive economically and will therefore do not object to the war against Iraq, but partly responsible for the decline and fall of also have an impact on public opinion. But we they do not favour the use of outside force the Empire. Islam for them was the old also recognise that there is an ethical responsi- to modernise and democratise the country world. It had to be repressed, replaced, and bility for intellectual honesty, for truth and or the region. I will not dwell on Iraq, where made irrelevant in public life and politics. for sensitivity to transport valid images and I spent two weeks as a journalist at the end They wanted to build a centralised nation messages that are not purposefully biased and of April, nor will I talk about the German or state and wanted to avoid separatism at all prejudiced. the Japanese models. I wish to reflect upon cost. To that end, they borrowed the Swiss In an age of globalisation, we may very the Turkish example, which may shed some civil code; that was a real revolution. They well feel the threat that all our deeds and light on our topic today. borrowed the German trade laws, the Italian actions have global consequences, but at the Turkey’s population is 99 per cent Mus- criminal law and adopted French secular- same time I also ask all of us also to realise lim. It is a country that has undergone a sys- ism. They borrowed and adopted the French that there is a second side to the coin, namely tematic revolution from above for the past centralised administrative structure in a new that our positive efforts towards a just dia- 200 years to modernise. At the beginning of Republic of Turkey. To break away from the logue will have a global impact. ■ the 20th Century, we saw the first and brief imperial Islamic past, both mentally and

16 Model

symbolically, they replaced the Arab alphabet with the Latin one, threw away the fez and the veil, and began to sport Western hats and Western outfits. They founded conservatories engaged in the composition of Western music. At times they went too far, like when they banned classical Turkish music on the radio. They tried to render Islam – a religion that claims to encompass all aspects of life, including politics – a matter of individual faith. They argued forcefully that religious belief was to remain strictly between the individual and God. As they suppressed any religious Turkey had an association agreement, dated ty, or the maturation of Turkey’s own liberal manifestations in politics, they institution- 1963, with the EU. Since 1995, the year a democratisation. alised the state’s control of religion and reli- customs union agreement was finalised, a This is a rough summary of the Turkish gious practices. At times, they went wild and gradual progression in democratisation took model. It is also a model that proves the com- banned the construction of new mosques. place. The pace intensified after the 1999 patibility of Islam in democracy. I would ar- Helsinki Summit, when the EU invited Tur- gue that this is a chance to avoid a so-called The impetus for these key to become a candidate for membership. clash of civilisations. In this context, it is im- Last August, the seventh and for the moment perative that the Turkish candidacy, declared steps towards modernisation final reform package was enacted that trans- by the EU in 1999, is allowed to arrive at its was not imposed by formed the civil and military balance in the terminus, i.e., EU membership. outside factors, but they were country. It is heartening, therefore, that Günther instrumental, at least indirectly, One cannot really underestimate the sig- Verheugen, the EU Commissioner in charge nificance of these reforms, especially the last of enlargement, said, “Even if, like me, you do in prompting the change one about the civil and military balance. In not subscribe to Huntington’s idea of the clash the 200 years of forced modernisation that I of civilisations, the risk that the 21st Century This was the first stage of modernisation tried to outline, the Turkish military played a might see far-ranging conflict between the from above in Turkey, a Muslim country. pioneering role. As the protector or custodian Western democracies and the Islamic world The second stage came in 1945 with the of Turkey’s modernisation, it also saw fit to cannot be wholly excluded. In such a situa- advent of multi-party politics and the elec- intervene and interrupt in the democracy tion, it has to be an advantage to have on our toral transfer of power in 1950 as the result of process several times over the past 50 years. side an important country like Turkey, which free and fair elections. Actually, the very success of the modernisa- proves that democracy and the rule of law are The third stage consisted of economic lib- tion drive made the military’s continuing role perfectly compatible with Islam.” eralisation, launched in 1980. as the guardian of the Republic redundant. Even more heartening was what Joschka The fourth stage addressed the need to for- The economic liberalisation of the 1980s and Fischer, the German Foreign Minister, said on tify the country’s democratic institutions and the opening up of Turkey to the currents of the occasion of the Turkish Prime Minister’s deepen its democratisation, to do away with, globalisation created the circumstances for the visit to Germany at the beginning of Sep- once and for all, interruptions caused by mil- society at large to own up to the modernisa- tember: “Turkey will become a member of the itary interventions. tion project that once had to be dictated from EU as a modern Muslim country and thus At that stage, the European Union mem- above. I call this phenomenon the secularisa- become an example for all other Muslim bership process provided the framework. tion of society, the development of civil socie- countries in its region and beyond.” ■

17 SUNDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 2003

Anthony Heard Former Editor, The Cape Times, Cape Town; Special Adviser in the Presidency, South Africa

Looking at the South African Experience

have just been dipping into Samuel Hun- could be no community of interest between the last nine years has been totally against the I tington again and it makes quite scary read- black Africans and white South Africans. In trend of the theories of Huntington. ing these days because, since he wrote it in fact there were quite a few people who might We are faced with enormous problems on 1993, the world has taken quite a lurch prefer to forget about it now, particularly in the employment front, on issues to do with towards what some of his supporters might the media, who supported this as a first step in crime, issues to do with neighbouring coun- suggest is a direction that confirms his basic the right direction. tries and our role in Africa and the world. thesis, i.e., ideology and economics will not be But as we celebrate our tenth year of democ- the cause of future wars but, in fact, culture It can be very encouraging to racy next year, which will be a very big party, and civilisations. What we have seen in the briefly look at the South African we feel emboldened and encouraged to move last couple of years is cause for very profound along that road of total non-racial democra- thought about Huntington. But it can be very experience which, I think, cy. And it is perhaps something from which a encouraging to briefly look at the South offers an interesting, counter- world facing such terrible new tensions can African experience which, I think, offers an vailing force to the theories gain some encouragement. It is certainly interesting, countervailing force to the theo- of Samuel Huntington something that I never expected to see in my ries of Samuel Huntington. whole lifetime and it is something that I saw I spent all my professional life working as a happening in 1990 with that quite remark- journalist in South Africa, except most recent- We had this tricameral nonsense for a able figure who walked out of prison in the ly as an adviser in the Mbeki government, so I while and then the forces built up that we all Cape Wine Lands on a summer’s day. saw a country hurtling from one disaster to know about and the white establishment Someone whom South Africans had never another – Sharpeville, Soweto, you name it – released Nelson Mandela from prison in been able to see, let alone quote. And now we and from one ideological disaster to another 1990. And we rubbed our eyes, and we are live in a society which, I think, can only en- in terms of the attempts by the ruling minor- still rubbing our eyes, when we found that courage the world to seek those sort of ans- ity to make what they were doing sound less we were a free, democratic, non-racial, non- wers and I suggest that the main ingredient is repressive. Funny enough, one of the turning sexist country in Africa. I can say, having not ideology, economics and other factors points, I think, was in the early 1980s when lived through all of that, it is quite mind- like that, but leadership. When one looks at the then South African government of P. W. boggling, which is a term that Archbishop Africa today and one sees the improvements Botha came up with a new constitutional ar- Desmond Tutu would always use, and of in Africa today, one sees a new and realistic rangement called The Tricameral Parliament. course he also used the term Rainbow and resolute leadership emerging which is It was essentially a move, which was put to the Nation. We have a long way to go in South taking that continent into a different mode white voters, for a vote that would have given Africa to be able to make that enduring and a very encouraging one for us in South some measure of rights to non-African mino- claim, and there are still a lot of unhappy Africa, including those in South Africa who rities like the Indian and Coloured people. feelings beneath the surface in terms of so vociferously supported the previous They would have then worked in a tricameral remaining racism. If you listen to the talk regime, many of whom now are tremendous relationship with a white house, excluding all radio in South Africa, you will see what I allies in the cause of democracy and free- black South Africans, the majority of the pop- mean, in terms of attitudes that are wrong. doms in that country. ■ ulation, because of the basic thesis that there But the thrust of South Africa’s experience in

18 Bernard Margueritte President, International Communications Forum, Warsaw

The Tasks of the Media

have one single question for you this morn- thought? And they started to give answers: of information, presented in the same way I ing. Should we –the people of the media maybe it is because by building army bases worldwide. This has wide reaching conse- gathered here today – feel happy? Of course, near the holy Mecca, we offended many peo- quences: one of the main missions of the media we should be happy to be here in Austria, a ple. Maybe it is because by promoting all is forgotten. We in the media ought to be country that was and remains an example of around the world a culture people do not like, "media-tors", go-betweens. As I said, one of what culture and civilisation should be. And we offended people. Maybe it is because by our most important and exhilarating tasks is yes, we should be happy to be in the lovely proposing as the only valid solution a unique to report about far away people. Now we have city of Salzburg. But should we be happy as version of globalisation, we offended people, a paradoxical situation. We have globalisation, media people? Should we be proud of what we etc. But they should have known earlier! And but we know less and less about each other! are doing? Or should we rather ask why, ac- the reason they did not know was because the Last year I took part in a conference in Le- cording to all surveys worldwide, only 17-18 media did not fulfil their mission and were banon about world media and Arab culture per cent of the people say they respect jour- not informing about the reactions and the and we discovered that in the world media nalists (we are just above politicians and sec- feelings of people around the world. there is really very little about Arab culture. ond-hand car dealers)? We know also very little about Jewish culture. Is it not time to ask what our mission is Now we have a paradoxical The average French citizen knows almost supposed to be? We have two main tasks: to situation. We have globalisation, nothing about the United States or the way of give our public everything they need to know life of the farmer in the Middle West, and vice (and not only everything they want to know), but we know less and less versa. It is my contention that if there is so so that the people know what is happening, about each other ! much hatred and violence in the world, it is why it is happening, and so that they can ma- among other things because the media are not ke up their own minds. Hubert Beuve-Méry, Speaking about globalisation, the media fulfilling their role. Hatred often comes from the founder of Le Monde, said this is the only are both affected by globalisation and also af- a lack of knowledge of others. way for the people to be citizens and the only fecting it. We are witnessing a concentration But, at a smaller level, people feel frustrat- way for us to live in a true democracy. of media power in a few big groups, acting ed that the media are less and less addressing Our second task is to report about far away worldwide. At the same time, those corpora- their concerns at home, that the media are countries, to bring closer to our audience the tions have a tendency to sell to the world this becoming impersonal. Not only do Europeans civilisation, the culture, the problems, the unique version of globalisation. It is therefore or Arabs feel that the world’s media are not fears, the dreams of those far away people, so about time to see how the media can better respecting their culture. This is happening that we can all move from understanding to react to globalisation and have a positive im- even within countries, including the United mutual understanding. pact on it. States. When the International Communica- But we have failed to do so. Look at what The first result of the concentration of a tions Forum held a conference in Denver two happened in the United States after 9/11. We few media groups is that it is becoming more years ago, our friends there were complaining had many remarkable articles in the best and more difficult to respect and promote the that because most of the Denver media are newspapers. People were wondering why it is local identity, be it of a town, a country or a owned by corporations with headquarters in that so many millions around the world hate culture. As we have "fast food", always the Los Angeles or New York, it is more difficult us Americans? Are we not as great as we same, we also have "fast news", the same kind to find articles or programmes with topics

19 SUNDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 2003

that respect the local identity, that are specific ly independent newspapers within larger po- nity for voluntary and public action at every to the Denver area. wer groups. Are we going to stand and watch level.” Furthermore, warns the Pope, “globali- In Le Monde Diplomatique, Ignacio Ra- as the freedom of the press is taken from us? sation must not be a new version of colonial- monet has shown how the industrial giants And can we really accept a situation in which ism. It must respect the diversity of cultures from the electricity, telecommunications, information is reduced to the status of a com- which, within the universal harmony of peo- water or armament sectors are buying into the modity? ples, are life’s interpretive keys.” media. America Online controls Netscape, Interestingly, at the same time, Paul Krug- Why are the world media addressing only Time, Warner Bros. and CNN; Bill Gates is man is addressing the same concerns in The marginally these urgent concerns? Is it not our the king of software but also of press photog- New York Times. He says that in the U.S. you mission to do so? Instead of promoting an raphy through his agency Corbis; Rupert get your news from what he calls “AOLTime- inhuman version of globalisation, should not Murdoch owns a variety of British and Ameri- WarnerGeneralElectricDisneyWestinghouse- the media exert their influence by trying to can papers, including The Times, The Sun, NewsCorp.” He adds, “The handful of organ- shape globalisation? In which direction? The The New York Post, the satellite network isations that supply most people with their answer is easy: toward a globalisation of soli- BskyB, and also a major film production com- news have major commercial interests that darity, of respect for the human person and, pany, 20th Century Fox. Some are trying in inevitably tempt them to slant their coverage, yes, a globalisation of love. The media can and Europe to follow that model. Bertelsmann has and more generally to be deferential to the should play a prominent role in the fight to a lot of papers, radio and TV; the same is true ruling party”. One recent example is the fact build a better world, a more human world. with Silvio Berlusconi in Italy. In France our that the 100,000 people anti-war demonstra- But for that we have to get back our dignity, two biggest groups are controlled by Serge tion in Washington before the invasion of Iraq our dignity as media people and human Dassault and Jean-Luc Lagardère, both in- “was almost ignored by some key media out- beings. And we need to find again the sense of volved in the armament industry. lets.” Klugman concludes: “For the time our mission. Ramonet writes, “This concentration is a being, blatant media bias is still limited by old This should be one of the main tasks of the danger for pluralism, for the press and for rules and norms of behaviour. But soon the media at the beginning of the new century. I democracy. Moreover, it puts the emphasis on rules will be abolished and the norms are am sure that in this battle, we, the people of profits, instead of quality." He continues, eroding before our eyes. Do the conflicts of the IPI and the people of the International “One of our most precious human rights is interest of our highly concentrated media Communications Forum, will be together. the right to communicate thoughts and opin- constitute a threat to democracy? I’ve report- Yes, we are in the media and we have to chan- ions freely. In democratic societies freedom of ed; you decide.” ge our vision and look in the same direction as speech is guaranteed, but goes hand in hand As John Paul II said, we are observing, the people of good will on this planet. At with the right to be well-informed, a right “the intrusive, even invasive, character of the stake is our own credibility, as media people now threatened by the increasing concentra- logic of the market, which reduces more and and as human beings, and at stake is the tion of the media and the merging of former- more the area available to the human commu- future of our societies and our world. ■ The Pivotal Role of the Media

Mogens Schmidt I think that these concepts sometimes lead It is true, as Johann Fritz was saying yes- Director, Division of Freedom of Expression, to a kind of fatalism, becoming a self-fulfilling terday, that there are strange things happening Democracy and Peace, UNESCO prophecy putting us in a situation where it in the world. It is also true that it is easy to get looks as if there is no room anymore for rea- frustrated, impatient and misanthropic when ike all the other speakers, I have a bit of a soning, for dialogue and for reconciliation, all we look at the world and this is very easy for L problem with Samuel Huntington’s con- of which are absolutely imperative right now. someone representing the UN system. I am cept of the clash of civilisations. It is a very I also think the media has developed what I not just talking about the fatal bomb attack in reductive concept. It is a concept that risks would call a culture of clashes. The media are Baghdad and what it has done to the con- taking away some of the underlying root caus- focusing enormously on the conflicts and not cepts, and the self-concepts, of the UN. I am es and determinants of these conflicts that always bringing enough information and con- also thinking of the role that there still is for a actually exist. And it might tend to make us text to really understand them. I would like to truly international organisation in this world. forget some of those conflicts that cannot be see the media return to a culture of pro- There is a huge need, not just to bridge the easily fitted into a “culture against culture” fessionalism, of high professional standards, gap between those who have and those who prism. and I will come back to that a little bit later. do not have. I am not sure that is enough for

20 that will leave the gap there. We have to fill Ashcroft said recently in an inter- that gap. That is why the negotiations going view in the Financial Times that it on right now in Cancun, Mexico, are maybe will take many more years before the most important of all these things that are there is rule of law and true demo- happening at the moment on the global scene. cracy in Kosovo. But apart from Another tendency which I think is a cause that corner of Europe, look what for concern right now is the tendency to in- has happened in the Baltic coun- creased unilateralism, to regard the UN sys- tries, in Central and Eastern Euro- tem a bit as a humanitarian area. To leave it as pe. These countries have gone from a decisive force giving leadership to develop- oppression to democracy. Look to ment in the world. what has happened in Thailand, the Philippi- choose to play a negative or not so negative Johann Fritz was saying yesterday that one nes, and Indonesia. There are still huge prob- role. Media can choose to convey stereotypes, sometimes fear that the UN system will prove lems but there is also a vibrant, free profes- to incite and to deepen the opposition in the to have been nothing but a bubble in post-war sional press exposing all the violations against society. They can also develop “hate speech”. Western democracies. I really hope that histo- democracy that take place there. Look at South But the media can also try to enhance the un- ry will prove him wrong, but of course that Africa. Look at countries like Mozambique or derstanding of why a conflict has arisen. I am suspicion might occur when you look at na- Benin. I think it is true that despite the despair not saying that it is the media’s responsibility tions putting aside fundamental general prin- that we see in West Africa and Central Africa, to be a peace broker. It is not. But the media ciples as laid down, for example, in the Uni- there is a new leadership coming up that will can provide information, context and knowl- versal Declaration on Human Rights. Just to take these countries forward. edge that will enable the citizens to get from take a small example, without even going into war or conflict to peace. the big wars, next week, in Geneva, there will The media can provide information, Of course, there are some basic conditions be a conference on the information society context and knowledge that that have to exist for media to fulfil this role: where all the member states involved will rule of law, media legislation, all that is neces- make a declaration on how the information will enable the citizens to get from sary to ensure independent and pluralistic me- society should be installed. Still, just 24 hours war or conflict to peace dia. But media themselves also have a huge before it goes off, many media organisations responsibility when it comes to the quality of and UNESCO are fighting to make clear that In this whole process, the media plays a what they are doing, the way they exercise a reference to Article 19 of the Universal pivotal role. Benita Ferrero-Waldner said that their profession, and it comes back to three Declaration, the one guaranteeing freedom of freedom of expression is the oxygen of democ- simple things. It comes back to training, a lot expression and freedom of information, racy and she is right. We all sometimes get of training. It comes back to research. And should be included. Countries say they do not tired of saying it, but it is true. There is no then it comes back to dialogue, dialogue care too much about these universal princi- true democracy without freedom of expres- among the professional organisations, among ples. There is right now a tendency to go away sion. We can also see that terrorism thrives in journalists themselves. from accepting international standards and countries where there is no freedom of expres- There is a big role for organisations like my fall back on national laws and policies. sion. And the media must play its role in a own, like UNESCO, but also for media I do believe, however, that there are a lot of professional way. Whenever there is a conflict organisations like the International Press Ins- good examples, that the world is moving in the in a country, a war or a transitional phase, titute, to expose violations of freedom of ex- right direction, that we are developing democ- which always creates huge problems, the me- pression, to protest, to give assistance, to en- racy and, as part of democracy, free and plu- dia will be negatively influenced by that. sure that there is dialogue, to set up exchange ralistic media. There are many examples. I am There will be problems, there will be restric- programmes, etc., when it comes to the devel- not saying that they are perfect, I am not say- tions. The safety of journalists will be in dan- opment of media. ■ ing that it is going fast. It takes time. Paddy ger. But even in that situation, the media can

21 SUNDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 2003 Challenging their Leaders

Bart Dijkstra Director, Communications Assistance Foundation (CAF), Hilversum, The Netherlands

am the director of the Communications where this may be the present situation, but sands have fled, are missing or dispossessed. I Assistance Foundation (CAF), which was this situation is not accepted by them as a fact Houses, churches and mosques are looted and founded by the Dutch Association of Jour- that will never change. Of this I will give you burned down. In the beginning, the local me- nalists, the Dutch Society of Editors-in-Chief three examples: dia were biased in their reporting. Christian and the Dutch Newspaper Association. 1) Upon the request of a number of jour- journalists chose to inform the public from These organisations founded CAF to fulfil nalists from Arab countries we plan to start a the Christian perspective and Muslim journal- its mission, which is the following: promoting taskforce, which will identify projects for ists from their perspective. After years of con- maximum access to independent news, know- media support in countries such as Egypt, flict, journalists from Ambon approached ledge and information in the developing Yemen, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. In a num- CAF with the request to support the Maluku world by optimising the pluralism, quality ber of Arab countries there are (sometimes Media Centre, which is located on the very and availability of the journalistic sources. informal) organisations of journalists who try border between the Christian and Muslim We work in some 28 countries in Latin to escape from the oppressive media climate parts of the island. This centre is meant as a America, Africa and Asia with multiple pro- and who try to realise change. We at CAF meeting point for all journalists on the island, jects in some countries. Because media in believe that, based on our mission, we should where courses are given and workshops are many countries are interwoven with the politi- support local media organisations and institu- offered. The concept behind the Maluku Me- cal system and play a role in social processes, tions. Thus foreign support is indeed support- dia Centre is that of “Peace Journalism”: jour- the provision of support to the media is often ing and opens windows of opportunity as seen nalistic responsibility is more than just report- delicate and demands a fundamental know- by journalists themselves. ing the so-called facts; journalists can also ledge of local circumstances. This is the reason 2) The youth are the future of a country. In have an active role in conflict prevention and why CAF does not implement media projects. Africa, Latin America, and in Asia some 40 to peace building. We keep to financing, organising, advising, 50 per cent of the population consists of peo- From these examples of what we at CAF networking and sometimes an initiating role. ple under the age of 21. But news is hardly support, I hope I made it clear that we are in CAF supports independent media organi- ever aimed at them. Journalists write newspa- contact with journalists all over the world who, sations in the three continents by: pers for grown-ups and television news pro- even when a breakthrough seems far away, as for • bringing about independent and pluralis- grammes are for adults. This in spite of the instance in Zimbabwe or Cuba, will never give tic media, fact that children are nearly always affected by up and will try to get those basic principles of • advancing balanced and reliable journal- what the news is about. In discussions with democracy and freedom of the press also work- istic reporting, and Afghan Radio & Television, the South African ing in their country. These are Zimbabwean, • making the media accessible in faraway Broadcasting Corporation and Surinam Tele- Cuban, Egyptian, Indonesian or Afghan jour- areas. vision, we will in 2004 enable the making of nalists who say to CAF they challenge those Our financial base comes from the Dutch news programmes for children in the age leaders in their countries who claim democracy Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other sources. group between 8 and 14. In South Africa the is not suitable, freedom of the press is not for Our annual budget for project funding is items will be produced on a weekly based TV their people. They challenge the leaders who say about 2.5 million Euros. news magazine for children and linked with a civil society is foreign to their people. These In spite of what is written in the small newspaper for youngsters, which is distrib- journalists believe that people in their countries print of this morning’s session – “there has uted in schools throughout South Africa. with access to independent information (old been no significant breakthrough in the con- 3) In Indonesia, on the Moluccan Islands, and young) are better equipped to make choic- solidation of pluralism and democracy in there has been bitter fighting between the es. And people whose voices can be heard these countries” – we at CAF get applications Christian and Muslim populations. Thou- through the media are able to fully participate for projects from journalists in countries sands have been killed and hundreds of thou- in society and fight poverty and oppression. ■

22 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The International Press Institute wishes to acknowledge the following organisations, institutions and companies for their generous support of the IPI World Congress and 52nd General Assembly:

Alcatel Austria City of Salzburg

Salzburg Management – Government of the State of Salzburg University of Salzburg Business School

Freedom Forum

The Christian Science Monitor UPM-Kymmene

Coca-Cola Central Europe, Eurasia and Middle East Group

Stiegl Brewery

Heidelberger Druckmaschinen Osteuropa Vertriebs-GmbH Media Print

23 SUNDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 2003

SESSION II Salzburg Congress Centre “Analysing the World Summit on the Informa- tion Society”

Chairperson Ilse Brandner-Radinger Regulating the Internet: Secretary General, Presseclub Concordia, Vienna

Opening Statement James Ottaway New Challenges Chairman, World Press Freedom Committee; Senior Vice President, Dow Jones & Co., New York, NY to Press Freedom Discussants Raymond Louw James Ottaway At the Bucharest European Regional Pre- Editor and Publisher, Southern Africa Chairman, World Press Freedom Committee; paratory Conference, 7-9 November 2002, Report, Johannesburg Senior Vice President, Dow Jones & Co., Yashio Utsumi, Secretary General of the Inter- Alain Modoux New York, NY national Telecommunication Union (ITU), Senior Adviser to UNESCO for the WSIS, stated his three goals for the WSIS: Geneva will speak briefly about many issues at the 1. To raise awareness among political lead- I World Summit on the Information Society ers, at the highest level, on the implications of (WSIS) that concern us at the World Press the Information Society and the new challen- Freedom Committee (WPFC) and that my ges it will bring. fellow panel members and I believe should 2. To tackle the injustice of the “digital concern you. We have worked hard to oppose divide”. new challenges to press freedom and the free 3. To develop new legal and policy frame- flow of information on the Internet during works appropriate to cyberspace. the Preparatory Conferences leading up to the The first two goals are legitimate issues for WSIS in Geneva, which will be held from 10- international action and debate. We are most 12 December 2003. concerned about the third goal, about any

