Category: Feature articles

Salcito argues that national divisions are causing Malawian journalists to under-represent locals in their coverage of a major mining project in the less developed north.

Last month production began in Malawi’s first ever foreign-developed mining venture. The Kayelekera Uranium Project, owned by Australian uranium miner Paladin Energy, is in Malawi’s northernmost district, Karonga. It has the potential to enrich the region – with jobs, skills training, and income – or launch locals into a health crisis.

You wouldn’t know it from the press coverage, though. In fact, you would hardly know there were locals in the region at all.

As a result of decades-old divides between the north and south, Malawi’s southern-based media is overlooking the people most directly impacted by the new mine. Instead of addressing the pressing concerns the mine presents to northerners, southern journalists are waging philosophical battles over the “Right to Development.”

The Right to Development has been hotly argued since the mid- 20th century, and its adoption by the UN General Assembly in 1986 has not resolved the disagreement. The debate hinges on whether the benefits to beneficiaries outweigh the risks to victims of development.

At its surface, this is precisely the discussion needed. Development helps countries and communities that require foreign capital to improve infrastructure, and it has lasting, sustainable positive roles to play. But it can be risky for the local communities whose back yards become project sites while weak governments lack resources such as environmental legislation and adequate tax revenues to remedy problems if the project goes awry.

Malawi fits both descriptions, yet locals are not considered among the relevant winners or losers in the project’s development – benefits and risks are only discussed in terms of national, not regional, gain.

The people are getting lost amid discussion of their rights.

Geography and visibility

How have the communities most directly affected by the mine and the national quest for development disappeared from this public debate? The answer is in the geography: the mine is in the north, while every newspaper is based in and distributed in the south.

In Malawi, latitude matters. 

For the three decades of dictatorial rule between colonial times and Malawi’s first democratic election in 1994, Northern Malawi was known as “The Dead North.” Northern teachers were exiled from southern schools; northern laborers were passed over for work. Southerners were taught that their northern neighbors were “backwards,” and northerners were taught that nothing could grow, thrive, or prosper in their region.

Until the late 1990s not a single highway linked the north and the south. Northerners were accorded no voice, so, unsurprisingly, they produced no newspapers.

Reversal of this policy has not reversed the southern mentality. In fact, laws created to protect northern rights are now being used against them. A March 2009 editorial evoked the constitutional nondiscrimination clause to argue that northerners should not be given first priority in hiring at the project site. The government had informed Paladin Energy of such a policy two years prior.

It is traditionally accepted that a mine’s social and environmental damage to local populations is offset by economic gain. But “nondiscrimination” means that southerners, who had training opportunities and developed industrial experience, actually stand a better chance of gaining from the project’s largesse than the local northerners.

Also, economic gains from taxation and royalties will go to the national capital in Lilongwe, and there is no public agreement that a percentage of that income should return to Karonga. This issue has not hit the presses.

Bypassing risks

Not only are local benefits being bypassed in favor of southern interests, so are the local risks. If the newspapers are to be believed, the mine’s biggest threats are uranium content in water and corruption.

These arguments have little bearing on the reality up north. Extensive environmental assessment by renowned consulting group Knight Piesold details the radiation risk in air, water, and food supplies. Given the natural, extreme quantities of uranium in the soil, locals are already consuming high quantities of the radioactive mineral, and the watersheds are already inundated with it. Risks of radon gas are addressed in Paladin’s globally accepted policies, and monitoring is ongoing. A mine that will finally monitor water and air quality could actually improve public radiation levels

Newspapers, however, report the risk of uranium pollution killing fish in Lake Malawi, 50 kilometers east of the project site. Vigilance regarding monitoring is vital, but concerns far more pressing, if mundane, should be raised, if local health is really at interest to reporters. 

People living within a 15-kilometer radius of the project, when asked in the course of a Human Rights Impact Assessment what worried them, expressed fear of the arrival of outsiders and the increase in food prices. The implications of in-migration and food inflation are serious cause for concern, but their only victims are northerners.

Development and HIV

The influx of foreign populations means a dilution of local culture and increased stress on food supply. Food price spikes hit close to home in a region with a history of drought-induced famine. The most recent food crisis occurred between 2002 and 2004, setting 80 percent of the population at risk for starvation, according to government estimates.

The secondary impacts of in-migration are even more pressing. When Kayelekera was located off a pot-holed, rarely used road, HIV was slow to arrive. But the importation of miners and truck drivers (two of the world’s highest HIV-carrying populations), coupled with the significant improvement to that road, which now connects Kayelekera to Zambia and Tanzania, means that the HIV rates are almost certain to explode. 

Not only is there global documentation that mines, transportation routes, and sudden changes in population types and density put communities and significantly greater risk for HIV transmission, there is a health surveillance project less than 100 km from the mine site that has been tracking HIV rates in the region since the first case was found in the 1980s, verifying that this is the case in North Malawi.

Is there a journalistic responsibility to report on the indirect links between economic development and health deterioration? Should journalists have such specialized information about mine sites and HIV rates?

In Malawi, where HIV rates increase annually, the causes and repercussions of HIV transmission are matters of national importance.   HIV strikes the young and able-bodied — the mothers and the breadwinners. It leaves children orphaned and elderly grandparents unemployed and unsupported. Families crumble, schools lose teachers, students lose the cash for school fees, over-extended hospitals lose the ability to cope with increasing health demands from increasingly sick populations. Ignoring the fears of locals in favor of having a national debate over development ignores the heart of the development issue itself: improvement of life for citizens.

The ultimate irony is that, by failing to consider northerners, the nation could be struck with an HIV epidemic of proportions that would stagger national development for decades.

Kendyl Salcito is the director of the Nomogaia Foundation, a nonprofit organization that conducts Human Rights Impact Assessments for transnational corporations erecting new projects in developing countries. Salcito is the past editor of JournalismEthics.ca. She has been writing and editing for Journalism Ethics since the fall of 2005. Salcito is a 2007 graduate of the UBC School of Journalism, where she specialized in international reporting in the era of global capitalism. Her BA in History from Princeton University piqued her curiosity in global events, but work in Southeast Asia led her into journalism. Since the spring of 2006, Salcito has worked as an editor and writer for the Canadian Journalism Project, as a writer for The Tyee, and has provided stories to CKNW and CBC.

Lee Wilkins, University of Missouri, offers her candid thoughts — and worries — as she attended The Future of Ethical Journalism.

It is almost impossible to attend a gathering of journalists — either of the academic or practical varieties — without considering the future of the profession. This looming question is an under current in every room and most conversations, but it seldom truly bubbles to the surface. That was the position I found myself in at the Future of Journalism Ethics conference: wondering whether what I heard and what I had to say really would matter in the next five to 10 years.

I was captured by a series of ironies. The first is this essay, which today we would label a blog.

The dilemma of blogging

I find blogging both uncomfortable and frustrating. My level of emotional disquiet is made worse by the fact that I have to blog about once a week, for a local radio show for which I am a panelist.  When I do blog I find myself in some netherworld between writing an editorial (which I was taught had to be based in fact and articulated logically) and reporting, which I most often haven’t had the time to do. Even writing in the first person bothers me, as one of my personal standards for good writing involves getting out of the way so the reader can focus on the story.

Blogging to me seems self indulgent, at least when I do it, and frequently ill considered, by both myself and others.

But, what does that have to do with ethics? Especially for a woman who has been known to have a strong opinion or two and is fairly unafraid to state them. For me, it has everything to do with the need for some private space for thought…for not just the time to think, but the time to ruminate, to go down awkward and disjointed paths, to get emotionally involved, to reject or accept that emotion — before coming to not just a conclusion but the beginning of a question.

When I was a city hall reporter, I had hours to write a story about a meeting it had taken hours to sit through and weeks, months and years to amass a context for. In crafting that news story, even under deadline, I had had plenty of time to think. I knew the people and I knew something about the issues. And, it wasn’t ever about me — it was about the citizens and decision makers in the community.

Blogging contests most of these patterns of thinking and behaving. The requirement that I do it often feels invasive — as if I am being asked to relinquish the privacy of my thoughts and feelings before I am quite ready. But, my students do it naturally, and they don’t seem to have any of my hesitations. This was certainly evident at the conference. And, it causes me to question whether I understand this new genre of journalism at all.

The role of newspapers in a democracy

The second irony — well, it was Clark Hoyt’s gently phrased assertion that, for the family that owns the New York Times, preserving that newspaper, even in a form that is now requiring pay reductions for the entire staff, probably will supersede the survival of the Boston Globe.

And, so we have a newspaper potentially closing a newspaper, thanks to conglomerate market economics.  In Boston, the home of John Adams and John Francis “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, John Kennedy’s grandfather and mayor of Boston. The news organization that doggedly, in that very Roman Catholic city, told Americans that the priesthood too often had become a home for perverts and pedophiles as well as men and women of deep faith.

I have a new friend, Bill Densmore, the founder of the Mediagiraffe project, who told me only a couple of weeks ago that, as a New Englander, he cannot imagine Boston without the Globe. Because Mr. Hoyt is such a thoroughly engaged journalist and decent human being, it was impossible to ask him “who is it that speaks for democracy and community” in the boardroom at the New York Times. Surely this is a question that the reader’s representative, at least as much as citizens, should be preoccupied with and passionate about. But his columns, as important as they are, have yet to veer into this personal and professional quagmire.

Yet, it is this question that haunts me more than any other — because I have always seen journalism as a pathway to democratic self-government. I cannot imagine one without the other, and in that I am in the ethical tradition of Dewey and Gandhi. At this conference, we walked up to the question, stared it in the face, and retreated. Big question, big implications — it deserves more conversation than we gave it.

