A Report for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
By Ellen Hume
May, 2002
Click here for a table of contents.
Click here to print this page (newer browsers only.)
A new wave of repression against journalists in developing democracies is threatening much of the $600 million in global media support provided by U.S. organizations, according to a new report by Ellen Hume for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. In "The Media Missionaries: American Support for International Journalism," Hume assesses media training and other aid since 1989 by hundreds of U.S. private and government organizations, including the U.S. government, Knight Foundation, George Soros, journalism groups and others.
Despite serious setbacks, continued U.S. support for independent local media around the world is needed more urgently now than ever, the Hume study concludes. "The needs are great in virtually every region, as former Communist countries still struggle to establish democratic cultures, and as many populations in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America remain cut off from basic information about their own governments and the rest of the world," the report concludes. "The stakes are rising now, since media are so important to acquiring and maintaining political power, and since economic health is linked, in part, to information access and digital technologies."
The report offers "Fifteen Commandments of Media Development" and maps efforts by Americans in a billion-dollar international field that tries to build local journalism capacity through media training, equipment, fellowships, legal support, and lobbying for open media laws and journalists' safety. The goal is to professionalize independent local media so they can promote democracy by informing citizens, providing accountability, and eliminating "the information vacuums that spawn terrorist cultures," Hume says.
Most of the Americans' media development aid to date has been underwritten by George Soros and the U.S. government, targeting journalism capacity in former Communist countries after the Iron Curtain fell. Since 1990, "thousands of journalists have been trained and empowered, television and radio networks have been established; newspapers have been recreated" and in some cases, newly-established media have toppled corrupt officials, the report says.
However, in many countries the results have been disappointing. In much of the former U.S.S.R., for example, "the millions of dollars spent have not yet produced a viable independent media sector," because the advertising industry is too small to sustain the explosion of broadcast and print media. As a result, "politicians or oligarchs have taken over much of what was developed, diverting the media's mission from public to private ends."
The current hot spots for increased U.S. and foreign media aid are in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East. Without a strong development effort, media there may foment new factionalism, rather than serving as a source of real information, the report cautions. Elsewhere, Africa still needs the most help, and China's commercial interest in the Internet may provide an unprecedented opportunity for developing open media, the study concludes.
Hume, a journalist and teacher, has participated in international media training since 1993. Assisting with the report were Joan Mower of the International Broadcasting Board of Governors, Whayne Dillehay of the International Center for Journalists, David Hoffman of Internews, the staff of the Committee to Protect Journalists, Monroe Price of New York University, and others engaged around the world in giving or receiving U.S. media assistance.
This scoping paper maps the myriad American efforts to develop and support journalism capacity around the globe, with fellowships, exchanges, training, grants, loans, equipment, infrastructure, staff, conferences and other means. This study, commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, tries to identify where much of the money has been going and what some of the "lessons learned" are after a decade of such work. This project also includes a database of organizations and contact information, building on information provided by Whayne Dillehay at the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) which compiles this material on its IJNet website, with funding from the Open Society Institute, the Freedom Forum and the McCormick Tribune foundation. The database of organizations and contacts will require Filepro 5.5 software to work. It should serve as a useful, updatable archive of the people and organizations at work in global media development. This report also includes a regional analysis, with contact information for some key media development organizations and individuals in each region.
Given the quick turn-around needed for this report, it necessarily reflects journalistic, rather than scholarly, research and analysis. This study should be seen as a quick overview that will need updating over time. A partial list of individuals interviewed for this report is appended. Some asked not to be listed by name, however most were willing to go on the record with their comments since they believe this is good journalism practice. The author is grateful to everyone who took the time and effort to answer questions. Crucial research support was provided by Charlie Costanzo of TRAC, (1) Whayne Dillehay of ICFJ, Monroe Price of the Programme in Comparative Media Law & Policy at Oxford University, Mark Hallett of McCormick Tribune Foundation, Joan Mower of the Freedom Forum, Ed Baumeister of IREX, Gordana Jankovic and Bill Siemering of OSI (Soros), CPJ's Attacks on the Press in 2001, and David Hoffman and his many regional directors and international managers at Internews. Carole Lee provided invaluable production assistance and Margaret Fleming Glennon designed the final report.
When the Communist barricades collapsed in 1989, hundreds of Americans rushed in to spread the gospel of democracy. Among them were some of America's most prominent and altruistic journalists, hoping to midwife a newly free and independent press.
Now over a decade has passed and more than $600 million has been donated by American government and private supporters like the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to develop media capacity around the world. Millions have gone into legal training and other aspects of democracy-building, the requisite "enabling environment" for public service media. Thousands of journalists have been trained and empowered; television and radio networks have been established; newspapers have been recreated and in some countries, corrupt governments have fallen, thanks to reporting that was unimaginable before 1989.
But the picture is far from perfect. In all too many places, including the core post-Communist societies where most of the money was spent, independent media are struggling now against a second wave of repression and censorship. It is time to assess what worked and what didn't, what lessons have been learned, and where we go from here.
By far the biggest American players in the field of media development have been USAID and George Soros' Open Society Institute. They and hundreds of other organizations have worked to develop media in order to advance democracy, starting in Latin America in the 1980s, and then moving to the Communist bloc in the 1990s. Now they are looking toward Afghanistan, the Middle East and parts of Asia. Some are active in Africa. The need for successful media development continues unabated, in virtually every corner of the globe. Yet at the same time, financial woes have forced two prominent American foundations-Freedom Forum and McCormick Tribune-to pull back from commitments abroad.
The survival of independent journalism in countries where politicians or oligarchs are abusing media for their own self-interest depends on finding alternative sources of power. This can come from a combination of economic independence, international funding and pressure, and local public support. Civil disobedience-such as recent pro-media street demonstrations and boycotts in Russia, Georgia, the Czech Republic and Kazakhstan-needs to be followed up by more sustained local and regional legal clout, backed by international support. Media need to adopt a public service mission to earn the public's loyalty. In most of the world, this remains a challenge. In addition, neither the lawyers nor the journalists in these emerging democracies know much about their own local or international media laws, nor are the courts likely to interpret them in favor of the press. (1)
In some regions, including much of the former U.S.S.R, the millions of dollars spent have not yet produced a viable independent media sector. Politicians or oligarchs have taken over much of what was developed, diverting the media's mission from public to private ends. Yet the time frame still is short, and thousands of trained local journalists are at work despite difficult, even dangerous, conditions. Regional populations are starting to learn a great deal more from the media about what is really going on, in their backyards and the wider world. The effort clearly is worth it, particularly in contrast to information vacuums that spawn terrorist cultures. If it's two steps forward, one step back, media development still is a valuable endeavor, with benefits for Americans as well as the international communities they are trying to help.
The time has come for a second generation of media development, with a commitment to dig in for the long haul. Here is how the field looks in the spring of 2002:
This next decade of development should live by the lessons learned from the past decade, summarized in the "Fifteen Commandments of Media Development":
1. Build from the bottom up, rather than the top down. It doesn't work simply to arrive and try to establish something based on Western models. If all politics is local, so is all good media development.
You need buy-in at the grassroots level, with locals who are dedicated to the project and involved in the strategic planning and project development. Be careful of setting up commercial ventures with direct funding that will drive up salaries throughout the media sector, making it more difficult for indigenous local media to compete.
Instead of launching a new office in Southeast Asia, the World Press Freedom Committee wisely decided to offer the funds to SEAPA to extend its work. When SEAPA challenges anti-media policies, politicians can't charge that it is "Western imperialism" at work.
Westerners have to understand the problems in the local setting, how to resolve them, and why local assistance providers haven't solved them already.
2. Economic sustainability must be addressed sooner or later. This is perhaps the biggest challenge of all.
Suggestion: It is long overdue to examine more systematically what business and economic models can be devised for supporting fair, comprehensive news in emerging and even mature democracies. The traditional advertising model for print and broadcast should not be the only one available. In America it is challenged by Internet and TIVO recorders; in Latin America, it is the vehicle for narrow political control, and in some post-Communist societies, it is not workable at all.
"In Kyrgyzstan, our office is struggling because it's going to be a long time before there's any market for supporting a TV station. Teaching people to sell advertising and rely on that in places where it's physically not possible, doesn't make sense."
Manana Aslamazian, Internews
In Georgia, owner Erosi Kitsmarishvili of Rustavi 2 television supports his news operations with ancillary cell phone and Internet businesses. Now he is looking for American investors to help him start a newspaper. The Media Development Loan Fund (MDLF) and the GRAMEEN BANK system (2) offer interesting approaches that might be adapted to a variety of unorthodox local ventures.
Northwestern University's MMC and IAPA train media managers and owners, but there isn't much visible work at the management level on public service journalism, probably because it is harder to support than entertainment journalism and it raises political hackles (n.b. Mexico's new independent papers). Perhaps scholarly studies, or a blue-ribbon journalists' commission, could find a way to inject public service into the media business. New Directions for News is exploring these issues in the U.S., but it is not clear who has realistic, adaptable business models for foreign public service journalism other than Bill Siemering, who has found NPR worth replicating in developing countries.
3. Time, patience and collaboration are essential. Independent media cannot be expected to spring to life in otherwise anti-democratic societies. This requires a sustained commitment, and collaboration with other democracy developers. Open media's "enabling environment" includes legal and marketplace reform.
Suggestion: More pro-active, collaborative work on policy, ethics and media law is needed locally, regionally and globally. Consider training more journalists and lawyers about local and international media laws.
One creative training project in the former Communist bloc by Prof. Herman Schwartz from American University Law School brings judges and journalists together for a seminar on how press coverage of a transparent, accountable judiciary is helpful to both. But these are "parachute" seminars run by the Americans, and they should instead be sustained local efforts to build lasting professional relationships.