24 United Nations or other international organi- The WSIS agenda goes far beyond the Statement of 21 November 2002, with its 16 sation declaring its intention “to develop new technical issues of telecommunication that the points of concern about dangers to press free- legal and policy frameworks for the Internet.” ITU has addressed in the past. The draft dom at the WSIS in Geneva. It is not within the mandate of the ITU to Declaration and Action Plan, totalling thou- In his article entitled, “World Summit Pre- create new regulations and policies for con- sands of words, nowhere mentions the basic parations Hark Back to Global Censorship tent of the Internet or the “Information So- human right of “press freedom”. It deliberate- Campaigns”, Rony Koven wrote: ciety”. The ITU was set up to create interna- ly avoids clear and unqualified restatement of “Unprecedentedly, the summit is to be tional consensus on telecommunication stan- Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of held in two places – in Geneva this December, dards and broadcasting frequency allocations, Human Rights of 1948, while calling for an and again two years later, in Tunis, in Novem- not information content and policy. unnecessary new “Right to Communicate”, ber 2005. Bluntly put, the WSIS is an ITU power which was thoroughly expo- play for ideological influence and internation- sed and discredited during “We are very concerned that a al regulatory power within the UN system, the 1970s and 80s UNESCO where the major issues of content on the debate and defeat of the world summit like the WSIS, where Internet, regulation of the Internet, economic New World Information and social development addressing ignorance, and Communication Order poverty and the “digital divide” should be de- (NWICO). countries which control and censor bated in more appropriate UN forums at In a critique of evolving UNESCO in Paris or the UN Information WSIS draft statements, Rony their media to varying degrees Committee in New York. Koven, WPFC representa- But even if the WSIS were sponsored by tive in Paris since 1981, and are in the majority, will produce UNESCO or the UN Information Commit- Chairman of the WSIS Me- tee, anyone interested in their own press free- dia Caucus trying to state the a Declaration of Principles doms, and the free flow of news and informa- free press position at the first tion for every citizen of the world, must be PrepCom meetings, wrote: and an Action Plan that will con- very worried and sceptical when 185 United “The latest draft of the Nations gather to talk about “The Informa- final declaration for WSIS done and encourage controls on tion Society”. That is because of the funda- refused to refer to Article 19 mental fact that a clear majority of nations by name or to quote it as the Internet news and ideas.” (nearly 60 per cent in the latest Freedom international standard for House report on the status of press freedom free speech and press freedom. Instead, it twice “Tunis hardly seems to be the ideal place worldwide) do not allow a free press. referred to a ‘Right to Communicate’, which for a summit on the future of communication. was a term used during the NWICO debate to The government keeps a tight lid on attempts Anyone interested in their own designate a collective right of groups and gov- to assert press freedom. Zouhair Yahyaoui, the ernments, supplanting the Article 19 concepts young editor of an Internet magazine, Tune- press freedoms, and the free of free speech and press freedom as individual zine, has been serving a two-year prison sen- flow of news and information for human rights. tence since mid-2002 for reporting on how “The latest WSIS draft makes enjoyment the Tunisian government prevents expressions every citizen of the world, must be of free speech and free press subordinate to of independence by Tunisian judges. very worried and sceptical when national sovereignty and subject to national “The whole drive for a NWICO started in laws. Such ideas contradict the basic right the early 1980s with the Tunisian Information 185 United Nations gather to talk embodied in the UNESCO Constitution to a Minister of the time, Mustafa Masmoudi. about “The Information Society ‘free flow of information’ that Article 19 stip- And – surprise! – here he is along with other ulates should be for ‘everyone’ and ‘through veterans of the NWICO campaign, taking any media and regardless of frontiers’. part in the WSIS preparatory conferences as We are very concerned that a world sum- “Furthermore, the latest draft is peppered head of his own Association Tunisienne de la mit like the WSIS, where countries which with NWICO-era code word concepts such as Communication. He has spoken out against a control and censor their media to varying ‘responsibility’ or ‘accountability’ of the press. movement among NGOs to protest holding a degrees are in the majority, will produce a ‘Responsible’ or ‘accountable’ to whom? To second WSIS in Tunis. Declaration of Principles and an Action Plan governments? And who defines these respon- “Another prominent veteran is Professor that will condone and encourage controls on sibilities?” Cees Hamelink, a Dutch professor of commu- Internet news and ideas that will legitimise Rony Koven has publicly stated major con- nications, who has been the leading champion even more restriction and censorship of the cerns of the WPFC and the nine major groups over the years of the ‘Right to Communicate’ Internet than those unfortunately already in in the Coordinating Committee of Press Free- – a code term for, among other restrictions on place in a growing number of countries. dom Organisations, which issued the Vienna press freedom, instituting a collective right of

25 SUNDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 2003

groups and governments to take over space regularly violate its provisions. But, refusing to news content, or the independence of media and time in other people’s print and broadcast cite Article 19 by name, drafters at the latest operations. news outlets. WSIS ‘intersession’ preparatory gathering at 5. That statements on any other subjects “These and other still-active NWICO vet- UNESCO headquarters in Paris this July gut- that could justify restrictions of news on the erans have found enthusiastic younger disci- ted it, scattering its dismembered provisions Internet make clear that no such restriction is ples in a group called CRIS (Communications throughout the text and saying that they intended. Rights in the Information Society Campaign), should be enforced ‘in accordance with the 6. That all defenders of press freedom, and headed by Sean O. Siochru. CRIS has done a legal system of each country’. nations that guarantee it, should speak out sterling job to bend the Geneva-based ITU, “This amounted to adoption of China’s and vote against a second, redundant, WSIS the chief organisers of WSIS, to its will. position. China holds that its sovereignty in Tunisia in 2005. “Yoshio Utsumi, Secretary General of the needs to be protected against the Internet by To put it simply, how can a World Summit ITU, regularly calls for adoption of a ‘Right creating a Chinese ‘Intranet’, a nationally on the Information Society be taken seriously to Communicate’. He goes beyond that to controlled Internet that communicates with if it does not call out, loud and clear, for free- call for detailed international regulation of the outside world only via state-controlled dom of the press and freedom of information the Internet, apparently in search of a new Internet Service Providers serving as choke and opinion for all people, in all nations, in all role for ITU, as deregulation worldwide ma- points for access. Some 10,000 monitors are media, including the Internet? ■ kes it growingly irrelevant. Utsumi opened a reported to watch Chinese Intranet traffic to European regional preparatory conference see that nothing dangerous circulates. Various for WSIS by saying that ‘cyberspace is a features of China's cyberspace censorship re- new land without frontiers and without a gime have also been adopted by Cuba, Bur- government yet.’ A ‘new global government’ ma, Egypt, Russia, Singapore, Vietnam and is needed to police and control crime, secur- other nations. ity, taxation and privacy in cyberspace, he “Despite opposition from mainstream said. It is generally understood that the journalists’ groups and from a working group reason Utsumi decided to organise a second session in which Western officials said they WSIS in Tunis was that the Arab League vot- wanted no new rights, the ‘Right to Com- ing bloc threatened to oppose his re-election municate’ did appear twice in the latest WSIS last fall if he did not do so. text, along with a number of other NWICO- style code words like ‘moral values’, ‘sovereignty’, ‘truth’, ‘human dignity’, ‘responsibili- How can a World Summit ty’, and ‘accountability’. Defined by whom, on the Information Society be we always ask.” taken seriously if it does What can all of us in the press freedom not call out, loud and clear, community do to mitigate the damage to world press freedom that seems likely to occur for freedom of the press and at the WSIS in Geneva this December? freedom of information and I suggest that we all adopt and urge others opinion for all people, to support the Statement of Vienna’s princi- in all nations, in all media, ples of press freedom on the Internet. The key positions for us all to support in our public including the Internet? statements and personal lobbying at the remaining PrepComs and at the WSIS in “In the latest of a number of successive ver- Geneva are: sions of a final Declaration for the Geneva 1. Restatement of the full text of Article 19, WSIS, the governmental drafters gutted refer- and a clear call for all nations to actually imple- ences to Article 19 of the Universal Declara- ment its freedoms of speech and the press. tion of Human Rights. Mainstream news me- 2. That the WSIS Declaration of Principles dia organisations have been arguing that that make a clear statement of unqualified support pledge by UN members in 1948 has become for press freedom on the Internet. international customary law, that it constitutes 3. That press freedom should be guaran- the only ‘Right to Communicate’ that is need- teed on the Internet or any new communica- ed, and that WSIS should press for it finally to tion system. be implemented, both in cyberspace and for 4. That delegates working on WSIS Dec- traditional broadcast and press news media, by larations and Action Plans reject any propos- the more than half of UN member states that als or language that can lead to restrictions on

26 Alain Modoux Senior Adviser to UNESCO for the WSIS, Geneva

A State of Emergency

fter the statement made by my friend, the other aspects of the Information Society. at the very beginning governments said that it A Jim Ottaway, I hope you understand that This is a very important element in the analy- is a technological conference and that human the situation is really very alarming. We are in sis; it will have very important consequences rights have nothing to do with the Informa- a state of emergency in terms of press free- for the future. tion Society. dom. Let us be clear about that. We have to My fourth remark concerns the global par- My seventh remark is to say that a certain move before it is too late. So my presentation ticipation; it is not only an intergovernmental number of representatives from non-demo- will focus on what we have to do. meeting; it is a meeting with different stake- cratic countries have taken advantage of the I have several short points to make. holders, in particular – apart from govern- lack of knowledge and experience of their col- My first point is to say that because the ments and intergovernmental organisations – leagues – most of whom are specialised in the World Summit on the Information Society the civil society and the private sector. And so new technologies – in an attempt to down- (WSIS) is being organised by the Internatio- it is a multi-stake holder meeting. grade the importance of the media and to re- nal Telecommunication Union (ITU), there This being said, even though it is a multi- introduce the concepts of the New World has been a terrible misunderstanding. People stake holder meeting, some governmental rep- Information and Communication Order heard the word “telecommunications” and resentatives made attempts to limit the partic- (NWICO) – concepts such as the ‘right to thought this would be a summit on technolo- ipation of other stakeholders. This attitude communicate’, or worse, particularly Article gy, but this summit is not only on technology, was crystallized in the rules of procedure 51, in which freedom of expression is subor- it is on everything. where you see that only governments will dinated to national legislation. My second remark is to say that today we make the decisions and the others are just So this is the situation today. This trend, live in a global world. New technologies are observers. Fortunately, the reaction from the unfortunately, is also greatly facilitated by the touching upon every activity of any person, civil society, in particular, and also the private division existing among the media, in particu- society, government, etc. In fact, this summit sector and a certain number of so-called in- lar between the so-called mainstream media is global; it touches upon technologies but dustrialised countries changed the situation. and small, community-based media in Africa also on content. What is important is not the And I can say today, at least, this is something and elsewhere, who are often the only alterna- camera, not the printing house, it is the mes- good, even though the result is very weak for tive to government-controlled media. This is sage you want to deliver – what you write in the time being. At least we can say today that regrettable. We must work toward bridging your newspapers or show in your television the other stakeholders are present in the dis- these two groups, because there is no possibil- programmes – and this element was not taken cussion, but not in the drafting of the text. ity to change the situation if the media are into consideration by the ITU when they That is another element that is very important divided. A united front is a necessity. started. Today, thanks to UNESCO, content for the discussion. The text is the text of gov- My conclusion is to say that the situation is part of it, but it is a bit late. A lot has been ernments. is even more alarming than it was 20 years ago done and content lags behind. My sixth remark is to say that we can now when NWICO was being debated. Why? Be- My third point concerns the participants. say, thanks to the pressure exerted by the civil cause, at that time in the 1970s and 80s, you Because it is organized by the ITU, most of society, the private sector and a certain num- at least had a group of important, powerful, the participants are telecom specialists. Of ber of governments, in particular the host democratic nations fighting openly for free- course, these people are very good for In- country, Switzerland, that there is a more flex- dom of speech, freedom of expression, free- formation & Communication Technologies ible and open attitude. But let us bear in mind dom of the press. But today the situation is (ICTs), but they do not know anything about that even though things have changed a little, totally different. At the governmental level I

27 SUNDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 2003

would say that freedom of expression is supported in a very weak way. Govern- ments in the West seem to have other priorities, in particular the so-called security issue. So it opens the way to those who for many decades have been trying to impose a new vision of the world regarding freedom of expression.

It is killing freedom to say that freedom of expression should be subordinated to national legislation

So we have to act. The last chance is next week. It is not in October, it is not in November and it is certainly not in De- cember. In December the meal is cooked, it is served. The texts are ready and the Raymond Louw its membership to take note of them because heads of state and the chiefs of government Editor and Publisher, Southern Africa Report, they can affect the business we are in if put their signature on paper; nothing will Johannesburg allowed to become international standards be changed. and are adopted by countries. The first thing to do, I think, is to try to n concept, WSIS is a good thing. Broadly, • One of these is a requirement to “respect secure a real debate on freedom of expres- I it is trying to extend information technolo- national characteristics and concepts”. sion and freedom of the press. Switzerland is gy throughout the globe to increase commu- • Another is a requirement that there insisting on having a working group on nication between the developed world and the should be “appropriate content” on informa- media. According to what I have heard, it under-developed world, to increase the avail- tion systems. seems that this idea is acceptable, but you ability of information to the developing • The Information Society “must serve the never know. We are going to have a working nations and to people who have little concept interests of all nations in a manner that secu- group so we can redraft this famous Article of information transfer apart from their age- res the fair, balanced and harmonious devel- 51. And who is going to participate in the old methods and to whom information tech- opment of all people”. working group? I can tell you that it will not nology is some form of magic. • Governments must strengthen co-opera- be the media people speaking on the media. There are some people with a passionate in- tion with the private sector to prevent the use It will be governmental people so you had terest in the improvement of people’s lifestyles of information resources and technologies for better go to your governments or write in through this global enterprise, but their are criminal or terrorist purposes and develop a your newspapers what you want to have in others with agendas of their own which pay lip rapid action organisation to deal with security the articles. That is very important. It is the service to these concepts but which have hid- violations. last minute to focus in your media on this den agendas to further a variety of objectives • Cyberspace must be subject to universal- dramatic situation and inform your readers, such as suspect ideologies, political agendas, ly held ethical values and must be subject to listeners, and viewers about your opinion. I technical and personal desires, and so on. values such as truth. am sure that this contribution will have an Jim Ottaway has focussed on one aspect, the • There must be due regard to rights and impact on governments and they will think surreptitious re-introduction on the world stage obligations of stakeholders in such areas as twice before supporting things that are dan- of the discredited New World Information and “privacy”. gerous. It is killing freedom to say that free- Communication Order (NWICO), the infor- Alain Modoux referred to Section 51. Let dom of expression should be subordinated mation manipulation strategy designed to fur- me read the clause: “The existence of free and to national legislation. ther the interests of venal, corrupt, incompetent independent communication media, in accor- To conclude, I will refer to what Mada- governments wanting to cloak their criminal dance with the legal system of each country, is me Ferrero-Waldner said this morning: activities and keep out prying eyes. an essential requirement for freedom of ex- “Freedom of the press is the oxygen of de- He has given a few examples of how it lies pression and a guarantee of the plurality of mocracy.” I would add, without freedom in the words used in the documentation that information.” of expression there is no Information flows from these conferences. I have several One of the important facets of “summit” Society possible. ■ more examples and it is important for IPI and conferences deciding international standards

28 It’s all in the Terminology and value systems for all of us is that the deci- Human Rights being applied. I was pleased to see that there was a refer- sions are being taken by government represen- Let me illustrate this. When I was in Bama- ence to press freedom in the final statement. tatives, officials whose major concern is to ko at the African regional preparatory meeting It reads, “Every citizen should be guaranteed protect the interests of their respective gov- for WSIS last year, I attended a session to freedom of expression and protected access ernments, and only after that to give some which I thought I could make a contribution. to information in the global public domain attention to principles that may be of value to I suggested that the previous speaker who was as part of their inalienable right to freely some of their constituents. talking about the Information Society provid- accessing the information constituting the ing a conduit for African languages to be heritage of mankind which is disseminated The media is a constituent, propagated had a point. Obviously, using the on all support systems including new multi- a stakeholder, and a highly im- information channels to enable people to hear media support systems.” This is by no means portant one at that. It represents and exercise their languages was a good thing. ideal, but it does make a reference to free- But, I said, surely the main principle that dom of expression. the broad public, but it is given we should be concerned about was to ensure The other day I asked South Africa’s repre- no special say in the fashioning that the Information Society adopted the sentative at the Prepcom 3 meeting that starts of concepts such as WSIS principles of Article 19 and that it should tomorrow in Geneva to outline the first five enable maximum access for the gathering of priorities for the Information Society as she The media is a constituent, a stakeholder, information and maximum ability to dissemi- saw it: and a highly important one at that. It repre- nate it and that the overriding principle 1) Information & Communication Tech- sents the broad public, but it is given no spe- should be freedom of expression. The chair- nology (ICT) for good governance cial say in the fashioning of concepts such as man, a French-speaking diplomat from Mali, 2) ICT for democracy WSIS and all the other world summits which listened carefully and then observed, “Your 3) Open software for developing countries have an effect on the public at large and the intervention has opened a new aspect.” I must to use and create knowledge media in particular. say I was somewhat thrown by the remark, 4) Promoting gender and youth I have been appalled – at the three sum- which was followed by a comment by a SA 5) Confidence, security of the Internet and mits I have attended – at the conduct of these government representative that she hoped that guard against ICTs being used for warfare officials who show a remarkable ignorance freedom of expression did not provide a licen- She also mentioned the need for Internet about the role of the media. The media is not se to libel the president of South Africa. governance. some special group with some extra-special Though good governance and democracy powers. It is merely a representative of the This is a wake-up call to the media may imply freedom of expression and the public at large. When we talk of media free- to become aware of how shackles principles of Article 19 being applicable, it dom, we are really talking about the freedom should be noted that in taking her remarks as of people. are being fashioned to hobble a whole, the idea of freedom of expression is But at WSIS, the media is expected only us in the use of communications not uppermost in her mind. She reflects the to report the lofty statements of the civil ser- thinking of government delegates to such vants and not have any direct input on how What I found remarkable about the chair- conferences. the media sees issues. We constantly have man’s comment was that a media sub-com- It is valuable that this subject has been people and organisations trying to impose mittee had earlier sat for a couple of days raised at this conference of editors and jour- roles for the media. working out what contribution it should nalists because I believe we have got to do I am appalled at the manner in which the make to the statement emerging from that something about this. This is a wake-up call to IT concept is viewed from every other aspect African summit. This occurred before I got the media to become aware of how shackles except the main one, which appears always to there but in searching all the documentation are being fashioned to hobble us in the use of be ignored. That is the concept of media and relating to this committee’s work, I found no communications and how governments are freedom of expression principles contained in reference whatsoever to media freedom or trying to extend control over the means of Article 19 of the UN Universal Declaration of freedom of expression. communication. ■

29 SUNDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 2003

SESSION III Salzburg Congress Centre “SARS and the Media”

Chairperson Alfred Payrleitner Columnist, Kurier, Vienna

Keynote Speaker The Press and Maria Cheng Spokesperson, Communicable Diseases Section, World Health Organisation (WHO), Geneva Public Health

Panelists Maria Cheng China had seeded directly or indirectly all Kavi Chongkittavorn Spokesperson, Communicable Diseases Section, other outbreaks. Assistant Group Editor, World Health Organisation (WHO), Geneva We quickly realised that unless the situa- Nation Multimedia Group, Bangkok tion in China changed we would perpetually Simon K.C. Li evere Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) be fighting outbreaks wherever they erupted. Assistant Managing Editor, Swas the first new disease to emerge this China did change and it was the turning point Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, CA century. When it was initially recognised by in the battle against SARS. Several factors Bo Maltesen the World Health Organisation (WHO) in helped bring about this change. One of the Editor-in-Chief, Politiken, Copenhagen February 2003 it was identified as a highly most important factors was the press, particu- Russell Mills contagious disease, one that was capable even larly the foreign press reporting from China. Dean, School of Media and Design, of infecting experts on contagious diseases. It was they that broke the news to the world, Algonquin College, Ottawa; This new disease had no effective treatment. often to us, and sometimes I suspect to the former Publisher, Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa While traditional outbreak techniques, in- Chinese government hierarchy, of a vast epi- cluding contact tracing, isolation, and travel demic that had been hidden by lower officials restrictions, helped to control acknowledged who shuttled patients between hospitals and outbreaks, one place, China, denied the pres- silenced healthcare workers. WHO and the ence of this disease. But as we now know rest of the world owe these reporters enor-

30 mous thanks. They did a stunning job often individuals and a component of medicine is that it threatened to deplete stockpiles of masks working under circumstances that exposed patient education. Public health deals with needed by healthcare workers. Did this mask- them both to disease and to sanctions. entire populations. Still, education is critical wearing mean that our message was not get- This episode highlights the necessity of a and much of what we do is done through the ting across or that the press was somehow free press operating even in countries that are press. So public health has a long history of hyping the risk? We spent a lot of time think- not entirely free themselves. It might be dealing with the press because we see the press ing about this. We discovered that our mes- argued that China’s initial cover-up of SARS as the essence of the public. Arguably, public sage was in fact getting through, but, as our was engendered by what some would charac- health and the press never worked closer experts told us, in the face of a threat people terise as the Chinese culture of silence. To together than during SARS. need to be able to do something tangible to draw attention to a problem with no obvious Communicating with the press about minimise their risk. Once we understood this, solution, as was the case with SARS, would be SARS had many challenges. Initially and for we began discussing the importance of hand unwelcome in any country, but was particu- many weeks we were dealing with a disease washing rather than mask-wearing to control larly so in one governed by a Communist re- about which we knew almost nothing. We had communicable diseases. gime that purports to be all knowing. China’s few tools to control the outbreak and those We were also aware that people at a great history has long been marked by striking inci- tools could seem widely inappropriate, ham- distance from the outbreak sites had a percep- dents of misguided leadership where the effort mering economies while appearing to do little tion that their risks were extraordinarily high. to save face has often come at the expense of to stop the spread of the disease. Politicians, We received thousands of inquiries a day from its unknowing citizenry. The case of SARS especially in Canada, reacted angrily, attack- people around the world who were at abso- might have been no different had it not been ing WHO’s methods and intentions. Politi- lutely no risk. This perception of personal risk for the combined efforts of WHO and the cians in China felt victimised, accusing WHO at a distance is known to risk communicators press. In an extraordinary turn, the foreign of applying discriminatory policies. as vicarious risk perception. It is the hardest to press in China became an informal yet re- It was a very good story – economies teet- control and it may have had the biggest eco- markably effective health surveillance system. ered, political careers wobbled, and a danger- nomic impact as people cancelled vacations to Reporters took to systematically visiting and ous new infectious disease calling hospitals to get for themselves the struck here and there like “The unrelenting pressure journalists number of SARS patients – numbers that fre- lightning – and it would quently differed significantly from official have been an even bigger sto- working in China exerted on government figures. This information was ry had much of the world passed in turn to WHO and was generally media not been diverted to the Chinese government was found to be accurate and warranting further the looming and then actual investigation. war in Iraq. Demands from instrumental in forcing that The unrelenting pressure journalists work- the press were enormous and ing in China exerted on the Chinese govern- unrelenting. Every day, for nation’s unprecedented admittance ment was instrumental in forcing that nation’s weeks, WHO communica- unprecedented admittance that it had indeed tions people and technical that it had indeed engineered engineered a vast cover-up conspiracy. No- staff would speak to the me- where was the significance of this admission dia from around the world. a vast ’cover-up conspiracy.” more evident than in the political consequen- But this was not just a matter ces. In another remarkable reversal in mid- of responding to the press. April, China’s leaders finally came clean on We were communicating to the world through places like Thailand, which had never had a the extent of SARS in their country, promis- the press. Through it all, we relied on very SARS outbreak. Was this a problem in reporting swift action, greater transparency and co- simple guidelines. We would tell what we ing? We do not think so. operation with WHO. To illustrate the sincer- knew, even if we did not know much, as soon Indeed there were examples of bad report- ity of their intentions, the Beijing mayor and as we knew it. And we would be as accessible ing. Some stories were indeed hysterical, but health minister, both of whom had down- and transparent as we were asking all our these were stories done early in the outbreak played the disease’s impact in China, were member states to be. when in fact we had no idea what was going sacked. The press reported that WHO had While we had simple guidelines we often on or how bad it would ultimately get. Prob- brought China to its knees. Maybe so, but this had complex messages. For example, when we ably the worst example of poor reporting came never would have happened without those talked about the risk of SARS, we repeatedly from a British crew who visited us for more very reporters themselves. said, “While the risk to any single individual than two weeks in Geneva. They arrived with The work of the WHO is protecting and is extremely low, the threat to hospitals and something like a script near at hand and improving public health. We deal with large the public health structure is high.” Then we nudged and pushed our technical people in populations, vast immunisation programmes, began seeing lots of photographs of people front of the camera until they got close clean water campaigns and global efforts to wearing masks. WHO not only thought indi- enough to the lines they had written back in eradicate entire diseases. Medicine deals with viduals wearing masks was ineffective, but England.