Journalism for hire

The third irony — the moving story of one news director’s unwillingness to continue with his work in the face of “journalism for hire”. As I was listening to that story of professional courage, I thought about my photojournalism students. I think it is accurate to say that most of them do not expect, in their working life times, to have the title “staff photographer”. Instead, they will be in the world of the perpetual freelancer — or work for hire as it is more often called.

On my very worst days — and this is not one of them — I think about these extraordinarily talented young people who are willing to enter a profession that finds them in some sense disposable. And, I ask myself whether what is now the “wave of the present” for photojournalists or most copy editors in the publishing industry might not be the wave of the very near future for the entire profession.

So what if the news director — or an entire staff — quits. They are replaceable; indeed, in many news organizations — stretched beyond thin by the current economic crisis — they have been at least partially replaced.

When Carol Gilligan was developing her concept of the ethics of care, one of the most crucial insights the women she studied had to discover was that they were beings of moral worth, of equal weight to every other person involved in the moral choice they were making.

How will journalists — as individuals or as members of the small communities that comprise individual news organizations — find that moral voice and make themselves heard in an economic structure that views them as a replaceable commodity rather than the single most important locus of human insight and strength?

I have no answer, but I know that every time I hear this choice phrased in strictly market, rather than ethical, language, I fear the battle is already lost.

Exercising ethics

And then, there is the final irony: whether ethics is changing.

In a way, I think many of the panelists were correct when they noted that ethics doesn’t change. But, the word seems plural (though it takes a singular verb) for a reason. Professional ethics itself isn’t singular—it’s about the exercise of practical wisdom, and that involves a multitude of things, among them values and priorities.

And, here’s where I think a consequential shift is taking place. In the world of the web, the predominant value is publish — get it out there. Preferably as transparently as possible. Then comes verified fact, and maybe an effort at truth-telling.

I think this emphasis on the immediacy of publishing represents an intellectual — philosophers would use the words epistemological and normative — change. And, while the concept of publish NOW does include a component of the “speed-induced-scoop”, I think to reduce the ethical issues it raises to the scoop mentality is to think less deeply than the question calls for.

Take your average crime story. Crime gets committed. Story gets written/broadcast. Cops bust someone — another story. There’s a trial — another story. Jury renders verdict — another story. And, in very rare cases, an innocence project finds — many years later — the original conviction is invalid. Another story. All of this is considered legitimate journalism — at least in the recent past. It is reactive journalism — it relies on other important institutions in society to take an action and then reports on them.

As a former police reporter, I can tell you that this process of covering cops and courts was flawed. I had been a reporter for less than a month when I discovered that crime reporting in this traditional way provided only the most fragmented and inaccurate picture of the impact of heroine addiction in Detroit on the civic culture of Ann Arbor, Michigan, disguised in the form of residential burglaries. Whatever else they were, my reports were accurate but not truthful, at least truthful in a way I believe would have been most useful to the community.

So, I flinch a bit when traditional journalists get all outraged about valuing publication — getting stuff out there — as the predominant value of internet journalism. At the surface level, I don’t see it as very different as what I did in the early 70s and again in the mid 80s, although my efforts continued over months rather than hours. But, what IS different, I believe, is the epistemological underpinnings of the approach and its normative intent.

The epistemology of journalism

Getting it out there, for many on the internet, means getting it out there with the intent of getting it corrected, or perhaps the more accurate phrasing would be getting it more correct in subsequent postings. Each version is intended to get somewhat closer to the truth, with the transparent understanding that the “truth” may change according to additional evidence provided.  But, that “truth” is no longer limited to the tangible facts of the case — the internet has the capacity to add interpretation (what we call opinion or analysis) to those facts. While some interpretations are bogus, others actually may help people take facts and make meaning of them. This is the potential promise of crowd sourcing.

To drive the theoretical connection back to practical application, how important could it have been to take my reports of residential burglaries — all told from the point of view of the investigative officer — and add to it the faces and voices of those in the community who were the victims of those crimes and those who knew those who were committing them — and why. This is not intended to excuse theft — an ethically reprehensible act. But, it is to say that hearing something from the neighborhood level, from the point of view of the voiceless who were thoroughly implicated in my reporting but almost completely without access to its daily development (I seldom got to interview subjects once they had been thrown in the county jail and the cops often told the victims not to talk until the trial stage), is a real possibility here.

The letter from the jail inmate (and I received many) can now be replaced by a real time text or cell phone message that may or may not contribute to the reporting but which at least has a chance of being “heard”. Of course there will be ethical concerns with this approach. But, I do not view them as more problematic then our current concerns with crime and cops reporting — only ethically distinct and every bit as important.

But, the normative intent for me represents an even more consequential shift.

The normative intent of at least some stories done in this way is to provoke a response. It is not reactive journalism — it is journalism that is proactive and can be issue focused. (This is not to say that it always is so.) It is intended to function minimally as a real time feedback loop to other institutions, political and economic actors in the community. Normatively, it has the potential to be transformative — for both good and for ill. Too much dumb and mean spirited crowd sourcing could promote hate, ill considered actions, and, as Plato would have said, rule by the mob.

Smartly done — and our readers/viewers/listeners are nothing if not smart — it can make journalists an engine of democratic change. And, for many journalists — that’s why they got into the business in the first place — to change things for the better. But, to take journalism from being an essentially reactive institution and process to one that can and will provoke and promote a response will raise a host of ethical issues, many of them connected with power and influence. And, many of them focus not just on individual actions, but on those actions in a corporate setting.

Philosophically, this is tough territory — it includes questions of agency (individual and collective), of rationality, and of role.  Those questions are powerful and worth exploring in the profession and in the academy.

LEE WILKINS focuses her research on media ethics, media coverage of the environment and hazards and risks. She is a co-author of one of the country’s best-selling college ethics texts, Media Ethics: Issues and Cases, now in its fifth edition with McGraw-Hill. Wilkins is the associate editor of the country’s leading academic journal on media ethics, The Journal of Mass Media Ethics. She is Curator’s Teaching Professor in the Department of Journalism at the University of Missouri.

View conference program [PDF / 2.27 MB]

The future of journalism must include ethics, or journalism won’t serve democracy. That was a recurring theme among journalists, media scholars, and ethicists at “The Future of Ethical Journalism,” the first annual ethics conference of the Center for Journalism Ethics on May 1.

Asked if ethics was possible given the current troubles in journalism, several panelists replied along the same lines: ‘It better be possible because, without ethics, it is no longer journalism.’

An international group of 23 panelists and moderators engaged in intense discussions on the future of journalism – and the future of ethics in journalism. Is ethics possible amid an economic crisis in mainstream journalism? Is the speed of online journalism incompatible with the ethical norms of accuracy and truth-telling?  Are there new models for doing good journalism?

Over 100 people registered for the event, hosted by the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and sponsored by the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association Foundation.  Many people across the United States and Canada (and beyond) watched the proceedings that were streamed live to the center’s web site, www.journalismethics.info. Others sent questions and comments through the conference’s social media page.

Jon Sawyer, head of the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, said ethics can adjust to new forms of journalism. He said his center has developed ethical norms appropriate to its new approach to covering global affairs, using reporters around the world.  Kathy Bissen of Wisconsin Public Television said she didn’t think that the basic ideas of journalism ethics have changed. For her news organization, trust was crucial to its “brand,” and the task was to “convey that brand into the new media.”

Ellen Foley, a former editor of the Wisconsin State Journal, asked: “What is a product and what is journalism?” Foley said she didn’t like to talk about “brands.”  Journalism was about truth-telling and community building, and these values are general enough to be honored by new media.  Phil Rosenthal, media columnist for the Chicago Tribune, said journalists need to distinguish between “conventions and convictions.”  They should not confuse conventional ways of doing journalism with basic convictions about what makes for good journalism.

As the conference progressed, the challenges of doing ethics in the current media climate surfaced.

During a session where editors described tough decisions, Scott Anderson, a former political editor with CNN, asked whether a major news organization should ‘go’ with unconfirmed rumors, e.g. a web site is running a rumor that a leading politician has had an affair. The pressure on CNN to match such stories is intense, Anderson noted, adding that these situations call for “gut decisions.” On the same panel, Martin Kaiser, editor of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, discussed how his newsroom debated using a dramatic picture of a mother arriving home to a devastating fire that took the life of her child.

During an afternoon session, journalists worried about the future of investigative journalism at a time of newsroom cutbacks. Yet most remained positive on its future.

Brant Houston of the University of Illinois, a former head of Investigative Reporters and Editors (www.ire.org) said new media and new technology are allowing journalists to investigate complex issues more deeply and more quickly. Houston said non-profit forms of investigative journalism, often based at universities and funded by foundations, are helping to make up for the loss of investigative journalism in newsrooms. Andy Hall, director of the new Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, said he was among the “optimists” who see new models as leading to a revival of this crucial form of reporting.

Rob Cribb, an investigative reporter for The Toronto Star, expressed concern for the health of investigative journalism. He said that, in Canada, the non-profit model of investigative journalism does not yet exist, and few organizations have investigative units. However, Cribb also stressed the power of new collaborations. He noted how a recent investigation conducted by the Toronto Star and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation caught the attention of the country, going off like a “nuclear bomb.”

The conference concluded with a robust and wide-ranging debate on new media ethics. Peter Kafka of AllThingsDigital, didn’t think new media posed new ethical problems.  Dhavan Shah, who studies political communication at the UW School of Journalism and Mass Communication, said new media can be a positive tool for mobilization and engagement. Young people are engaged by blogging, by specific issues, and by peer-to-peer communication. Journalists should view these “newly empowered citizens as an asset, not as a threat,” said Shaw.

Shah added that attention should be paid to teaching “communication literacy” – a set of skills that includes the ability to assess information as well as being able to express oneself.  Katy Culver, also of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, added that we needed to teach “skepticism” to young people in their approach to online information.

Video of all sessions, pictures of panelists, and other information from the conference will be available on this site.