4. In many areas, there's too much aid and not enough requirements for getting the aid.
Suggestion: People who attend training or seminars should be required to take part in follow-up surveys, seminars and questionnaires, and they should be required to transmit their knowledge in their newsrooms and stations. The managers who send them should be required to agree to this, and monitor this. Further aid should be stopped if they don't fulfill these agreements.
Local people, no matter how well-intentioned, are often too much a part of the problem to see what is really needed in terms of quid pro quos or paybacks.
5. It's the people. Everything depends on the individuals involved. The local partners must be professionally respected, and the Westerners must be carefully chosen and prepared for the region. Language skills are a great plus.
"Too much training I've seen is not training. It's yapping. Lecturing. Talking. Crowing about the First Amendment. Western trainers talking about 'how I did it.' Not enough interactive training. Not enough practice in seminars so that people get actual learning, not just theory."
Ann Olson, Knight fellow
6. Bigger is not necessarily better. Quality is far more important than quantity.
7. Oversight, feedback and evaluations are crucial.
"The cost of oversight at the local level may be as much as 1/3 of the original budget and will necessitate decent computers and database expertise to keep good institutional records."
Ann Olson, Knight fellow
Indigenous organizations should be required to track the results, not the numbers, of the money they spend. The better evaluations are probably not the metric tabulations and regression analyses by American consultants and scholars, but rather feedback and impact assessments from knowledgeable players in the field.
8. Training programs need to weave together journalism values with technical journalism practice skills. Don't expect to succeed in building public service media if you teach one without the other.
"Tell them you are going to teach them how to be great disc jockeys; you are actually training them how to talk on the radio about HIV/AIDS. You weave ethics into every seminar, even those about management and sales."
David Hoffman, Internews
"Provide them with real skills; how to use a video camera, to edit. Teaching them how to be objective and free doesn't go over so well."
Manana Aslamazian, Internews
9. The training should be the beginning of a long-term relationship. Assistance organizations should form support/communication groups of those who have been trained. George Soros' OSI, Internews, Greenfield's Independent Journalism Foundation and others create leave-behind journalism organizations run by the locals, who are a continued presence for local journalists to turn to. The Knight fellows' extensive tour in country is a real plus. But U.S. Embassies and many others still use American "parachute professors" for one-shot seminars, whose impact is minimal.
10. Have different kinds of training in your toolbox: short workshops, long immersion training, practical advice, grants, research, traveling to U.S. or Europe, traveling to each other's stations, producing cooperative programming.
11. Journalism centers make a lot of sense in some regions, but not others. It often depends on the size of the service area and the quality of the local management.
Centers worked in Kiev, Ukraine and in Armenia, because journalists could get together for two or three hours and then go back to their communities. But in Russia, donors funded a center that became a boondoggle.
12. More up-to-date training materials and books are needed virtually everywhere.
13. One shouldn't just focus on the negatives about media in a country. There has to be a concrete positive incentive in each project for local people to make it their own and move forward. (Frank Vogl, Transparency International).
14. Teach the Internet!
Cross-platform digital training is the wave of the future, thanks to media technology convergence. The rise of Internet use in Africa proves that no place will be off the Internet screen for long.
This is a critical moment to intervene before restrictive Internet policies proliferate. A powerful argument to use with autocratic regimes is that if they want to be players in the world economy, their workers and resources have to be wired to the Internet.
15. But don't forget the old technologies. Community radio may be the best way to reach populations in Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan and many other countries.
American assistance to journalists around the world was minimal at best when Tom Winship founded the Center for Foreign Journalists(1), and the first Alfred Friendly foreign press fellows arrived in the U.S. in 1984. The U.S. State Department's visitor exchange program was bringing over groups of international journalists for several weeks a year, along with thousands of farmers, scientists and others. But there was no regular approach to showing them American media practices. No U.S. organization was exclusively dedicated to developing foreign journalism capacity, and there was no systematic training overseas using American professionals. (2)
Today development assistance to foreign media is a multimillion-dollar industry, with literally hundreds of U.S. and European organizations involved. The field of media development (3) exploded when the Iron Curtain fell, and as media, especially television, became a growing factor in the exercise of political power. Americans and West Europeans rushed in to help encourage democracy by supporting the voices of independent, free media, especially across the former Communist world. By rough estimate, at least $600 million (4) and probably much more has been devoted by American-based sources to the independent media cause over this decade, with most of the money coming from the United States government's US Agency for International Development (USAID) and U.S. Information Service (USIS) (5) , and from philanthropist George Soros's Open Society Institute. USAID alone provided an estimated $275 million from 1991-2001.(6)
Other important U.S. non-governmental organizations sponsoring media development include the Ford, Knight, McCormick Tribune foundations and the Freedom Forum. The European Union probably has donated as much as the U.S. government in money, training, equipment, legal advice and other media support. Other important non-U.S. media development players are, the Danish Agency for Development Assistance (DANIDA) ($1.44 million in 2000); the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which also is in charge of media policy in Kosovo; UNESCO's Program for the Development of Communication ($2 million in 2000); the Dutch government through Press Now; the Swedish International Development Corporation Agency (SIDA), Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the very active German foundations, (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Friedrich Naumann Stiftung and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung). (7)
Efforts to bring foreign journalists to America also expanded, with fellowships sponsored by the World Press Institute, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, the Atlantic Council, and a myriad of government-sponsored international visitor programs. One Washington ngo ,the Alfred Friendly Foundation (http://www.pressfellowships.org), brought some 214 mid-career journalists from 72 developing and Warsaw Pact countries to the U.S. from 1984-2002, at a cost of more than $4.3 million, according to vice-chairman Alfred Friendly Jr. This project, launched in 1983 with an endowment from Washington Post Editor Alfred Friendly, today brings about a dozen English-speaking journalists from developing countries to the U.S. for six months each year to practice journalism in U.S. newsrooms. Alumni include top editors from such countries as Bangladesh, China, Colombia, Croatia, Indonesia, Turkey and Zimbabwe. The high cost and logistical challenge of bringing foreign fellows to America for productive work ($20,000 per person for six months, not including administrative overhead for the Friendly fellows) is less appealing to some U.S. media developers. But Friendly argued that this type of fellowship was especially valuable because “these efforts immerse visiting journalists in American free press practices” and he found that America’s big-city dailies were more willing to accept foreign journalists than to give up their own staffers for extended sessions abroad.
American journalists got more involved after USIA official Marvin Stone created the International Media Fund in 1990 with money from the U.S. government's SEED (South East Europe Development) program. He enlisted American news organizations that otherwise would not, for reasons of independence, use grant money directly from the U.S. government. Other nonprofit private organizations followed suit.
Soon, hundreds of Americans fanned out into Russia, Eastern Europe and nearby countries, offering workshops, lectures and more ambitious long-term media projects. By the end of the decade, it seemed as if every American foundation, university and journalism trade association had a program in Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Moscow, Johannesburg or Bosnia.
U.S. government media development efforts generally followed the geography of U.S. foreign policy attention. Florida International University won a large government contract to help Central American journalists in the wake of U.S. military involvement in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Panama in the 1980's. In 1990 the spotlight landed on the former Soviet empire, where journalism was thawing out from the long Cold War. This is where the field of media development burgeoned and where most of the money still goes today, through government grants to Internews, IREX, and through Soros' Open Society Institute (OSI) foundations. In Africa and other regions, U.S. embassies in the 1980s helped local media with small grants which shrank during the 1990s as interest shifted to Russia, Eastern Europe and the Balkans. (8) "The Cold War is over and Africa lost," lamented the Nigerian ambassador to the United Nations in 1990. (9) Now there is increased U.S. donor attention to African media, much of it motivated by the fight to stem HIV/AIDS.
U.S. government interest in building journalism capacity in Africa, Asia and the Middle East remains sporadic, at best. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks aroused more U.S. government and ngo interest in building journalism capacity in the Muslim world. The virulently anti-American press in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East was thought to have contributed to the rise of Al Qaeda and other terrorist allies. In Afghanistan, USAID recently granted $1 million to Internews to revive independent broadcast media through the Afghan Media Resource Center (AMRC) which was founded by the Boston University School of Journalism in 1986, and which represents the largest number of trained non-Taliban Afghan television and radio broadcasters. Non-governmental media development organizations also are now busy training and reviving Afghan journalism, although the situation remains unsettled. (See pp. 68-70.)
While the bulk of American assistance during the past decade was devoted to the former Communist bloc and the Balkans, some smaller-scale, nonprofit groups such as the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ, formerly the Center for Foreign Journalists), the Freedom Forum and the International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) engaged American and foreign journalists also in Latin America, Africa and Asia. These diverse ngos offered fellowships, exchanges, workshops, awards and other assistance, sometimes sponsored, in part, by pass-through U.S. government grants as well as the Knight, McCormick Tribune and other media foundations. Journalism rights organizations like the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Europeans' Article 19 stepped up support for journalists in peril, and fought for public access to information all around the globe.
The Americans, with their First Amendment tradition of a hands-off government relationship to the media, generally have not assisted media companies that continued to be run by foreign governments. The U.S. government's media development programs were designed to ease the transition from state-run media to private, independent media, as part of a larger mission of building democracy and civil society. (10) American ngo journalism support work also was directed in most cases to newly privatized or start-up "independent" media voices that in many places, had to be created from scratch.
All of this development has in some cases skewed the marketplace, aiding some news organizations over others that might equally have been worthy. In Bosnia and Kosovo, as well as other areas, there is no question that millions in Western journalism development money has made some contractors into media kingmakers. Yet this is not a fair argument against the practice of helping some media organizations over others, Internews' Persephone Miel explained. The small pot of advertising money in Russia, for example, has made it impossible for all the local television stations that wanted to do independent news to survive, she said. Helping some stations was better than letting them all sink.