31 SUNDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 2003

Some of the best reporting, outside of the foreign press in Beijing, came from Hong Kong. They did everything that can be asked of a free press. The information that they conveyed to their audiences was generally scientifically accurate. At the same time, they were critical of hospitals and healthcare authorities who seemed to be doing less than they should. This balance of reliable information and public scrutiny is the best that any society can Kavi Chongkittavorn • The first SARS case in Hong Kong was in hope for from its press. Assistant Group Editor, mid-February, but schools were not closed un- The Canadian press by contrast reacted Nation Multimedia Group, Bangkok til 27 March after 1,080 people were put un- largely with hostility to WHO’s issuing of der quarantine. a travel recommendation for Toronto. Its lthough I am not an expert on SARS, I What was South East Asia’s reaction? criticism was directed more towards A hope to give you an idea of the SARS Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand banned WHO, rather than the Canadian health- experience in Thailand. Chinese tourists. China retaliated by ban- care system or politicians. SARS began in Guangdong, southern ning their tourists. Quarantines were intro- During SARS, the world’s press did an China, in November 2002 and in late duced at the airports for tourists from infect- outstanding job and occasionally their February 2003 spread to 25 countries in Asia, ed countries. Leaders from SARS-affected work was critical. Beyond the political and North America and Europe. According to the countries met in Bangkok in late April 2003. social restrictions they were operating WHO’s latest tally, about 8,200 people have Thousands of tours to and from Asia were under, any excesses or lapses from the press the disease worldwide, and there have been cancelled. Singapore tried to develop a quick were very likely reflections of WHO’s own 783 deaths. SARS test kit. confusion or anxieties. Public health is China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore Singapore proved to be the “Master of the ultimately about the public. We see the were the worst hit (349 deaths in China, 299 SARS crisis”, a shining example of how to res- press as the distilled essence of the public. in Hong Kong, 84 in Taiwan, 55 in Singapo- pond to a crisis like the SARS outbreak. On Reporters’ questions are the questions re). The estimated economic loss was nearly 27 March, it was the first country in the world many people want to ask and when WHO US$ 50 billion for the region, and US$ 150 to close all schools. There was a strict quaran- answers we need to remember that we are billion worldwide. tine on 861 people who had been exposed to not speaking into the camera or at a During SARS, China failed to provide SARS victims by installing closed-circuit cam- snarling, unhappy reporter. We are talking timely information about the spread of SARS, eras in their homes. Those who violated the directly or as directly as we can to the peo- waiting four months before it sought help quarantine orders were tagged electronically. ple we most care about – the worried, the from WHO. China finally came clean on 20 After global criticism, China sacked health sick, those at risk and those working on the April, admitting that it had been under- minister Zhang Wenkang and Beijing mayor frontlines. We struggle through the reporting its SARS figures. Meng Xuenong. China ordered health offi- unknown and often frightening future of Tales of the cover-up: cials to improve reporting on SARS; changed SARS together by being open and candid • On 3 April, Health Minister Zhang Wen- the definition of patients with SARS; closed and I think both the press and public kang reported 12 cases. down schools and universities in Beijing; and health now have a stronger relationship to • 23 April, China reported 2,305 cases and increased the supply of medical equipment confront the next global outbreak. ■ 106 deaths. and drugs to rural areas.

32 A Thai View

Lessons can be drawn from Canada. On major department stores, shopping centres SARS killed 916 persons out of 8,422 cases 23 April, WHO issued an advisory against and massage parlours. worldwide. unnecessary travel to Toronto, sparking a Of course, whacky things happened in Each year, 250,000 to half a million deaths storm of angry protest from Canadian offi- many countries because of the uncertainty are reported worldwide from among three to cials. Seven days later, the WHO lifted the over SARS. five million cases of severe illness. travel advisory as no new cases had been On 1 April, a 14-year-old Hong Kong boy With regard to the role of the media in our reported for 20 days. Health officials began posted a false report on the Internet saying part of the world, I think we have done a pret- to relax some of the SARS preventive meas- Hong Kong had been declared an infected ty good job, providing accurate, timely and ures, such as the use of gloves and gowns. port, setting off a wave of panic buying in the transparent information; preventing panic; Then, less than two weeks later, a second out- territory. and educating the public. break surfaced and Toronto went back on the Singapore sentenced a 50-year-old man to list of SARS-hit places. six months in prison for disobeying a SARS Finally, lessons for all of us include: quarantine order. • Bad news, SARS or otherwise, travels far With regard to the role and fast. • of the media in our part of SARS-related questions included: Lack of information on a new disease cau- “If someone with SARS uses a public phone, ses anxiety/uncertainty. the world, I think we have what are my chances of getting the virus?” • Casualties dominated the media, not done a pretty good job, “If a person with SARS uses a steam room knowledge of SARS, leading to an exaggerat- providing accurate, timely or sauna, will the heat be enough to kill the ed perception of the disease. and transparent information; virus, or could I be infected if I use it after he And the most important lesson of all: “Just does?” don’t lie!” ■ preventing panic; and “Is it true that women are more vulnerable educating the public to SARS than men because their lungs are weaker?” Thailand being Thailand, where tourism is “Can SARS be passed through sexual inter- very important, our government offered all course?” kinds of incentives. Any tourist who contacts With regard to SARS causalities, I would SARS in Thailand gets one million baht, or like to put things into perspective. € 46,000. Any tourist who dies gets two mil- Anywhere from 15,000 to 25,000 mainly lion baht, or € 92,000. Reduced hotel pack- elderly people died of heat-related conditions ages were offered. There were sales in all the this summer in Europe.

33 SUNDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 2003

Simon K.C. Li Assistant Managing Editor, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, CA SARS Coverage in America

ohann Fritz said yesterday that strange led to the war and, after the war started, the erage in America. Does the identification of Jthings are happening in the world. I am progress of the war itself. March of course was SARS with Asia unnecessarily stereotype from California and we in California have our about the height of the epidemic. This did not Asians in America and around the world and own kind of SARS epidemic going on, Severe mean necessarily that the epidemic did not get therefore should the media have been more Acute Recall Syndrome, which is an epidemic covered. There were plenty of stories in my careful in identifying the problem with Asia? that our host nation, Austria, has more than a paper and others but it did mean that they In fact, this sort of extreme situation was ex- usual interest in because of the prospect that a had a hard time breaking page one. And if emplified by one Asian group jumping on the native son could end up running the world’s they had a hard time breaking page one, a lot back of a Canadian health officer who, ex- fifth largest economy, and this despite the fact of the context might not have been noticed, plaining the second outbreak in Toronto, said that his best known quotation is not in the context covered in better stories. The re- that the health authorities had erected what English, or German, but in Spanish: “Hasta la sult, unfortunately, was some level of exagger- they thought was a fence to prevent SARS vista, Baby”. ation and hysteria in the United States, and from coming back into the country and yet Perhaps as an example of how the U.S. can alarm from a country that had relatively few there was a chink in the fence. And some attract world attention in strange ways, every- cases. I understand that the number was less Asian-American group jumped on this poor body feels that sooner or later in some way than 50. man for using that expression. That is the sort they are going to have a piece of connection to of peculiarly American nervousness about the the United States. Yet we in the United States Serious American media did issue of race. At the same time, there is a real are often criticised for the very reverse, that we a pretty good job, but in many issue here. Both Time and Newsweek, when are insular and we have little or no interest in they chose to put SARS on their covers, used what happens in the rest of the world. I am parts of the country I feel white or Caucasian models and that raised happy to say that with SARS this was, gener- that the predominant image and questions of whether it was more important to ally speaking, an exception, but one of the les- coverage of SARS was simplistic be sensitive to a minority group and its con- sons of the coverage of SARS is that, if you are and lacking in context cerns about being stereotyped or was it more going to have a serious epidemic globally, try important to reflect reality? And indeed the to avoid having it at a time when the United reality was that SARS affected Asia and Asians States is preparing to go to war. Quite serious- With so few cases and no fatalities, and so much more than it did Caucasians. ly, this meant that a major global story was many assets away in the Middle East, I think I think it is fair to say that there are two not given the same attention that it otherwise we did not do the best job. As a result, there major story lines that came out of coverage of would have gotten from the American media. were such incidents as a plane from Asia, on SARS. One of course is the issue of China's Serious American media did a pretty good which one passenger got ill, landing in cover-up and secrecy and I think built into job, but in many parts of the country I feel California and being quarantined for many that was an unspoken context that this is a that the predominant image and coverage of hours. We had the University of California, Communist regime with a long, deplorable SARS was simplistic and lacking in context. Berkeley, telling Asian applicants, who had tradition of secrecy, of covering up some terri- The image of people wearing face masks prob- been invited to interviews, not to come. We ble disasters in its own country. But as some- ably added to an unnecessary alarm about the had people cancelling vacations to Asia. Even body commented this morning, we journalists dangers posed by this disease and in fact some of my relatives, who had paid for a seek context and I think it is important to put nobody in authority ever said that face masks cruise, cancelled the cruise because they were some of that in context, not to excuse what were any good in preventing the spread of this told that other passengers would be alarmed at happened in China or what the Chinese did, disease. their presence. So there was some of this low- but to put it in context. In the 1980s and 90s The reality is that many American media level exaggeration and hysteria. there were cases both in France and Japan of companies, mine included, had moved repor- America being America and having this government officials eventually brought to ters, cameras and other assets to the Middle fixation with the issue of race, there was also a trial for having covered up the fact that HIV- East and were busy covering the debate that strange debate that cropped up in media cov- tainted blood donations were given to

34 haemophiliacs. In France, it resulted in the trial of the former Prime Minister Laurent Fabius, who was subsequently acquitted, Helping Limit SARS but nonetheless others were convicted. The British Government in the year 2000 issued a 4,000-page report accusing Bo Maltesen should have investigated more, and probably the government of the last ten years of hav- Editor-in-Chief, Politiken, Copenhagen not run the story, which caused anxiety ing followed a policy of what they called “a among a lot of people. policy of sedation” on the issue of whether am going to talk about a story that I regret I do not regret what Politiken did when we BSE, or “Mad Cow disease”, could be I and another story that I do not regret. reported on SARS. When we first started transmitted from animals to humans. And In the spring of this year my newspaper, reporting on SARS – and the headlines were long after the government was pretty sure Politiken, ran a story about a nutrition prod- not yet big although they were to get big soon that this could happen, civil servants and uct that – according to a press release by a – we knew for a fact that a new unknown politicians were still down-playing that Swedish consumer organisation – possibly mysterious disease had taken its first lives. We possibility, so much so that there was that contained cancer-causing substances. The knew for a fact that this disease had a high bizarre incident with the agriculture minis- story came in late one evening. Our reporter mortality rate; that there was no medical ter feeding his four-year-old daughter managed to get one or two comments about it weapon against it; that it showed up in a part hamburger on television as proof that and we ran the story next morning. of the world where some Danes live and work British beef was safe. As is always the case with this kind of story, or travel to as tourists. Most recently, a couple of weeks ago, radio, television and news agencies took it up We did not know for a fact whether this was the Environmental Protection Agency in and by noon that day almost everybody in the tip of the iceberg, or the iceberg itself. the United States was accused by its own Denmark knew that this product was poten- Should we have wasted weeks or months until inspector-general of having issued news tially dangerous. But only one hour later, both we had seen all the consequences of SARS and releases repeatedly after 9/11 that the air the Danish and Swedish authorities announ- then start reporting? Of course not. I hope no around Ground Zero was safe, when in fact ced that there was nothing to fear; it was a false one thinks we should have done so. Yes, we cre- it contained unsafe levels of asbestos, alarm. Some weeks later the laboratory behind ated fear among our readers. We ran stories PCBs, lead, mercury, benzene, etc. Yet peo- the findings had to confess that they had made about possible SARS victims among those people toiled in that Ground Zero cleaning it a major mistake. The tests they had conducted ple coming home to Denmark from the Far up; people moved back into apartments were contaminated from other sources. East. In fact we had to deal with this within our covered in dust and these news releases own paper because one of our journalists came were actually toned down by the White We and all other media created home from China and her colleagues were very House’s Council on Environment, which such a global awareness of SARS anxious about what she might bring home with coordinates environmental policy in the that the global community had her. We did not know what to do except to ask administration. They denied that they lied; her to stay home for two or three days to find they just said they did not want to scare to cooperate quickly in order to out if she had a high fever. Luckily, she had no people. So sometimes there are economic identify the SARS virus fever but it shows that even at the paper we had reasons, sometimes there are genuine con- trouble dealing with SARS because of the cerns about panicking the public, but the That is a story I regret. We did not do our uncertainty surrounding the disease. truth is when it comes to health issues gov- job well as professionals. We relied on a press We and all other media created such a glo- ernments in London, Paris and Tokyo are release and did not take the time to research bal awareness of SARS that the global com- not that different from the government in the story in depth, even though we knew that munity had to cooperate quickly in order to Beijing. ■ this was a story that would upset people – and identify the SARS virus. They succeeded with- it did. I regret our behaviour in this case; we in months. Media exposure on SARS helped

35 SUNDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 2003

make it possible for the authorities to very quickly isolate the victims in order to stop SARS before it turned out to be a possible disaster. In the old days, an incident like SARS would have developed into a world catas- trophe – just think of the Spanish Flu – Russell Mills Confidence in Canada did not recover un- because news spread only slowly. You had Dean, School of Media and Design, til July when a group of haggard-looking, 60- no mass media and you could not protect Algonquin College, Ottawa year-old men performed at a large concert in yourself before these things happened to Toronto to show that the city was now safe for you in person. But with today’s media sit- y the time SARS had run its course, more older people. These were the Rolling Stones uation, including of course the Internet, Bthan 250 Canadians had contracted the and they appeared as part of an extensive gov- you can achieve quick results if you want disease and 44 had died, almost all in the ernment public relations campaign signalling to do that. The media plays a role here. Of Toronto area. SARS shook the confidence of that Toronto and Canada were back to normal course, you can be wrong and you can Canadians in their healthcare system partly and open for business. cause false fear like in the case of the nutri- because Canada was the only country outside Now I must say that I had the good for- tion story that I mentioned earlier. But in Asia that was so seriously affected. tune to be a Nieman Fellow at Harvard last the case of SARS we reported the facts Canadians are accustomed to sharing year, so I was not in Canada for most of the available at the time. Our problem here healthcare problems and just about everything SARS crisis. I tried to keep up through the was the silence and denial of the Chinese else with the United States, but this time our coverage in the New York Times, which was government. But of course that should not large southern neighbour escaped almost quite good, and through various Canadian prevent us from reporting. totally unharmed and this was puzzling to websites. Back in Canada, I talked to a lot of One could argue that the harm done to most Canadians. The disease had a serious editors and reporters who were covering it and the Asian economy because of the media short-term impact on the economy as travel to their general conclusion is, with a few lapses storm over SARS was out of proportion, the country was sharply curtailed. Conven- which I will outline here, both the public with some 900 deaths among 9,000 sick tions were cancelled. Concerts were cancelled, authorities and the news media performed patients, but it is always very easy after- including one by the Dixie Chicks, who had well during the crisis. Information was gener- wards to say you should have done this and risked the wrath of all of America because they ally released quickly by the authorities and not that. We in the media had to react criticised the war in Iraq. Visiting sports teams disseminated accurately and responsibly by immediately and on this occasion it is my were warned to stay in the middle of the field the media. The general public in Canada and opinion that the media – despite some or court and not get too close to the Toronto particularly in the Toronto area was almost mistakes – helped reduce SARS to what I fans. The Prime Minister was dispatched to always well informed about developments of hope is a very short chapter in the big book eat Chinese food in a Chinese restaurant be- SARS and they took appropriate actions, of catastrophes. cause the panic had fallen disproportionately which may have helped to limit the spread of Could we, or should we have reacted on the Asian population. More recently he the disease. differently? I would say no. So this is a was sent out to eat a hamburger when Mad The story was initially covered as a mys- story I do not regret. ■ Cow Disease hit Canada, too. tery disease from Hong Kong before its real

36 The SARS Crisis and the Canadian Media impact was known and it took a week or so hospital job every day in a crowded train. After a week, WHO amended its travel advi- before the Canadian media realised the seri- Instead of releasing her name and photograph sory and took Toronto off its list and it ap- ousness of it. Initially information about to alert people who might have been sitting peared to some that they had bowed to the SARS was released by municipal health offi- near her, they decided to release a general significant pressure coming from Canada. In cials and this caused a few problems until the description and no indication to where she fact, it now it appears that the advisory was Ontario government took over responsibility had been sitting. Although the media quickly right because SARS did make a comeback a for communicating. In Canada, healthcare is learned her true identity they reached an iden- couple of weeks later, infecting more people a provincial responsibility and these people tical conclusion and did not release her exact and killing several more within the health- held press conferences virtually every day, identity but just a general description. That care system. That is one thing that some of sometimes more than once a day, to release was a similar decision on how to balance pri- the journalists I spoke to regret. information as soon as they had it. In the vacy against public information. SARS dominated coverage in the Canadian opinion of the journalists I spoke to, these media and quickly replaced the Iraq war as the health officials were candid, professional and SARS dominated coverage in the main subject, particularly in the Toronto area, invariably helpful. Most of what the media Canadian media and quickly but there were few complaints about sensa- learned about SARS came from them and tionalism or excessive coverage. Even the busi- there was rarely a delay in releasing informa- replaced the Iraq war as the main ness community seemed to realise that this tion. There was a feeling, however, amongst subject, particularly in the Toronto was a serious crisis. Although they were ex- journalists that there was a struggle going on area, but there were few com- tremely upset about the loss of economic ac- behind the scenes between politicians who plaints about sensationalism or tivity in the Toronto area they did not blame wanted to hold some things back and public the news media for that. health officials who wanted to get it out. excessive coverage One other failing I think we might cite, Fortunately, the healthcare officials seemed to although I do not think the final word has win these battles nearly all the time. In late April, the World Health Organisa- been written on this; there are still outstand- Concerns about confidentiality and priva- tion (WHO) issued a travel advisory adding ing questions that no one has dealt with. An cy caused a few problems. In the early days Toronto to a list of places like China and infectious person arrived in Vancouver just before the province took over the informa- Hong Kong where non-essential travel was about the same time as the first person tion, some municipalities would not release discouraged. Since the peak of the crisis had brought the disease to Toronto, yet the disease information to others, citing patient confi- passed and SARS seemed largely under con- did not break out of the healthcare system in dentiality, and it was not until the province trol, Canadian officials were furious. Maria Vancouver. There are questions as to whether took over that these barriers were broken Cheng characterised the attitude of the the right tests were used, whether the disease down. Health authorities and the media also Canadian media at that time as hostile and I was defined properly and whether the use of wrestled with privacy issues and sometimes think that is an accurate description. Some of the hospitals was appropriate in terms of con- reached the same conclusions. One case the Canadian journalists that I spoke to taining the disease. involved a nurse who came down with SARS think they were wrong at that time because So I think the conclusion is that the Cana- symptoms after treating SARS patients. the focus of the coverage did switch from dian news media did a good job in getting Health authorities were alarmed when they covering SARS to covering the WHO’s trav- information out during the crisis, but there is learned that she had been commuting to her el advisory, probably to an excessive extent. still more work to be done. ■

37 SUNDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 2003

2003 IPI Free Media Pioneer AWARDED TO THE MEDIA COUNCIL OF TANZANIA (MCT), DAR ES SALAAM

Johann P. Fritz Director of IPI The MCT’s declared aim is to “help create an environment in which democracy, free his year, the International Press Institute speech and basic rights will finally predomi- Tand the Freedom Forum have decided nate” by “promoting freedom of the media to honour the Media Council of Tanzania and ensuring the highest professional stan- (MCT), one of the few independent media dards of accountability” in Tanzania, East councils in Africa, with the 2003 Free Media Africa, and beyond. Pioneer Award. To this end, the MCT, which comprises Founded in June 1995 by media owners, academics, business representatives and pro- editors and leading journalists, the MCT was minent citizens chosen by journalists, has not allowed to operate until 22 May 1997, dedicated itself to ensuring that Tanzania’s when it was finally registered by the govern- media follow the letter and the spirit of a ment of Tanzania. The MCT was borne out of code of practice drafted and adopted by the the realisation that Tanzania’s vibrant media media industry itself. It has been a driving should develop their own self-regulatory code force in calling for the repeal of repressive of practice rather than wait for government media laws and in working toward the estab- intervention through existing laws, many of lishment of further independent media them dating back to colonial rule. councils in the region. ■

38 Jenerali Ulimwengu became too powerful. This was defeated at the duty-bound to honour them voluntarily. Vice President, Media Council of Tanzania, hands of civil society and donor pressure, and It is safe to say that we have achieved some- Dar es Salaam the government eventually, and reluctantly, thing. Tanzania today boasts dozens of publi- withdrew the bill. cations, scores of radio and television stations hen, approximately a decade ago, we We took the opportunity to move fast to and this makes for variety and plurality of W took the first ginger steps toward the establish a non-governmental council, and va- views. The MCT has so far won the trust of establishment of what is today known as the rious stakeholders got together and adopted a the public and compliance rates are impres- Media Council of Tanzania (MCT), we were constitution and elected a board comprising sive. But nothing in all this is irreversible. essentially responding to a plan by our gov- individuals from the media fraternity as well How many times have we witnessed former ernment to set up a government-sponsored, as prominent members of the society at large. champions of democracy turning into the statutory regulatory body to oversee the media most rabid destroyers of their peoples’ free- in the country. doms, imprisoning journalists, killing them As most of you may recall, this was a peri- even, banning their publications, closing od of a particular effervescence in the world down their broadcasting stations, bombing generally, a period when a certain erstwhile their printing shops? order in certain parts of the world was crum- We still have in our statute books pieces of bling very fast, paving the way for new think- draconian legislation which are fundamentally ing that was opening up democratic spaces inimical to a healthy media practice, because hitherto unknown to the peoples of many they seriously curtail media freedom and free- countries in Eastern Europe and Africa. New dom of expression generally and impose stiff vistas were opening up with blinding speed, criminal penalties to offences which should be and there was an unmistakable sense of per- left in the realm of civil action. plexity on the part of our African govern- Tanzanian media stakeholders have recent- ments who were not quite sure whether to ly undertaken a concerted media law reform stem the tide or swim with it. campaign aimed at effecting the repeal of a This tended to breed a schizophrenic stance number of obnoxious laws that impinge on that paid lip service to democratisation and the the freedom of expression and put into place a establishment of multiparty politics, while at freedom of information act with a view to the same time attempting to deny this demo- Still, although this process was completed making public officials more accessible, trans- cratisation any substance by, say, making it dif- by 1995, the government withheld the Coun- parent and accountable. ficult for the nascent free media to operate and cil’s registration for two years, until 1997. We know we must endeavour to make our flourish. Hence the move by the government to Nevertheless the Council went to work with council more self-sustaining, maintain and introduce in Parliament a draft law designed to gusto, listening to public petitions against strengthen leadership and insist on the incul- set up a government ordained council which alleged misconduct by the media, the empha- cation of the highest ethical standards among would regulate the press using statutory powers sis being placed on arbitration and reconcilia- our media practitioners. akin to those wielded by the law courts. tion rather than courtroom adjudication, all An ethical, responsible and highly profes- We of the media fraternity recognised the the while seeking to teach and counsel rather sional media must be built and nurtured danger inherent in this move, which was go- than to penalise and award damages. painstakingly, and this means the rooting ing to have the effect of taking with the left At the same time the Council undertook to out of all the bad weeds which, through hand what was given by the right hand, and support the establishment and development questionable professional standards, shoddy we protested vigorously. Our protest was sup- of regional press clubs with a view to building reporting and incendiary editorialising, ported by other members of the civil society, capacity at grassroots level and to train media bring the media into disrepute. But this job who also saw the sly machinations that were practitioners all over the country professional- cannot be done by government, for we do being trotted out to emasculate a potent force ly and ethically. A code of conduct was adopt- not know where government acquired the that was fast making its presence felt. ed and distributed widely and it is today taken requisite expertise to do it. ■ For this was a time when, almost overnight, as the yardstick to guide all media practition- a virtual revolution took place in Tanzanian ers in their work. media, and when, from a media landscape As a result of this work of five years it has dominated by the ruling party and its govern- been gratifying to note that we have estimated a ment, we now had new media outlets setting compliance rate of over 90 per cent, compared up shop virtually everyday. to a 60 per cent compliance rate with court Needless to say, this was worrisome to a decisions. This high rate of compliance is infor- government that dreaded and distrusted these med by the fact that the Constitution of the newfound voices, and the bill was an attempt MCT and its Code of Ethics were established to snuff out the fledgling media before it by the media practitioners themselves, who feel

39 MONDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2003

SESSION IV Salzburg Congress Centre “Media in War Zones and Regions of Conflict”

Brothers in Arms? Reese Schonfeld reports and I guess embedding journalists is Co-Founder and former President, CNN, Atlanta better than that, it gives them more access. Aside from that, it’s a disaster. When you em- here have been many claims that the U.S. bed journalists, when they travel with soldiers, Chairperson Tdeliberately targeted U.S. forces, deliber- they become soldiers, they think like soldiers, Christian Rainer ately targeted certain parts of the press corps, they are brothers in arms almost. As one jour- Editor-in-Chief, profil, Vienna particularly Al Jazeera. Whether or not the nalist said, “I feel a hell of a lot more com- U.S. attacks on the Hotel Palestine were inno- fortable being surrounded by soldiers point- cent or were actually purposeful, I leave to ing their guns away from me than having sol- Panelists someone else to find out. I am not so naive to diers point their guns at me.” believe that there could not have been a Perhaps in this kind of war there is no Jonathan Baker colonel or a captain somewhere who wanted other way to go. I don't like it. After travelling World News Editor, BBC, London to shell the Hotel Palestine deliberately and with people for days on end and becoming Hanoch Marmari attack the journalists. At the same time, I involved in a cause together, who would not Editor-in-Chief, Ha’aretz, Tel Aviv believe and I hope it to be true that no one begin to sympathise with those people with Reese Schonfeld higher than that in the U.S. military ever told whom one travels? But at the same time, Co-Founder and former President, anyone to attack the Hotel Palestine. somebody at headquarters, an anchor man, CNN, Atlanta Firstly, I would like to congratulate the someone should be reminding people that Victor de la Serna British in the first Gulf War. When Sandy these reporters have probably been co-opted, Deputy Editor, El Mundo, Madrid Gall, an ITN correspondent, broke away from that they have become a part of the people the rest of the press corps he was – probably that they are travelling with and their reports thanks to the cooperation of the British gov- reflect that. ernment – able to roll right in with the first It is probably inevitable that these kinds of forces into Iraq, with the British forces, and things happen in a fluid war. Wars have he got the best pictures and the best stories of changed. In the First and Second World Wars the war because he was there. It was just a ter- you had fronts. Reporters could stay behind a rific piece of journalism. front, move up to it, choose what point they As you know, the rest of the journalists wanted to go to, look for different stories and were still sitting in Saudi Arabia waiting for then come back to safety. In this kind of a war

42 “Embedding as a means of war coverage was extremely useful to us if we understand the difficulties and the implications of it, and we are clear to our audiences about them. But it was not truly tried and tested and many of the questions that were asked about it beforehand therefore remain unanswered.”