Meanwhile, photos taken by Matthew Wisniewski may be viewed at UW’s photostream, http://www.flickr.com/photos/uwethics/show/ View conference program [PDF / 2.27 MB]

Shakuntala Rao is Professor of Communication at State University of New York, Plattsburgh, USA. She was a visiting lecturer at Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas and at La Universidad del Zulia in Maracaibo in November 2008.

The cabbie, driving me into Maracaibo, the second-largest city in Venezuela and a place where one finds some of the largest oil refineries in the world, says sarcastically: “Esto no es revolucion, esto es robolucion” (“This is no revolution, this is revolution of thieves”).

He is referring to President Hugo Chavez’s anti-American, anti-imperialist policy of “revolutionary socialism.” Such sentiments are not uncommon on the streets of Maracaibo, the capital city in the state of Zulia, where Chavez remains highly unpopular and has lost successive elections.

Since Chavez came to power in 1999, in the name of socialism, he has nationalized Venezuela’s oil industry, overhauled taxation, and imposed dramatic state-sanctioned education and land reforms.

He also has been no advocate of free and independent journalism.

Chavez’s real popularity lies in the crowded streets of Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, about 320 miles east of Maracaibo.

Fernando Rodriguez, associate editor of Tal Cual, a leading left-leaning opposition newspaper in Caracas, and a prominent and vocal critic of Chavez’s regime, invited me to his villa in the hills at the outskirts of the city where, he believed, we could safely talk about journalism in Venezuela.

Rodriguez, the former director of Cinematica Nacional de Venezuela (Venezuelan national film archives), a post from which he was fired when Chavez took office, is a soft spoken man in his 60s. We sit in his library surrounded by books, contemporary Mexican Art, and Spanish furniture.

“It has been a very strange socialist revolution,” says Rodriguez, “There are no students or intellectuals involved in this revolution.” Calling it the coalition of the “perverted left”,

Rodriguez admits that Chavez’s relationship with the press has been a different one from other Latin American leaders. While he acknowledges that “newspapers have enjoyed significant liberties” in Venezuela, he harshly critiques Chavez attempts to control the broadcast media.

There are five government-controlled television networks in Venezuela and about 80% of Venezuelans get their news and information from TV. “We are losing the war of free press on television,” laments Rodriguez, who recognizes the popularity of Chavez as a TV personality.

Venezuela has become a country governed largely through television. The most emphatic exercise of power resides in the weekly show hosted by Chavez where he engages with the masses, announces policies, muses on his political philosophy, sings traditional songs, and signals the next step in his self-described revolution.

In many ways, Chavez wants to bypass journalists all together. His show cleverly titled, Alo Presidente (“Hello, President”) is broadcast every Sunday on all state-owned television and radio networks and simulcast on the web. The show places Chavez at a different location each episode; sometimes viewers can see Chavez perched on a hilltop and sometimes sitting next to an oilrig. The show can last five to eight hours in which citizens call Chavez and chat with him directly. He is personable, often referring to callers endearingly as abuela (grandma) or hermano (brother). Studio guests are hand-picked, most often comprised of members of his own political party, United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

The few independent journalists who dare to appear on the show are castigated. His rant could include disparaging remarks about everyone – including his own cabinet members and party loyalists. But most of his sharpest criticisms are reserved for the American government. The show has included ‘fake’ news conferences where pro-Chavez journalists appear and ask friendly questions.

In a country where TV and radio stations and newspapers have strong political alliances, Chavez has been playing a game of cat-and-mouse with opposition media.

Thousands of students and media activists took to the streets of Caracas in 2007 when Chavez shut down and revoked the broadcast license of one of the largest opposition TV network, RCTV or Radio Caracas Television (RCTV Internacional is now available only via cable and on satellite). Chavez said he was democratizing the airwaves by turning the network’s signal over to public use, accused the network of helping to incite a failed coup, and “poisoning” Venezuelans with programming that promoted capitalism.

Chavez has also attacked the Maracaibo based private channel, Globovision TV, accusing it of broadcasting information of attempts on his life.

According to Rodriguez, there are hundreds of anti-Chavez journalists who remain in jail and people are routinely “disqualified” from running for public office on flimsy charges of corruption. “It remains to be seen whether Chavez will become a dictator if he continues to lose power” says Rodriguez.

Rodriguez and others are wary of comments like the one Chavez made leading to the November election in the state of Carabobo. He said: “If you allow the oligarchy to return to governing, maybe I will end up taking my tanks from the armored brigade to defend the revolutionary government.”

The regional elections held in November 2008 were a partial success for Chavez. While his party won 17 of the 22 gubernatorial seats, his candidates lost governorships in two of the largest states, Zulia and Merida, and for the first time since he became President, the mayor of Caracas is from the opposition party.

Following the elections, Chavez appeared on his Sunday morning show and asked the people of Venezuela to amend the existing constitution so that term limits for Presidency could be eliminated and he could run for office again in 2012, the year his term is officially set to expire. The success of the socialist revolution, he said, depended on him being the long-term President of Venezuela.

Tal Cual’s editorial the next day harshly criticized Chavez’s attempt to become “President for life” and called him “delirantes” (“delusional”).

As I left Rodriguez’s home after a dinner of arepas and empanadas, Rodriguez said distantly, “I have hope for Venezuela’s future and for a free press.”

Canadian journalist Alan Bass argues that journalists who worry about the future of newspapers are asking the wrong question. Rather than ask, ‘How can we save newspapers?’ we should ask, ‘How can we save journalism?’ Bass believes that professionalizing journalism is a step in the right direction.

I opened up a local newspaper the other day to see a section front topped by this big, bold headline: “How will newspapers be saved?”

No doubt you’ve seen, perhaps written, similar headlines asking the same question. The news industry – and newspapers in particular – are in a state of crisis. Newspapers that have endured all manner of troubles in the past are on life support today. Some are already dead.  With increasing urgency, if not panic, the same question is being asked throughout North America: How can newspapers be saved?

The trouble is: It’s the wrong question.

It isn’t newspapers that need saving. It’s journalism. To put it more exactly, what needs to be preserved is the public service journalists provide by using a particular set of ethical methodologies to gather, assess and report information people need to function effectively as human beings and citizens in a free society.

Slowly, that realization is beginning to break through the public discussion about the newspaper death rattle. Paul Starr got close recently in The New Republic when he wrote that “newspapers have helped to control corrupt tendencies in both governments and business.” An article in Canada’s Globe and Mail got even closer: “If print is a dinosaur, what will take up its traditional roles – informing the public, animating civic culture and holding government accountable? For all the wonders of online media, so far no viable substitute has emerged for the power of the press.”

I believe they’re talking about journalism.

As media has evolved, journalism has been an ever decreasing component of its output. Journalism plays a dominant role in newspapers because they invented it. The rough and tumble days of fierce political debate that gave birth to the concept of freedom of the press also led to the notion of improving public discourse by using that freedom to gather, assess and report news without, as the saying goes, fear or favor.

Minor role for journalism

But journalism clearly plays a very minor role in post-newspaper media systems. In most communities, newspaper journalists still do most of the legwork in gathering and assessing information. Journalists working in other media depend on the original daily reporting being done by newspapers to guide their own work. That’s why there’s a sense of panic. As some have noted, if the newspaper as a community institution withers away, the foundation upon which the modern system of journalism is built withers with it.

Even so, newspapers themselves are not solely devoted to journalism. The typical daily newspaper content model is a compendium of news, information, commentary, diversions, entertainment and advertising. Newspapers have always been in the business of building audiences to sell to advertisers and they’ve been willing to incorporate and bundle just about any kind of content to do that. As other media formats have increasing stolen eyeballs and advertisers away, newspapers have tended to incorporate more and more non-journalism content.

Fewer and fewer people want or need a daily newsprint compendium. Audiences gather their own content by visiting the websites, publications and broadcast channels that meet their needs. Advertisers follow their customers. The content traditionally packaged by newspapers is being explosively unbundled, forcing journalism for the first time to face a future in which it will stand or fall solely on its own merits.

That is why the question is not whether newspapers can be saved. Although most of us would like to think some newspapers – the New York Times, for example – will survive this crisis in some format, the standard daily newspaper content and business model seems to be all but dead. The important question is what happens to the now unbundled public-service journalism it invented?

A business issue?

In seeking the answer, many have positioned the problem as strictly a business issue, focusing attention on alternative business models for journalism. Can we fund journalism through philanthropy or endowments? Can we develop non-profit business models? Should we be seeking government subsidies? Can we somehow leverage networks of “citizen journalists” to provide a comprehensive system of news coverage? Some are experimenting with truly original ideas, like putting story ideas up for public auction and covering only those that attract sufficient funding.

Many find these alternatives scary. Every one of them has detractors. We are warned philanthropists won’t support journalism unless it somehow supports their agendas. Citizen journalists lack the skills or the authority to dig into dark corners and demand accountability from the powerful. If for-profit newspapers are losing money, why should we expect non-profits to break even?

The alternative that scares American journalists the most is the idea of government funding. For those of us doing journalism in other developed nations, that’s a difficult fear to fully understand. In Canada, the government-funded CBC is recognized as one of our country’s most trustworthy and comprehensive providers of journalism. The tax-funded BBC is one of the world’s most-referenced news sources.

Obviously, government-funded journalism is not a nutty communist concept. It is true that journalists who work for government-funded news organizations may face political interference. Both the CBC and the BBC from time to time have been forced to defend themselves from unhappy governments. They’ve done so exactly the same way as newsrooms in profit-making newspapers have defended themselves from commercial interference – by insisting on governance structures that give newsrooms a critical measure of autonomy. . In any case, if U.S. journalism has demonstrated anything in the past few years, it is that rejecting government funding doesn’t guarantee journalists won’t act like government toadies. Remember weapons of mass destruction?