Bill Siemering of Soros' OSI thinks it was a mistake for the U.S. government, through its contractors Internews and IREX, to sidestep such mixed public/private models as America's National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting Service, which might be more sustainable and better serve democratic culture in these transition societies than purely commercial media. USAID assessors in 1999 also concluded that NPR and PBS-style public service broadcasting was an "overlooked area" for American media support abroad. (11) European counterparts, with different traditions, had no compunction about supporting state-owned broadcasters or newspapers as well as independent media, or using government-subsidized media as models in the assisted countries.
In many instances, especially in the beginning, the trainers were well meaning but ineffective. Sometimes this was compounded by the problem that the journalists being trained couldn't use the help. Their managers didn't support them or they didn't agree with the training. Ethics and professionalism remain a stumbling block today, since many media owners are uninterested in public service or lack the capacity to pay journalists a living wage.
Mexico's president Vicente Fox has said he is ending the longtime government practice of "subsidizing" journalists, but it remains to be seen how this will work out. In Kenya, Transparency International exposed journalists who got free Korean cars because they "overlooked" certain stories. In Russia, another sting found that 95% of newspapers published, without checking, a press release announcing the opening of a major stereo store, which didn't actually exist; each press release had included a bogus $200 bonus coupon for the reporter. (12)
In Bosnia, a satellite dish donated for independent television use was hijacked by the very Serb nationalists that the new independent media were trying to challenge. It was then used to broadcast noxious propaganda. Questions about local misuse of money forced funding cutbacks at a Eurasia Foundation project in Belarus and management changes at RAPIC in Moscow.
The fast-growing commercial marketplace for media and advertising has not always been supportive of the democratic goals of free press and information access. In Ukraine, for example, improving the quality of newspapers often leads to the acquisition of those papers by corrupt forces. (13) Similarly, in Russia, the advertising market is too small to support hundreds of local TV stations, which produce local news and would like to be independent. (14) This means that "politically motivated sources of money, from business and governmental interests at all levels, continue to have far more influence in the media market than is desirable" said Persephone Miel of Internews.
The Case for Community Radio
Mission-oriented community radio stations are thriving in many regions. Radio 101 in Zabreb and B-92 in Serbia offer news and programming that reflects community values, according to Bill Siemering, a legend in American radio for creating National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" program. Siemering now helps local communities create their own radio stations, on behalf of George Soros's Open Society Institute. Rich and Suzi McClear, respected media developers who have done work for IREX, The German Marshall Fund, OSI and others, helped develop effective business plans for radio stations in Slovakia, Albania, and elsewhere. The U.S. public radio model "with strong modifications" has worked in many developing democracies, McClear said. "Depending on voluntary listener contributions for over 50% of income is not applicable overseas," Siemering noted. "No model can be effectively imported. However, there are values and principles that do work everywhere." South African community radio has been one of the most successful. Frances Fortune, director of the Talking Drum Studio in Freetown, Sierra Leone, is doing a good job developing radio throughout the region, Siemering said. Also in Freetown, owner and manager Andrew Kromah of SKY-FM (and KISS-FM in Bo), will receive an award in October, 2002 from ICFJ for his courageous exposés of corruption, under the moniker "Mr Owl."
Veran Matic, the director of Serbia's heroic B-92 radio station, says donor governments should avoid artificial ventures. "Only those initiatives which have taken root and become an integral part of the social fabric of the area in conflict stand a chance of yielding satisfactory results," he said at a 1999 conference. "Initiatives from the outside would surely fail, as they can never do more than mimic cultural patterns, this mimicry is obvious to the local community, and the information it carries is disregarded." (15)
Despite enormous difficulties and some discouraging setbacks, U.S. and European media development efforts continue to make a positive difference today. Improved media in Serbia, Mexico, Georgia, Ghana, Senegal and elsewhere have helped change the way those countries work. Many development sponsors are more sophisticated about what to do and what isn't effective. The old "parachute professor" model is still used by the U.S. government, but it is largely discredited by veteran media development organizations in the field. Now journalism schools, professional associations, radio networks and other practical projects are helping knit together an indigenous "enabling environment" for independent journalism in many countries where democracy is under attack. (16) An Internews "Public Expertise" Russia study funded by USAID argued that it is in governments' financial interest to cooperate with independent media, because they can save money on media subsidy costs. "We thought it would be controversial, but the government welcomed it," said Mark Koenig of USAID, which funded the study. (17)
The needs are great in virtually every region, as former Communist countries still struggle to establish democratic cultures, and as populations in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America remain cut off from basic information about their own governments and the rest of the world. The stakes are rising now since media are so important to acquiring and maintaining political power and since economic health is linked, in part, to information access and digital technologies. (18)
Today the field of media development-which is dominated by at least $50 million a year in US government grant money, and at least $20 million a year from Soros's funding and operating foundations, plus several millions more from diverse other sources-continues to expand around the world. The giant media development implementing organizations are Internews (19) and IREX, plus the web of Soros OSI foundations. While the scope of their work dwarfs the private projects, some smaller ngos do provide effective assistance that makes a real difference, such as the Knight Fellows/ICFJ work, the Centers for Independent Journalism and the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Projects still underway in Russia and the new republics that once made up the Soviet Union are more vital than ever, and sometimes dangerous. As new capitalist oligarchs with political ties to the ruling parties take over the "independent" media in Russia and other countries, the need for concerted action to win legal, policy and economic battles is clear. The local stakes are great, as Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze learned in October, 2001 when he tried to silence government corruption exposés on television. He had to dismiss his government after tens of thousands of people took to the streets to defend their beloved independent Rustavi-2 television. (20)
GEORGE SOROS' $450 MILLION NETWORK OF 32 FOUNDATIONS (21)
Aside from the U.S. and other governments, the largest financial contribution being made internationally to support democracy and independent media is probably made by Hungarian-born investor George Soros. The "mother ship" of all the Soros foundations is the Open Society Institute, established in New York City in 1993. OSI is a private operating and grant making foundation.
The complexity of Soros' philanthropic empire is daunting. It includes separate Open Society foundations in 28 countries, plus Kosovo and Montenegro, and two regional foundations, the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa and the Open Society Initiative for West Africa. (These two make grants in 27 African countries.) These locally-based foundations, plus several overlapping Soros international initiatives, have focused primarily on the former Communist bloc.
These networked foundations all participate, to some extent, in media projects. Major media efforts are administered by the Open Society Institute in New York and the Open Society Institute in Budapest. The Soros foundations' itemized media projects totaled about $20 million in 2000, but this does not adequately represent the Soros foundations' contributions to open, professional journalism. They view media development as organically linked to democracy development, and thus do not separate it out as a line item. The U.S. government and other foundations also have failed generally to maintain journalism capacity-building as a separate program or budget line item.
Together, all the Soros foundations spent $494.1 million in 2000, and this $450 to 500 million level is expected to continue for the next several years. This figure has grown from 1994 ($300 million) but lessened from the peak years of 1998 ($574.7 million) and 1999 ($560 million). Soros's philanthropies do not plan to expand the number of national or country foundations. In fact, George Soros has said he intends to support the foundations only until 2010. Most of these investments aim to develop in some fashion a democratic culture, providing an "enabling environment" (in Monroe Price's words) for independent journalism and public access to information.
The goal of all of Soros' philanthropy is to "establish a global alliance for open society." Because he plans to end funding his philanthropies in 2010, his foundations are working now to make their current work self-sustaining, with partnerships, spin-offs and other initiatives.
The Soros foundations expect to continue allocating 60% of their funds for projects in the former Soviet bloc countries, 20% in the U.S. and 20% on the rest of the world. Media initiatives singled out in the 2000 annual report as likely to win continued support are the Media Development Loan Fund, Internews, and a number of human rights organizations. Emphasis will be on serving the least advantaged. This will include support for Roma media, and strengthening the rule of law-including laws that affect journalists-in Central and Eastern Europe.
There is a "new media order" in the developed world, particularly after Sept. 11, according to Lee McKnight, of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. Those with access to them go to their television sets for breaking news, then the Internet, and then the news filters back into print and television. With technological leapfrogging in Africa, Bangladesh and other places long considered cut off from technology, digital cross training for journalists should be considered virtually everywhere. Yet only a few of the existing media development groups are doing this kind of training. (22)
With Internet publishing, "the obsession with autocratic governments may be overblown" because their ability to censor information is reduced, said Crocker Snow, Jr., editor of the World Paper. Internet training gives a journalist "the potential to become a self-contained, independent news production company should his newspaper or broadcast outlet be arbitrarily closed or nationalized by a government hostile to the free flow of information," said David DeVoss, who was the resident advisor in Bosnia-Herzegovina for IREX's $2.5 million USAID print media development program. "In a single day a rogue government can wipe out years of (media development) work. In August, 2001 Belarus officials confiscated USAID computers given to the newspaper Volny Horad in the town of Krichev. Simultaneous with that seizure, the Belarusian Justice Ministry warned Belorusskaya Delovaya Gazeta against publishing information on pro-democracy political groups not registered with the government. In cases such as this, journalists skilled in digital editing and production could provide a fail safe conduit for the dissemination of unfettered news." (23)
Yet even the Internet is subject to a growing body of legal restrictions in some regions. Armed with studies which show a correlation between open media and economic development, (24) the World Bank Institute and USAID are considering a new initiative to promote open media policies. They are building on pro bono efforts by the American Bar Association's CEELI project, the Covington & Burling law firm, IFEX, Internews, IREX, The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), Privacy International and many others.(25) In the media development field, policy work is both the most difficult and the most sensitive; much of the work to date is reactive, and the potential for impact is far from maximized. There is plenty of monitoring, but not enough local follow-through to build better policies for media and information access.