Jonathan Baker

you cannot do that and as a result you depend on the people you are travelling with for safety. So you get stuck, you are Journalists in Zones embedded. As we all know, the number of independent reporters who died was greater, much greater, than the number of embedded reporters and I think that is the reality of modern journalism and we are of Civil Conflict stuck with it. Sometimes I am glad that I no longer run CNN. I would not know Victor de la Serna ried out basically for media purposes, to coun- what to do – risk peoples’ lives, or take the Deputy Editor, El Mundo, Madrid teract Iraqi propaganda and show that the easy way out. forces were able to get into Baghdad. He was Finally, at a recent conference in Brus- f I am here today, it is probably because my left behind with a German reporter because sels, I defended the war in Iraq. I believe I newspaper holds an unenviable record right they were advised not to follow; their flak Oswald Spengler, that we are in a clash of now. In the past three years, we have lost three jackets were not up to the strength that was civilisations. I believe that the West must journalists in zones of war or conflict under recommended and they thought there was face up to it. Battles must be fought and very different circumstances. A young embed- going to be a lot of heavy fire against them. So that is the unpleasant reality. ded journalist was killed in Iraq last spring. A they stayed behind and they were killed by an I think the U.S. took on a heroic burden veteran journalist who had covered Chechnya Iraqi missile while staying behind and not when they went into that battle. I am very and the first Gulf War was killed in 2002 while participating in this dash, which we all saw on disappointed that the United Nations did covering Afghanistan as an independent jour- television. By the way, none of the journalists not support it. I am very disappointed that nalist not involved with any military mission. that participated were hurt at all. So it was an the rest of Europe, the cradle of Western And an important political columnist who had ironic situation. A sad irony for us, of course, civilisation – a hundred years ago it was very strong views against the actions of Basque because it was the third one of our colleagues Germany that produced Oswald Spengler terrorists and the current Basque regional gov- that we had lost in tragic circumstances. You who predicted all this so well – ran away ernment was killed in his own town in the could feel the weight of sorrow and incompre- from that hard duty, saying they could not Basque territory by Basque terrorists. Different hension in the newsroom as we heard the do anything about it and leaving it to circumstances, but all of them died, and if I news report that he might be dead and then someone else. had been on the second panel today, on news when it was confirmed. Of course, we debat- At the end of my talk in Brussels, I cal- safety, I would have had a very sceptical, cyni- ed this, we had meetings, our editor-in-chief led the war a triumph. I stand by that. cal or jaundiced attitude about this, saying wondered a lot if we should stop sending cor- However, I must add an adjective. It is now that there is no safety. How do these circum- respondents into conflicts. What could we do? a hollow triumph and for that I am very stances, extremely difficult ones, condition the There seemed to be some sort of terrible jinx sorry. I am sorry that my government has way we function and the way we report as against us out there. not been able to do a better job of turning journalists. That is more the subject right now. Of course, we have not stopped. We have a that triumph into a triumph for everyone Julio Anguita Parrado was only 32 and it person in Baghdad right this minute and who lives in Israel and for everyone who was the first war he was covering. Ironically, under very dangerous circumstances as we all lives in the West. But that is the situation. he was not killed while following the U.S. know. Whatever the risk environment, in eve- Great civilisations rise to confront grave sit- tanks in that dash into central Baghdad, three ry separate conflict responsible media will not uations, not run away from them. ■ days before the end of the war, which was car- give up their duty to report from them. If they

43 MONDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2003

can afford it financially, some will say someone else should cover it for us, some news agency. However, if fewer and fewer people go to conflicts we will get a narrower and narrower view. Therefore the point is moot for us. The point of whether or not it is good to have embedded journalists is also moot for us. We need both embedded and non-embedded journalists. We complained loudly in the first Gulf War that journalists were not allowed near the front, near the action, and that it gave us a restricted view. We fully understood – and our reporter who was killed understood – that he would be extremely limited by the fact that he was submitted to American censorship, which of course was never really applied except that the journalists knew not to indicate exactly where they were at every moment. We knew that if we had one embedded person and three persons outside reporting independently that we could get a much more comprehensible, understandable jigsaw puzzle in place. Therefore we did it and we have done it again and we are just praying that this incredible round of bad luck against us will end. But there is a case that for me probably is a greater cause for concern than the conditions under which we report on wars. Even though these are less spectacular situations, it is those zones in the world where there is a latent and sometimes apparent and permanent civil conflict, which many times entails constant ter- Spanish regions have more powers, for out one morning to buy a loaf of bread and rorist action. I am thinking of places in the instance, than the German Länder. They have the day’s newspapers, and when he returned world like Colombia and some of the former their police, their parliament, they levy taxes, home they were waiting for him at the Soviet Republics in which journalists are sub- they run hospitals, education; anything but entrance of his apartment building; they shot mitted to incredible pressure and that is foreign relations is theirs. The current Basque him in the head and left him in a puddle of indeed affecting their performance. administration has run the Basque Country blood surrounded by all the newspapers which There is at least one such zone in Western for over 20 years and despite that fact they are was a pretty sad and symbolic image. Europe that no one ever thinks about and that still acting as a very partisan administration, Then the Basque government will come zone is in Spain. One of the three colleagues constantly denouncing and attacking those and condemn these attacks on freedom of the we lost was writing from that part of Spain few journalists who are still working in that press, but these people have put journalists in and he was killed. Besides that tragic end, the area where terrorism is rampant and people the sites of terrorists and I think that is unac- whole situation of journalists in such zones for killed in terrorist actions every year. ceptable. I think we should not accept that me is really something that we should look The spokesman of the Basque Nationalist administrations and governments in demo- into. The pressures that they are subjected to, Party in power in the Basque country will refer cratic countries, in countries of the West, be- the self-censorship, the fear, are constant of to journalists as the modern media version of have in this way. There is too much hypocrit- course when terrorists are operating, but they Franco’s occupying army. Those types of state- ical looking-elsewhere, saying it's worse in are compounded when the local administra- ments not only put great pressure on the jour- Belarus, Russia, or Colombia. It may be worse tion, as is the case in the Basque country, has nalists, who sometimes opt to just pack their by the numbers, but not by the very essence of the same political aims as the terrorists. Even bags and live in Madrid or Barcelona, or if administrations pressuring journalists in zones if they do not openly espouse violence, they they stay are cowed into writing less, reporting of conflict, in zones where their lives are at have the same basic aims, secession and inde- less and less. José Luis López de la Calle was risk, and this should be denounced. ■ pendence from Spain, which they have diffi- denounced and criticised by those people who culty getting through democratic means. play lip service to press freedom and he went

44 Some Embedded Tr uths

Hanoch Marmari In order to survive and to work, Barel had long-term and transparent relationship with Editor-in-Chief, Ha’aretz, Tel Aviv to dissemble. His fluency enabled him to be the subjects of his reporting. thought of as a visitor from elsewhere in the More than a dozen representatives of Isra- ur senior commentator on the Middle Arab world. Without that, he could not have eli newspapers have worked in Iraq since OEast, Zvi Barel, recently set out on a trip met with people in the Iraqi establishment, March, most of them during the war itself. All to Kurdish northern Iraq and considered nor spoken to ordinary Iraqis, nor have had a the Israeli journalists who covered Iraq were in entering Iraq itself. We warned him against heart to heart talk with an Iraqi engineer double jeopardy, as journalists and as Israelis. this, because we, like our readers, prefer a cau- who shared a taxi with him from Baghdad to They all had dual citizenship, and were pres- tious commentator and a living colleague. the Jordanian border and is a fan of Al ent in the theatre under some kind of cover, This might be contrary to the spirit of Qaeda. We were very pleased with all this usually as purported reporters for American journalism and the personal courage that are material, but whenever he managed to get in newspapers. expected of a reporter, but before Barel set out touch with us we begged him to get out of This disrupted the regular and reasonable on his mission I asked him to promise that he there as soon as possible. management of the newsroom. Instead of the would refrain from any hasty attempt to enter Is it allowable to dissimulate for purposes most suitable and knowledgeable reporter Iraqi territory. As it happened, Barel could not of a journalistic assignment? We believe that it going on an assignment, the reporter with a resist the temptation and went into Iraq with is never, ever allowable to lie to readers. second passport and good cover story went. the help of friends and an Israeli passport in Sometimes, in exceptional cases and in order There were cases of adventurers and travel his pocket. The only protection he had was to keep safe and obtain access to valuable writers coming along and offering themselves the fluent Arabic that he speaks. information, it is necessary to stray in the field to newspapers. Thus, at the start of the fight- Barel sent us excellent material, but we lost a certain distance from the truth. This is the ing anyone who managed to get out to the sleep the entire ten days he spent in Iraq. Each advantage and the disadvantage in a one-time field and sent material had his story published time he sent another report I wondered what assignment. The reporter’s shadowy work prominently under the by-line, “Our special would happen if he were to disappear, as we achieves a fleeting moment of journalistic correspondent in Iraq.” would have no way to help him. insight, because he has no need to maintain a

45 MONDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2003

We at Ha’aretz refused to get dragged into were released after questioning and the behind the fighters rather than move around this. On the eve of the war the Pentagon gave remaining 11 were taken into custody. In spo- as free agents in the field. But sometimes even us an “embedding” slot. We gave the assign- radic exchanges of fire during the night, five the definition of the field is difficult. ment to a Ha’aretz reporter who has a German Palestinian policemen were killed. They had In the West Bank and Gaza, for example, passport. The man went to a Kuwaiti embassy not laid down their arms as they had been one can find several layers on the same field, and asked for a visa. The Kuwaitis asked him called upon to do. This was indeed a crude and each requires a different mode of access. which newspaper he represented and he re- and costly operation. Tr ue, the Israeli army controls the roads and plied truthfully. He was refused, as was every- During the hours the village was closed, soldiers at roadblocks can create difficulties one who asked for an entry permit to U.S. rumours spread about a massacre of its inhab- for travelling press. But at the scenes of con- military headquarters in Kuwait City on be- itants. The IDF claimed that had it opened frontation between soldiers and armed civil- half of an Israeli newspaper. The Israeli media the area to journalists, it would have posed a ians the advantage is often held by stringers learned once again that without faking, there real danger to their lives. IPI sent a letter of who are part of the local population. A foreign is no access. protest to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon: “The reporter will be in a better position if he or she We approached a number of foreign corre- latest violation of press freedom appears to be enjoys the hospitality of local people. The spondents and asked them to send us materi- part of a concerted effort by the IDF to con- package deal that includes a guide and an al too. They explained in embarrassment that trol what is being reported about the resump- interpreter also includes sympathetic coverage if they were published in an Israeli newspaper tion of armed hostilities in the region.” that flows from the situation. Is that not a it would harm their freedom of action and form of embedding, too? The obvious result is perhaps even their safety. At Ha’aretz we de- Editors must consider carefully that the soldiers are observed from the dis- cided not to commission fly-by-night report- their demand for total access, tance, perhaps as cruel or indifferent killing ers, like some of our competitors did. Having machines, while the locals – the people and no alternative – we relied on dispatches from because there is a contradiction their cause – will be in intimate contact with the international press. between demanding total the reporter. It is not that we do not take risks. Quite a access to areas where fighting Those who control the field are often will- few Ha’aretz reporters and photographers go is going on and at the same ing to sell access to it. The press sometimes in and out of the Palestinian territories, often has to buy access and the question is at what facing real danger. The newspaper has a bul- time protesting that the lives of price? How can one ensure that deals are not letproof car for these assignments, but it can journalists are at risk cut over the heads of the reading public? never supply full protection for the hundreds When a reporter accepts the sponsorship of of movements every month of our reporters in In principle, this is a justified protest. one of the sides in a conflict, a sponsorship the territories. Anyone who closes off an area is damaging that affords the advantage of access, he is The war in Iraq was an important test lab- freedom of the press. On the other hand, edi- prone to recompense the sponsors by promot- oratory for the surreal journalistic reality in tors and journalists who insist on free move- ing their interests. This can happen actively our region. I take the liberty of making two ment in a battle zone must take responsibility and openly or passively, if the reporter refrains observations on Iraq, linking them to the cov- for the fatal results of their decisions. But by from covering embarrassing matters. The pas- erage of our own conflict. the same token, the need to ensure the jour- sive case is worse, because the readers and the First, the demand for maximum access to nalist’s safety in the chaotic arena of battle, viewers are not aware of it. The more the hostility zones for reporters imposes maxi- which IPI also demands of governments and reporter is dependent on the controlling ele- mum responsibility on editors. fighting organisations, directly contradicts the ment – a regime, an army, a local leadership – Editors must consider carefully their de- demand for absolute freedom of movement. for access and writing, the more this influ- mand for total access, because there is a con- In fact, the moment the military force left ences and even slants his coverage. tradiction between demanding total access to the village, the press went in and sent out in- Only after Saddam Hussein’s regime was areas where fighting is going on and at the dependent, full stories and descriptions of the toppled did CNN chief news executive Eason same time protesting that the lives of journal- operation and its results, with a one-day delay. Jordan allow himself to describe the terrible ists are at risk. No journalist was hurt. But imagine the vol- price the network had paid for the Iraqi agree- Here is a case that demonstrates this point. ume of protests had the area not been closed ment that CNN keep working in the country. In October 2001, after an Israeli government and had reporters been found among the dead. Jordan wrote, “Over the last dozen years I minister was assassinated by Palestinians, a Secondly, access to the area of conflict is an made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the gov- large military force encircled the small village asset, and it has a price tag. ernment to keep CNN’s Baghdad bureau open of Beit Reema near Ramallah and went in to Armies, even those of democracies, always and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. arrest a number of suspects. By order of the prefer a battlefield without journalists run- Each time I visited, I became more distressed regional command, the area was sealed off ning freely over it. Take the U.S. army in the by what I saw and heard – awful things that entirely, including to journalists. The village first Gulf War or the British in the Falklands. could not be reported because doing so would was closed for 25 hours, during which time The embedding in the recent war in Iraq was have jeopardised the lives of Iraqis, particular- the soldiers arrested 50 people. Of these, 39 a clever way of organising journalists to stay ly those on our Baghdad staff.”

46 Ethan Bronner, a former Middle East cor- services to the press. For that matter even an American lieutenant trying to conclude his respondent for the New York Times, defended Ha’aretz reporters need these services in order contribution to the events: “They won’t re- Jordan from a flood of criticism: “Anyone who to report on Palestinian stories. The questions member us for what we did in the war. They’ll has reported from totalitarian states knows we often ask ourselves when we run stories on remember us for shooting a civilian who does- that it is one of the most challenging tasks a the Palestinians is whether we go too far in n’t stop at a checkpoint.” journalist faces, involving daily calculations practising an accommodating kind of jour- Foreign press coverage tends to be nervous, over access, honesty, freedom of movement nalism, by printing versions of stories that we impatient and superficial, as are today’s read- and fear of reprisal.” can never fully verify. ers, providing a kind of fast-food journalism. Israel is a paradise for foreign correspon- Attaching a reporter to a fighting team There is a recipe for stories from remote and dents. Distances are short and the access is may result in the fighters being depicted from violent places. They should be crunchy and usually easy. The drive from the scene of con- the human angle, with all their anxieties and spicy – that is short, thrilling, touching, mov- flict anywhere in the territories to the presti- their worries. But the other side of the con- ing, very simple, emotional and wrapped up gious and serene American Colony Hotel in flict, the civilian side, to which access is low with a quick moral lesson. Jerusalem takes in average less than an hour. from the outset because of the barriers of lan- We know all about it because we see our- There are 350 foreign news and media organ- guage and discourse, remains far from the selves in the mirror. We are objects of foreign isations working in Israel, with 800 perma- heart and thoughts of the viewer. press coverage in Israel; we are the foreign nent foreign news people and 2,000 Israeli Brian MacQuarrie, a Boston Globe corre- press in covering Iraq; and we play both roles and Palestinian staffers. Annually there are spondent embedded with 630 artillery sol- in the Palestinian territories. ■ 2,000 to 3,000 accredited visiting journalists. diers for three weeks of fighting all the way Israel is one of the largest foreign press sites from Kuwait to Baghdad, wrote, under the after Washington and Moscow. title: “Brotherhood Bred in Combat”: Even taking account of all the bureaucratic “I had not sacrificed for as long as these obstacles that the government poses for the troops, had not left my loved ones for as long, foreign press, the foreign journalists are not was not expected to expose myself to the harassed. They expect from Israel, as a demo- deadly risk that is the job description of a cratic and open society, maximal and uncon- combat soldier, and I could come and go as I ditional openness and minimal interference in pleased in pursuit of a daily story. But they their work. When the Israeli Government accepted me in their ranks as one more soldier Press Office piled difficulties on them, there who got dirty as they did, albeit with a very was a justified outcry that could never have different mission. ‘You’re now one of the band been heard on the Palestinian side or in even of brothers. You know that, don’t you?’” the most moderate Arab state. There is no reciprocity between Israel’s atti- When a reporter accepts the tude towards journalists from Arab countries sponsorship of one of the sides and their countries’ attitudes towards Israeli journalists. The Arab satellite networks operate in a conflict, a sponsorship in Israel with wide-ranging freedom, but an that affords the advantage of Israeli journalist cannot be posted as a perma- access, he is prone to recompense nent correspondent in Egypt or Jordan even the sponsors by promoting though there are peace agreements between us. In any case, it cannot be said that the State their interests of Israel collects any favours or affection because it is a hostel for the journalists of the Still, over these past three years of exhaust- world. The embedding approach is not ap- ing military activity, the world press did not plied by Israel in order to present its interests pay much attention to the human angle of in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is sim- Israelis serving as soldiers, both conscripts and ply because the IDF does not have and cannot reservists, in this violent urban conflict, and have a monopoly on access to the field. the complexities they face. This is not a com- So my point is that embedding has always plaint, just an observation. In the ugly war existed, even before the invention of this spe- being waged in our region, where soldiers are cial term for this special context. And while fighting terrorism in urban areas, where you in the Iraq War the press was dependent on can never be quick enough in guessing who is the services of the U.S. military, in the the enemy and who is just an innocent civil- Palestinian territories the press is dependent ian, you never find in the foreign press such for access on local people, who provide vital lines as those quoted by Mr. MacQuarrie from

47 MONDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2003 The Embedding Process

Jonathan Baker from somewhere, clearly you are inclined at ing in which we could be caught up. Or we World News Editor, BBC, London least to take more risks and to send people could be caught up in a popular backlash of further forward and expose them to even more people seeing us as somehow the representa- thought that I might concentrate my com- danger. In fact the more I reflect on the Iraq tives of an invading country. Iments more on the embedding process and conflict and what it was like going through it This was a really tough decision. A lot of the war coverage because I was very closely as a manager of 300 or 400 people in the the big American networks, except for CNN, involved with the evolution on what turned Gulf, the more convinced I am that the key decided to go. All the major British broad- into the British embed system and I was the decision we made at the BBC during the cam- casters decided to stay and many other print point of contact of the BBC with the Penta- paign or just before the campaign was to re- and other broadcasters stayed as well. We all gon and the operation of their programme. main in Baghdad throughout. moved into what we perceived to be a safer The BBC had about 40 journalists embedded News organisations were pretty divided hotel and we all stayed together reasoning that with the Americans and the British during the about it. The temptations to leave were ex- the Americans would not deliberately bomb a war and I think embedding is one of the key tremely great. In the first case you are operat- hotel that they knew was full of journalists. issues that emerges from the war which we ing under censorship and therefore to some But, as we know, this hotel did come under need to reflect on and examine as we move extent what you are reporting is devalued or at attack from a tank round, so nothing was forward. least compromised in some way. You are oper- guaranteed and the warnings about our safety Perhaps I can just briefly comment on the ating in what is going to be an enemy capital were repeated throughout the conflict. other two. One has already been mentioned, – for an American or British journalist at least This decision I think brings all the big the safety issue, and I do not want to encroach – and some American organisations took the safety questions into very sharp focus – secu- too much on the next session, but the fact that view that, quite apart from the dangers rity of your people against the demands of a one journalist was killed for every ten mem- involved, it would also be unpatriotic. story. It is still as dangerous and volatile in bers of the coalition forces is I think an Baghdad today, perhaps even more so than it extraordinary statistic. It raises very important In coverage terms we wanted was three or four months ago. I have about 20 questions about the role of safety considera- to build as wide and as total a people in Baghdad at the moment and we are tions in our deployment, what we do in the picture as we could, so reviewing their situation and the circum- future, what we ask people to do, and how we stances under which they are working on a train and equip them to do it. our war coverage came from daily basis. It is very frightening. The third issue after embedding and safety our embedded correspondents, In coverage terms we wanted to build as is technology. I speak here as a broadcast jour- our unilateral or independent wide and as total a picture as we could, so our nalist and not a print journalist. Every conflict teams, from military briefings, war coverage came from our embedded corre- in the last ten or 15 years has also signalled spondents, our unilateral or independent some sort of milestone in technological ad- from expertise and sources within teams, from military briefings, from expertise vance and the way in which we tell our stories America, the United Kingdom and sources within America, the United and bring our material back. Most recently in and the Middle East. Kingdom and the Middle East. Had we not Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq we saw the use been in Baghdad, I think that coverage would of satellite phones, then video phones. A fea- And then there were the physical dangers. have been very seriously diminished and in- ture of this last conflict for us was the store Both the British and the Americans issued a deed distorted to some extent. There would and forward system which means that you can series of very direct and stark warnings to me- have been greater emphasis on the military send video from almost anywhere, although dia organisations. I heard it first hand from a campaign and no chance really to see the very slowly and laboriously. The way ahead I very senior official in the Pentagon that Bagh- effect of it on the city. The decision to stay think is signalled by the evolution of new, dad would not be a safe place to be. The Mini- looks pretty obvious now since none of the lightweight and generally portable satellite stry of Information, where all journalists had awful things that could have happened did dishes. That I think is not very far off and to work at that time, would be a legitimate happen, at least to the journalists in Baghdad, when it does happen we then will have real- target and we would be well advised not to but it was an agonizingly difficult decision at time war coverage. stay there. the time. These three issues I think overlap and There was the further prospect that in the To return to the subject of the embed, we interweave because if technology makes it wake of an invasion journalists could be held have always had, or certainly for more than possible to get your material back quickly as human shields. There could be street fight- 100 years, embedded journalists of one sort or