How journalism will be financed is not the first issue that needs addressing. From a media business perspective, journalism isn’t the surest way to build and keep an audience, compared to alternatives like sit-coms, games, social networks, horoscopes or pornography, so it must seek support on other grounds. I suspect the journalists of the future will need to be funding agnostics and will find themselves working in organizations large and small that are financed in a variety of ways – a non-profit organization devoted to practicing public service journalism could run on any conceivable combination of donations, government and other community-sourced funds, advertising revenue and possibly even subscription income. Perhaps some for-profit media organizations would continue to host public-service journalism if they could obtain tax benefits for doing so.

What are we trying to save?

The first step toward securing journalism’s future is to be crystal clear about what it is we’re trying to save.

If we are going to seek alternative funding and tax incentives on the basis that journalism provides a necessary public service (as opposed to a surefire mass audience), then we can’t afford to continue to define journalism as sloppily as we have in the past. And let’s face it, we’ve gotten pretty sloppy. When comedian Jon Stewart publicly ridiculed the “journalism” practiced by CNBC’s Jim Cramer and the hosts of Crossfire, he was like the little boy who cried out that the emperor had no clothes. Except this time, what’s being exposed as false to the knowing delight of the audience is the claim that journalists serve the public interest.

I know many good journalists will say that’s unfair – that they and their colleagues aren’t like the circus performers ridiculed by Stewart. And that’s true.  The journalists who have turned their craft into a clown routine are still the exception, not the rule. The problem as it affects the future of journalism is that while most journalists define journalism by best practices, much of the public defines journalism by the worst.  Stewart’s well-received mockery of our ethics shouldn’t shock anyone. Opinion polls have charted a steady decline in public trust for journalists for decades. But now that journalism has to stand on its own merits, our collective failure to consistently meet our own standards is a problem we can no longer ignore.

Journalism standards today vary so widely throughout the industry it’s hardly surprising or inaccurate if non-journalists doubt there are any standards at all. If journalism is going to seek public support on its own merits, this ethical laxity is a luxury we can no longer afford. Our first step toward creating a future for journalism must be to acknowledge that journalism’s current structures of standard setting and accountability are not working and must be changed.

The mechanism by which we currently define journalistic standards and hold journalists accountable for meeting them is the newsroom. But there is no single newsroom standard – they vary wildly. Some newsrooms have formal, written codes of ethics and enforce them. Others have codes of ethics but don’t enforce them. Some don’t have any formalized standards at all. Some newsrooms protect the independence of their journalists, but others require journalists to write promotional material for advertisers. Some expect journalists to investigate the truth of all claims, but others are content to reprint news releases verbatim. Some demand journalists avoid conflicts of interest, others turn a blind eye if journalists moonlight for the organizations they cover.

I could go on but I think the point is clear. Even in the days when newsrooms were strong, they were not an adequate occupational standard-setting mechanism. Today, when most newsrooms have been gutted and the remaining staff overworked and demoralized, they certainly aren’t doing any better.

Apart from newsroom standards, the policing of professional integrity is left to individual journalists. This is best expressed as: “If you don’t like the way we do things, quit.” Nobody knows how many excellent journalists have left the profession under this accountability mechanism, but everybody knows some. I doubt I’m alone in viewing this approach to upholding ethics as ultimately self-destructive for journalism. In the end, it only serves to provide cover to those who masquerade as journalists.

Clearly, these mechanisms are not enough to provide the level of clarity about journalism’s purpose and accountability that will be needed as we seek public support. We need to define journalism more carefully, we need to make it clear it is not about horoscopes, comics, dating advice, celebrities without underwear, recipes or people yelling at each other and screaming at the audience. But how?

Professionalizing journalism

We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Journalists aren’t the first occupational group to serve a public purpose. We’re not the first occupational group that needed to rid itself of charlatans. We not the first that needed to demonstrate a higher level of public accountability. We’re not the first to require practitioners to meet high standards of ethical conduct. These are issues that have bedeviled every profession – lawyers, doctors, architects, teachers and so on. Each has developed its own way to meet professional standards, assure the public of its commitment to public service and hold practitioners accountable by organizing itself as a self-regulating profession.

The idea of professionalizing journalism has traditionally been regarded as a non-starter by many journalists. Some argue journalism can’t be professionalized because no formal training is necessary to enter the field. We may want to revisit or at least refine that assumption. I entered the field (a long time ago) without a journalism degree, but there’s no question I underwent intense training during my first months on the job until I learned to do it properly. Even if journalists don’t necessarily require a journalism degree (a premise increasingly contradicted by hiring practices), that’s not the same thing as saying they don’t require knowledge. Would it really do journalism harm to insist that aspiring practitioners demonstrate a basic level of knowledge about what it is they aspire to do?

The most deeply ingrained argument against professionalization is that it would violate freedom of the press. That might still be a valid argument if the primary purpose of today’s “press” or media was journalism. But it isn’t. The argument might also be valid if professionalization would block access to the press by the non-credentialed. But we live at a time when anybody can publish or broadcast anything they like. We now have the freest “press” in our history, and journalism’s survival is very much in doubt. What journalists need to realize is that freedom of the press means the press is entirely free not to support journalism.

What can we do to save journalism?

We need to start by defining our standards and holding ourselves publicly accountable.  We need to be in a position to honestly persuade citizens (and potential funders) that society needs trained professionals working full-time as public intelligence agents devoted to gathering, assessing and reporting the information people need.

We need to be able to demonstrate that journalists are trained and committed to providing effective, ethical journalism for a public purpose – even if that means we institute an effective credentialing process and subject ourselves to a system of peer review and accountability.

If we do that, I believe we can save journalism.

Surviving the Media Carnage

Newspapers closing. Journalists let go. Old economic models  to support journalism are imploding amid a media revolution. Two veteran journalists — an American and a Canadian — view the carnage and propose new ways to do good journalism and maintain standards.

As an 8-year-old boy living in rural Southern Indiana, I always looked forward to the sci-fi TV series “Time Tunnel” and the adventures of two scientists (actors James Darren and Robert Colbert) who were, as the narrator said, “lost in the swirling maze of past and future ages, during the first experiments on America’s greatest and most secret project.”

Now, old enough to join AARP, I find myself living in a version of “Time Tunnel,” bouncing between past and future.

The outcome of this experiment will influence the future of investigative journalism and democracy.

Unlike “Time Tunnel,” the results will be public, not hidden on a secret base.

My odyssey began two months ago, when I ended a 26-year career as an award-winning daily newspaper reporter in Arizona and Wisconsin to establish a non-profit investigative journalism center. The move from old media came after more than two years of planning. My wife, Dee, an investigative reporter, remains at the Wisconsin State Journal and continues to assist the new venture in her spare time.

I’ll admit that my excitement about all of this was tempered by the knowledge that I was plunging into the unknown despite the continuing realities of a mortgage payment and college bills for our oldest daughter — at a time when journalism and the nation are experiencing financial collapses of historic proportions.

So far, the unknown is a good place.

In February, the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, which will be operated by a staff of professional journalists under the guidance of a board of directors, was awarded a $100,000 grant from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation to begin its work of producing journalism in the public interest.

The board, five leaders in non-profit journalism and management, hired me as WCIJ’s executive director. As resources expand, we hope to build a staff of four Wisconsin-based investigative journalists and a Washington, D.C., correspondent who will keep watch over Wisconsin’s congressional delegation, lobbyists, and the impact of federal policies and programs upon Wisconsin residents.

WCIJ will produce stories on government integrity and quality-of-life issues with its partners at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism & Mass Communication,   Wisconsin Public Television and Wisconsin Public Radio.  In addition, the Center will collaborate with mainstream and ethnic media and will teach residents how to investigate issues such as water quality, government ethics, school performance and neighborhood safety in their own communities. Its content will be given away for free to all Wisconsin news media and distributed on its interactive Web site, WisconsinWatch.org.

WCIJ aims to increase the quality and amount of investigative journalism in Wisconsin — whether through its own stories or by assisting other news organizations in ways ranging from quick advice about open records to intensive collaboration on a major investigation.

Why would the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, which is based in Oklahoma City, give so much money to a Wisconsin start-up venture?

Because the foundation’s board of directors and board of advisers believe that WCIJ — a model based upon a professional staff, partnerships with college journalism and public broadcasting, and collaborations with other media and the public — represents a glimpse into the future of investigative journalism in America.

It turns out that we’re not alone.

Non-profit investigative journalism is expanding even while the overall industry is suffering the most wrenching series of layoffs and shutdowns of our lifetimes. And while the rise of the non-profit business model for investigative journalism is greeted by many journalists seeking hope for the future, it also raises profound ethical and operational questions.

We’ll be turning to experts to help address issues such as:

From whom will we accept contributions, who is off limits, and how many strings may be attached to a contribution, such as specifying the nature of a project?

As they pursue investigative stories, how will non-profit news organizations, funded by contributions from individuals and organizations, deal with real or perceived conflicts of interest involving donors?

What is the appropriate role of students in high-stakes investigative coverage that can damage the reputations of people and institutions, lead to civil and criminal legal actions and influence public policy?

How effectively will news organizations, which traditionally have competed for news, collaborate with one another and non-profit centers on investigative coverage, and what role should competition continue to play?

To what extent should non-profit investigative centers integrate the work of volunteers, such as retired or laid-off journalists, into their coverage?

The same week that we announced the launch of WCIJ, Boston University announced the formation of the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, which has received a $250,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The New England model differs from ours in some respects – it is controlled by a journalism school instead of being an independent organization, and it is focusing upon a region rather than a single state, for example. So it will be interesting to see how each of us fares as we step into our own episode of “Time Tunnel.” We’re already working together on this shared adventure.