There is a better system for tracking violations of media rights than for tracking the development of media legislation. The BBC tries to monitor world media each week, but many governments don't publish even their final media laws. ICFJ's IJNet is a website funded by Soros's OSI to publish media laws as they emerge, but it is hard to keep it up to date with just a small staff in Washington. Bob Gillette, recently of IREX, believes it would be valuable to monitor changing laws on a regional basis. "It should be possible to identify an existing regional organization that becomes an active collector and repository of this information." Yet even in Bosnia, which is run by the international community, they can't keep track of new media laws, Gillette said. (26) He concluded that tax reform would do more for free media in some countries than anything else.
EPIC, Internews and others see this as a critical moment for preserving the open Internet, before more repressive policies are put into place. One major new U.S. government initiative is a $75 million USAID cooperative agreement called Dot.com, concerning Internet policy, access and distance education. (27) Even China is beginning to recognize that it has to allow more open media in order to participate in the global marketplace. "If you want to be part of the globalization of commerce, you have to be part of the globalization of communication," concluded David Hoffman of Internews. Experts believe that it is more effective for U.S. ngos to conduct media policy work as part of the field's traditional "capacity building" rather than expressing it as political engagement against repressive regimes.
Funding has a vital impact on where media development will occur and what shape it takes. The U.S. government contracts with non-governmental institutions to do media development, in order to be consistent with the mission of establishing media independent from government. A more systematic approach to monitoring the media environment in each country is needed. IREX is developing a complex monitor of media conditions and Crocker Snow, Jr. of the World Paper and International Development Conference (IDC) consulting group, has developed an Information Society Index that also helps businesses measure a country's economic prospects based on media capacity and public access to information. The State Department's human rights reports contain a media dimension that also is a powerful tool for assessing media problems from country to country.
Freedom House offers a well-known, updated map of press freedom, which is used widely but gets mixed reviews from the field. Media indexes like Freedom House's, which declare some countries "bad" on media, must be used with care because they may antagonize governments that might otherwise tolerate U.S. media development.
New funding is starting to address the emerging Internet, media convergence and media policy areas. But old media still need much of the attention in developing democracies. Some of the smartest American money is being spent these days on developing community radio, which reaches mass audiences that otherwise would receive no news, especially in Africa, Indonesia, other parts of Asia, and Latin America.
Interest in funding media projects in former Communist Central Europe (Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania) peaked in the late 90s, as media in some of these countries seemed to find their own legs. The Center for Independent Journalism in Prague, financed by Greenfield's Independent Journalism Foundation (IJF), was closed in 2000 and IJF opened a new center in Cambodia instead. But as recent Russian, Czech and Hungarian experiences with the political takeovers of "private" media show, this kind of departure may have been premature. (28) The areas receiving the most funding attention in 2002 continue to be Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, Russia, South Africa, the Caucuses, South Asia and Cambodia. Afghanistan and the Middle East are new hot spots for U.S. sponsored media training and development. South Africa is thick with American journalism trainers and developers. Cambodia also is popular for these projects because it offers relative freedom for media compared to its neighbors, so work can be done across its borders to help the embattled democratic activists in Myanmar (Burma), and the developing democracies of Vietnam and Thailand. (29)
USAID is more interested than ever in supporting media development, David Black said. (30) The World Bank also is expressing new interest in independent media as a factor in economic development. At the same time, some private foundations are being forced by financial setbacks to retrench. The Freedom Forum has cut 60% of its programs, including 100% of its international programs, due to a combination of reduced resources in the economic downturn and a redirection of priorities to the new Newseum location on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. The McCormick Tribune Foundation, which lost over $500 million in stock value after Sept. 11, has refocused its work more narrowly to press freedom issues, and the level of its media development support is expected to drop significantly from its current $6 million a year, including $2 million in the Americas.
The accumulated impact of this extensive democracy support, including specific media development efforts, has made a crucial difference in some countries. For example, the estimated $40 million in U.S. public and private democracy programs in Serbia from mid-1999 to 2000, along with complementary efforts by Western Europe and Canada, are credited with helping the Serbs topple Milosevic in September 2000. "Western aid underwrote much of the independent media in the country, helping ensure the expansion of an enterprising network of independent radio and television stations, and the survival of many independent magazines and newspapers. The independent media played a major role in challenging Milosevic's efforts to control public information," international lawyer Thomas Carothers wrote in a policy paper for the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. (31)
However, the U.S. contributions to the anti-Milosevic campaign were only helping a local movement to remove him from power, Carothers found. "Even when a democracy aid campaign is extensive and sophisticated, it is at most a facilitator of locally rooted forces for political change, not the creator of them," he concluded.
Beyond that one example, it is fair to say that tens of thousands of journalists have been "trained" in the former Communist world, Latin America, and Africa; hundreds of independent television, newspaper, radio and Internet news organizations have been nurtured, and more information has been made available to populations in transition societies than they would have had without America's public and private media support efforts.
At the same time, other forces have had an equal or greater impact on the ability of media in transition societies to be independent and viable. The most significant factors are the "enabling culture" of civil society-the economic environment, political culture and prevailing media policies-which improved in some regions over the past decade only to grow worse in others. (32)
Among the media development organizations, there remain issues of competitiveness, overlap, competency and turf. There is a famous rivalry between the giant U.S. government contractors, Internews and IREX, even though in the field, they often work effectively side by side. Much media development has been undertaken around the world by the legions of media missionaries who mobilized in the 1990s and who still are active today. But as politicians continue to enact repressive legislation and market forces bedevil the best journalists everywhere, much more remains to be done. "We have failed at multilateral issues because there are too many players who want to lead. There is a tremendous competitiveness out there at the moment, whether from OSI or others, and this is a serious issue…A broader coalition is needed," said Frank Vogl of Transparency International.
These challenges surely are inevitable, in a field that has grown so large in such a short time. As Whayne Dillehay of ICFJ concluded, "There's more than enough work for us all to do."
The story of U.S. public and private media development aid to the post-Communist world has been so extensive and complex that it is worthy of book-length, scholarly assessments impossible to provide under the scope of this report. However, some of the points listed below should be helpful to understanding what kind of aid has been delivered, what questions have arisen, and what lessons have been learned.(1)
With glasnost and the fall of Communism, Americans poured into the U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe to participate in their exciting rush toward democracy. In 1990, Secretary of State James Baker announced at Charles University in Prague the establishment of a new International Media Fund, headed by former USIA official Marvin Stone, to help establish independent, non-governmental media across the former Communist bloc. Prominent American journalists swarmed into the trendy capitals: Warsaw, Prague, Budapest and Moscow. Charles University in Prague suddenly found itself besieged by American journalism school partners. But soon it was clear that this "parachute professor" model was designed more for the Americans than for the foreigners. "The joke became something like, 'We've had U.S media assistance; Ben Bradlee was here for lunch one day,'" recalled veteran trainer Ed Baumeister.(2)
No non-governmental philanthropic organization arrived earlier, was more generous or more influential in democracy building across the former Communist world, than George Soros' Open Society Institute. For example, it was OSI who provided $80,000 to found Moscow's first independent radio station, Radio Echo, through Internews as the intermediary. "If Echo hadn't been in the Moscow White House, Yeltsin wouldn't have been able to broadcast, and might have lost the coup," said Manana Aslamazian of Internews. Soros funded everything: training, production, competitions, and direct assistance to media, transmitters.
Soros has spent $360 million over the last decade on democracy building in Russia alone.(3) While just an estimated 10% of that went specifically to media development, all of OSI's grants aimed to help support the development of democracy and civil society, the "enabling environment" necessary for independent journalism to survive.
In the heyday of media development in 1993-94, thousands of new non-state commercial television stations were created across the former U.S.S.R. "There was a time when two new companies were being opened every day," said Aslamazian. Under her leadership, Internews is credited with developing independent broadcast television all across Russia with USAID and Soros funds.
As American journalism trainers in the early 1990s tripped over each other in foreign restaurants, they decided more coordination would be useful. The Center for Foreign Journalists (later ICFJ) was asked to track media development and training by creating the Clearinghouse on the Central and East European Press, with $50,000 each from the International Media Fund and the Freedom Forum. A government contractor, the Academy for Educational Development, tracked broadcast media for a year, but then gave it up so ICFJ has been collecting both print and broadcast assistance data ever since, now published on its IJNet website.
James Greenfield, a longtime New York Timesman, also concluded that a more systematic in-country approach also was needed. His Independent Journalism Foundation (IJF) (4) , backed by the Knight and New York Times foundations, established Centers for Independent Journalism first in Prague, then Bratislava (after Czechoslovakia's velvet divorce), Bucharest and Budapest with Don Wilson and Nancy Ward. These resource centers have been offering help ever since in basic journalism, research, database building, circulation, and business practice. (The Prague center was closed in 2000 as a new center was opened in Cambodia.) They worked with visiting American Knight fellows, local print and broadcast journalists, and their professional organizations. "In my view, they are the ideal form of media assistance," concluded Baumeister, who has worked in the region for much of the decade.
In 1992, Greenfield, Tom Winship and Dana Bullen of the World Press Freedom Committee brainstormed with Creed Black of the Knight Foundation in Miami and created the Knight International Press Fellowship Program. The program, run by ICFJ, emphasized long-term media assistance by carefully prepared American journalists whose work would be tailored to specific local needs.
Meanwhile, in Russia, the New York Times was partnering with Izvestia, Hearst started a paper in Moscow, and a small San Francisco-based organization called Internews began to build Russia's first independent television network, training thousands of broadcasters across the country. Soon the U.S. government was spending more than just about anyone else, except perhaps George Soros. Internews won ever-increasing government grants as USIS and USAID's primary broadcast development contractor in the former Soviet Union. Five years later, the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), a government-funded Cold War scientific exchange contractor, jumped in to do print training and now has huge AID contracts in the Balkans and newly independent states (NIS).
The Freedom Forum started to build media libraries in coordination with the Centers for Independent Journalism and other partners. In Moscow, New York University's Center for War, Peace and the News Media, run by Robert Manoff, founded RAPIC, the Russian Press and Information Center (now the Press Development Institute.) They did print training with 19 field offices around Russia. But RAPIC/PDI has become by all accounts an expensive quagmire of union problems and other management issues; it serves today as a cautionary example, which has not yet been adequately analyzed.