48 another. From the Crimean war onwards, the military and the press have worked together in some way or another on coverage of a war. But I think that there were some very substantial differences this time. The first thing was the sheer scale of it. The Americans embedded several hundred journalists and the British embedded almost a hundred. This was to be the primary tool of war reporting as far as the military was concerned. The second thing was the access. We got greater access than our journalists had ever done before. Our journalists got closer to the front line and were involved in the action more than ever before. tary campaign, a phenomenon we know as regard as manipulative or attempt at censor- Thirdly, our coverage was more timely. We “boys and toys” and that they would forget in ship. Most importantly they were told not to were able to get the material back much more their coverage that a very large body of opin- speculate. They were to report only what they quickly than we had done before, partly be- ion, in the UK at least, was bitterly opposed had seen or knew for a fact because they cause of the technological advances that I to the war in the first place; and finally, that would only know what they saw in their own mentioned previously and partly because the they could give only a micro image of what little patch. They were not to be drawn into Americans realised that this had been one was happening, reporting only a very small endless speculation about the overall strategy of the disadvantages of the previous Gulf portion of the theatre and not giving any or what was happening elsewhere on the bat- War. The material was not getting back quick kind of overall picture. tlefield. enough to counter the propaganda reverses I think these were all perfectly legitimate The fourth element of the BBC approach that they were suffering at the hands of Sad- concerns and I shared a lot of them. We went was to be candid with the audiences about dam Hussein in the previous campaign. into the embed process, therefore, determined who these people were and the circumstances The rules that the military imposed upon to do what we could to counter those con- under which they were operating. All our us for embeds were that we should not report cerns and to neutralise them as far as possible. reports from embedded correspondents were any details of our positions or anything that The first important principle was to be preceded with the “health warning” that they might give away our position to the enemy, clear that the embedded correspondents were were with the military and were not allowed and we should not give away any details of only one element of our coverage. We were to give away details of their positions or mili- military plans. These were the two restrictions not relying on them to carry the whole burden tary plans. and we regarded those as not unreasonable and of our war reporting. So the embeds are only I mentioned that the embeds were only they for the most part stuck by it. There was part of your coverage, not only of the battle going to give you one part of the picture. We little or no attempt at censorship in the expe- itself but also of the whole war. And if you see had hoped that the other part of the big pic- rience of the BBC journalists and I have it in those terms you can regard it as a very ture, the strategic overview, would be provid- debriefed nearly all of them pretty thoroughly. useful adjunct to what you are doing. ed by the military briefings set up in that huge Clearly we would all have concerns about We did everything we could to discuss with Hollywood-style set and hanger in Doha. In the embed system as a philosophy. People our correspondents the danger, the concerns, fact, those briefings were woefully inadequate; were worried that the military would only al- the traps that they might fall into. The BBC very little was said on the record, not much low us to see what they wanted us to see; that reporters were instructed that they were not to more off the record and it was very difficult to they would only make it possible for us to re- dress as soldiers; some correspondents from pull together all the amazing images and report those things that they wanted reported; other agencies did. We used our own blue hel- ports we were getting into some sort of com- that because we were living with the troops mets and blue flack jackets. They were not to prehensive and coherent picture. we would become soldiers in everything but talk about the British military, as “us”, “our I have had a number of theories advanced name and this would inevitably skew our side”, etc. They were to confine themselves to for this. One of these is that the Americans coverage; that our reporters would get too factual or neutral terminology and they were very cynically thought that if they provided a excited about the whole business of a mili- to guard against anything that they might huge mass of pictures and battlefield reporting

49 MONDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2003

then that would do. A lot of networks and volume of material coming back from lots of correspondents would not care too much different points on the front lines, but a com- about what they were seeing, and frankly all plete lack of analysis to explain to us and the they were interested in was a propaganda war audiences what was going on. A rather strange and those pictures of American doughboys reversal, I think. liberating the oppressed peoples of Iraq. So as we move forward I think it incum- A second theory was that Donald Rums- bent upon us to try to resolve some of these feld wished to control very much the flow of ethical and practical issues and to engage the information himself from his briefings at the military in the debate if we can. Pentagon and therefore the operation in Doha was to some extent emasculated. All our reports from embedded A final theory, which I myself ascribe to, is correspondents were pre- that they simply did not foresee what it would ceded with the “health warning” be like. They were not ready for the fact that that they were with the military all these images were being seen by audiences at the same time that they were being seen by and were not allowed to give military strategists and they were either un- away details of their positions or willing to keep up or simply could not keep military plans up with the flow of information. Oddly, that tended to drive us back to local There is one major caveat that must be sources, which we already knew were to be stated about the embedding process. Do not questioned, because people only knew their forget that this was an enormously successful little part. Because of the inadequacy of what military campaign. The country was invaded we were getting in Doha, it became an as- within a couple of weeks. There were no sub- sumption that what you were getting from the stantial checks to the advance. There were no ground was likely to be more authentic, for really heavy military casualties. So to that ex- this is what people were seeing with their own tent embedding was never really put to the eyes, and so we had the phenomenon of the test. What if things had been different? What over reporting of the insurrection inside Basra if there had been a major setback to the cam- and the over reporting of the column of Iraqi paign or greater losses or street fighting? The armour supposedly seen heading out of the relationship on the ground then between the city a couple of days later. So the fact that the embedded journalists and the people with briefings were so poor I think actually led to whom they were embedded, I suggest, would some poor reporting, although embedded cor- have been different. respondents also acted as correctors on some How would journalists feel reporting mili- occasions. tary defeats and setbacks among the people But I think the concept of embedding, who were suffering them? How would the sol- even given that inadequacy of the briefing, diers have felt about them in those circum- which should have been the other half of the stances? I think that our embedded journalists equation, is still valid. I think most of us would have found life much more difficult. assume that embedding in some form or ano- Would we have had the same amount of access ther, whether we like it or not, is here to stay. in these circumstances, the same degree of It cannot be denied that the embed system trust and the same pretty light-handed view gave us more intimate, powerful, graphic and on censorship? I do not think so. I think we timely images of war from the front line than would have been having a very different dis- any of us had ever seen before. This is a rever- cussion here this morning. sal of what we had in the past. We all remem- So embedding as a means of war coverage ber the formal daily briefings at NATO dur- was extremely useful to us if we understand ing the Kosovo conflict, for example, where the difficulties and the implications of it, and we were given the military view and we have we are clear to our audiences about them. But very little first hand information from the it was not truly tried and tested and many of front to substantiate it. Here in Iraq we had the questions that were asked about it before- exactly the opposite. We had an enormous hand therefore remain unanswered. ■

50 Reuters journalist Mazen Dana, killed in Iraq on 17 August 2003. (AP Photo / Nayef Hashlamoun, HO) MONDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2003

SESSION V Salzburg Congress Centre “The Inter- national News Safety Institute”

Chairperson Claus Reitan Editor-in-Chief, Tiroler Tageszeitung, Innsbruck Creating a Culture

Speaker Rodney Pinder Director, International News Safety Institute of Safety in Media (INSI), Brussels Rodney Pinder tion of the International News Safety Institute Director, International News Safety Institute (INSI), (INSI) – together with an update on the sad Brussels events since then. The Iraq conflict is one of the bloodiest in n a gloomy mood, Robert Kennedy occa- history for reporters. A camera operator in I sionally would quote the ancient Chinese the Occupied West Bank now enjoys one of curse, “May you live in interesting times.” the most dangerous jobs on earth. A journal- Dull times are uneventful, unchallenging ist in Colombia today almost qualifies as an and, above all, safe. Interesting times are full endangered species. In trouble spots around of exciting events – hazardous, threatening, the globe, hundreds of reporters and editors even dangerous. Interesting times of course daily face persecution, intimidation, torture are meat and drink for us in the news busi- and even death. ness. But in recent years we have seen far too The International Federation of Journalists much of the dark meaning of the Chinese (IFJ) counts more than 1,200 journalists and curse. Interesting times have become increas- support staff killed in the line of duty in the ingly deadly for journalists. We discussed past ten years. That is about three times as this in Ljubljana and agreed something had many as international humanitarian workers to be done. whose dangerous conditions attracted consid- I am now reporting back on the result of erable attention after the bombing of the UN the groundbreaking IPI initiative – the forma- headquarters in Baghdad.

52 Journalists are being killed because some- “rules” that used to help protect journalists in Health is important. A journalist must be one did not like what they wrote or said, be- conflicts. In the old days when wars had dis- physically fit and mentally robust not only to cause someone did not like reporters, or sim- tinct sides and were played largely to conflict endure the extreme stress of modern combat, ply because they were in the wrong place at the conventions, reporters were mostly seen as but the physical torture of sitting cramped up, wrong time. And the situation is deteriorating, impartial and unbiased. In today’s often swir- knees to chin, in the back of an armoured per- in part we believe because so few people have ling and confused conflicts, there are no set sonnel carrier (APC) for hours at a stretch. been held to account for attacking members of rules. Reporters are seen as belonging to one Embedded journalists were by and large the news media, and in part because the old side or another. Israeli soldiers and officials safer than non-embeds, or unilaterals. They rules that used to govern conflict, in which seem unable to comprehend that a Palestinian had a measure of safety provided by being reporters were largely accepted as impartial cameraman can be as honest a reporter as an protected by the most powerful side. But observers, have gone by the board. Into this situation comes INSI, dedicated to safeguarding journalists’ lives. It was the “Until now there has been virtually no intra-industry brainchild of IPI and IFJ. The initiative was backed last November by a conference of 100 coordination of safety policies. Although foreign corre- media organisations, press freedom groups and humanitarian campaigners, all deeply spondents often swap advice informally, no organi- concerned by the mounting death toll in the world news community. sation existed for editors around the world to share The Brussels-based institute, led and managed by media professionals, aims to help create a culture of safety in media in all corners safety information efficiently. INSI is the one-stop shop of the world. It recognises of course that brave reporting in the teeth of adversity is vital to for all news media workers, editors and executives.” free societies everywhere and never can be completely safe. Intrepid reporters, willing to risk their lives to expose wrongdoing and mis- Israeli. An Islamic fanatic can regard Western some wore uniforms. Did that make them ery, are vital to free societies everywhere. Their journalists as being on the side of a global war safer by blending into the crowd around them initiative cannot – must not – be snuffed out on Islam. An anti-globalisation rioter sees a or make them targets by appearing to be sol- by some overbearing “nannyism”. photographer as an arm of hated capitalism. diers? Unilaterals had more freedom to report However, there are many things concerned An American military media officer cannot all sides. But they were “owned” by neither. employers and working journalists, as well as accept that an Arab TV station can be unbi- Did that make them no one’s responsibility? governments and security forces, can and ased. At the very least those committed ele- Chillingly, Coalition media managers had should do to manage risk and maintain high ments do not care very much whether a made clear that the safety of unilaterals would quality reporting. reporter lives or dies on the bigger battlefield. not be guaranteed. To comprehend why INSI was deemed so At the most extreme end, the reporter is a tar- INSI wrote an open letter to both sides necessary by so many of us there has to be an get for their anger. before the war began appealing to them to understanding of the grave danger facing jour- INSI has recorded 20 journalists and their respect journalists’ neutrality and to avoid tar- nalists in so many parts of the world. The support staff dead in the Iraq conflict, plus geting civilian buildings where journalists Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says two missing and believed killed. Analysis might gather. Yet journalists were killed when 76 per cent of journalists who have died in the breaks this down to 12, or 14 if the missing American forces fired on the Palestine Hotel, past decade were murdered – targeted in are counted, claimed by acts of war. Five were well known as the Baghdad base for most of direct reprisal for their work. Ninety per cent killed by American fire, two by the Iraqi mili- the international media. of the dead were not international correspon- tary, one by Iraqi or U.S. fire – it is unclear INSI and other organisations also are dents parachuted into war, but ordinary jour- which side delivered the fatal blow – and four examining the Geneva Conventions to see if nalists trying to pursue their daily work at by unidentified anti-Coalition elements. Evi- they might be strengthened to provide partic- home, in their own countries. Most disturb- dence suggests the two missing ITN crew, ular protection for journalists in war zones. At ingly, in 94 per cent of the murders no one Fred Nerac and Hussein Osman, were in Iraqi the moment the journalist enjoys no more has been brought to justice. Many experts hands when they disappeared. Of eight who safeguards than any civilian. The issue is con- believe this lack of accountability has given a died from other causes, five were in road acci- troversial. Should a journalist be enshrined in sharp upward twist to the spiral of journalist dents, two succumbed to health-related af- international law as a more valuable person persecution. Killing a reporter has become a flictions and one stepped on a mine. than other civilians? What about the aid relatively risk-free activity. Many critical safety issues have arisen from workers and UN officials I mentioned earlier? Another twist to the vicious spiral has the Iraq conflict and need to be addressed by Some, like me, argue that journalists are a come from a widespread disregard of the old journalists and assigning editors. special case. They place themselves deliberate-

53 MONDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2003

ly in harm’s way in order to keep the world In a comprehensive paper on safeguarding not carry firearms in the course of their work. informed. If they did not do so, the flow of foreign journalists drawn up for the News- INSI urges employers not only to provide information that is the oxygen of free societies paper Association of America, Beth Howe of physical protection but also “armour for the would be cut off. After all, that is precisely the Kennedy School of Government at Har- mind”: free counselling for journalists who why journalists are targeted by elements who vard outlined the industry’s need: witness war’s horrors. The heavy-drinking, want the rest of us kept in the dark. And spe- “The risks of death, injury and mental volatile, morally-challenged war correspon- cial protection for journalists surely need not trauma faced by overseas journalists and free- dent is an international cliché, but there is no come at the expense of humanitarian workers lancers have ethical, financial and legal impli- divine law that says people who cover conflicts or other worthy workers. cations for their employers. Managers can have some inbuilt urge to abuse drink or Conflict reporting of course can never be reduce these undue risks significantly by pro- drugs or unleash their demons on their loved completely safe. But the danger can be reduced. viding their journalists with the proper train- ones. A recent study of 150 war journalists has Far too often, journalists still head out towards ing, equipment and safety guidance. established that conflict reporters have signif- trouble, whether war or violent protest, with- “Editors and publishers must actively pro- icantly more psychiatric problems than jour- out the most basic preparation. They charge mote safe behaviour by monitoring the situa- nalists who have never been in danger. The into situations about which they know little, tion in the countries from where their staff is rates of PTSD in war reporters were found to without proper safety equipment or health reporting, mandating training and modified be remarkably similar to soldiers who had awareness, when a little homework could make behaviour for those journalists travelling to faced combat, and higher than police. Yet a huge difference to their safe return. unstable or risk countries and providing staff while soldiers and police routinely receive ex- Many were appalled at the spectacle of with and requiring the use of safety equipment. tensive training to deal with violence, conflict hundreds of foreign journalists arriving in the Failure to do so may result in not only the reporters as a rule do not. Iraq war zone effectively naked. Malaysian tragedy of losing someone in the field but may Modern competitive pressures – especially journalists told me they did not even have gas also expose newspapers to potential legal action among 24-hour news channels – fuelled by masks when most experts were predicting by the families of those killed on the job.” technological advances that permit live battle- chemical or biological warfare. One Japanese Indeed, neglect can be costly. In 2001, the field reporting, are feared to be driving many correspondent politely inquired of a Western family of reporter Larry Lee sued his employer, journalists to take more risks. Successful war reporter the purpose of the sandbags around the financial news wire BridgeNews, claiming reporting can enhance a career like little else. his workspace. Few were protected by proper its negligence had led to his death in Gua- But more journalists and bosses are coming insurance, if they had any at all. One reporter temala. They alleged the company had failed to around to the view that no story is worth a life. told me that if he had been killed the insur- provide adequate training and protection for its Dead journalists, after all, do not tell tales. ance money would have gone to his employer. employee. The suit was settled out of court in The newspaper industry in general, and Only a handful of major networks and favour of the family. Experts in journalist safe- the American press in particular, has lagged newspapers sent experienced staff that had ty believe further suits will follow, not only in behind broadcasters in waking up to the safe- been trained to cope with hostile environments cases involving the death of a reporter but also ty issues. Chris Cramer of CNN is INSI’s and were adequately equipped with helmets, in situations where journalists suffer from Post Honorary President and a determined cam- respirators, flak jackets, even armoured cars. Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). paigner for our cause. He says the American Not all news organisations of course can indi- In this climate of greater danger to journal- news industry is in the dark ages when it vidually afford the safety nets deployed by the ists, wider safety awareness and increasing liti- comes to safety, despite the death of Daniel global giants. And even the big organisations giousness, INSI provides practical help. We Pearl and statistics showing the job of foreign are being stretched by their seemingly endless have published a 10-point safety code, which journalist as one of the most dangerous in the commitments to training and protection. This urges news organisations to consider safety United States. is where INSI comes into the picture. first before competitive advantage. It calls for INSI’s purpose is to help industry address Until now there has been virtually no all media staff to be given appropriate hostile these issues in effective and practical ways. It intra-industry coordination of safety policies. environment and risk awareness training as is not a reactive advocacy grouping, but a pro- Although foreign correspondents often swap well as protective health and safety equipment active organisation that aims to help try to advice informally, no organisation existed for such as medical packs, helmets, respirators and prevent the event that leads to a clamour of editors around the world to share safety infor- flak jackets. It calls for adequate insurance for protest and condemnation. mation efficiently. INSI is the one-stop shop staff and freelancers, counselling for journalists Since Ljubljana, INSI has launched formal- for all news media workers, editors and execu- traumatised by the horrors of conflict and freely. We have an interim advisory board, includ- tives. We serve as the global safety network, dom for any media worker to refuse an assigning founder members IPI and IFJ. We have establishing safety standards, funding safety ment to a danger zone without career penalty. already organised a couple of joint safety train- training for those unable to afford it, lobbying Journalists themselves must contribute to ing projects for needy journalists with the governments and news organisations to pro- the new safety ethic. They are urged to behave Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and vide greater safety protection, and serving as a responsibly and not recklessly endanger them- the Reuters Foundation. We have secured the safety information hub. selves and their colleagues. They are reminded backing of major security companies for a that journalists are neutral observers and should greater effort to bring training to journalists

54 most in need but with the least access. We have secured the financial support of leading news organisations such as the BBC, Reuters, CNN, ABC News, Al Jazeera, the Guardian, and others. We have begun work on a website which will serve as a global safety information and assistance hub. We have our first AGM this coming November to formalise everything. Of course, to fulfil our global mission and live up to the promise of Ljubljana we need wholehearted and consistent industry commitment. We are not commercial. We are a not-for-profit registered charity, run by professional journalists for professional journalists. We need money to run the website, for safety training courses for those in need and unable to afford their own, and for a small administration staff. We have a sliding scale of subscription des- cending from only € 5,000 for global news organisations to really small amounts for national news companies and journalist group- ings. For this, members get timely information on danger spots, the latest safety equipment and training, and other matters affecting the way we work under threat – critical matters that otherwise would take up much time and effort by a concerned news organisation acting for itself. Provision of proper safety where- withal – training, equipment, information – is proving to be a huge financial burden for car- ing companies. INSI can help with that by spreading the load – acting as a central industry resource, monitoring developments, providing up to the minute guidance and elimi- nating duplication. But most importantly, INSI members join a global news community dedicated to the safety of fellow journalists everywhere. We need to spread this global safety ethic from a few organisations at the top of the world news pyramid to hundreds at the base. So my appeal to you is to help yourselves and those less able, to say enough is enough, it is time to reduce journalist casualties. Do something about it by signing up your organisation as an INSI founder member. Calling on governments to do their bit, UNESCO on World Press Freedom Day last May – the day INSI was launched – said, “The debt we collectively incur when journalists suffer on our behalf must be repaid in practical ways.” That is what the Inter- national News Safety Institute is about. But ■ only with your help. ourismus Salzburg GmbH T Photo: TUESDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2003

SESSION VI Salzburg Congress Centre “Media Self- Regulation: A Press Free- dom Issue”

The British

Chairperson Hubert Feichtlbauer Former Chairman, Austrian Press Council Example

Panelists Robert Pinker Robert Pinker or require payments of financial compensa- tion. When a complaint is upheld, the offend- Privacy Commissioner and former Privacy Commissioner and former Acting Chairman, Acting Chairman, Press Complaints Press Complaints Commission, London ing newspaper or periodical must and does Commission, London publish the commission’s critical adjudication Keith Spicer am going to talk about the work of the Bri- with due prominence. tish Press Complaints Commission (PCC), What is the case for a self-regulatory sys- Director, Institute for Media, Peace I & Security, University for Peace, Paris; noting as I do so that there is no universal blue- tem? Press self-regulation serves two main former Chairman, Canadian Radio- print. There are many different kinds of coun- purposes. It protects press freedom and it pro- Television and Telecommunications cils and a great majority of them work well. tects citizens from abuses of those freedoms by Commission, Ottawa The PCC was established in 1991 and it the press. Freedom of expression and privacy Joerg Steinbach currently consists of 16 members, the majori- are both fundamental human rights, but they Chairman, Complaints Commission, ty of them laypersons working under an inde- can seldom if ever be treated as absolute rights German Press Council, Bonn pendent chairman. We are a self-regulatory because they so frequently come into conflict Jenerali Ulimwengu body in the sense that we are entirely inde- with each other. In seeking to reconcile these Vice President, Media Council of Tanzania, pendent of both the industry, which provides conflicts, regulatory bodies must give due Dar es Salaam funds, and the government. We deal with consideration to the claims of the public Andreas Unterberger complaints falling within the remit of the interest as well, although the nature of these Editor-in-Chief, Die Presse, Vienna industry’s Code of Practice. This code is kept claims varies according to who is advancing under continuous review by a small commit- them. We as a commission have to interpret tee made up of working editors. We are a self- and apply this concept and so for their part do regulatory body, which does not impose fines editors. Of course, there are from time to time

56 “Media self-regulation is the topic of this afternoon’s discussion. It will be based on certain

assumptions and some questions that arise from these: 1. Humans err. Media are operated by humans. Therefore media errs, too. How do they and media consumers cope with this

situation? 2. Media like to consider themselves as watchdogs of public life and society.

Watchdogs bite. Who bites the media? 3. In many countries the solution is the establishment of self-regulatory institutions such as press councils or media councils. Are they all they are promised to be? Are they really bulwarks of press freedom? Are they protection for readers,

viewers and the media alike? Are they instruments for guaranteeing credibility? 4. Humans differ. So do countries. So do regions and civilisations. Should media councils differ too

or is there one model for all media in the whole world? 5. We can all learn from each other.