Journalists and college journalism leaders in a surprising number of states — including Colorado, Washington, Florida, California, Montana and Arizona — plus Puerto Rico, are discussing ways to launch regional, state or local non-profit investigative journalism centers. Texas Watchdog , a non-profit organization funded by the Sam Adams Alliance from Chicago, recently began operations with a staff of four professional journalists.

College-based investigative journalism centers have sprung up in recent years in places such as Columbia University and Brandeis University.

On the national level, several non-profit investigative journalism organizations are hard at work on new initiatives.

The Center for Investigative Reporting which has produced national stories since the 1970s, has obtained a $1.2 million grant to focus upon its home state of California. The Center for Public Integrity continues to produce high-impact state, national and international investigations in Washington, D.C. — and is assisting WCIJ by serving as its fiscal agent while the Wisconsin center awaits its IRS tax exemption and by offering to collaborate on coverage. In New York, ProPublica, funded by  Californians Herbert and Marion Sandler at $10 million a year, is producing strong coverage, too, often in collaboration with other news media.

Investigative Reporters and Editors, a journalism training organization based at the University of Missouri, is nurturing new and venerable non-profit ventures and their relationships with other media organizations, and the Poynter Institute in Florida also is taking a leadership role. The Sunlight Foundation is creating high-tech tools to increase the transparency of government’s operations and the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University is experimenting with new forms of national and international journalism.

Watch for some of these organizations, and maybe even some yet to be formed, to lead regional and national efforts to support and coordinate the work of the new locally focused investigative journalism centers, with help ranging from business and fundraising services to sharing investigative stories and data. We’re all eager to collaborate, but first we’ve got to hold conferences and talks to figure out how.

Despite the new financial landscape, and the new emphasis on collaboration, investigative journalism’s soul remains relatively unchanged. Non-profit newsrooms and their counterparts in other media will continue to pursue investigative journalism that, as long defined in “The Investigative Reporter’s Handbook” from IRE, is “the reporting, through one’s own initiative and work product, of matters of importance to readers, viewers or listeners.”

WCIJ’s mission is vintage investigative: Protect the vulnerable, expose wrongdoing and seek solutions to pressing problems.

While the Internet has undercut the for-profit business model of journalism, the Internet and technology also are creating unprecedented opportunities for journalists, even at small news organizations, to produce powerful data analyses and multimedia presentations that enhance the public’s understanding of critical issues. The Internet has boosted the total audience for many news outlets to record levels, even as those organizations struggle to stay afloat.

News organizations in Wisconsin are fighting to retain their investigative capabilities. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel won the Pulitzer Prize last year for local reporting and continues to support an excellent 10-person Watchdog team.

As we mourn the shuttering of newspapers and the loss of friends’ and colleagues’ jobs, let’s remember that good investigative journalism surfaced all too rarely in most communities, even during the 1980s and 1990s when newspapers and television networks had cash.

This financial crisis and the reaction to it presents an opportunity to build — often for the first time — the capacity of news organizations to deliver investigative reporting. WCIJ’s board of directors and other journalism organizations are developing procedures that will protect the integrity of the journalism while drawing on the generosity of donors, the skill and energy of students and the resources of public broadcasting and other media to produce journalism that matters.

Our success in attaining that balance in Wisconsin and across the country will determine whether non-profit investigative journalism, like “Time Tunnel,” is canceled after a single popular season.

I believe that WCIJ, and similar locally focused non-profit investigative newsrooms, will be producing important stories for a long time — even when our two daughters, who now are teen-agers, receive their first AARP cards.

If, like me, you believe that democracy needs investigative journalism to survive, there’s really no choice: Better to evolve than to cower in wait of an end.

So here’s my vision of the future of investigative journalism: Within five years, in many areas served by a non-profit investigative journalism center, you will see an increase in the quality and amount of investigative news in mainstream and ethnic media. Foundations and individuals will support ventures in nearly every state. We’re going to build personal connections to residents, through our coverage and the civic-engagement tools offered on our Web site and in series of workshops. News organizations new and old will harness the powers of collaboration and technology to hold the powerful accountable and comfort the afflicted.

Don’t be afraid to leap into “the swirling maze of past and future ages.”

When you do, you’ll find a new landscape, bathed in sunlight.

ANDY HALL is the executive director of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, an independent non-profit organization based at the UW-Madison School of Journalism & Mass Communication. More information is available at WisconsinWatch.org

Email Andy Hall

What the Turkish and international public know about headscarves is as divided as the debate on lifting the ban.

Not long after winning a landslide reelection victory last July, the mildly pro-Islamic Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development (AKP) party went to work to lift the ban on wearing of Muslim headscarf in universities, despite opposition from the secular establishment.

After years of sidestepping one of the most sensitive social issues in Turkey, Erdogan revisited the issue and has moved to lift the ban on young women wearing headscarves at universities.

In February, the Turkish Parliament passed an amendment to the constitution that permits women to wear the headscarf in Turkish universities. But the ruling met with widespread dissent among secularists, who see the headscarf as a symbol of Islam. And last month the Constitutional Court of Turkey reinstated the ban on headscarves citing a constitutional obligation to uphold the secularity of the state.

The debate is an ongoing struggle between the government and a militantly secularist establishment used to getting its way.

Either way, the debate is not black and white. For the secular elite, this means a step back into Islamic Turkey, while for others it is a long overdue right to wear what one pleases. For the Turkish media, this creates a tension when trying to serve the public interest. 

” Both the pro-government media and the “liberal” media have been following an editorial line supporting government on issues such as the freedom of wearing a headscarf while down playing other social issues like government corruption or lack of labour rights,” says Ariana Ferentinou, lecturer in the Faculty of Communication at Istanbul Bilgi University.

“The coverage is one sided at the expense of objective and fair news analysis,” she says.

Long simmering issue

The issue has been simmering since the mid-1980s. The rise of political Islam, well entrenched in Turkey’s growing middle class, has lead to more women petitioning to be allowed to wear headscarves in public institutions. Because of the ban, some resort to wearing wigs over their scarves to cover their natural hair and be permitted into university buildings and into classes.

“We will end the suffering of our girls at university gates,” said Erdogan, who has personal stakes in the matter. He sent his own daughters to the U.S. to study.

“The right to a higher education cannot be restricted because of what a girl wears. There is no such problem in Western societies. I believe it is the first duty of those in politics to solve this problem,” he said in an interview with the Financial Times.

The clash goes even further between political maneuvers in Turkey and how the international media reports on these matters, influencing what the international audience thinks has happened.

Before the law got to judicial review, the constitutional court in Turkey, the highest court, over-turned it. The secular establishment, which is composed of the judiciary, military and bureaucracy, strongly opposes the removal of headscarves at universities. There’s a lot of effort to prevent this freedom. But in the meantime, international media reporting construed the image that Turkey’s ban had been lifted.

“Most people think this happened because of the irresponsible workings of the foreign media,” says David Judson, Editor-in-Chief at the Turkish Daily News. “It is still illegal.”

‘Derivative feeding frenzy’

Judson blames the mis-information on what he calls a “derivative feeding frenzy.” When one newspaper publishes something, others follow. But for him, “the most difficult part is avoiding and navigating the attention in the media.” Especially, when there is a derivative instinct to go after a story that is entrenched with symbolism.

“Symbolism is a real important tool in journalism,” he says. “Symbols are a form of capital.” 

From Monica Lewinsky wearing the blue beret, to the glove in the O.J. Simpson trial, the story is laced with easy symbolism that both the national and international public can remember and it’s no wonder the press feed off one another.

This process can be described in another way. Judson also calls it the “self-licking ice cream cone.” Pretty soon all the media is chasing the story in some way and they try to break it even when there’s nothing to break.

“The media has a moral, social, political and even constitutional responsibility to not engage itself in censorship, but to put the kinds of highly symbolic, highly emotional, highly sensitive issues in context,” he says.

When Hurriyet published a front page cover announcing the ban was lifted with numerous photographs of girls wearing headscarves, the Turkish Daily News didn’t follow suit. 

“When on the day that the law of Turkey allows students to freely go into universities wearing a headscarf, then I think that is a banner story.”

Until then, Judson is going to revert to his journalism teachings: “Don’t use up your 72-point font in the primary election.” 

When he feels the font will be worth the story, he will print it, otherwise, he is not here to mislead his readers with a font that is not worth the story, he says.

‘What’s so special?’

But Fatma Dişli doesn’t understand why some newspapers in the Turkish media don’t like headscarf-wearing women. She says she sees headlines that state: “Headscarf wearing girls seen while attending a university.”

“What is so special about this?” she asks. For her the problem doesn’t lie in the size of the headline, but of the way the media portrays women. “They approach headscarf-wearing women like they are aliens, illiterate, uneducated,” she says. “They have prejudice, unfortunately.”

Fatma Dişli is a reporter and a columnist with Today’s Zaman. She wears a headscarf. She feels she is fortunate that her employer allows her the freedom to choose. Most of her friends who wear a headscarf are not so lucky. They are unable to find jobs or they find their potential employer asking them to take it off if they want the job.

As a journalist who wears a headscarf, at times it is hard to tackle sensitive issues in her articles because of the number of opinions in Turkey. 

“There is the opinion that women wearing headscarves are backwards and they are ignorant and they don’t wear headscarves because of freedom, but from the pressure from their family,” says Dişli.

Personal choice

For Dişli it is about personal choice and not pressure. And as a journalist, she needs to keep in mind concerns of all parties involved.

“As a person and a journalist, I can’t understand their concern,” she says. But that doesn’t reflect in her writing.

She needs to follow strict journalism ethics when writing her column or the news. 

“We have to be objective.” 

For her, this doesn’t mean that the reader needs to take sides with the person who writes. As someone who wears a headscarf, she doesn’t feel any obligation to other women wearing headscarves in her writing.

“It has nothing to do with my writing,” she says. “At the newspaper, we always take the side of democracy and equality.”