The first development organizations to arrive often dominated that country's media training for years, like Internews and RAPIC in Russia. In Bulgaria, the American University in Bulgaria was launched by the University of Missouri, and has been a success in teaching journalism and other subjects. In Warsaw, however, Rutgers' media center was plagued with internal problems and lost its U.S. government funding. In a far more successful venture, Cox newspapers arrived in Warsaw to invest in Gazeta Wyborcza, the Solidarity paper. In Prague, recent college graduate Lisa Frankenberg started up the commercially successful English-language Prague Post newspaper, while a few blocks away, John Siegenthaler, one of America's most respected newspapermen, worked to revive the Czech newspaper, Lidove Noviny.
CASE STUDY: LIDOVE NOVINY VS. GAZETA WYBORCZA
In the economic free-for-all after Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution, a group of entrepreneurs managed to take control of the assets of the 100-year-old Lidove Noviny, which had been the most important Czech intellectual newspaper before World War II. The Freedom Forum's John Siegenthaler came to Prague and spent six months training the staff in all aspects of newspaper management. Meanwhile, Czech-American Martin Stransky, whose grandfather had owned the newspaper before the Nazis and then the Communists took over, stepped up with other investors to buy shares that the entrepreneurs offered for sale. Stransky was able to buy back for a high price only 2% of his grandfather's paper, while the entrepreneurs kept the majority of shares for themselves. Soon $10,000 was being spent to paint giant ads for Lidove Noviny on Prague tram cars. The paper's business directors had listened well to Siegenthaler, in fact, perhaps too well. The Czech entrepreneurs sold their stock to the Ringier publishing empire. They had made their own personal fortunes, while Stransky was left out in the cold, and his Czech national treasure was just another newspaper owned by the Swiss.
To be sure, Siegenthaler's efforts may have had positive ripple effects on journalists now working throughout Central Europe. But there is an important lesson in this case: Training at an organization whose owners are not committed to the same values may be a waste of time and money.
In contrast, Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza (Electoral Gazette) started as an underground Solidarity paper and became the first independent daily in a communist country in 1989. Now it is the major newspaper in Poland, helping define Polish politics, and making solid profits. When the Communists fell, Le Monde gave Gazeta some old presses, but what the paper really needed was capital. Cox invested $5 million in cash and sweat equity, and sent over advisers in every area except editorial. "They wouldn't take that; their fear was that we would control the editorial page," said Cox's Andy Glass. (5) Cox saw it as a good business model and entry point for other communications in Poland, including cable and cell telephones. When Gazeta launched an IPO, Cox's investment multiplied. "We could pay for our Cox Washington bureau many times over for what we made on Gazeta," Glass said. It was Cox's 12% interest that enabled Gazeta to buy color presses, instead of limping along on Le Monde's hand-me-downs. To be sure, much of Gazeta's success was due to the Poles' enabling environment, which had elements of civil society lacking in Czechoslovakia-including a vibrant labor movement and strong Catholic church-as well as an early economic "shock treatment" shift to capitalism.
In 1996, Marvin Stone disbanded his International Media Fund because his USAID funders wanted a tighter policy rein on media development. USAID had won a turf battle with USIS over managing media aid, which meant that government-funded media development projects now had to serve USAID's policy objectives. At that point, "helping independent media was not seen as an independent activity," one IREX veteran recalls. "Those doing the assistance to independent media were looked on more and more as agents of the U.S. government, as indeed they were."
Previously, USAID had been funding Internews for five years without seeking competitive bids. Now USAID put out an RFP (request for proposals) for a three-year grant starting in 1997 to work in Central and Eastern Europe. (6) "Five years after the dramatic end of Communism, too many media in the region-especially outside the capitals-continue struggling along in an in-between world: half free, unprofitable, demoralized, dependent, living hand to mouth, uncertain whether they have a future," USAID noted in the RFP. IREX won the Promedia contract. As with Internews, the emphasis of the Promedia project was on practical business needs for self-sustaining media organizations, rather than "exercises in journalism theory." (7)
The Knight fellowships served as a model for Promedia's work. ICFJ became a partner in the $19 million Promedia project, bringing in the journalism expertise that IREX and a third partner, the National Forum Foundation (now Freedom House), lacked. But the consortium arrangement did not work well, according to a subsequent USAID assessment. ICFJ withdrew 18 months later over differences with both the progress of the project and USAID's micromanagement of it.
Promedia started off with lots of problems: endless field studies, a chaotic work planning process, inconsistent aims and poor coordination. While IREX worked on training, in-country activities and association building throughout the region, Freedom House identified future leaders for study tours and narrowed its work to running the Romania program. The harshest criticism in the USAID assessment was directed at Freedom House, which vigorously contested that analysis.(8)
Despite these problems, the Promedia consortium's work made a positive difference. In Croatia, for example, they strengthened the Croatian Journalists Association. In Romania, they founded an Audit Bureau of Circulation, representing 60 publications throughout the country. In Slovakia, IREX Promedia worked with the Slovak Syndicate of Journalists and designed a "model station" technical template. They negotiated reduced prices so local television stations could upgrade their equipment. In Ukraine, they helped establish a western-style student newspaper at the state university's journalism department. The Covington & Burling law firm worked pro bono with IREX Promedia to analyze proposed laws, engage in program design and policy debates, and train media lawyers for work throughout the region.
By 1998, the project's assessors found that some media were still struggling, some were successful and free, and quite a few were profitable. "Only a few are demoralized, and rarely do these organizations live 'from hand to mouth.' None of the media leaders interviewed felt the field "lacked a future," the report found.(9)
In 1999 USAID funded a second, $48 million Promedia II contract, won again by IREX for Armenia, Belarus, Bosnia, Bulgaria Croatia, Macedonia, Romania and Ukraine. (10) ICFJ won the contract for work in Georgia. In post-war Bosnia, IREX built a small commercial Sarajevo news agency into the only independent, countrywide news agency. It also poured resources into Nezavisne Novine, a Bosnian Serb daily whose editor had his legs blown off by a car bomb in October, 1999 but who returned to work, joking that he was now a "limited edition" of his former self. IREX planted a satellite-fed TV transmitter permanently in a hotel room in bombed-out Srebrenica, a devastated community which otherwise had no television. And it helped create freedom of information and Western-style civic defamation laws, as well as training in journalism, newspaper graphics and media business. IREX's work got high marks in Kosovo from Veton Surroi, the editor of Kosovo's KOHA newspaper.(11)
Meanwhile, Internews also was winning millions in USAID media development contracts (12) and expanding into 22 countries. It did what IREX did, and more. Most importantly, Internews developed a sustained local presence. Its media trainers focused first on developing local Internews organizations to take over the work with indigenous trainers. They dove into independent broadcast development throughout the 1990s, helping start up television stations in provincial cities, linking them into program-sharing networks, enlisting them to do programming projects and sponsoring news awards competitions.
Skeptics wondered how Internews President David Hoffman could raise so much money and expand so quickly if his organization was trying to do meaningful, long-lasting work. But admirers cited Internews's remarkable network of dedicated local media activists, who continue to work today in such difficult settings as Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Georgia. Wired magazine wrote "Feisty, independent, market-driven TV has taken hold across the former Soviet Union, thanks largely to the efforts of…Internews." (13)
Ann Olson, a Knight fellow who worked in Russia and is now in Cambodia, said that Internews "made independent TV in Russia what it is, step by step, because it was the one on the ground when everything started, and grew as independent TV grew. The importance of that mutual growth cannot be underestimated." (14)
The two rival USAID-funded organizations evolved from different cultures, missions, and ideology. IREX came to the media development field after establishing itself in Washington as an NGO with government grants to do scientific and cultural exchanges with the U.S.S.R. during the Cold War. It still does 2/3 of its work in areas other than media. (15) IREX generally hires outsiders to do its journalism training, including a number of former Knight fellows. IREX's Promedia program works on four areas: journalism skills, media business skills, media law and media associations. IREX has worked mostly with print and only recently branched out to broadcast. In some places where the relevant USAID personnel in charge of the country program are flexible, proactive IREX trainers can do more, such as IREX's helping private Bosnia television stations lobby on broadcast regulation issues.
Internews also came to the U.S.S.R. during the Cold War, as a small ngo founded by San Francisco-area peace activists who created televised "space bridge" forums to foster U.S.-Soviet citizen dialogue. Still working today out of a clapboard house in tiny Arcata, California, Internews tries to spin off in each country a local Internews media assistance ngo, at least one media industry association (such as the Russian or Ukrainian television networks), at least one journalists' association, and a "media monitoring" ngo. (16) Internews' style is more collaborative than didactic. Each local Internews organization typically recruits the most promising local broadcasters and trains them further as they make Internews-contracted programs. This provides programming to share among participating stations, linking a formidable local network of Internews alumni.
Internews alumni now are leaders in Russian broadcasting, providing some lasting impact for media development there even as the independence of most stations is thwarted by a weak advertising sector, Russian politicians, and media oligarchs.
In the transitional societies where Internews and IREX have been working, media urgently have needed business, technical, marketing and management training, and legal assistance. The speeches about American-style "objectivity" and balance have been harder to sell to local journalists. (17) Some American media missionaries criticize Internews for working to build independent broadcasting on commercial marketplace terms, without paying as much attention to journalism values. In fairness, however, it must be mentioned that Internews has sponsored highly successful journalism awards competitions and other incentives that emphasize journalism quality. Internews' Russia director, Manana Aslamazian, is held in high regard by other media developers and she sits now on a Russian broadcast regulatory body and an advisory board for George Soros's Network Media Program, as well as the board of Internews Network, the California home base of Internews' far-flung empire.