What can we learn from different experiences with different media councils?” Hubert Feichtlbauer disagreements that arise. But the fact that such because it is accessible to everyone, rich and of informal conciliation between the com- conflicts do arise explains why some form of poor alike. It is fast and flexible in its conduct plainant, the newspaper and ourselves. Others press regulation is necessary. The dilemma we of business and with the appropriate institu- go all the way to a formal adjudication and face is not one of choosing between regulation tional safeguards it operates independently of some newspapers actually have their own in- and no regulation at all, but choosing between all special interests at no cost to either the tax- house ombudsman, or reader’s editor. Cases two different kinds of regulation, the statuto- payer or the complainant. that go all the way to adjudication do so either ry or the self-regularity options. But the business of self-regulation is a because there are prima facie grounds for With regard to the press, two powerful highly practical activity. Regulators, like edi- believing that the breach is potentially so seri- arguments can be advanced in defence of self- tors, have to apply general principles, which ous that an informal apology, a published let- regulation. First, as we already noted and know, often conflict with each other, and they apply ter or a voluntary correction would not be a a free press is one of the fundamental institu- them to specific cases as they arise in everyday sufficient remedy or because the editors are con- tional characteristics of a free society. Newspa- life. The code of practice, which the commis- vinced that they have not breached a code and pers and periodicals are public watchdogs. sion administers, provides the general frame- that a formal adjudication will vindicate them. They scrutinise those who exercise power and work within which these principles can be put The extent to which we can rely on such consequently they must be kept free from gov- into practice, and the British system is based voluntary compliance and correction explains ernment control. But media freedom is never on a clear-cut but complementary division of in large part why it takes us on an average only absolute in any country. It is subject to many responsibilities between the industry and the 32 working days to conclude a complaint from legal restraints, which in the United Kingdom press and the PCC. The code belongs to the the date of its reception to the date of its dis- include laws of defamation, data protection industry, which is responsible for upholding patch. Over 60 per cent of our complaints are and so on. And in the absence of an effective, its requirements and keeping it up to date. so resolved. self-regulatory system it is more likely than The commission is responsible for administer- The code sets out not only the principles not that these types of legal restraints on free- ing and enforcing the code. which editors voluntarily agree to abide by, but dom of expression would extend rather than A self-regulatory system creates a level also the exceptions which might be pleaded on contract. But if the state were to become con- playing field for all the players, who voluntar- the part of an editor who might seem to breach tinuously involved in regulating the day-to- ily subscribe to the same code of practice. In the code but do so in what is termed the pub- day conduct of news gathering and publica- the case of the UK, that is how we started. The lic interest. An editor might for example argue tion in ways that went beyond these formal industry was asked to write its own code and that it was necessary to invade somebody’s pri- legal restraints such regulation would eventu- therefore it could never thereafter turn around vacy because there was a public interest to be ally become synonymous with statutory cen- and say that this code was an alien document served by investigating and publishing a partic- sorship of the printed word. imposed upon it by people who had no idea of ular story. That public interest is set out in the Secondly, the case for self-regulation rests what the realities of producing the news are. code. It includes three key issues: detecting or on the premise that in complex, democratic I will add one point to demonstrate the exposing crime or serious misdemeanour; pro- societies self-imposed rule will carry a moral effectiveness of a self-regulatory system. In re- tecting public health and safety; and sometimes authority and consequently work with greater cent years, the commission has developed two more controversially, preventing the public effectiveness than externally imposed legal complementary procedures for the resolution from being misled from some statement or rules. Self-regulation at its best works well of complaints. Some are resolved by the means action of an individual or an organisation. ■

57 TUESDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2003

Relativism, the Role of Culture and a Canadian Case Study

Keith Spicer quieu, in his Lettres Persanes, argued that the Senator Joe Lieberman, Senator Fritz Hollings – Director, Institute for Media, Peace & Security, people in Persia defined freedom as the right and we talked with people in Hollywood. University for Peace, Paris; former Chairman, to wear a long beard. Indeed that might still The FCC simply did not see a violence Canadian Radio-Television and be so in some societies today. In some coun- problem. When I spoke to my opposite number Telecommunications Commission, Ottawa tries, sex is a big problem. Violence is a big there he said, “What violence problem?”, and I would like to emphasise the relativism of problem in Canada. We do not tolerate that mentioned the incontrovertible medical evi- I freedom in any society; secondly, the role very readily; we like to see ourselves as the dence about hurting children. Then I said, of culture; then give you an example of a case peaceful kingdom, just as Sweden used to. I “Well, what bothers you?”, and he said, study in which we dealt with television vio- think you can look at any society in the world “Indecency.” This time, I did not know what he lence in Canada. This case will probably hor- and find that freedom is not absolute. It is rel- was talking about. I guess he meant sex and foul rify you because it does not sound as if we ative to something. language. We are not really upset by sex in were in favour of free speech. But we really With regard to the role of culture in settling Canada. The weather is too cold; we have to do were. The issue was whether toy companies disputes about alleged censorship, in my coun- something to keep warm! would censor what small children watched, or try we have a consensual approach to things, a So there is an issue about how each country whether parents would. non-legalistic one. I think the best metaphor for deals with social and cultural issues. It is First of all, I think we all agree that freedom Canadians is a group of Indians sitting around impossible to define a common regulatory or is not unlimited. It is relative to each nation’s a campfire, talking a question to death. Talking self-regulatory system for the world. Content culture. If you look at the United States, you until everybody falls asleep is called consensus. regulation has to be at arm’s length from any might put great stock in its First Amendment. We do not like hard, sharply defined issues; we government agency, and adapted to each coun- But I think you will find lots of exceptions. I do not go to lawyers for many things. In the try’s vision of society. would argue that every society has its blank case of television violence, what we did was, I In response to the question on the agenda, spots, and maybe even its hypocrisies. For ex- think, rather unorthodox, but it worked. It is self-regulation a free-speech issue? Of course ample, I am thinking of Howard Stern, the probably does not work in theory, but it worked it is. But free speech is not the only issue. It shock-radio man who was fined five million in practice. has to be situated in the context of society – dollars by the Federal Communications Com- What did we do? There was a horrific mas- against health problems, public safety or secu- mission (FCC) in the United States. In my sacre of 14 young women at the École rity problems, and other freedoms a society humble country, Canada, which is basically re- Polytechnic in Montreal. Such an event would holds important. garded as semi-communistic by lots of Ameri- shock any society, but in Canada, the so-called Perhaps we can all agree on the principle of cans, we have never fined anybody a nickel for peaceful kingdom, it was traumatic. As broad- ambiguity. I would argue that the role of a news- saying anything on the radio. We have had peo- casting regulators, we decided that we would do paper or other media outlet is to stand for the ple similar to Howard Stern, but we did sneaki- whatever we could to prevent such horrors, but principle of free speech. All is in the diagnosis. I er things with them. We shortened the broad- without regulating. We would undertake a certainly defend freedom of speech, but I do not casting licence, we forced owners to spend multi-year system of educating the industry and think I could define in the abstract, and for all money in testifying; but we never fined them. the public, using the medical evidence of the possible cases, where the frontiers are. We never took them off the air; we never threat- damage caused to children 12 years and Every profession has its hypocrisies. If you ened to do that. I just throw that in to under- younger by a relentless diet of television vio- are going to be honest as a journalist, you line that freedom, even in a country like the lence. We used mostly American medical have to say you are going to explore the fron- United States, is relative – and I think it is in research to do this. We made reforms in Canada tiers of freedom every day. And you have to other countries. that could not happen in the United States recognise, with a little humility, that these Take any society in the world and you will because of an absolutist obsession with the First may change every day, in different ways, in find different definitions of freedom. Montes- Amendment. We worked with U.S. legislators – any given society. ■

58 Joerg Steinbach Chairman, Complaints Commission, German Press Council, Bonn

New Tasks wo years ago the new Federal Data Pro- rent regulation according to which the Press drawals, counter-representations or reprimands T tection Act was adopted and the German Council controls implementation of the new by the German Press Council, these reactions Press Council was given the task of monitor- data protection regulations in editorial offices. must be added to the saved or archived data. If ing the protection of personal data in editori- This means that the press retains a special posi- a person’s right to privacy is impaired by a press al offices. Our new task is to support the edi- tion. What is most important is that no state publication, the editorial office is required torial offices of newspapers and magazines in supervision was set up for the field of data pro- upon request to give the affected party infor- securing personal data that has been research- cessing in the journalistic editorial sector. mation about the personal data that has been ed, processed or archived there. We will also The German Press Council was brought in saved if they were the basis of the reporting. monitor the implementation of the statutory as a self-regulation body: “The contents of this Another example: According to the recom- tasks. This is what the legislature wants. self-regulation shall be codes of conduct and mendations of the Press Council, personal da- The process was started by a European Uni- recommendations, regular reporting on editori- ta collected as an infringement of the press on directive from 1995. Its transposition into al data protection and the creation of a com- code should be blocked or deleted. Further- German law was a task for the Federal Govern- plaints procedure which opens up the opportu- more, the Press Council has set up a second ment and ended up in an amendment to the nity of internal press monitoring of the han- committee that specifically deals with com- Federal Data Protection Act. Two demands dling of personal data for the party concerned.” plaints concerning data protection legislation. had to be brought together. The right of every This committee was constituted in March citizen to data protection and freedom of the Just like the general complaints 2002 and has already decided on several cases. press as guaranteed in the basic law. committee, the complaints com- In one case, a newspaper had reported on the In order to be able to perform their tasks complaint of a newspaper seller and in the derived from the basic law, journalists must mittee for editorial data protection process printed an extract from an official let- collect, save, and use personal data, including is made up of equal numbers of ter. Although the addressee’s name had been especially sensitive data. They must be able to journalists and publishers, and blacked out, the name, position, office address do this work free of intervention from the complaints are also assessed on and telephone number of the civil servant state. That is why traditionally there was the who had signed the letter and was not even so-called “privilege of the press”. Initially, the the basis of the press code the subject of the report could be read. This is Federal Ministry of the Interior wanted to an example of the careless handling of person- greatly limit this privilege. Data protection The first measure that the German Press al data and a violation of the press code as the commissioners under state supervision were to Council took was to supplement the press members of the complaints committee found. monitor journalists’ research and editorial code and the guidelines by several passages. They expressed disapproval. work. Wide-ranging obligations to pay dam- This defined the right to informational self- With this procedure the German Press ages would have hampered journalistic re- determination. This right, a manifestation of Council is continuing its long established, self- search and would have entailed the reversal of the general right to privacy, is the material regulation practice in data protection in the the burden of proof to the detriment of the heart of data protection legislation and is de- journalistic and editorial sector. Just like the editorial offices concerned. signed to protect the individual’s rights from general complaints committee, the complaints The German Press Council was up in arms. being impaired due to the handling of person- committee for editorial data protection is made Above all, it felt that the protection of sources al data. At the same time, it means that the up of equal numbers of journalists and pub- was no longer guaranteed and consequently the individual decides on the surrendering and lishers, and complaints are also assessed on the job of the press was restricted. The Press use of his or her data. basis of the press code. The measures can take Council condemned the plans of the Federal Recently the Press Council has been recom- the form of a comment, disapproval or a rep- Minister of the Interior, Otto Schily, as “cen- mending that editors no longer print addresses rimand. A reprimand must be published by sorship by the backdoor” and thus met with a when publishing readers’ letters. If an article the organ of the press concerned in accor- great response in the media. This led to the cur- leads to the publication of corrections, with- dance with the voluntary commitment.

59 TUESDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2003

Within the context of a voluntary commitment campaign, the Press Council asked the publishers to participate. The publishers should declare the support for the extended press code and the principles of editorial data protection contained therein. The publishing houses organised in the Federal Association of Newspaper Publishers and the Association of German Magazine Publishers were contacted first. The other publishing houses were also asked to submit their declaration. A sector-wide declaration of voluntary The African commitment is thus in a way the nationwide mandate for the Press Council. It is of key Jenerali Ulimwengu tempt by government to impose a statutory importance for the legislative recognition of Vice President, Media Council of Tanzania, body to regulate the press. We recognised this model of internal-press self-regulation. In Dar es Salaam very fast the dangers inherent in such a the wake of a forthcoming amendment to the move, because we thought it was another Federal Data Protection Act, in particular, frica presents a particular case of press move to strengthen the hand of government politicians will keep a watchful eye on it. A regulation that needs to be studied. clamping down on press freedom. One Within the context of the first contacts with This is basically because we are still strug- would have thought at the time that this the publishing houses it can be seen that the gling to emerge from a certain situation move by the government was completely un- field of data protection in editorial offices has that is really inimical to good journalism. necessary because of the way that our work is sometimes not even been considered. Some of Even as we look at what has happened over regulated in Tanzania already. the editorial offices have no idea of what will the past ten years or so, the so-called demo- The government can get at you as a press be coming their way soon and what they cratisation, we realise that it is still fragile, practitioner through the following means: should and have to do. The Press Council is delicate and weak. The people yearn for 1. There is a penal code, the criminal therefore increasingly in demand for support. freedom. They may not be sophisticated, code that governs everybody. Issues like But not much will be changing in compar- but they do feel when they are being hem- defamation, libel, sedition, obscenity, you ison to the previous situation. The regulations med in by an overweening, ruling class that name it, all are contained in the penal code. in the Federal Data Protection Act, which will can neither provide the food and shelter So even libel is criminalised when you would also apply in press enterprises, are not really and clothing that the people need, nor the have thought this belongs in the private new at all. Both data secrecy and technical space for the people to say that they are not domain and that whoever feels that he has and organisational precautions had to be con- getting the food and shelter and clothing been defamed should have recourse to a sidered even before the amendment of the that they need. court of law in a civil suit. Federal Data Protection Act. But what is new 2. Then you have the Newspaper Act of is the intensity with which the legislature will What we have achieved is not 1976 which is another instance of criminal- monitor compliance with data protection in irreversible. We have to stay ising press activity, because you can be sent the future and the main new feature is that the vigilant, but always strike a very to jail for defaming a leader or a member of legislature will transfer the task of guarantee- tenuous balance between free- the public. ing compliance with data protection in jour- 3. Then you have the National Security nalism and editorial work to a voluntary self- dom in the media and the res- Act, where so many things cannot be said or regulation body. Within the editorial offices, ponsibility that the media have written that may, in one way or another, no state or company data protection commis- hurt National Security. sioner will monitor data collection, processing The leadership or the ruling cliques in 4. The Official Secrets Act can also send or use. However, the editorial offices are now Africa are determined to hold on to power you to jail. called upon to take measures for data security no matter what. One way that they can do On top of that, the government still wan- themselves if they have not already done so. this is by making sure that the press does ted to have a statutory council, which could Depending on the editorial office concerned, not work properly; that media cannot voice impose sanctions and maybe send people to the security concept can vary. The setting up the discontent of the people. Therefore, jail because they had wronged the provisions of access control to the editorial rooms, trig- the tendency to want to muzzle the press of the Press Council Act, which was fortu- gered by a chip card, and the installation of by whatever means available is very much nately refused. electronic firewalls and PCs are just two in evidence. After rejecting the government proposed examples. The German Press Council will The formation of the Media Council of deal for the establishment of the Press Coun- provide help in this matter. ■ Tanzania (MCT) was a reaction to an at- cil, we realised that it was imperative for us

60 Context

to move very fast to establish our own non- statutory media council, which we did. Stake- holders got together to form this council and in order to make it more effective decided to ask prominent, well-respected members of the public to come and join us in doing this work. The delicate situation we are placed in dic- tates that a lot of what we do has an input from the public. This why it is difficult to regulate the media in the way that you regulate medical doctors, or lawyers or engineers. No lawyer usually invites an outside person, a non-legal person, to come and do legal work for him. But we have to provide a space for the general public to voice their opinions through our newspapers or through our radio and television stations. So the public becomes a very important player in the work that we do as journalists and thus it is important for them help us do our work. As Prof. Pinker said, it is not a choice between having some regulation and not having to publish whatever we want to publish, to any regulation at all. It is an question of what malign whoever we want to malign, to an ex- kind of regulation do you want to have so that tent that there is a backlash from the public, you can find a judicious means between these which feels really insulted by what we write two horns of the dilemma. One is the freedom and broadcast and asks the government to of the press that we all crave, that we all cam- intervene and to teach us a few lessons. This paign for and advocate, and the other is the would be something that the government has responsibility first to ourselves and to the pub- been waiting for. So we have to move before lic that we are supposed to be serving. If we do this happens, to always be on top of the situ- not do it ourselves, then in the African con- ation, to make sure that whatever we do is text you can be sure that the government will appreciated and whoever amongst ourselves step in. The governments in all African states, wrongs, shames and abuses the profession is except for a few, are already doing this. What named and shamed. It is always going to be a we have achieved is not irreversible. We have very delicate task. We have to approach it with to stay vigilant, but always strike a very tenu- the humility it deserves. Some of the African ous balance between freedom in the media nations have already examined this situation and the responsibility that the media have. and have taken measures and formed various The ultimate tragedy would be that there is organisations and they are in various degrees some laissez-faire type of situation, which of development. I think that with a little bit of allows us to do anything that we want to do, luck, we shall succeed. ■

61 TUESDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2003

Andreas Unterberger Editor-in-Chief, Die Presse, Vienna

Points of Dissatisfaction agree of course with the good intention of all the other media that do, as I said, compete unions, the publishing houses, the association Ihaving some form of self-regulation for with us, that can also violate the same values, of the publishing houses. These institutions, journalists, because it is obviously a ground the same human beings, as the printed press? Of which have the power in Austria to appoint rule of any liberal society to have as little inter- course, there are some regulations, but they are staff to the panels, the juries, that decide in ference of the state as possible in any kind of different regulations and it is always much easi- each case, are not the very best source for staff. activity. But good intentions do not always er to complain against a newspaper, and the They are politicised and they have very special bring good results. The purpose of such self- procedures in the Press Council are much easier interests that are completely different to the regulated bodies is obviously to have fast reac- than any of the procedures for the other men- real purpose of such a body. tions to any misbehaviour of journalists. That tioned media. Perhaps it is not my duty here to make pro- is definitely a good aspect of such a council. Another complaint that I have in the way posals, but I really think that it would be The purpose is also to have a lot of journalistic that the Austrian Press Council was handled is much better if a group of retired journalists, experience involved in the procedures. That is a kind of amateurism that I found there. I or retired editors-in-chief like Hubert Feichtl- also a very positive aspect. Another purpose is think if it wants to be taken serious, it must bauer, sit together and vote once a year on the to find solutions without any clear, defined pursue certain clear, defined rules of proce- panels for the next year. This is just an idea law. Well that can be good, but it can also be a dures. For example, a paper and a defendant and there are other models possible, but I also bad aspect of such councils. Nullum crimen must get a clear accusation before the meeting think that freedom of journalists should also sine lege, no crime without a law, is a good of the Council. Simply to write, “By these ar- include freedom from the unions and freedom principle for any court-like procedure, and the ticles you have violated the principles of jour- from the publishing houses. fact that press councils are a kind of court-like nalistic work,” is not enough if you are not This independent body I am dreaming of procedure is quite obvious. informed how you violated these articles. It could also develop new recommendations for But I have also some other points of dis- reminds me of Franz Kafka, the Central Euro- the behaviour of the media, since new prob- satisfaction, especially with the Austrian way pean author, who described a similar proce- lems, new possible ways of misbehaviour, are of handling the press council. That dissatisfac- dure in his famous book, “The Trial”. always developing. For example, I find it nec- tion has led to the withdrawal of my paper Of course, there must also be a clear verdict essary to define rules for the clear separation from the activities of the Austrian Press at the end of the trial if no compromise is of commercial and journalistic content. It Council. As some of you might know, when found. I certainly subscribe to what was said at could and should also deal with the rules of we did decide to give the Council a second the beginning, that a compromise between the information from public institutions, which chance, the Council had stopped operating media and the person or persons who feel vio- do too much overprotecting of data. This completely due to internal conflicts, which I lated by an article is best. But if that is not body should also develop codes for taking or, will discuss later. found then I think we have the clear right for a sometimes stealing, quotes and information For me, and this issue was not mentioned by written statement of what we have done wrong, from other media. It could and should discuss any of my fellow panelists, a big problem is that how it was done, and what rule was violated. the problems of obstructing criminal proce- the Austrian Press Council only deals with the I think it is also necessary to have one law- dures. In Sweden, during the past days, we printed press, although we are in competition yer in the panel so at least primitive rules of saw a discussion about media doing that. with television, radio, the Internet, perhaps also fair trial are observed. So I think there is a broad and large field the book market. Can such a council only look Finally, I see such a body completely mis- of activities for such a council, but I think at the products of the printed press, or is it not placed under the control of the so-called so- that it must be professional in its work and necessary to have a more comprehensive look at cial partners, as they are known in Austria, the not an amateurish council. ■

62 Photo: Tourismus Salzburg GmbH TUESDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2003

SESSION VII Salzburg Congress Centre “The Trans- atlantic Rift”

Chairperson Eugen Freund Special Correspondent, Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF), Vienna

Introductory Remarks What’s New? Sir Peter Ustinov recently bought a copy of Foreign Affairs Eugen Freund I at the airport and the whole issue deals Special Correspondent, Austrian Broadcasting with what we are discussing this morning. Corporation (ORF), Vienna Panelists Ronald D. Asmus writes in his opening para- Franziska Augstein graph, “One of the most striking conse- years after it came to power, the Bush admin- Editor, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich quences of the Bush administration’s foreign istration, elected by fewer than half of the vot- Gilbert Grellet policy tenure has been the collapse of the ers, has an impressive but depressing record.” Atlantic alliance. Long considered America’s I also heartedly recommend Clyde Presto- Director, External Relations, Agence France Presse (AFP), Paris most important alliance and a benchmark witz’s book, “Rogue Nation”, to all who want by which a president’s foreign policy skill to know why the U.S. has become so hated by Daniel Hamilton is measured, the U.S.-European relationship so many. Director, Center for Transatlantic Relations, has been shaken to its foundations over a To put this all into historical – and I stress Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins series of disputes that culminated in the U.S.- historical, not hysterical – perspective, I want University, Washington, DC; and former led war in Iraq.” to quote from an issue of the International U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Of course, Asmus was not the first, and he Herald Tribune. It reads, “The disarray has for European Affairs is certainly not going to be the last, to have been strikingly evident in the past seven Stuart Loory these kinds of observations. months in clashes over Middle East policy and Editor, IPI Global Journalist; Robert Kagan, in his book, “Of Paradise the response to Iran and Afghanistan. While all and Lee Hills Chair in Free Press Studies, and Power”, an expanded version of an essay profess a desire to strengthen unity, the United University of Missouri School of Journalism, originally published as “Power and Weakness” States and its allies seem to have drifted farther Columbia, MO in Policy Review, coined the wonderful term, apart than at any time since World War II.” Peter Preston “Americans are from Mars and Europeans are The German weekly, Die Zeit, writes, Director, Guardian Foundation, London from Venus.” “Hardly a week passes in which the foreign Stanley Hoffmann wrote in The New York policy interests of the United States do not Review of Books, “Less than two and a half collide with those of the Europeans.”

64 “Many of the frictions we see derive not from the fact that our societies are drifting apart, but in fact because our societies are smashing into each other.” Daniel Hamilton Sir Peter Ustinov A Temporary Thing

In case you want to rush to the nearest efore I say anything, I want to make I went out. There is always that possibility. newsstand to get these issues of Die Zeit Bone thing clear, as John Major used to The founding fathers of America must and the Herald Tribune, do not bother. say and then muddied the waters after that, be slowly turning in their graves with the They appeared in June 1980. and that is that anything I say must not be present events, because America was, after So what’s new? Is it really, like many interpreted as being anti-American or anti- the shock of World War II, eager to rebuild political observers from both sides expect, anything. I always live in hopes that there the League of Nations into something rather the beginning of an end of an era, or are will not be any antis and for a democracy it different. She set an example with Bretton we just witnessing the low tide of some- is very difficult to be anti all the time, be- Woods, and her wisdom, especially with thing that eventually will be repaired? cause conditions change. I wrote recently in things like the Marshall Plan, are extraordi- How much do personalities have to do an Austrian newspaper that if the American nary. In her own short history, she made her with all these misunderstandings and the public is satisfied with George W. Bush it mark on the world in no uncertain fashion rift in the transatlantic alliance? When I means only one thing, that Bill Clinton was and has been on the whole helpful. say personalities, I could easily be more a man of quite unnecessary brilliance. A yardstick for common men like myself precise and pinpoint it to one single name, I think the situation now is not as terrible is that the man in the streets in the United George W. Bush. Are our present tensions as people imagine; they boost it a great deal States is far nicer than the size and the just the consequence of the end of the but we are still all eager to overlook the fact power of the country would lead you to Cold War? How much has the war in Iraq that recently French camembert has been expect. In other words, they are much nicer put additional strains on relations? Is the thrown into the ashcan and French wine than the English or the French or the U.S. trying to insert a wedge between the down the toilet, which are infantile reactions Russians were when they were at the height so-called old and new Europe? If so, why? and unworthy perhaps of thinking people. I of their powers. And that speaks a great deal These are but a few of the questions that remember that already in 1983 when the for them in any case, and they are also I hope we will address this morning. I Korean airliner crashed, I could not get a resilient and open to new ideas. trust that this very distinguished panel Bloody Mary in New York served with But when George Bush came into power will be more than capable of answering at Soviet vodka. “We don't have none.” Well, after the terrible shock of 9/11, he suddenly least some of them. ■ I did not have my Bloody Mary, that’s all. said, “Anyone who is not for us is against