If Dişli feels that there is a need to take a stance on the ban, then she will do it, but on the other hand, she feels there is no reason for her to take a stance on the issue because individual liberties are at stake in this situation. And the right to wear a headscarf is an individual liberty.

The problem with the news media in Turkey is they are not trusted. The trust is rooted in the misrepresentation of information, the manipulation of facts and in the fact that most journalists don’t comply with the standards of journalism ethics.

Between extremes

Ferentinou notes there are two media extremes. Between them lies the rest of the Turkish media that tries to follow the basic notions of journalism ethics such as objectivity, fair representation and truthfulness. It happens that these notions are often compromised.

“In spite of their proclamations for protecting privacy or fair representation of women and children, the Turkish media (especially the press) break many of these ethical rules for the sake of increasing their sales.”

To tackle the problem of mistrust, first a journalist needs to understand the public and secondly think of what is in the public interest.

In regards to the headscarf issue, Dişli says, “What [the public] needs to know is only the facts. Not my information and not my opinion. Only the facts.”

But she does say there are journalists that will spin their stories and there are people in Turkey who will believe everything that is written, while she hopes there are more people who will question the sources.

“I think journalists should understand the public, what are their problems, what they like, what they don’t like. They shouldn’t just sit back in their chairs and write problems.”

This could be one solution. And the one solution that Dişli hopes to see is compliance with journalism ethics set by Turkey.

The other solution is to include as many views as possible as long as they are not incriminating. Unfortunately, the monopolization of the Turkish media, where the Dogan group owns a large chunk of the media, poses a challenge to the independence and objectivity of journalistic work in Turkey.

Media in this case is used as a tool to acquire state contacts. This is where the media breaks many ethical issues for profit or an increase in sales.

Another serious problem that prevents the ethical practice of journalism and promotes self-censorship is the low unionization of media professionals.

“Most journalist work outside Law 212, which regulates their rights and they do not have permanent employment contracts,” says Ferentinou. This leaves journalists vulnerable.

The result is that there hasn’t been a change in the law on headscarves and legal confusion surrounding a deeply divisive issue in a country struggling toward democracy has remained.

“I think there is a long way before Turkish media can reach global standards of ethics,” says Dişli

In the last of a four part series on special topics in journalism ethics, journalismethics.ca’s international reporting team analyzes the issues of nation building and the public interest in communities as diverse as  South Africa and Bosnia. These are communities  that have been fragmented by exclusive nationalist discourses. These countries illustrate contemporary challenges for journalists who must come to terms with national histories of censorship and other maneuvers to restrict the press, while facing issues surrounding attempts to integrate into the 21st century public sphere.

Truth-telling in the public interest has been considered a communication norm since the advent of the free press in the 17th century – the assumption being that when reporters push microphones in people’s faces, it is not in their self-interest, but in the name of an inquiring “public.” 

Theorists from Alexis de Tocqueville to Jay Rosen have argued that journalism should serve “the public” by perpetuating the idea of community amongst geographically and historically dispersed populations, creating publics that share common goods, concerns, and goals.

Journalism ethics has become so focused on serving the public that ethicist Dale Jacquette argues, “the fundamental and principal mandate for journalistic ethics refers for good reason explicitly to the concept of maximizing relevant truth in the public interest.” However, notions of “relevant,” “public” and “interest” are complicated in a globalized world where borders are permeable. In an  era of globalization, reporters must ask, does the public constitute the nation in a democratic (political) sense, or is it more than that, a community of humanity comprised of citizens of the world?

New media – the internet, satellite TV and radio, cell phones and digital cameras – has increased the scope and pace of news dissemination, presenting new challenges for journalists and editors who must make hurried ethical decisions regarding what constitutes the public interest, and the consequences of reporting in its name.

Defining the public interest is particularly problematic in developing countries, where communities have been fragmented by legacies of colonialism, and journalists’ allegiances are often dominated by what their government dictates is in the name of national unity.

An expanding public sphere

As societies become more complex and differentiated, the scope of the public that journalists claim to serve has evolved from specific social classes to a national public and now to a global public. Concurrently, disagreement increases about what constitutes social and political ‘health’ and how they can best be ensured. 

The search for universal ethics might best be grounded in the shared belief among many theorists that the public sphere has normative requirements – that discussions of public issues should be rational, inclusive, open to all participants and not distorted by particular interests.

However, theorists continue to debate the semantics involved in determining the public interest because definitions range from a very narrow to a broad application. 

One working definition developed by media theorist Dale Jacquette holds the public interest is “any value attached to the preservation and proper functioning of a society.” While there are certainly some cases where the preservation and proper functioning of society are easily identifiable, such as stories that involve airport security, public health and a free flow of information, there is also a tendency for journalists to justify invasions of privacy with their responsibility to an  abstract “public interest,” even if doing so is damaging to some individuals.

The new social contract between journalists and their “public” requires a global perspective that considers various viewpoints and codes facilitating the expansion of the public toward all of humanity, or what Ward calls the “claim of humanity,” namely that “journalists’ primary journalistic allegiance is to truthful, independent informing of a global public – humanity.”

Fragile, fragmented publics

In fractured societies, journalists struggle to report what they believe to be in the public interest, when faced with ethnic, political, and religious pressures that can result in extreme nationalist or patriotic reports that are not grounded in the concept of “truth-telling in the public interest.” 

Journalists struggle on a daily basis in these countries to balance duties promote nation building and maintain the watchdog role of the fourth estate. 

In developing countries around the world –from Bosnia to Turkey to South Africa – the public interest is often conflated with the “national interest,” or government interest.

Bosnia

Bosnia, for example, is a country struggling to rebuild after ethnic war driven by competing nationalisms threatened to tear apart a sense of a national public body to which journalists are responsible for. 

In countries like Bosnia and Herzegovina, comprised of three major communities (Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks) who were once fighting against each other, the notion of public good can become complicated by felt allegiances between the state and the ethnic community the newspaper or broadcaster is part of.  

Bosnia’s media has been characterized by a history of nationalist rhetoric. Only The Dani, a Sarajevan weekly, and The Oslobodenje, a daily and a handful of media outlets have kept their independence and survived the last decade.

South Africa

In South Africa, the death of presidential spokesman Parks Mankahlana and other debates about media interpretations of concepts like truth-telling, human dignity, and the public interest illustrate that a universal interpretation of the public interest, even within one nation, cannot be assumed. 

When Phakamile “Parks” Mankahlana, a prominent spokesman for President Mbeki, died in October 2000, the media widely reported that his death was due to HIV/AIDS although the official cause was not released. President Mbeki refused to comment on Mankahlana’s death saying it was a family matter and critiqued the media for invasion of privacy. However, the media called for the government to be more open about the epidemic that claimed the lives of thousands of South Africans in the public sphere.

South African media ethicist Franz Kruger believes nation building is an integral role of journalists in post-apartheid South Africa, but is wary of government pressure for journalists to report in its interest.

“I think that actually the question of nation building and the question of our relationship to the community, I think those questions are, in a sense, prior or to be built into the process before you even come to the specifics. One needs to understand that journalism’s contribution to nation building is simply by informing people and giving sort of a good basis for good amount of information on which they can base various decisions on. That’s the contribution – I think when we get into the specifics of here is the story and its going to embarrass A, B or C maybe that’s going to hurt nation building, that’s when we’re in trouble. That’s a problematical use of the idea.”

Competing conceptions of which coverage would be in the public interest underscores how the concept of human dignity cannot be applied uniformly even within one nation, even though it is thought to be a central value in the search for a universal journalism ethics. 


Turkey

In Turkey, a country caught between competing ideologies, including Western ties to the EU and historical and religious ties toward the Muslim world, journalists face pressure from the government to report in its interest, says Fatma Dislim a reporter for Today’s Zaman, an English language publication in Turkey.

“In our newspaper we are trying to promote reconciliation of our country. But at certain times, the larger media groups are overriding our efforts,” she says.

After years of sidestepping one of the most sensitive social issues in Turkey, the newly elected government has moved to lift the ban on young women wearing headscarves at universities.

The country’s secularists, who see the headscarf as a symbol of Islam, are up in arms over the proposed reform. The debate is an ongoing struggle between the government and a militantly secularist establishment used to getting its way.

David Judson, Editor-in-Chief at the Turkish Daily News argues that the role of the press is not to promote nation building, but to act as an independent watchdog.” I’m not going to move the nation. I’m just trying to report on what happened yesterday in Turkey.”

Instead, he points fingers at foreign media for skewing reports about his country, and not providing proper context, which serves to undermine the national community of Turkey.

“The newspaper has a responsibility to look at all the dimensions of the story. Obviously.

For example, when Time magazine did their cover story of this and used a photo of a girl wearing a headscarf above a headline that said: Turkey Divided, we went and interviewed the girl. She said and we reported she tried to explain to Time, she wears a headscarf because she chooses to wear a headscarf, but her sister doesn’t wear a headscarf. Some of her friends wear headscarves and some don’t. It’s a personal choice and they ignored all that,” he said.

“They used few comments she made out of context that supported the thesis that Turkey is divided between those who wear a headscarf and those that don’t wear headscarves and that they hate one another. And implying that Turkey is on a verge of a civil war, that there’s this great culture brief in the country. But the woman we interviewed, she said, she didn’t say that.”

A global public

The case of war-torn Bosnia, racially segregated South Africa, and religiously divided Turkey shed some insight into the complexity of the ethical struggles journalists encounter daily in the ever- expanding public sphere.

These case studies raise questions about the impact of global journalism, and its relationship with political, technological, economic and cultural aspects of global trends has fostered debate about the role of journalism in fostering or stifling a democratic public sphere.

In a world constantly evolving toward what Marshall McLuhan famously termed a “global village,” in which we are all interconnected, the notion of the “public,” as a collective body is evolving in tandem because global journalism has created a plurality of public spheres, some of which can be considered global. 