Independence from government meddling is a central point of media development work. Internews recently adopted an explicit code of ethics against accepting journalism content directives from any donor. (19) Several insiders and other media developers said IREX has been less successful in maintaining the boundary, although IREX President Mark Pomar disagreed that his organization is catering to U.S. policymakers.(20) There is "daily tension" with government officials about IREX's mission, he said, but IREX people have "stood their ground" against improper requests. His organization's mission is capacity building for civil society, not the advancement of specific US government foreign policies, he contended. "Most of our trainers are former Knight fellows…We're not a human rights organization, we do not lobby against or for certain governments."(21)
Recently both IREX and Internews, to their great credit, avoided taking the assignment when a U.S. official tried to enlist them to create news coverage against a current NIS (newly independent states) regime (which was, to be sure, repressing independent media and democracy activists). Both organizations refused to direct their affiliated journalists to provide the biased content sought by the U.S. official. It would have made them into partisan players, even though a change in that country's political leaders would probably have served the cause of open media.
Government pressure on its media development contractors is not proper USAID practice, according to its June 1999 report on the Role of Media in Democracy, which emphasized "…the need for clear distinctions between media assistance and public information campaigns that promote U.S. policies and viewpoints." The report warned U.S. policymakers that "Democratic transitions may not be strengthened through the creation of a media which, while free from its own government control, espouses views of foreign governments and reflects their interests. An outlet's credibility depends on its ability to report news freely."(22)
IREX and Internews sometimes overlap in the field, sharing contract relationships or working side by side, as they do in Ukraine. IREX is doing more broadcast development in Central Europe and Internews is starting to branch out into print in Central Asia.
Despite Internews', IREX's, OSI's and others' efforts, an environment to support independent media still is struggling to evolve in the former Soviet bloc. In Russia, the fledgling advertising industry was too small to sustain the explosion of stations, so many fell victim to shady investors. By 1995, the new stations, newspapers and magazines were falling into the hands of two rival oligarchs, Boris Berezovsky (TV-6) and Vladimir Gusinsky (NTV).
Gusinsky and Berezovsky used their media empires to fiercely challenge the Kremlin and President Vladimir Putin. Some important journalism was done, particularly on the war in Chechnya and other embarrassments to the Putin regime. But at times, the two media barons did not behave like neutral, independent broadcasters, trying to develop civil society through a watchdog press.
"The media didn't learn too well to preserve themselves. They gave many pretexts to be closed, to be punished, to be silenced," Aslamazian said. Putin's allies used the courts to close both media empires down and pursue Berezovsky and Guskinsky on criminal charges stemming from irregular business practices. "Formally speaking, the government never closes the media down for speaking freely. There is always some economic, some business issues to be used as a pretext" Aslamazian said. Both broadcasting companies were tried under a law that experts said was antiquated and only used once before. "If it was applied universally, many (non-media) companies would be liquidated," concluded Anya Kachkaeva, professor of journalism at Moscow State University.
Now even Radio Echo, which broadcasts breaking news and analysis to 70 cities as part of Gusinsky's network, is back under the control of the state, as are the once-independent national television stations created with help from foreign media developers. A debate continues about the Kremlin's motives, whether Putin is trying to reinstate state controls over the media or is just trying to neutralize political rivals Gusinsky and Berezovsky, who recently started a new opposition party.
There still are some 11,000 television companies working in Russia, over half of them calling themselves "independent," but the important national television and radio channels, as well as the major newspapers and magazines, are clearly under Putin's thumb. One problem is that the public makes no distinction between those who truly are trying to operate independently and those who are direct shills for the government or local politicians, Aslamazian said. "The concept of reputation does not really work. It is not possible to say who is good and who is bad. We have to strive for self-regulation."(23) Audiences often believe fantastic stories in the popular press, and few seem to imagine that there can be a more public service-oriented "independent" press.
What has happened to media in Russia has been repeated, in some fashion, in most former U.S.S.R. newly independent states, including especially Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia. A downward economic and political spiral is afflicting them all, making it harder for media to establish a financial footing. Many if not most locals who invest in media there know they are going to lose money, but do so in order to accrue political or financial influence. (24)
Much of the media training by Internews and others in the former Soviet republics has been focused on advertising revenue, market research, and production of shows with broad audience appeal, such as soap operas and game shows as well as news. Their governments and societies are generally corrupt and officials are hostile, sometimes violently so, toward investigative journalism that unmasks this corruption. Self-censorship is a way of life for most local journalists, who may take money to write or avoid certain stories.
Even in freer Central and Eastern Europe, the privatized media have not offered consistently reliable journalism about government corruption or consumer advocacy. In the Czech Republic and Hungary, dominant politicians control broadcast councils which give out licenses. Broadcast ownership is not transparent, accountability is rare and the journalism is often amateurish. Getting journalists to ask the pertinent questions, to find out what the government actually is doing, and to publish or broadcast the answers, is still surprisingly difficult in many CEE countries. The challenge of media development in post-Communist societies was eloquently summarized by Czech journalist Jan Urban. It's like trying to "teach old cats to bark."(25)
Case Study: Media Assistance in the Balkans
Since the media helped fan the flames of war in both Yugoslavia and Bosnia during the 1990s, the international community came in with huge sums of money and media management structures after the Dayton Peace Accords. By 1996 there were 110 print media, 41 radio stations, 17 television stations and four news agencies in Bosnian-controlled Federation territory, because the international community had plowed $7 million into them from 1992-95. (27) Typical projects included the Free Elections Radio Network (FERN) which was financed with 2 million DM by the Swiss government, and which covered much of the Bosnian and Serb areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina, but didn't reach well into the Croat area or Republika Srpska. An influential alternative newspaper, Nezavisne novne, evolved with financial assistance from the UK's Overseas Development Agency, USAID (IREX), and Soros' OSI.
The London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting partnered with Sarajevo-based Media Plan in June 1996 to do comprehensive media monitoring. This project was funded by OSI, the Winston Foundation for World Peace (USA) and the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung (Germany). Despite large investments, the International Crisis Group's (ICG) 1998 report concluded that there had been "few breakthroughs" and that the problems were the still unstable situation where trust had not yet been established. In one of the worst embarrassments, a U.S.-donated satellite dish meant for alternative media was hijacked by anti-democratic forces and used to broadcast hate messages serving the Milosevic cause.
The biggest disappointment was the disastrous $10.5 million Open Broadcast Network (OBN) which was set up in 1996 by the Office of the High Representative and thus was seen from the beginning by all sides as a foreign creation, to be viewed with suspicion. Sarajevo-based OBN was created out of a network of nominally independent television stations, all founded during the war in Bosnian territory. These stations were unprofessional and biased. One of them NTV Studio 99, was set up in 1995 with "massive" financial backing from UNESCO and European governments, and joined OBN briefly "in order to acquire new equipment. It left the network almost immediately," the ICG report said. For on-air talent, OBN Sarajevo used foreigners instead of investing in and training local journalists. The ICG report concluded in 1998 that "by all objective criteria" OBN "a disaster which should be scrapped." It was.
To be sure, a scorched postwar landscape is hardly fertile ground for civil society and its key facilitator, public mission media. Even the heroic Oslobodjenje newspaper, celebrated in the USA for its publication every day during the siege of Sarajevo, has fallen on hard times in today's corrupt, internationally-run state.
The "enabling environment" in which independent media can flourish still doesn't exist in much of the Balkans. Soros' OSI finds that direct subsidies to media in Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Macedonia still are necessary. In other countries, however, OSI has reduced operational support and is turning to more legal and policy reforms, and support for minority media.
It would be a mistake to assess too harshly the media development and training work done in this region so far, or to be too pessimistic about the future. Communism had decades to establish itself, and democracy may take just as long. There are trained journalists in place throughout Russia and the newly independent states, thanks in large part to these altruistic media development efforts. Many locals are organized into journalism associations that fight for better media laws and work with the U.S. and other media developers to slowly bring open media to the post-Communist world. Even a civic journalism project is underway in a number of Russian cities, including Rybinsk, Yaroslavl region, where the TV station R-40 is working with the Rybinsk regional court to establish a system of justices of the peace.26
Sometimes even the most embattled journalists manage to break free at important moments, like Rustavi-2 in Georgia and the Independent Broadcasters Association in Ukraine. (See country reports, below.) The free expression organizations and reporters' rights groups, such as the Committee to Protect Journalists, have a vital role to play in these countries.
Perhaps the biggest success story is in Poland, where major broadcasters and print media are not only relatively free from government control, but are economically independent. Gazeta Wyborcza paid off enormously for the Poles and the Americans who invested in it, and its corruption stories have toppled government officials.
1. Stay in for the long haul. Early media training programs in the post-Communist world were faulted for focusing on capital cities and one-time workshops with little systematic follow-up; they needed better language skills and integration of local resources, according to a study for USAID. (28)
2. Sustainability is the next big hurdle. The survival of independent media in countries where politicians or oligarchs are abusing them for their own self-interest depends on finding an alternative source of influence. This can come from a combination of economic independence, international support and pressure, and local public support. Continued local public defense of independent media will evolve only with a more professional and self-critical press corps. In the frontier nations of Belarus, Georgia, Ukraine, and their neighboring republics, it is important not to simply set up foreign-funded media that expect to live from grant to grant. It is suggested that supporters should build the system on the GRAMEEN BANK principle of group pressure to repay loans. If the association of broadcasters provides a loan to one station, the other stations will pressure that first station to pay it back, because only then will there be capital to make a new loan to another station.
3. More legal and policy work is essential. Neither the lawyers nor the journalists in these emerging democracies know much about their own local or international media laws, (29) and thus do not use or change them.