65 TUESDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2003

us,” with a kind of hermitic conviction which to push their ideas through. In fact, George to expect by the Constitution. I must say in boded ill because nobody can say that in the Bush said that if they do not accede to our my defence that I love America. I work there modern world. There are far too many nuan- demands the United Nations is going to go often, but having worked there, many ces and life is far too interesting to say that. back to the League of Nations and be ineffec- Americans looked at me with slight suspicion You cannot put everybody against you because tual for the rest of its existence. This is and said, “Peter, you worked here so often why they are not for you. That is an absurdity. absolutely untrue because the United Nations aren’t you a citizen?” I answered quite honest- Then it was followed almost immediately by a with all its agencies, which are the only agen- ly, “I cannot swear allegiance to a flag unless I declaration of war on terrorism, which I cies of their kind in the world, are a guarantee know who is holding it.” And this seems to me maintain is nonsense because war and terror- and headed by an extraordinary, wise African. primordial. If it is Senator McCarthy holding ism are intrinsically the same things, except When you first look at Kofi Annan, he it, there is no chance I would ever be a citizen, that terrorism is the war of the dispossessed looks like a lamb on the way to the slaughter. or George Bush. So the trouble is one has to and war is the terrorism of the powerful. And one thought to oneself, “Oh God, Mrs. wait for the next election and you cannot be Albright has her patsy who is going to do consistent. America, having no possibility for War and terrorism are intrinsi- exactly what he’s told,” and he turned out to obvious reasons of being patriotic on an ethnic cally the same things, except be the exact opposite. He spoke as mildly as ground, thank God, has to take a piece of cloth ever, but what he said was trenchant very as a symbol, which it does with a great veraci- that terrorism is the war of often and as far as he could go without being ty and all its politicians wear little American the dispossessed and war is the dangerous to everybody. He is an extraordi- flags in their buttonholes. I’m dying to buy a terrorism of the powerful nary man. I saw him in Basel at a congress in few other flags to put in my buttonhole when which he was supposed not to turn up. I was I go back to let them see that there are other In the invasion of Iraq, it started out with warned not to go by UNICEF because he possibilities. an air attack, which had the soubriquet would not be there. He was there and at the “Shock and Awe”. I suppose it was intended final concert he played the drums with the The confusion which reigns to hit only the bad guys and then it was African delegation. It was one of the most in Iraq today is indicative of the expected that the good guys would come out heart-warming things that I have ever seen with flowers to welcome the invader. I do not because he has the gift of making contact and fact that they prepared know how anybody with any experience in the being human and that is terribly important in themselves for war in the most world could have had such expectations. I am this world. efficient kind of way but amazed that it happened. The confusion Now of course, I do not know what is made no provisions for what which reigns in Iraq today is indicative of the going to happen. I do not see why Europe fact that they prepared themselves for war in should help the United States in its perplexity happened afterwards the most efficient kind of way but made no after so many wrong decisions in trying to get provisions for what happened afterwards. it out of this mess, especially after the destruc- People often ask me, especially in America, They said they could not know what was tion of the UN mission by terrorists who mis- “What are your roots?” They are always in going to happen. took the United Nations for something else. search of roots, because they are so recent. My Well of course, if you are going to take an Let us help in other ways, but not that. The roots are, I hope, in civilised behaviour and initiative of that kind you have got to know Security Council cannot condone the extraor- more than that I do not ask for, because I what is going to happen. You have got to have dinary lapse of judgement that occurred in the think that this is the future. I think war as a some inkling of what is going to happen. United States at this moment. method of settling differences is out of date. Unfortunately, they did not and they still have Mind you, this is a temporary thing. We have seen that it is not only costly but it is not, and now they are asking for the help of I think the Americans have a gift of scaring ugly and it is a thing from the past. With foot- the United Nations after a very disgraceful the world because they are so strong. ball around and the World Cup and the performance in the UN. Disgraceful because McCarthy already scared the world and it did Olympic Games, who needs war? It makes the it went against any concept of democracy not come off. With George Bush it did come same appeal to human nature as war does even which they hold so dear. They could never off for a while, but I am absolutely convinced if there are some misguided people who kill have won the vote in the Security Council. that every time I call and talk to somebody in each other in the tribunes. You cannot expect The French were against it. The Russians, America they are all absolutely horrified by a transition from one method of warfare to whom everyone thought would need the things that go on. another without a few casualties. That is a Americans too badly at this moment, were So America is an enormous democracy, a statement worthy of Mr. Rumsfeld. absolutely steadfast. Eventually the Chinese free-thinking place, a place which is so large On that happy note, I am sure that things also came in and they are the three votes that that sometimes it is a little bit difficult to will regulate themselves because the rift is not count. There were only two against them, the understand, especially when an election of a as great as people think and it will not be United States and Great Britain, and they nation of 280 million people is finally decided permanent. Of that I am absolutely sure. ■ tried every manoeuvre in the United Nations my nine old men. This is not what you are led

66 Daniel Hamilton Director, Center for Transatlantic Relations, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC; former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs

Drifting Apart or Smashing into Each Other?

lived in Berlin during most of the 1980s the range of caricatures that one is experienc- mains for many Europeans the framing event, I and when the Berlin Wall came down I ing across the Atlantic. In my mind, the de- the way in which many Europeans tend to worked with Ted Koppel and ABC News bate about Iraq was less about Iraq per se, look at not only at themselves but at the rest of Nightline to start a series on what was crum- although it is important, and more about the world. It was an amazing event, the col- bling in Eastern Europe, starting with East what our actions and expressions on Iraq on lapse of an old order, the beginning of some- Berlin. We worked on this for a number of both sides of the Atlantic are saying to each thing new. There were a lot of fears associated months and finally ABC said, “We can’t run other about our future behaviour toward each with that transition, but when one looks at it this series.” We were flabbergasted and we other and perhaps some fears about what Iraq today one sees the potential of something ama- asked, “Why can’t you run it? This is history; might say about our future behaviour. zingly positive. The earthquakes that are still this is huge.” And they said, “Well, because rumbling this continent from the East are still the ratings are going down with all this stuff Iraq, while certainly the impetus shaking and have the potential of transforming about walls coming down.” When they looked for a lot of transatlantic crisis, Europe and really creating a continent that is at their viewers the answer was they had no whole and free and at peace with itself for the context to understand what it meant that the does not really explain the depth first time in its history. It is an amazingly pos- Berlin Wall had fallen and that Communism of emotion and the range of itive possibility. It is, of course, a possibility to in Eastern Europe had crumbled. The ratings caricatures that one is experienc- which many Americans have contributed for for news in United States actually went down ing across the Atlantic decades, and to which many Americans con- in those months, not up. And so it led to can- tinue to participate and to advance. cellations of news programming on an amaz- The expansion and the deepening of Eu- ing historical event. I think it is just one les- In that type of debate, caricatures and sim- rope is an overwhelming agenda. It is an over- son to me about the importance of context in ple political cartooning of the other side be- whelming perspective. When one comes to how one views the news and certain issues. comes important because one’s perception of Europe and lives here one sees how totally I think Eugen Freund’s retrospective press one’s partner is a reflection of course of one’s overwhelming it is. All the headlines are analysis is helpful in that as well, because the self-perception. One analyses and looks at the mainly about that project and that focus. And headline today is more like the kind of head- world from where one is in one’s own world- I think for most Americans, despite the failing line you read when you leave the supermarket, view. So I step back a bit and in fact come context, that project was also our project until “Can this Marriage be Saved?” And I think it back to some framing events that I think are 11 September 2001. On that day I would ar- is important because Iraq, while certainly the influencing the way Europeans and Americans gue that for many Americans 9 November impetus for a lot of transatlantic crisis, does look at the world and look at each other. became a bookend to an era of transition. not really explain the depth of emotion and In my mind, 9 November 1989 still re- It was important, but no longer “the project”.

67 TUESDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2003

The way many Americans, beyond the Bush ing a certain political agenda. I would argue simply that this relationship still remains the administration, think of this world is simply that, but I do not think that is my point or my decisive relationship for our planet. When something very different today. purpose here today. The media reporting on it Europeans and Americans agree on any topic We are having a fundamental debate in is quite striking. I was living in Austria last they are almost always the core of any global United States about the future direction of spring and it was as though we were experi- effort that achieves any type of progress. And American foreign policy. It is equivalent to encing two different events, two different when Europeans and Americans disagree on the debate one had in the late 1940s when worlds – the reporting in the spring on the any topic, we are the global break. We stop after World War II we had for a number of Iraq crisis, here and in the United States. I everything. I do not think one can say that years a fairly open-ended debate about the think for me the most symbolic difference about any other relationship that Europeans U.S. role in the world. I would suggest that came on one day in which the headline all have with any other partner and I do not be- our debate is just as fundamental today. through Europe was the meeting of EU lead- lieve Americans can say that about any other When one has a fundamental debate one asks ers in Athens to seal the enlargement of Euro- relationship either. So we are still decisive very open-ended fundamental questions. pe. The headline all through the United States partners. The question is whether we are go- That is why some of these questions are irri- that day was the meeting of U.S. commanders ing to use that partnership to advance things tating to Europeans, for example when one in the Abu Ghraib palace after they had just or whether we are going to spend our time asks, “What’s Europe worth today to us?” entered Baghdad and were deciding what to confronting each other rather than dealing That is a very irritating question, of course, do with Iraq. The news could not have been with our challenges. when one thinks that Europe is worth quite more different as the headline and the main I think the second element that is impor- a bit, thank you, or that the partnership has theme of society. tant is that the focus of our relationship has endured for decades. But that is the type of The danger that we have in this debate is shifted. For 60 years, transatlantic relations debate we are having. that we use the other as a very easy and lazy were about stabilising Europe. It was about At that point, the issue of containment of temptation; we use the other as the instru- stability on the European continent and the the Soviet Union became a sort of organising ment with which to either bash one’s domes- measuring stick of the health of our relation- principle for U.S. foreign policy. Today the tic opponents or advance a certain political ship was how many troops were based in Ger- question is whether the threat of terrorism agenda. I see that happening all the time. many or on the European continent. I would joined with weapons of mass destruction be- argue that that is gone. If you were to ask comes somewhat of a principle organising the The danger that we have in this most Americans, in good American English, way we go about our business in the world. It debate is that we use the other as they would say, “Europe is fixed.” That is how is an open debate. As Sir Peter said, there are they would express it. It is not fixed, but that many things that are quite open about the a very easy and lazy temptation; is a prevalent view. The strategic focus of our United States and I think that this debate is we use the other as the instrument relationship is not the stability of Europe, it is still open. But I think it is important to un- with which to either bash one’s whether Europeans and Americans are pre- derstand the fact that we are having this deba- domestic opponents or advance pared to deal with a whole range of broader te right now. It is a very fluid process. At the global issues that neither partner is going to same time, Europe is in fluid transition. The a certain political agenda deal with on its own. It is an open question, divisions last spring were as much divisions but I think that is where all the dangers are, all within Europe as between a Europe and an It seems to me our challenge is to resist that the frictions in the relationship and all the America and I think that it is very important temptation and to try to reconcile a bit the possibilities. But you have to think of the rela- to understand that point. perspective of 9 November, which I do think is tionship in a new way. It is about all these But 9 November says to us hope, new hori- a tremendously positive one, with the chal- other challenges today and less about stability zons, new possibilities. The possibility of eter- lenges that are posed by what 11 September in Europe. nal peace on the European continent. 11 has come to mean. And as we do that, I would The last piece that I would argue is how we September says to us tragedy, the end of illu- simply suggest that we keep track of some talk about globalisation, because it is an easy sions, new dangers. 9 November says to us the basic fundamentals here about the relationship term that falls off the lips. Usually the report- worst is over. 11 September says to us the between Europeans and Americans. When you ing is about its impact beyond the transat- worst may still be to come. So, if you look at have open debates you are not quite sure where lantic community. It is how it is affecting the world through one or the other perspec- your coordinates are anymore and in connec- nations in Africa, in Asia and so on. If you tive your debate is simply different. Even if tion with the end of the Cold War many look at any objective standard of interaction you talk about the same issues, you are talking Americans and I think many Europeans asked between continents, which after all is what about it through a somewhat different per- why is this relationship important anymore? globalisation is, what you see is that globalisa- spective. I think that is the important context Why can’t we just do our own thing? Why is it tion is happening fastest, deepest, cheapest of which to understand these debates that go so distinctive? It was clear during the Cold and reaching deeper into our societies across beyond a particular administration. War; it is not so clear today. the Atlantic than between any other conti- One can certainly argue that the adminis- I would just put forward a few simple rea- nents. It is not an even process and it is hap- tration has spun 11 September and is advanc- sons why I think it still is distinctive. One is pening first across the Atlantic, which means

68 many of the frictions we see derive not from the fact that our societies are drifting apart, but in fact because our societies are smashing into each other. Our citizens are interacting The Role of the more with each other today than ever before in our history. More Americans and Europe- ans interact today; our economies are increasingly intertwined. Media in the Here again, I think the reporting is a bit shallow because we tend to measure our economic engagement by trade flows. And if you look at that, it looks as though Americans and Europeans do not have as much to do Transatlantic Rift with each other. But investment flows today drive trade and investment drives transatlantic commerce, and if you put trade and investment together then the transatlantic economy is still the dominant force in the global economy. There is no other trend happening that contradicts that. American companies invested as much in the last decade abroad as in the previous four decades combined and Europeans invested as much in the United States in the last decade as they ever had before. There is more European investment in Texas than all the American investment in Japan. We talk about China’s rise and of course China will change the world, but over the last ten years or so, American companies invested eight times as much in The Netherlands than they did in China and twice as much in The Netherlands than they did in Mexico. We talk about Germany as a classic trading nation; if you look at German-Ameri- can trade it is not very large, but if you add investment it is overwhelming. The German investment stake in the United States is five Gilbert Grellet times what its trade stake is with the United Director, External Relations, rac a worm and even printing a paper in States. That seems not to be much reported. Agence France Presse (AFP), Paris French and distributing it in Paris. My only point here is that many of the fric- Of course, this is nothing new and there tions we have – food, competition policy, all would like to discuss the role played by has always been this tension between France the kinds of issues that we talk about – are fric- Ithe media in this so-called transatlantic and England. In the middle of all this mess tions because we are running into each other rift. I think the media played quite an im- in April a friend of mine called me from and our mechanisms are not equipped for this portant and I would say negative role and I London and he said, “Okay, it’s terrible, but new era of transatlantic governance. I think think there should be a discussion on that. it’s nothing new,” and he reminded me of an that is a new realm that we have to look at. First, let me tell you that in my mind it episode of “Yes, Prime Minister”, a famous Yes, there is some bad news. Yes, there is an is not only a transatlantic rift, but what I series in England in the 1970s and the 80s. administration trying to spin the issue. Yes, might call a trans-channel rift. The biggest In one of the episodes, a young civil servant we have some problems, but there are a lot of abuse against Europe and France, especially, is ranting about the Soviet Union, because countervailing trends here that are deeper and came from the British media, particularly they have done something against Europe, that cloud the water a bit. In the end the ques- from the tabloids but also some so-called and he says to his boss, “What should we do tion is, are we going to confront these issues quality papers like The Telegraph or The against these Russian enemies?” And his together or are we going to stop each other? Times. We had those infantile reactions, as boss responds, “Bernard, never forget this, I think that is the alternative. Going it alone Sir Peter mentioned, but also very strong the Russians are adversaries, the enemies are on either side is not going to be a solution. ■ campaigns by The Sun, calling Jacques Chi- the French.”

69 TUESDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2003

This is something that is really ingrained The media have played a big role in fuel- in the British mind. So we had this abuse ling the rift between the U.S. and Europe, in during the entire Iraq war. I must say though, particular France. True, there were some hard in the end, there were no calls for boycotts comments made against France by Paul Wolf- or what you call infantile reactions, pouring owitz or Donald Rumsfeld or Richard Perle, down wine and things like that, in England. but I think that the comments and actions There is the fact, of course, that the British taken by the U.S. media were even worse. public was also against the war and you still Some of them even called for a boycott of have quality papers and the BBC in England French products and this is really, as we have for which we still have high regard. said, infantile and ridiculous. We were made On the other hand, what happened in the the scapegoats. The attacks were never as U.S. was really terrible. I was a correspondent strong against Russia or China. in New York and Washington for eight years When I talked about that to some friends and I have a very high regard for the American on the U.S. East Coast, they said, “Don’t media. My favourite reading in the U.S. is the worry, it’s just a Washington or New York Columbia Journalism Review and I think the reaction and it’s not true that all Americans American media has set standards for report- hate the French.” However, it is true. I have ing and journalism around the world. an example from this morning, when I was Stuart Loory watching CNN. There was a story about the Editor, IPI Global Journalist; and Lee Hills Chair The media have played a recall in California. A Republican Senator, a in Free Press Studies, University of Missouri School of Journalism, Columbia, MO big role in fuelling the rift candidate, who was really mad about the decision of the court to delay the recall, said, between the U.S. and Europe, “This is preposterous! This is totally un-Am- find myself in a strange role, because I was in particular France erican! This is French!” He used that word. Iprepared to be a critic of the way the Ame- I was taken aback. It is true that he laughed, rican news business has been handling things But we were really disappointed in as though he did not really believe what he recently, particularly during the Iraq war, but France to see the evolution of patriotic cov- was saying, but he used that word. That I now find that I have to cast myself in de- erage in the U.S. media. It started with the means that now, even in California, the word fence of the American media. Not all of the Gulf War and then it became even more bla- “French” is associated with un-American. media, but some of the media. tant after 9/11 and during the Iraq War. We In France, we do not really understand I would like to remind us all that we speak thought this was a big change in the way the this change and we discussed it a few weeks of the media as if it is a monolith, as if media, media was reporting and following its own ago at the French-American Press Club in a plural word, is actually a singular word and a standards. The criticism against this came Paris. We posed the question to Richard word that encompasses everybody, but it does from within the U.S., not just France, or Reeves, a renowned American columnist not. I think that there are a lot of failings in the England or Germany. I quote a journalism who was there to talk about it. I asked him American media, but there are also a lot of professor at the Missouri School of Jour- why the American media has changed in good things about the American media. I think nalism, Geneva Overholser, who said, “The the way it covers wars and become so ag- that the American media have not been unilat- fact that the television networks have over- gressive against European countries. He ans- eral in their coverage of the war and in their stepped their mark goes right at the heart of wered that there may be different reasons, approach to whether or not they should adopt our credibility. If we think that the press is but one of the reasons is that in the past ten a patriotic attitude about what is going on, or supposed to be fair and balanced then does years the owners have taken back the power in their approach to how the Bush adminis- that cease to be true during wartime?” from the journalists and the owners have a tration is dealing with the rest of the world. Then there is an editorial in the New York more conservative agenda. That means that Gilbert Grellet quotes Dick Reeves, an old Times saying the network news shows are not there is a general tendency to support the friend of mine from the New York Herald covering the war, they are promoting it. And U.S administration and bring about this Tribune, as saying that the problem is that the finally a comment from an analyst at Fairness kind of abuse. news business has changed from one that was & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a national My last remark will be this. At the begin- reporter-directed in the 1960s and 70s to one media watchdog: “Many in the media in the ning of this conference two days ago, we that is owner-directed in the 21st century. United States are confusing their awakening talked about how journalists should not just Owners have always controlled newspapers patriotism with their journalistic duty.” be reporters of facts but should also try to and owners have always been dominant in de- This is a big disappointment for us in promote peace and rapprochement between termining what editorial positions a newspaper France, because the French media has always people. I really have the impression that in is going to take. Newspapers depend on good been accused of being too close to the gov- the United Kingdom, but mostly in the Uni- reporters to ferret out information and present ernment and confusing reporting and com- ted States, the media does not promote that it in their news columns. There are some mentary. any more; instead it promotes division. ■ newspapers that do that very well. The New

70 The U.S. Media and the Transatlantic Rift

York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston was a time when CNN was a reporter’s organ- about how to handle your health on the cover, Globe, The Los Angeles Times, The Dallas isation and not an owner’s organisation. There the newsstand sales were going to go up. Or if Morning News and many others around the was one reporter, and I hate to say it was me, they put Arnold Schwarzenegger on the cover, country are doing a good, critical job in how who was given the authority to carry out a the newsstand sales were going to go way up. they cover the news. Not all of it, certainly, is story that he wanted to do on the lifting of the My own feeling is that this is not a problem favourable to the present administration. Iron Curtain in the 1980s. It was in 1986, with the American public. The American pub- On the other hand, there are some newspa- when the trends were set in place that led to lic wants to know what is happening around the pers that take editorial positions that many of us the breakdown of the Wall in 1989. CNN world. The problem is that the news business is in this room would not agree with, although allowed me to do a 30-part series – 30 parts! not doing the story well enough. We are not do- there are other papers that take editorial posi- That was at a time when CNN was a monop- ing it with enough attention to detail and we are tions that are very critical about what is hap- oly in the 24-hour news business. not doing it with enough attention to presenta- pening in the United States. I would say that I mention that only to show that there are tion, good writing, good video, whatever it is there are probably more now than there were differences in the news business, from organi- that is necessary in a particular outlet or another. during the early years of the Vietnam War. sation to organisation, from reporter to re- The other point that I want to make is Having said all that, I would like to come porter, from time to time. That is something that, as I travel around the world, I notice that to the question of how the media cover what that I think is being ignored now as the Am- news organisations everywhere are, as Peter we call the Transatlantic Rift. This rift that we erican news business is being so heavily criti- Preston put it, growing inward. If you live in are now talking about as a post 9/11 story is a cised for the manner in which it is covering London, as we did for several months, what story that has been going on for decades. It things at the present time. you find is that the great newspapers of Lon- comes and goes and it is reported as a daily don feature crime, unsafe streets, feature sto- story. First in the 1980s, then in the 90s, and This rift that we are now ries of a local nature, and celebrities, David now once again. The problem is that the news talking about as a post 9/11 Beckham being the best example. As we go business, not only in the United States but from country to country, we see that it is gen- also around the world, does not cover a story story is a story that has been erally the local news that is considered to be deeply and incisively and regularly. We cover going on for decades important. Some newspapers are different and events; we do not cover trends. We cover con- of course that is to be applauded. flict; we do not cover intellectual debate. There is one other thing that I would like What I am saying is that we in the news Dan Hamilton said that there is a debate to say and that is that the American news business, wherever we are, have to spend more going on now within the United States over business is generally criticised for not being time thinking about trends – thinking about foreign policy. I think that is certainly so, but interested in international news. As Dan poin- the future, rather than today or the past – and I think the manner in which the public is ted out, editors and producers feel that they how we are going to report possibilities for the informed of that debate is just not adequate in know as a matter of fact that when they fea- future and report the debate that is going on our news business. Dan talks about how, when ture international stories, ratings and reader- about what is going to happen in the future. If he did some work for ABC many years ago, he ship go way down. I once heard an editor of we can educate ourselves on how to do that could not cover the conflict within the East- Time magazine say that when they put an job better, we will do a better job of making ern European countries and the breakdown of international story on the cover they could sure that the policy makers of the future do Communism at the time. Not every news count on the newsstand sales drop that was their jobs better. ■ organisation treated the news that way. There going to take place, whereas if they put a story

71 TUESDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2003

Franziska Augstein Editor, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich

Opposing the United States

n the aftermath of the decision to invade at spin-doctoring as others. He had told a few world resides in the fact that the Germans are I Iraq, strange alliances could be discovered. members of the press, but those colleagues on the side of the United States. If you have For example, in Berlin – the biggest Turkish were not able to divulge the message. When, in any criticism, you have to do it in a low voice city outside Turkey – Germans and Turks, who the summer, Schröder ruled out participation so that no one can hear it, and certainly not usually have a strange relationship, all of a sud- in military action on Iraq, his critics said, “Ah, the United States. den found themselves pulling on the same end you only say that now because of the recent You encounter this attitude everywhere. of the rope and actually even proud of each polls and you feel the people are against the There are many Germans who think so, includ- other. The Turks were proud of the Germans war.” This is entirely untrue, because he had ing some of the best Germans experts on for- because they refused to partake in the Iraq war, always been against it. eign policy. Last week, I saw David Owen in and the Germans were proud of the Turks Britain who very strongly supported the same because their parliament had refused to allow In the minds of many people, view, calling French Foreign Minister Domini- the Americans to open up a second front. Schröder should have opposed que de Villepin a loose cannon and saying he Now I would like to say a few words on the did not know why Schröder lost his mind. role of the German government. Peter Preston the wishes of the people, like Whether it is just dumb and courageous or mentioned – and he is quite right – that had it José Maria Aznar did in Spain whether there is a point in departing for once been a Christian Democrat who was the head of from the United States in what they pursue in the government the outcome might have been Interestingly, this criticism should not have terms of politics is, ultimately, a question of different. Had it been another Social Democrat been levelled at all, because here you had a power. The moment anybody believes there the outcome might also have been different, but head of government who actually executed the is a chance for a European foreign policy it Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who was not kind of politics that the people wanted. And might make sense to let it be known that there brought up as part of the establishment, can be all of a sudden this was not right. In the minds are opinions other than American opinions. If somewhat of a maverick sometimes. of many people, Schröder should have oppo- there is no such chance, we can leave politics Now, interestingly, there were two reproa- sed the wishes of the people, like José Maria to the diplomats. ■ ches made when Schröder decided not to take Aznar did in Spain. part in the war and not to send German troops. Another criticism was that this was not the First of all, that he had done so only in order done thing. One does not oppose the United to win the elections. This is not true, because States because it is politically not prudent. It although the election campaign took place in is not prudent, because we have never done it the summer of 2002 he had already declared before and because the United States is so the winter before that he was not willing to powerful. The very fabric of German-Ameri- take part. The problem is that he is not as good can relations and Germany’s relations with the

72 Peter Preston Director, Guardian Foundation, London

A Degree of Perspective

imes of war place quite unfamiliar bur- ans, or a combination of the three, and we are weapons of mass destruction was not true, that T dens on journalists. There is a huge dif- struggling to find our particular sense of bal- the intelligence was wrong or that the people ference between reporting wars in which your ance. In terms of the transatlantic rift and the producing the intelligence genuinely believed own country is not involved and reporting a relationship, too, we are having real difficul- that it was right at the time or not? Now this, war which grips your readership because their ties. We do not know how to repair our brid- again, is the worst of all media stories. This is sons and daughters are doing the fighting. ges with Europe. And that swirls immediately dancing on the head of a pin, but it is also Remembering the Falklands, as well as the into the Euro debate, the world’s most tedious indicative. Gulf, once your own troops are underway, once British newspaper story of all time. The wider British debate was looking your own citizens are being killed in huge totally inwards. The good news, though, was numbers, then the imperatives upon an editor In Britain, we found ourselves that it was gradually calming down. When we change. Somehow it is more difficult. Some- in our usual role. On the one hand, wake up in the morning then we shall also how you have to mute things. Sometimes you we are sort of European. find, in large measure, a degree of perspective have to argue things through more carefully. I about the transatlantic rift, about things that think that is one of the great media lessons On the other, our biggest news- happen in the short term and things that hap- about the aftermath of 9/11. papers are owned by Americans, pen in the longer term, and we shall be asking Some American coverage, naturally enough, Canadians, or Australians, or a ourselves some of the questions that Dan had taken care and caution too far. How could combination of the three, Hamilton was asking about our relationship you argue otherwise when more than 60 per which seem to me absolutely right and sensi- cent of the American public still believed that and we are struggling to find our ble. The media too needs to take a cold bath Saddam Hussein was a close ally of Al Qaeda? particular sense of balance and come back later. ■ That was not a good job of informing the public. But nevertheless, if you are looking at the The panel’s chairman asked, “What about European media, then I would make pretty the Hutton inquiry?” What indeed? At the much the same comment about the French. I moment, it is about something that a BBC do not think that the French debate about Iraq reporter said at six o’clock in the morning, in Le Monde, Le Figaro, and so forth, was as when nobody apart from Alastair Campbell full and frank and as it should have been. was listening, and changed slightly at 7:20 In Britain, we found ourselves in our usual when he did a second broadcast. Were the role. On the one hand, we are sort of Europe- words he used generally right, intrinsically an. On the other, our biggest newspapers are right, or absolutely right? Does it matter that a owned by Americans, Canadians, or Australi- claim about 45-minute delay in delivery of

73 TUESDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2003

SESSION VIII Salzburg Congress Centre

“The Oslo Accords – 10 Years On” Signs of Progress

Chairperson Viktor Hermann Deputy Editor-in-Chief and Foreign Editor, Salzburger Nachrichten, Salzburg and Terrible Speaker Yossi Beilin former Justice Minister and former Deputy Foreign Minister of Israel Backlashes

Viktor Hermann peace that has international backing. Suicide Deputy Editor-in-Chief and Foreign Editor, bombings, military action and the plan to Salzburger Nachrichten, Salzburg build a wall between Israelis and Palestinians. This session will present a comprehensive hen Israel’s Prime Minister, Yitzhak Ra- evaluation of the Middle East peace process, W bin, and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat including an analysis of the Road Map. Who shook hands in Washington when the Oslo would be better equipped to speak about this agreement was signed ten years ago, many of us topic than one of the principle architects of thought to be eyewitnesses of a complete turn the 1993 Oslo Accords, Yossi Beilin, the for- in the history of the Middle East. For eight mer justice minister and former deputy for- months Israelis and Palestinians had secretly eign minister of Israel? negotiated an historic agreement that, at the There were plans to have a Palestinian time, was hailed as a step towards peace, a ma- speaker on the panel as well, but very shortly jor breakthrough, which would give this con- before our event Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo flict-ridden piece of land a turn for the better. had to send an e-mail saying that due to re- What has come from it? Hope and decep- cent events he could not attend the Salzburg tion. Signs of progress and terrible backlashes. congress and could not appoint another per- The Second Intifada and the Road Map to son to sit here for him. ■

“In the five years after the interim agreement, there was not even one meeting on the permanent solution between the two sides. We did not want it and the Palestinians did not push for it. Why? Because everyone knew that the permanent solution is the moment of truth. Then you have to solve Jerusalem, the refugees, and all those issues.”