Journalists’ audiences are no longer national or regional.

New forms of communication serve to widen the public sphere, expanding a reporter’s sense of duty beyond a particular region, community or nation and their reports, which now reach an international audience, serve to impact how nations view their constituency and their place in the world.

HIV/AIDS is a contentious and sensitive topic to cover anywhere in the world.  But reporting on HIV/AIDS in the South African context poses an especially complicated ethical challenge.

Politicization of the pandemic, tensions surrounding the use of traditional and Western medicine and balancing objectivity with nation building leave South African journalists with a seemingly insurmountable task.

South Africa has the largest number of HIV infections in the world. Despite 2007 HIV prevalence data that suggests that infections within the country may be levelling off, the pandemic remains rampant; the eastern province of KwaZulu Natal, for instance, has a staggering 39 per cent HIV rate. 

The Southern African region is the hardest hit by HIV in the world. According to UNAIDS, Southern Africa accounts for 35 per cent of all people living with HIV. It hosts one third of all new HIV infections and AIDS related deaths. It is within this context that South African journalists must tackle the issue of HIV/AIDS.

South Africa and HIV/AIDS

The ethics of HIV/AIDS reporting in South Africa has become more complex since the country’s first reported incidents of the pandemic in 1982. Originally considered a health topic, HIV/AIDS is now entangled with social, economic, cultural, scientific, personal and political issues.

In post-apartheid South Africa, one would be hard pressed to speak of the pandemic without provoking the kind of disagreement along racial and political lines that is symptomatic of a nation in transition.

Coverage of HIV/AIDS in South Africa has tended to be reactive, sensationalist, and ill informed.

Insufficient resources and time allocated to HIV/AIDS coverage across all South African media means that reporters tend to rely on news services like the South African Press Association (SAPA) or Health-e, a South African news agency that produces news and in-depth analysis on HIV/AIDS and public health issues, for copy. 

Lack of expertise in the field means that the more complex cultural, scientific and sociological aspects of HIV/AIDS are underrepresented, leaving significant gaps in reporting and opening the door for various ethical challenges.  

“It is a difficult topic to report. It’s so complicated,” said Franz Kruger, Ombudsman for South Africa’s Mail & Guardian and author of Black, White and Grey: Ethics in South African journalism. “I think we’re getting better at it. I think there is more care being taken, though the tabloids tend to be a bit more populous and tend to get things wrong from time to time,” said Kruger.

The death of Parks Mankahlana

The question of ethics surrounding the coverage of HIV/AIDS was not high on the agenda of the South African news media until the October 2000 death of 36-year-old presidential spokesperson, Pakamile (Parks) Mankahlana. 

While the official statement made by Mankahlana’s family and the African National Congress (ANC) was that Parks had died of heart failure after a long illness, rumours of HIV/AIDS circulated immediately among the South African press. Publications, both national and international, speculated as to whether Mankahlana’s premature death was AIDS related, sparking a heated national debate on the ethics of HIV/AIDS reporting. 

While some South African media reported on Mankahlana’s potential HIV positive status, crediting this information to unnamed sources within the ANC or simply reporting that other media were speculating, others remained silent on the matter, publishing only the official statements made regarding the cause of death.

This disharmony among media caused tension in a number of South African newsrooms along racial lines, said Kruger.

“The accusations from a lot of black journalists was that this would not have happened if Parks had been white and I don’t think that is quite true, I do think that race is always threaded through just about everything we do.”

The division of media over Mankahlana’s death raised ethical questions surrounding objectivity, nation building, and racism in the context of HIV/AIDS that had never been addressed by the South African media. It also demonstrated the complexities of reporting on the heavily tabooed topics of disease, death, and sex in a transitional, multicultural society.
  
Shortly after allegations of racism began, South Africa’s Business Day published an article entitled Openness is the Key, arguing that reporting on the cause of Parks’ death was in the public interest:

“The truth of Mankahlana’s death is important, not just because he was a household name but because the disease that evidently killed him casts a dark shadow over South Africa’s future. The experience of other countries is that ordinary people only start to take HIV/AIDS seriously, and adopt precautions, when role models who have the disease emerge from the closet. The fact that a decent and intelligent man like Mankahlana should remain silent on his condition is a sign that South Africans are still not confronting the HIV/AIDS crisis.” 

The Star, Johannesburg’s major daily, which is generally understood as being sympathetic to the ANC, took the stance that speculation on Mankahlana’s HIV status was disrespectful to African customs and dangerous in a society where discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS is widespread.

Mathatha Tsedu, The Star’s then deputy editor and chairman of the South African National Editors Forum, spoke out at Mankahlana’s memorial service. “I feel perturbed at being part of an institution that shows a vulture-like tendency of disrespect for life and death,” he said.

President Thabo Mbeki pleaded with the media to refrain from speculating on Mankahlana’s HIV status during a memorial service in his hometown:

”When Nthabiseng (Mankahlana’s widow) says ‘this is what my husband suffered from and this is what killed my husband’ I would hope, truly hope, that none of us will take it upon ourselves to come to a conclusion that we know better than she.”

Minister in the presidency, Essop Pahad, in his November 2000 address to the Forum of Black Journalists, also appealed to the media to refrain from publishing speculations:

“You may think that a celebrated AIDS sufferer is robbing the public of a valuable role model in not trumpeting the illness from the rooftops, but I would suggest that it is a matter of personal decision – and the personal right to privacy, entrenched in our Constitution, should be respected at all costs.”

The death of Peter Mokaba

Peter Mokaba, MP for the African National Congress, passionately spoke out against the South African press at Mankahlana’s funeral. “The media has disappointed us and I do not know how they are going to repair the damage. A comrade passes away who served them (the media) well…and they want us to bury him with diminished status,” he said. 

In June of 2002, less than two years after the death of Mankahlana, Mokaba died at the age of 43 after battling pneumonia linked to ongoing respiratory problems. 

The circumstances of Mokaba’s death were strikingly similar to those of Mankahlana’s but, this time, the South African press did not focus on the cause of death. While there was some speculation as to Mokaba’s HIV status, most South African media outlets chose to run the ANC’s and the Mokaba family’s official statements regarding the cause of his death. 

Business Day was one of the few South African publications to comment on Mokaba’s possible HIV status, though the manner in which they did so was restrained:

“We may never know whether the pneumonia that killed Mokaba was due in any way to HIV/AIDS. Many will assume this is so … his family and colleagues have chosen at this stage to remain silent. That is their right. No one should lightly challenge that right or intrude on the grief of those who survive him.”

In both cases, the South African media was charged with the task of balancing privacy issues against the public’s right to know, resulting in very different implications for the fundamental ethical principles of journalism.

The outcry of journalists, officials and the public after Mankahlana’s death meant that the media handled Mokaba’s death very differently, choosing, for the most part, to uphold his right to privacy over the public interest. 

According to Kruger, the contrasting coverage of Mankahlana’s and Mokaba’s deaths demonstrate that, while basic ethical principles tend to be fixed, their application can change dramatically, depending on the circumstances. 

“There was a huge outcry after the Parks’ series of events. There were a lot of particularly black journalists who criticized the media’s handling of that and I think that had an impact on the coverage of Mokaba. To me those two deaths are particularly interesting as an example of in fact exactly this point: how we apply our principles differently from time to time.”

Ethical implications of HIV/AIDS reporting

While numerous challenges remain for South African reporters on the HIV/AIDS, there is a movement within the media to address the ethics of HIV/AIDS reporting and guide journalists who face ethical dilemmas, such as with the deaths of Mankahlana and Mokaba. 

Franz Kruger has created nine principles, intended as a summary of the way accepted ethics should be applied in the context of HIV/AIDS. Kruger’s principles are set to become official policy for the South African National Editor’s Forum (SANEF).

At the foundation of these nine principles are three, more general values that can be applied in the context of HIV/AIDS. These are, truth-telling, independence and minimizing harm, adopted   from the American Society of Professional Journalists.

Truth-telling, says Kruger, is the most basic ethical principle as the media affects decisions made by both ordinary citizens and policy makers:

“Journalism’s contribution is informing people and giving a good basis for a good amount of information on which they can base various decisions on.”

Independence is a complicated principle in the South African context, as nation building tends to be high on the government agenda. Journalists who fail to tow the government line may be subjected to accusations of being unpatriotic. 

“There is political pressure in the sense that the government would like journalists to be more on side of government programs and that, of course, means ANC programs. Of course the government has been very unhappy about some of the media’s coverage but has been forced to retreat quite a lot on that front,” said Kruger. 

Just as it is important for South African journalists to maintain their independence from the government, says Kruger, it is also necessary to draw a firm line between reporting on HIV/AIDS and becoming advocates on the issue. “I do think that sometimes the media have got a little bit too close to NGOs and could do with a little more distance from that position,” he said.

Minimizing harm is Kruger’s final principle and is especially critical in post-Apartheid South Africa, where issues of nation building make cultural sensitivity especially important.

Particular care must be taken when reporting on traditional medicines and cures in South Africa, as the media must strike a balance between showing due respect for varying cultural beliefs and ensuring the public’s safety when it comes to traditional ‘cures’. 

“I guess the line that I would draw is that where things are actively dangerous. Then I think the gloves are off and one has a duty to expose bogus cures and that kind of thing. If they’re not actively harmful then one shouldn’t be too harsh about and simply assume that western medicine knows everything,” says Kruger.

In the South African context, the issue of traditional beliefs and medicine become even more nuanced as it can be used as a political tool, says Kruger.

“It’s all interlaced with politics. The minister of health stands up and says look we should try out the African Potato and on one level that’s fine but on another level of course it’s a kind of diversionary tactic to take attention away from what she should be doing which is supplying proper medicines through the hospital system.”