In addition:
RUSSIA:
The complex history of post-Communist media development in the former Soviet Union has been summarized above. Key U.S. organizations in Russia are: Internews, OSI, Freedom Forum (libraries), New York University Center for War, Peace and the News Media, World Bank, IJF, Freedom House, MDLF, ICFJ/Knight fellows, and the Media Viability Fund. IREX Promedia won in 2001 a $3.5 million Russian press assistance contract from USAID. IREX recently took over the troubled RAPIC, which has been renamed the Press Development Institute.
ALBANIA:
The Albanian Soros Foundation (OSFA) spent $277,000 in media in 2000, including a cross-border media project with the Association of Greek Publishers. This project will be expanded to Macedonia and Montenegrin media, with matching funds from a Canadian government foundation. Soros has merged its media training operation with the local Albanian Media Institute, and will continue funding it for a limited time.
ARMENIA:
Newspapers are mouthpieces for political factions and are not factually reliable. Internews has an organization in Yerevan. The Armenian Soros Foundation (OSIAF) spent $86,000 on media in 2000. They partnered with the Yerevan Press Club and Internews Armenia to sponsor a workshop, "Journalists Against Terrorism and Violence," in cooperation with USIS and several foreign embassies and supported production of new journalism textbooks and a course on journalism for practicing journalists. Most of the public does not know what is going on. "In Armenia in the past two years, there has been a resignation of a president, a shootout in the Parliament, and 6 months ago the government was on the verge of a peace agreement with Azerbaijan, yet little of this information made it to the regions of the country, and almost none was covered by the pluralistic regional media," observed one Internews media developer.
AZERBAIJAN:
Internews has an organization in Baku. Media problems are severe. The government control and censorship are stricter than in Russia, yet the independent opposition press manages to play a role in politics. It's a dangerous business. President Aliyev moved in July, 2001 to take over the leading Baku television company, prompting its president, Faig Zulfugarov, to seek political asylum in the United States.
BELARUS:
The political situation is dangerous for any journalist trying to be critical of the government. Internews and IREX are active here. The World Free Press Institute collaborated for three years on a journalism training program with the Belarusian Association of Journalists, funded by the Eurasia Foundation, but a financial scandal at the Ukrainian Eurasia Foundation office killed it.
BALKANS/BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA:
(See "Case Study: Media Assistance in the Balkans") IREX is completing a three-year, $15 million USAID contract in Bosnia. OSI Bosnia-Herzegovina (OSF-BH) spent $252,000 on media in 2000. OSI-Yugoslavia spent $1.2 million supporting independent media in 2000. It helped support the Alternative Network of Electronic Media (ANEM), including Radio B92, which played a major role in the election that overthrew Milosevic. Internews is creating programming for independent broadcasters, out of offices in Sarajevo and Belgrade. Efforts to improve Balkan journalism continue at all levels, including small projects like WBUR's 10-year-old exchange program for Balkan media. About 25 print and broadcast journalists are brought together to Boston each year by this Boston public radio station for two months to work as interns at local media outlets. It is funded with $300,000 from the U.S. government.
BULGARIA:
OSI (OSF-Sofia) spent $229,000 on media in 2000. They spun off their Media Development Center, which now has other funding. The American University in Bulgaria, started by the University of Missouri, has a good journalism school run by fomer Knight fellow Laura Kelly.
CROATIA:
See Balkans discussion in narrative, above. OSI-Croatia spent $229,000 on media in 2000, supporting pockets of resistance to the government, which uses state-controlled media to limit civil society.
CZECH REPUBLIC:
(See "Case Study: Lidove Noviny vs. Gazeta Wyborcza") Although the Czech Republic was deemed to have "graduated" from needing media assistance, the public and private broadcast media are struggling to maintain independence from political influence. The Center for Independent Journalism was closed in 2000, following the departures earlier of Pew, Ford, and most of Soros's activities. The Freedom Forum library was given to the U.S. Embassy. Most newspapers now are owned by chains from Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands. There is little ownership transparency in the broadcasting sector. Vladimir Zelezny, a shady Czech entrepreneur whose market-dominating TV NOVA was funded by American investor Ronald Lauder, not only ran off with the station's profits but regularly holds forth on his scandal-mongering "Ask the Director" talk show, building his political power by attacking Vaclav Havel and his liberal democratic allies. When the Czech Parliament prepared to pass a disastrous press law in 2000 featuring a news subject's "right of reply" regardless of the truth of the original article, Czech newspapers finally rebelled and published blank news pages to show what would happen if the law passed. But then they dropped the issue. It was only when international free press groups picked up the fight, using a scathing European Union report on the proposed law, that the politicians backed down.
GEORGIA:
Real journalism is dangerous here, and some are being jailed or killed, like Georgi Sanaya of Rustavi-2 who was murdered in July, 2001 and no one yet has been charged with the crime. But there also is public support for courageous reporting. In October, 2001 Georgian officials threatened to shut down the station after it aired reports on government corruption. But Rustavi-2 turned the live cameras on the KGB goons who entered their station. Thousands of people surged into the streets to protest the government's actions, and Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze was forced to dismiss not only the corrupt officials identified in the broadcast, but his entire cabinet. OSI Georgia (OSGF) spent $106,000 on media in 2000, including an Internet training program for 15,000 young people, and anti-corruption and investigative journalism projects. ICFJ is working effectively with print media. A promising new School of Journalism has been opened by the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs. IREX has a USAID contract here but is not a major player. Internews offers broadcast training programs that are well regarded and apparently cost effective.33 Erosi Kitsmarishvili, also of Rustavi 2, speaks highly of Internews and of the Committee to Protect Journalists, which helped free him after he was jailed. But the situation remains perilous, with continuous harassment, even after public demonstrations supporting Rustavi 2's investigative reporting on government corruption forced Shevardnadze to fire his cabinet.
The problems here cannot be addressed by "parachute professors" because the issue is not lack of training, but rather the structure of the media. The biggest problem is that the journalists have no incentive to write professionally because they make $30 about a month and are often paid months late. Everything outside Tblisi is tightly controlled, and it is dangerous for media to exert independence. Conferences are seen as easy and pleasant, but they don't accomplish much. The most effective work is long-term and local, with people who speak the Georgian language. One American doing development work in Tblisi advised that it would be better to send in a recent journalism graduate with no experience, who could stay for a few years doing training and free-lance writing, than to fly in experienced journalists for conferences.
HUNGARY:
In Hungary, the government appoints only its own dominant party members to serve on the broadcasting board overseeing the national television and radio networks. Opposition party member Gabor Demsky, the mayor of Budapest, found in 2000 that for the first time in nine years, his Hungarian national day speech would not be broadcast. The Hungarian press is the most privatized in Eastern Europe and the one with the most foreign business investment. Nearly 80% of newspapers are owned by foreign money. (34) This is still a hotbed of U.S. media assistance. Budapest is the home of Soros' regional Network Media Program, run by Gordana Jankovic and IJF has a Center for Independent Journalism here.
KOSOVO:
Media training is offered under an OSI project to Kosovar students at American University in Bulgaria. OSI's Kosova (sic) Foundation for Open Society (KFOS) spent $68,000 on media work in 2000, including a library and Internet program to give isolated populations access to global information. Internews has a modest operation in Prishtina, creating programming that crosses Balkan divides and teaching radio, digital video and Internet skills to students at the University of Prishtina and at Kosovar radio stations.
MACEDONIA:
OSI-Macedonia (FOSIM) spent $181,000 on media work in 2000. When journalists were harassed during an election, FOSIM provided legal assistance. It also helped media lawyers from the Macedonian Press Center in Skopje use Croatian legal models to defend journalists against defamation.
MOLDOVA:
Soros Foundation-Moldova (SFM) spent $77,000 on media work, making international journals and newspapers available through libraries. Other Soros foundations also supported media work here.
MONTENEGRO:
OSI-Montenegro spent $208,000 on media in 2000. The Montenegrin Media Institute, supported with five other donors, promotes regional cooperation and offers continuing education for journalists and media professionals. The foundation also works on freedom of information access, electronic media regulations, and the production of broadcast programs.
POLAND:
The independent media sector is vibrant here. Gazeta Wyborcza is one of the brightest media success stories in the post-Communist world. (35) It has toppled cabinet ministers guilty of corruption. Unlike most Russia/CEE countries, Poland's public radio and television have effective legal protection against outside interference. Stefan Batory Foundation (a Soros foundation) spent $70,000 on media in 20000, including support for independent media and investigative reporting, and a media campaign against corruption that inspired 30 private and public media groups to launch their own anticorruption activities. They also sponsored with Freedom House a World Forum on Democracy, to address globalization, rule of law, and other issues.
ROMANIA:
Radio is big here. There is a Center for Independent Journalism in Bucharest, where Knight fellows and others do the training. IJF also took over the third year of a journalism school at the University of Bucharest. Some Romanians also participate in the IJF's journalism school in Bratislava, Slovakia. The Open Society Foundation-Romania (SON) spent $47,000 on media in 2000. Their work focused largely on education, health programs, Roma programs, mediation and economic development, as well as rural access to communication and education.
SLOVAKIA:
IJF has a Center for Independent Journalism and a journalism school, Academia Istropolitana Nova (AI Nova), which was developed three years ago by Knight fellow Laura Kelly. It is a one-year program for college graduates, including non-journalists, from Romania, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and other countries in the region. For the past two years, IJF also has trained about 450 judges in media issues, with help from federal judge Mark Wolf from Boston. Open Society Institute-Bratislava spent $108,000 in 2000 on media, including work for successful passage of a freedom of information act and a FOIA handbook for state administrators.
SLOVENIA:
Open Society Institute-Slovenia spent $187,000 on media, founding an institute for Internet research, and a debate center, Recently its programs were transferred to another Soros project, the Peace Institute in Lubjljana. It also sponsored study trips abroad for Slovene journalists.