Yossi Beilin

74 A Coalition of Sanity

Yossi Beilin Former Justice Minister and former Deputy Foreign Minister of Israel

ow, on the tenth anniversary of the Oslo the right answer. But then one has to ask the lem. It speaks of the Palestinians achieving Nagreement, when people ask me the “trip- question, “Why?” autonomy within a framework of five years. le-W question” – What went wrong? – I am It was so obvious. For so many years we all After two years, there would be negotiations still trying to understand it, first of all for knew that the only solution to the conflict is between the two parties over a permanent myself, and then in able to give answers to the two states for the two peoples. So many of us, solution, and at the end of the five years there interviewers. in Israel, on the Palestinian side, around the would be a final settlement. This was the idea I tend to think that the answer should re- world, knew this. It was not a revelation. in 1978. The only problem was that there was semble the old joke about the young son of We did not get up one day and say, “Now we no partner. The agreement was between Israel the lawyer who finished school and rushed to have a solution.” But we could not invent our and Egypt about the Palestinians. solve the major case in his father’s office. He counterparts. All the efforts to do it artificial- Then there was the Madrid Conference in goes to his father and says, “Father, I solved ly, to talk to the people who nominated them- 1991, which followed the footsteps of Mena- the case.” And his father says to him, “You selves during the past 30-odd years, were chem Begin and Anwar Sadat. Now there was idiot, we have earned our living for 30 years totally futile. The only counterpart was appar- a partner, although a very artificial one, and on this case.” ently an unshaven person who led a very prob- this was the Palestinian-Jordanian Delegation We went there. We talked to the right peo- lematic organisation, but who represented the of ‘91. This artificial structure was formed so ple. We referred to the right issues. We be- Palestinian people. For a long time we reject- that the Israeli government of Yitzhak Shamir lieved that it was possible to find a solution in ed the notion that we would have to talk to would not have to talk directly with their real five years, and we found a world that was not such people, and history repeats itself now counterpart. The leaders of the Palestinian so enthusiastic about it. So many people got when some of us say, “You see, we told you. part of this artificial joint delegation told us, used to our conflict. So many people were in- He’s not a nice person; we cannot talk to “We cannot strike a deal. If you don’t talk to volved with it. There are organisations and him.” We are searching for a nice enemy. We the PLO, there won’t be a deal.” salaries and people who interpret the conflict, cannot accept just anybody as our enemy. That is why, when I began the process, suggest solutions, write doctoral dissertations. people on my behalf went to talk to Abu Ala There is a huge organisation, UNWRA, the We believed that it was possible (Ahmed Qurei), who apparently will now be UN relief agency, which is a very important to find a solution in five years, the future prime minister. That was the first organisation, but you have so many people time in which Israeli officials, directly or indi- working for it. Imagine if, in one day, it is all and we found a world that was not rectly, talked to the PLO after abolishing the solved. People were not prepared for it, nei- so enthusiastic about it stupid law that prevented us legally from talk- ther psychologically nor economically, and for ing to them. The idea was a very modest one: many other reasons. If you analyse the agreement itself, the idea to try to solve the impediments, the obstacles, Of course, one can give many reasons. was very simple. We followed the footsteps of between the two delegations. One can say that the agreement itself was not Menachem Begin, the former prime minister, In Madrid, there was a decision to have good enough, which I am sure is right, be- who made an agreement in 1978, which is bilateral negotiations in Washington. These ne- cause I do not know of any agreement that is known as the Camp David Agreement. In the gotiations took place between Israel and Syria, good enough. Others may say that over the agreement, there is a very long chapter refer- Israel and Lebanon, Israel and a joint Jorda- years people torpedoed it, which I believe is ring to the solution of the Palestinian prob- nian-Palestinian delegation. The talks between

75 TUESDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 2003

Israel and Jordan-Palestine were immediately So the extremists on both sides were on the suicide. So when we had to finish the job, frozen because they could not agree on any- verge of losing their dream. It was not a joke. which was on 4 May 1999, the end of the five thing. The idea was to take the obstacles, solve It was not a technical or political or econom- years after the Gaza and Jericho Agreement, them somewhere else, and then eventually tell ic issue which is reversible. This was irrever- he did whatever possible in order to ensure the heads of the two delegations, “You have sible in their view and they won, although not that nothing would happen. That is not so dif- orders from your governments to solve it in this in the long run I hope. We were too silent. We ficult. It is much more difficult to do things. way or another and eventually sign the agree- felt that we held the power. We had a govern- To assure that nothing happens is possible. So ment.” This was the idea. ment with all the Yossi Beilins of the world; on 4 May 1999 nothing happened and we lost Now what was unique about Oslo? There we did not need to do anything else. You could the trust of many on the Palestinian side who were two things. One was the partner. In Oslo, not have had a more dovish government in had expected us to implement the agreement. for the first time, there was this mutual recog- Israel than under Rabin or Barak. So the left In the five years after the interim agree- nition between Israel and the PLO. This was was happy and not fighting. ment, there was not even one meeting on the the revolution of Oslo. The same happened on the Palestinian side. permanent solution between the two sides. The second thing was that we suggested to The Fatah became established, built its own We did not want it and the Palestinians did hand over to the Palestinian Authority, which power, its own machinery. Opposite them were not push for it. Why? Because everyone knew was still in diapers, the area of Gaza and Jeri- the Islamic Jihad and the Hamas. Of course, I that the permanent solution is the moment of cho so that the Palestinian Authority would am not comparing the Islamic Jihad and Ha- truth. Then you have to solve Jerusalem, the be established even before the elections to the mas to the right in Israel, because after all here refugees, and all those issues. Now everyone Legislative Council and before the official we are talking about people who are using ter- knows that once you solve all these things you establishment of this authority. ror and on the other side it is only the mar- have to compromise and your constituency gins, although some of them do use terror. will perceive your decisions as selling your For so many years we all knew But for both of them it was a very difficult sit- people down the river, whatever you do. We that the only solution to the conflict uation and that is why I believe it was easier know the solution by now. The Clinton plan for them to fight. They fought for a big cause. is the solution. The Bush vision is the solu- is two states for the two peoples We felt that we had already achieved our cause tion. All those things are there, but it means and with the democratic tools of Israel it that you have to go home and say, “My dear These were the two ideas of Oslo. Eventu- would not be a big deal to defend it. refugees, you can’t go home,” or “My dear ally, because of the mutual recognition and Now, the first terrorist event happened on Jerusalemites, you are now being divided.” It because of the interest of the world in this ag- 25 February 1994 and that was the biggest is very difficult for leaders to do that. reement, it became a big story. As a result of surprise for all of us because it was a Jew – a it, people on both sides understood that they settler, an officer, a religious person – and he When Benjamin Netanyahu were on the verge of giving up their dreams. killed 29 Muslims in a Hebron mosque. This became prime minister, his main On the Palestinian side, the Islamic move- was the beginning of the vicious circle. After ments understood that if they did nothing the 40-day period of Islamic mourning, there aim was to prevent the implemen- the whole idea of an Islamic state in the came the first suicide attack. Since then, the tation of the permanent solution Middle East would disappear, because a Jew- story is well known. because he understood that the ish state would not only be there but would When Yitzhak Rabin was killed by an Isra- permanent solution between us be also recognised by the Arab world and the eli, the spirit went out of many of us. We were Palestinians. so sad. We could not apprehend it; we could and the Palestinians would be On the Israeli side, the settlers and the ex- not expect it. It is not that we waited for his the end of the vision and ideology tremist right understood that if we recognised a orders. We informed him about the Oslo proof people like himself. He could Palestinian state on part of the west side of the cess. It was not his initiative, but he was the not commit political suicide Jordan River, Israel would lose its claim over one who took it upon himself. Without him it this area. Ever since 1948 and the establish- was impossible to have it and when he was ment of Israel, Menachem Begin’s Herut Party killed it was like a kind of shelter had been The visit of Ariel Sharon to the Temple had made it a major platform issue to claim the bombed. That was the watershed. On 4 No- Mount was a trigger. It determined the date of unconquered areas of the West Bank in Gaza. vember 1995 we lost Rabin and we lost much the beginning of the Intifada, but not the This was their platform for every election cam- of the peace process. Intifada itself. As for Arafat, I do not think paign. In 1967, Israel was able to occupy these When Benjamin Netanyahu became prime that he initiated the Intifada, but he was fool- territories, which they had dreamt about for so minister, his main aim was to prevent the im- ish enough to ride on this wave and to become long, so their claim now became to annex it. If plementation of the permanent solution be- a victim again, something which he is used to. Israel were to give up these areas, or officially cause he understood that the permanent solu- I believe that the only way we can achieve recognise the Palestinian State, this would end tion between us and the Palestinians would be peace is to establish a coalition of sanity, a co- the raison d’être of the right in Israel, from the end of the vision and ideology of people alition of people on both sides who care for Begin, to Netanyahu, from Shamir to Sharon. like himself. He could not commit political peace, who understand what it means if we

76 continue like this, not only with regard to the violence, the risks we are taking, and the economic price we are paying, but also with regard to national interests. For example, for us it is important to ensure that Israel remains a Jewish state and a democratic state, but if there is no Jewish majority in Israel then the whole Zionist dream is over. For many in the world this is not important, but for people like myself, it is very important. If my country becomes a country that is trying to impose the Zionist dream on a majority of Arabs then it is not a democratic state and I am not interested in such a state.

In order to ensure the implementation of the Zionist dream we must have a Palestinian Farewell Remarks state and this Palestinian state must be a viable state Gerfried Sperl Ladies and gentlemen, this conference Chairman, IPI Austrian National Committee; took place in the time of a growing clash Editor-in-Chief, Der Standard, Vienna between two perceptions of journalism. Until Now in order to ensure the implemen- now, it was commonly believed that the press tation of the Zionist dream we must have a adies and gentlemen, dear colleagues, we is different from other businesses. It has uni- Palestinian state and this Palestinian state L had a great conference. We heard brilliant que responsibilities to serve the public inter- must be a viable state. speakers and moving speakers, like Yossi est and, as Daniel Hamilton pointed out, to The interests of Yasser Abed Rabbo – Beilin just now. We had the opportunity to create the context in which news can be bet- who could not appear here – and my inter- hear Sir Peter Ustinov, who asked, “Who needs ter understood. Since several years, however, ests are not the same but there is a meeting war?” I thank you very much Sir Peter, not the position has gained ground that the news point, a very serious meeting point, where only for this question, but also for your state- business is basically the same as any other we understand that his interests and my ments during the conference. business. The owners have taken power from interests have a common denominator. Publishers, editors and media representa- the journalists in recent years, not only in the This is why both of us have been working tives from 45 countries attended this confer- United States but almost everywhere, at least on a project over the past two and a half ence. Therefore, this is a opportunity to thank in the West. Gilbert Grellet pointed out this years and are trying to suggest a permanent Johann Fritz and his team for organising such argument and I think that we have to think solution which says, “Hey, its is not sim- an amazing meeting in such a short time in about it. ple, but we can work on it. We can live such a charming city as Salzburg. And let me In addition to that, the perception of the with it. We are willing to pay the price and say another thing. It is the result of the daily Western state, its liberal shape, has become get something which is more precious than work of the Vienna office of IPI, the result of endangered since 9/11. More and more gov- the price that we are paying.” many smaller meetings and conferences, that ernments are trying to curb the press and to I regret that Abed Rabbo could not IPI is in the position to attract such promi- establish a state of the winners against the los- come and I presume that he was not al- nent speakers and influential experts. ers, against the dissidents, and against the lowed to come. I hope that there will be a That is the background behind the forth- poor. I think that IPI, which dedicates its work chance for both of us to meet with you coming Bucharest conference on public serv- not only to the defence of freedom of the press and others and to expose to you our work ice broadcasting, which will host the heads of but also to the enlargement of this democrat- which hopefully will become a kind of ref- almost all the public broadcasting organisa- ic quality, should work on strategies how to erence point in the Israeli-Palestinian con- tions in Central and Eastern Europe. This is ensure the basic functions of journalism in a flict. And maybe it will convince some of extremely important in a situation where the pluralistic society. the people, who believe in peace but sus- enlargement of the European Union is being As chairman of the National Committee of pect it will not happen in their lifetime, implemented, and where the media and its Austria, I thank you for coming to Austria and that it is indeed still doable. ■ influence on public positions and public dis- to Salzburg in particular. I wish you pleasant cussions is so important for the process of po- days and safe flights home. We will see each litical developments. other next year in Warsaw. ■

77 RESOLUTIONS

Resolutions adopted by the 52nd IPI General

RESOLUTION ON WSIS torially independent public service organiza- IPI is deeply troubled by the situation in tions or independent private outlets. South Korea. Rather than upholding the me- Meeting at its Annual General Assembly Furthermore, It is hard to understand how dia’s right of independence, the present gov- on 15 September 2003 in Salzburg, Austria, a world summit devoted to advancing the free ernment appears set on a course of confron- the IPI membership unanimously passed a flow of information could consider holding its tation with selected media. Indeed, the speed resolution stating that Freedom of Expression second meeting in 2005 in Tunisia, a country with which the FTC investigation was and Freedom of the Press must be central to that violates its free speech and press freedom launched, coming so soon after Roh’s speech, any conception of an information society. commitments by censoring its press and jail- shows that the full power of the government is The guiding principle on Freedom of Ex- ing journalists who issue critical reports. once again being mobilized against some print pression and Freedom of the News Media at WSIS should suspend its plans to meet in media. the forthcoming World Summit on the Tunis until the Tunisian government has With its close similarities to the previous Information Society (“WSIS”) should be shown that it honours freedom of the press. administration’s tax investigations of the Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of newspapers, the FTC’s investigation is evi- Human Rights: RESOLUTION dence that attacks on the media are seen by “Everyone has the right to freedom of ON SOUTH KOREA government as the best means of diverting the thought; this right includes freedom to hold Korean public’s attention away from more opinions without interference and to seek, re- Meeting at its Annual General Meeting on important issues. Moreover, the threat to use ceive and impart information and ideas 15 September 2003 in Salzburg, Austria, the the courts is an attempt to stifle the critical through any media and regardless of frontiers.” IPI membership unanimously passed a resolu- major newspapers, although it is a firm prin- This principle, adopted by the United Na- tion condemning continuing attempts by ciple of international law that officials must tions in 1948, has come to be recognized as South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun to accept greater scrutiny than private persons. international customary law. But that law is intimidate and harass major independent The membership of IPI calls on President unfortunately not respected by a large number newspapers. Roh-Moo-hyun to respect journalists’ right to of governments. For example, speaking at a conference to report freely and to refrain from using the The International Press Institute is deeply evaluate the government’s progress in office institutions of government as the instruments concerned that the draft texts being negotiat- and attended by more than 130 cabinet min- of media harassment and intimidation. ed for the WSIS do not recognize the impor- isters, vice ministers and other staff, Roh ac- tance of implementing Article 19. Instead, cused the media of “trampling on government RESOLUTION ON THE they refer to highly troubling and discredited officials” and said he would not tolerate “the UNITED NATIONS COMMISSION concepts such as “Right to Communicate” tyranny of the privileged media.” ON HUMAN RIGHTS and “responsibility” and “accountability” of Roh later called for the strict policing of news media. History has shown that, at best, alleged unfair business practices within the Meeting at its Annual General Meeting on these are dangerously vague and overly broad; newspaper industry, claimed the government 15 September 2003 in Salzburg, Austria, the at worst, they legitimize direct threats to free- had a right to sue the media through the IPI membership unanimously passed a resolu- dom of the press. courts, and hinted at the need for an ombuds- tion criticising the decision of the committee Article 19 needs to be implemented, for man to oversee the media’s activities. on non-governmental organisations (“the the traditional media as well as for media The president’s attack on the media came committee”) under the United Nations Eco- using such new information technologies as only days after newspapers had exposed the nomic and Social Council (“ECOSOC”) to Internet and Direct Satellite Broadcasting. alleged corruption of his personal secretary, suspend Reporters Without Borders (“RSF”) Security and other considerations should Yang Gil-Seung. After fighting to retain the for one year. not be allowed to compromise Freedom of beleaguered secretary Roh was eventually The decision to revoke the press freedom Expression and Freedom of the News Media. forced to accept his resignation. organisation’s consultative status at the United Traditional news media, such as broadcast- One day after the angry statements of Roh, Nations Commission on Human Rights came ing and print press, will continue to play an the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) announced after RSF vigorously protested Libya assuming important part in the Information Society, that it would investigate 200 newspaper dis- the chair of the 54-member organisation. At a and news media using the new Information tribution centres and more than 2,000 readers meeting on 24 July 2003, 27 countries voted and Communication Technologies should nationwide for 40 days to check for evidence in favour of RSF’s suspension, 23 voted against strengthen this role. of unfair trading. An FTC spokesperson said and four abstained. Furthermore, those coun- WSIS should also affirm that state-con- the timing of the announcement was unrelat- tries that sought RSF’s suspension have threat- trolled media should be transformed into edi- ed to the president’s remarks. ened to prolong it.

78 Assembly on Monday, 15 September 2003

The committee ignored Part IV, Section 56 Finally, the IPI membership asks the Secre- IPI believes that the newspaper, having now of the ECOSOC Statute, which states that tary-General of the United Nations to remind been forced to register, may be compromised non-governmental organisations shall have an the countries on the Commission on Human in continuing its constitutional challenge. opportunity to respond to committee recom- Rights of the right of everyone to “hold opin- IPI calls on the government to withdraw mendations. ions without interference and to seek, receive its police and allow the newspaper to contin- By choosing to act in this manner, the com- and impart information and ideas through ue publishing and to scrap all repressive media mittee has committed a material breach of its any media and regardless of frontiers,” as stat- legislation. own procedures, blithely set aside the rules of ed in Article 19 of the United Nations Uni- natural justice and undermined one of the fun- versal Declaration of Human Rights. RESOLUTION ON damental principles of Article 10 of the United ANTI-TERRORISM LAWS Nations Universal Declaration of Human RESOLUTION ON ZIMBABWE Rights which states “everyone is entitled in full The International Press Institute (IPI) equality to a fair and public hearing by an Members of the International Press Insti- annual general assembly in Salzburg, Austria, independent and impartial tribunal… .” tute (IPI) at their annual general assembly in on 15 September expressed alarm at the glob- The failure to follow this procedure has Salzburg, Austria, on September 15, reacted al proliferation of anti-terrorist legislation, grave consequences for not only the reputa- with shock to the news of the closure at gun- which has made deep inroads into freedom of tion of the Commission on Human Rights point by the Zimbabwe government of the expression and media freedom. but also the United Nations as a whole. Given daily, the Daily News. They unanimously con- While IPI shares the concerns of the the appalling human rights record of Cuba demned the action of armed police, which United Nations and its member states about and Libya, who originally complained of they said was an attempt by the government to the rise of terrorism and the need to combat RSF’s actions, IPI is worried that the Com- stifle the lone daily critical voice in the media. it, it believes that many countries have revert- mission on Human Rights is in danger of The closure followed the refusal of the ed, or are on the point of reverting, to unac- adopting the same attitudes and tactics toward Zimbabwe Supreme Court to hear the news- ceptable repression of the media and freedom those who have a legitimate right to show dis- paper’s urgent challenge – lodged late last year of expression as part of the international cam- sent and express themselves. – of the constitutionality of a repressive media paign against terrorism. This viewpoint is further reinforced when law. Not only does the Daily News, the most At best this may be an unintended conse- the rights records of those countries voting vocal opponent of government policies, regard quence of this legislation; at worst it is an for RSF’s suspension are examined. Of the 27 the law as unconstitutional but so do interna- insidious attempt to introduce controls on the countries who voted in favour, several are tional media and legal experts. media under the guise of fighting terrorism. viewed as some of the world’s most repressive The law in question is a part of the Access According to the New York-based Freedom regimes by Freedom House, while the to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, House countries with populations totalling Russian Federation and Zimbabwe are on the which requires news organizations and jour- 100 million or more have been downgraded IPI Watch List of countries where press free- nalists to register with the government-ap- from “free” to “partially free” as a result of dom is regressing. pointed Media and Information Commission such legislation. If the present situation is allowed to con- before they are allowed to practice journalism. There can be no justification for causing a tinue, the rightful position of the United Na- IPI members were equally critical of the decrease in the flow of information or curbing tions as the world’s premier human rights court’s refusal to consider the constitutionali- the freedom of the media in the so-called body is in danger of being tarnished. Were ty issue instead declaring that the paper was interest of fighting terrorism. that day to come about, those countries that operating in “defiance of the law” because it IPI believes that the maximum transparen- have shown their persistent disdain for human had not registered. cy about terrorism is the best way of combat- rights will have won an invaluable victory. On 12 September armed police forced ing this evil and calls on governments tasked The membership of IPI therefore calls their way into the paper’s offices and shep- with the onerous task of combating it, to upon the committee to rescind the original herded the staff out of the building, telling ensure that they do not curb the media in its decision against RSF and return to the organ- them that they were working illegally in the role of gathering and publishing the news in isation its consultative status. In addition, the building and that the paper would not be the public interest. ■ United Nations must review the present situ- allowed to appear on the streets. ation in the Commission on Human Rights IPI also fears that in the wake of the action and formulate new rules to prevent the usur- against the Daily News, the authorities will pation of human rights by a broad alliance of now crack down on journalists who have not repressive regimes. registered.