While conflict and disharmony among media is inevitable in South Africa’s current political, social and economic environment, the ethics of HIV/AIDS reporting is beginning to be debated, discussed, and reinvented by the media. And as the pandemic continues to wreak havoc on the South African landscape and its people, it is becoming increasingly essential that the media is up to the task.

Reached on November 1st of 1995, the Dayton Peace Agreement is known as the agreement that ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The agreement created an institutional ethnic division in Bosnia through the creation of the Republika Srpska, a Serbian republic and the Muslim and Croat federation, both regions being loosely connected. Last fall, in the hope of helping the country move forward, Miroslav Lajcak, the High Representative of Bosnia – a diplomat acting as a watchdog from the international community – made a proposal to change ethnic voting. Serbs feared the proposal would lead to a loss of influence of the Republika Srpska within Bosnia and Herzegovina.

On November 1st, 2007, Bosnian Prime Minister Nikola Spiric resigned over reform measures pushed by he High Representative of Bosnia – the international community’s watchdog – that, according to Spiric, would have infringed on the autonomy of the Serbs of Bosnia.
 
During the following month, newspapers would cover every step of the political crisis, from protests in the streets to international reactions. Banja Luka-based Nezavisne Novine, for instance, would tell the story from a Bosnian-Serb perspective, and Sarajevo-based Dnevni Avaz would tell the story from a Muslim (or Bosniak) perspective.

On November 15, the former Bosnian Prime Minister Spiric scheduled a meeting with the UN Security Council in New York, to reiterate that it was “necessary for BiH to respect the Dayton Peace Agreement and Constitution.” But Spiric could not be received during the official meeting of the Security Council, as he did not have BiH Presidency approval to address the council. Under the insistence of the Russian Ambassador to the UN, Spiric managed to talk at the closed part of the session.

Media consumers of Bosnia, however, depending on their newspaper, would perceive the visit differently. 

Dnevni Avaz, the Bosniak daily, published an article titled “Who sent Spiric to New York?” questioning his authority to speak in New York, without conveying his message. The Nezasvine Novine, on the other hand, released a two-page spread on Spiric’s visit to New York. The report focused on the message the politician had to convey, and did not mention the reluctance of the Security Council to meet him in the first place. As a result, neither the Bosnian Serbs nor the Bosniaks shared the same understanding of the issues surrounding the visit of the politician to the UN.

Throughout the political crisis, as newspapers were offering different narratives for the events taking place, the national public radio and television network, BiH Radio-Television, provided citizens of Bosnia living in Tuzla, Sarajevo, Mostar, and Banja Luka a similar storyline that could be heard regardless of their origin. Its coverage showed the importance of the media in framing the public discourse. It also proved the value of a public broadcaster in facilitating public debate.

A journalist’s main duty is to report on what is in the interest of the public in making informed decisions. But defining “the public” can be controversial and subject to interpretation. In countries like Bosnia and Herzegovina, comprised of three major communities – Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks – who were involved in the worst civil war in recent European history, the notion of public good can become complicated by felt allegiances between the State and the ethnic community the newspaper or broadcaster is part of. 

Bosnia’s media has been characterized by a history of nationalist rhetoric.

During the Bosnian war of 1992-1995, which led to the death of approximately 100,000 Bosnian citizens and the partition of the State into two regions (the Republika Srpska and the Muslim and Croat Federation), many media turned into tools in the hands of politicians. Only a handful of media, among them The Dani, a weekly, and The Oslobodenje, a daily, kept their independence and survived throughout the conflict.

Director of BiHR1 Senada Cumurovic worked as a radio reporter during the war. “It was terrible period and it was mad period for journalism in Bosnia. Some of my colleagues promoted hate, intolerance, and they were part of war politics,” she says.

Ever since the end of the violence in Bosnia, nationalist tensions between ethnic communities have severely slowed the peace process and threatened the future of Bosnia as a united State. These tensions have also been felt in the media.

Tarek Jusic  acts as program director at the MediaCentar in Sarajevo, an NGO funded by the Open Society Institute. 

“You can imagine what a mess it was at the time! There was a lot of work to be done”, he said. “In the most extreme forums, it was very extreme propaganda.” 

The problem was not freedom of speech, but the overcrowded media landscape.

“These media prevented the opposition parties to enter the public discourse,” he said.

In 1996, more than 280 radio and television stations – twice the number of radio and television stations per capita of the United States – many owned by political parties, had a voice in the country.

In 1997, during the elections, NATO troops took control of the official television station of the Serb entity, after it was accused of being used as a tool for the nationalist rhetoric of Radovan Karadzic’s – a Bosnian Serb leader now indicted for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in front of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY). 
 
Following that incident, the international community pushed for regulations on broadcast media and for more training for reporters. Several media-oriented projects started up, with limited success, according to a report by the Organization for Stability and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
 
By 1999, the international community established the Independent Media Commission (IMC) and framed basic rules that suppressed the few remaining sources of hate propaganda. Even today, most print media show ethnic biases. “But there is no hate speech in the media in any way,” says Jusic.

The impact of a public and independent broadcaster

BiH Radio 1 aired its first national newscast in May of 2001, and has since developed a faithful audience in the whole country. It’s been the most important success in terms of media initiatives.

The network is considered one of few reliable sources of information in the country. “At the beginning,” says Senada Cumurovic, “people knew only for information in their entities, and we offered something new compared with the war period.”
 
Cumurovic admits her task is not without challenges. “People can listen to the same kind of music that’s no problem, if they’re from Banja Luka, if they’re from Sarajevo, no problem,” she says. “But if they listen news, they are more sensitive.”

Since the creation of the public network, she’s seen more open discussions on what remain controversial issues that various listeners, depending on their origin, remember differently. “Now, we don’t have so sensitive topics, war criminals, Srebrenica, corruption, everything is open. Of course it’s problem how to be objective, but we’re open to everything.”

Public broadcasters usually play a role in terms of state building, and act as unifying forces within a country. The BBC in the UK states six public purposes “that set out the way in which the BBC is expected to serve the public interest.” Among them, “sustain citizenship and civil society”, and “to represent the UK, its nations, regions and communities.” The BBC is clearly being asked to do more than to “inform the public.”
 
In Canada, CBC/Radio-Canada promotes similar goals, and remains the only broadcaster to present news in both languages across the country.

In Bosnia, the role of the public broadcaster is even more critical, considering the strong presence of nationalist forces in the political sphere, and the biases of some mainstream media.

Ethnic biases

Nerma Jelacic leads the Bosnian activities of the <a href=”http://www.birn.eu.com/”> Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), a small media-oriented NGO. Prior to that, she worked as a print reporter in the U.K., where newspapers, either left-wing or right-wing show strong opinions. But the Bosnian media are different, she says. 

“The story is published in a way that supports a message that is preconceived by the editors. And the message is usually parallel with the message the politicians want to say,” says Jelacic.
 
Program director of Sarajevo MediaCentar Tarek Jusic is not surprised by the way the local media handled the story of Spiric’s resignation and visit to the UN either. He says it’s common for journalists to “adapt” their stories according to their public. “Look at Fox news, in the USA,” he says. “It’s the same all over the world.”

The question, though, is whether these biases influence the readers and viewers. “The audiences are guided toward reaching certain decisions which are not based on full information, he admits. Whether it works in terms of influences, that’s another question.”
 
Jusic also points out that the political climate plays a role in the way reporters can handle a story. Bosnia’s <a href=” http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4225449.stm”> long awaited police reform (the abolition of the two ethnically divided police forces to created a united police structure to fight against organized crime), has been described as a matter of Serbian sovereignty by politicians from the Republika Srpska. Journalists have to report these statements and concerns, no matter if they agree with it or not. According to Jusic, the least they can do is to offer alternative views.  “What the media can do is at least not put oil on fire. And at least try to offer an alternative interpretation,” he says. “If the leaders can’t agree, it doesn’t mean the population can’t live together.”

A difficult climate for journalists

Reporters also suffer from the political climate. The international community acknowledges the power of nationalism that still holds sway in the region.  According to a 2008 report on media in the Balkans by Reporters Without Borders, “political and ethnic divisions continue to interfere with the work of journalists in a region still struggling to recover from wars and its politicians dislike editorial independence and criticism.” Nationalist political parties pose threats to journalists who are doing fair and researched work.

From Feb. 5 to 7 of 2007, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Miklos Haraszti, visited Sarajevo to enquire about the media landscape in the country. The visit followed a decision by the Republika Srprska President Milan Jelic to boycott the public broadcaster, BHT-1, and BiHR1, three weeks earlier.
 
Haraszti stressed the importance of government officials to use the legal complaints mechanisms in place to settle their grievances. “A public broadcaster could not be exposed to any sort of political pressure and limitation to media freedom,” he said. “It had to fulfill its role, vital in a democratic society, to inform all citizens regardless of their social, political or other affiliations, in a timely and impartial manner.”

Cumurovic agrees with that statement. “It’s very important to offer people to hear different kinds of positions and of opinions. Problems for young people in Bosnia, are same, never mind where they live, and old people have same problems too.”

Emir Habul used to work for The Oslobodenje, the Sarajevan daily that became famous during the war for reporting fairly and independently.
 
Habul moved to BiH Radio 1 when the project started. He says he found the spirit of The Oslobodenje in the offices of the new public broadcaster. “The mission of The Oslobodenje to work for the whole Bosnia and Herzegovina is now the mission of BiH Radio 1,” he says. “It’s important, because we address to citizens of Bosnia as citizens, and not as members of national groups.”

On December 10, 2007, the crisis surrounding Nikola Spiric’s resignation ended when he was nominated again as president of Bosnia. The crisis would not be the last one the country would have to go though in the road toward a sustainable peace. But the coverage by the public broadcaster shows how non-biased key reporting can be in reaching that goal.