UKRAINE:
Attacks on journalists like Georgi Gongadze and Ihor Oleksandrov, who were murdered, continue to go unpunished. The government is "re-licensing" many of the 600 licensed broadcast media outlets which serve a population of 49 million, to assume more control in anticipation of parliamentary elections. There is no media ownership transparency or freedom of information law. Self-censorship remains a big problem, along with criminal libel suits, tax evasion charges and other harassment. Continued support for legal assistance to media is a high priority here. (36) IREX (print) and Internews (broadcast) each have about $1 million from USAID a year to promote independent media development. USAID funded the formation of 30 regional press clubs through its Ukrainian Market Reform Project (UMREP). Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) do some parachute professor seminars with French experts at the Institute of Mass Information (IMI) and German foundations finance the Academy of Ukrainian Press (AUP) which is a small project with a good German and Ukrainian management team. (37) The Ukrainian Broadcasters Association, created with help from the U.S. National Association of Broadcasters and Internews, is developing well because the broadcasters wanted it themselves, and took over its development after initial help. The Association, together with Internews and IREX, was able in December 2001 to defeat a negative law on political advertising and agitation. Yet many broadcasters, still dependent on ngo grants, have not established for themselves economic independence or a public service mission.
1. George Soros's Open Society Institute (OSI) Soros has focused his vast philanthropy primarily on the former Communist bloc, working to develop democratic culture, which is the "enabling environment" for independent journalism and public access to information. OSI Russia has spent about $36 million on independent media development in Russia over the past decade, including $5 million in 2000, OSI's work includes broadcast, print and Internet. They have, for example, developed 30 Internet access centers, with satellite activity. Current Soros/Russia budget for media/civil society is $2 million, but additional funds come from other OSI organizations, which are both funders and operating foundations. (In contrast, USAID and the European Commission only work through grantee organizations). In the Balkans, Russia and NIS, the local OSI foundations support local media (see below for OSI country by country analysis), and related initiatives on law reform, Internet training/access, libraries, reading and education.
OSI's Network Media Program (NMP, "little OSI"), which is supposed to coordinate media projects (but sometimes conflicts with "big OSI" in New York), has spent $9.5 million supporting independent media development in Central and South Eastern Europe. Administered by Gordana Jankovic out of Central European University in Budapest, this program issues grants and also acts as a consultant for Soros foundations and other organizations' media projects. NMP established the priorities for the Media Task Force of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe and supports the South Eastern Europe Network for Professionalization of the Media (SEENPM), a consortium of over 17 institutions that offers training programs to increase journalism and management skills throughout the region.
2. Internews (http://www.internews.org) has been analyzed in a special section (Russia/CEE overview, above). By 2000, Internews had supported the development of 15 television networks and one radio network in 10 countries, including Armenia, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, East Timor, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine, the West Bank, and former Yugoslavia.
3. IREX (http://www.IREX.org) has been analyzed in a previous section (Russia/CEE overview, above.)
4. Independent Journalism Foundation, run by James Greenfield with support from the New York Times Foundation, Knight and others; has well-regarded Centers for Independent Journalism in Bratislava, Bucharest and Budapest (and now Cambodia) which often use Knight fellows. The center in Prague was closed in 2000. Academia Istropolitana Nova (IA Nova) is IJF's journalism school in Bratislava.
5. Media Viability Fund finds candidates for low-cost loans for purchasing capital equipment like printing presses; does intensive training from financial management to advertising, etc. Contact: Dmitry Surnin, Moscow. Funding: Eurasia Foundation and Media Development Loan Fund.
6. Media Development Loan Fund tries to level the media playing field by acting as a non-profit venture capital fund for independent news organizations in developing democracies. Since 1996, MDLF has extended about $15 million in low interest loans and program related investments. Its borrowers have repaid about $3 million in principal and interest so far. (38) They made about $540,000 grants in 2000. $665,000 in 2001, most for technology-related projects. Contacts: Harlan Mandel in New York, (Harlan.Mandel@ mdlf.org), Sasa Vucinic in Moscow (Sasa.Vucinic@mdlf.org). MDLF also provides management training and other assistance for some worthy news organizations, which may not yet qualify for a loan, to help bring them into qualification. MDLF is funded by the Canadian, Dutch, Swedish and Swiss governments, the OSI-New York, Mott, MacArthur, and Eurasia foundations, and others.
MDLF does not extend loans in Slovenia, Poland, Hungary (with one exception), the Czech Republic or the Baltic States because media organizations in those countries can borrow from commercial banks under acceptable conditions without a few of discrimination, the MDLF board has determined.
MDLF is of limited use in the truly embattled newly independent states. Its insistence on having news organizations with above-board finances doesn't work in places like Belarus, Georgia, and Ukraine, where there is no real above-board commercial media market. (39)
The Center for Advanced Media in Prague is a new-media lab run by MDLF (C@MP) since 1998 to train news organizations in the use of the Internet and other advanced technologies, and funds selected new-media projects. The Center also has regional locations Warsaw, and Moscow. The Center in Prague helps support the Prague-based Transitions-Online, an independent magazine promoting democracy, and Banja Luka's Reporter.
7. Southeast European Media Organization (SEEMO) is an offshoot of the International Press Institute. It aims to promote freedom of the press, improve journalism standards, and ensure the safety of journalists. In November, 2001 it convened print and broadcast reporters and managers from Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary and Bulgaria in Vienna to discuss threats to editorial independence. Contact: seemo@freemedia.at
8. The Committee to Protect Journalists, Glasnost Defense Fund and other free-expression ngos play a vital role in defending endangered journalists in the region.
At first glance, the Latin America media scene appears to be quite different from the post-Communist world; it is home to a mature media business sector, a culture of freedom and a tradition that has included some of the best journalists in the world. Yet as Russia and the former Communist countries move past privatization to new media/political oligarchies plagued by corruption and political pressure, they look like traditional Latin American media. Here, the owners may be tied closely to the political leaders, who together keep a tight lid on what is acceptable as "news."
In some countries such as Venezuela, the political leaders are more concerned about controlling the airwaves than the printed press. But historically, newspapers in Latin America are more important in setting the political agenda. That is why the rise of more independent newspapers willing to publish investigative journalism, such as Mexico's Reforma, is so important. Their emergence has not been easy. These papers often are under legal and sometimes physical attack. They deserve a supportive international spotlight as well as training, fellowships, legal aid and other elements of media development assistance.
A second trend among Latin American publishers is to create new down-market "light" tabloids to complement their more serious, elite newspapers. They lose relatively few of their current newspaper customers, but gain new subscribers who weren't reading any newspaper before. This has been done, for example, by the Ferrer family, owners of El Nuevo Dia in San Juan, Puerto Rico. (1) This development is cheered on by Northwestern's Media Management Center (MMC) and the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) because it is attracting new newspaper readers. Critics might ask, however, if this is the direction journalism should be going in fragile democracies starving for accountability and basic civic information.
In Latin America, the pressures on the press may be less obvious at first glance than the physical threats and takeovers in Belarus and Kazakhstan. The challenges may even look like marketplace pressures. But they often seek the same end: political coercion. Latin America has a shortage of capital for investing in independent media unless they carry some specific agenda. In most of Latin America, the main source of media income is advertising from the government. Other advertisers follow the government's lead. Thus independent media, if unwilling to offer biased support of the government in exchange for its advertising patronage, can be squeezed out. In some countries, only one or two advertising agencies control the marketplace and even own the media outlets outright.
Governments and their friendly advertising agency allies can "embargo" news organizations by denying them access to advertising. This happened in Chile and also in El Salvador, when a radio station reported corruption involving earthquake relief money. In Guatemala, the previous government embargoed El Periodica newspaper, and Chronica magazine, which subsequently closed. To some extent, the media themselves are also perpetuating this trend, by engaging in unethical practices and exhibiting a willingness to accept tainted advertising money.
Several organizations are interested in working against this "embargoing." For example, the Media Development Loan Fund, which is new to the region, would like to provide capital to bridge those embargo periods, offering other ways of selling advertising and other strategic advice. It is unclear whether MDLF will get involved in a big way; Rosental Alves hopes it will and points out that loans can be more viable in Latin America than in regions that have no capitalist tradition. Secondly, the Inter-American Court of Justice (see also the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights, below), based in Costa Rica, ruled that such embargoes are prohibited, opening the way for many possible lawsuits by targeted news organizations.
Aside from this kind of economic and legal support, the biggest need in Latin America is for professional training and education about the importance of a free press and democracy. "People who are journalists don't know how to be journalists or how journalism works in a free society. You also have a need to educate judges and public officers about what a responsible free press is about," said Professor Alves. The more serious problems are in the rural areas and the judicial systems, which still hold onto insult laws dating back to the Napoleonic Code. The International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) is in the midst of a three-year project funded by the McCormick Tribune Foundation (MTF) to educate journalists throughout Latin America on such issues of freedom of expression.
The Economist recently reported that Latin Americans are wavering in their support for democracy and disillusioned with privatization. "The optimism that accompanied the rebirth of democracy in the region two decades ago now seems to have worn extremely thin," the magazine concluded. Much of this is based on economic weakness. Fortunately, pro-democracy political transitions in Mexico, with the election of Vicente Fox, and in Peru, with the end of the Fujimora era, have bucked that downward trend. There, people are more supportive of democracy than before. Independent media are playing a part in these political changes. (2)
There are many opportunities to make a difference in Latin America. On the plus side, there is an appetite to learn how the Norteamericanos do journalism, Professor Alves concluded. "This allows partnerships we would never have seen before." Unfortunately, resources are more limited than ever. Two of the U.S. funders in the region are unable to continue at the same level. The Freedom Forum used to invest $100,000 a year in Latin America; they have cancelled all of their international programs. Prospects for renewed funding by the McCormick Tribune Foundation, are clouded by MTF's reduced resources. Details of MTF's current funding are outlined later in this report.
Case Study: The CELAP Story
In the midst of the 1980s wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua, and the U.S. arrest of Manuel Noriega in Panama, the U.S. government invested money for media in Central America in order to help support the d