Press Freedom and Pluralism in Europe: Concepts and Conditions
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Press Freedom and Pluralism in Europe: Concepts and Conditions
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| ISBN-13: | 9781841502977 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Intellect Books |
| Publication date: | 03/01/2009 |
| Series: | ISSN |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 314 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Andrea Czepek and Eva Nowak are professors of journalism at the University of Applied Sciences in Wilhelmshaven, Germany. Melanie Hellwig is an assistant at the University of Applied Sciences.
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Press Freedom and Pluralism in Europe
Concepts and Conditions
By Andrea Czepek, Melanie Hellwig, Eva Nowak
Intellect Ltd
Copyright © 2009 Intellect LtdAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84150-297-7
CHAPTER 1
Measuring Media Freedom: Approaches of International Comparison
Markus Behmer
Introduction
Every year on 3 May the 'World Press Freedom Day' is celebrated. It was proclaimed by the UNESCO in 1992, to mark the ratification of the 'Windhoek Declaration'. It was adopted one year later, during a regional UNESCO conference, when media representatives and experts had demanded independence, freedom and pluralism of the press.
Even sixteen years after Windhoek, 3 May is not a red-letter day, a day for joyful statements – rather, it offers the opportunity for critical appraisal. Freedom of the press is an ideal, yet oppression of that freedom is still reality in many places. Furthermore, since September 11 2001, freedom of communication and media has even suffered setbacks, worldwide. The fight against terrorism has often been a plea for constraints of media freedom all over the world. In Russia, the media are controlled and exploited by the president and powerful economic groups; the lives of journalists who gave critical reports from Chechnya were threatened. In China – and not only there – access to the Internet is strictly controlled; critical net activists are arrested. In Iraq the media are still in a sorry state. In Columbia journalists are kidnapped or murdered; in Cuba they are imprisoned on a massive scale.
This list could be continued for some time. In western democracies as well, even in Western Europe and in Germany, there is, here and there, cause for concern, for instance, when editorial offices are searched on suspicion of betrayal of state secrets, or telephones of journalists are wiretapped, or critical coverage of firms is omitted on account of pressure by advertisers. Of course, one has to think in relative terms here: phone bugging operations are alarming, but may not be equated with the arresting of critical journalists; the closing of websites due to pornographic or racist contents does not equate with acts of official pre-censorship in the run-up to elections.
To begin with, it should only be noted that the elementary human rights to gain information from a multitude of various sources and to communicate freely are under threat in many places, in different ways and to different extents. The most massive breaches of these (as of other) basic rights are to be found in those regions which are commonly (albeit in an unduly trivializing or at least strongly abbreviated manner) referred to as the 'Third World' – and particularly in conflict areas.
The International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) features the most comprehensive collection of breaches to the basic rights concerning communication around the globe on the World Wide Web. It gives numerous current alerts almost daily. That the cases shown on the pages of IFEX usually deal with injustice is not only self-evident but also clear under international law.
Media freedom and international law
Article 19 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: 'Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; the right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.'
These words are worth being remembered again and again. However, Article 19 is only a general manifesto which needs to be substantiated in two ways: first, its content is rendered more precisely by further inter- and transnational conventions, such as Article 10 of the 'European Human Rights Convention' of the European Council (1950), the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (now OSCE) from 1975, the UN Millenium Development Goals, the Conventions of the World Trade Organisation WTO, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and other UN sub-organizations, particularly in the various media declarations of the UNESCO. The later ones show how difficult it is to reach a worldwide consensus, even regarding the basic implications of Article 19. The work of the UNESCO communications department was paralysed or overshadowed by disputes over the unconditional 'free flow of information' versus a better-balanced worldwide flow of information aided by a 'New World Information and Communication Order' for at least two decades in the seventies and eighties (see for example Rohn 2002; Breunig 2000).
The second area of implementation or realization of Article 19 concerns national law. Christian Tietje clarifies this in the International Media Handbook of the Hans Bredow Institute: 'Just as in the jurisdiction of the international system in general, so it is in the areas of communication law, the states still being the protagonists as to jurisdiction and its enforcement' (Tietje 2002: 17). Here it can be observed that freedom of communication is part of the basic rights catalogue in almost all constitutions on earth.
A detailed survey was carried out by Christian Breunig in 1994 in which he analysed, amongst other things, the contents of the constitutions of 160 states. 143 states guarantee – or at least guaranteed then – one or more freedom(s) of communication in their constitutions. In sixteen constitutions, freedom of speech was assured explicitly; in 21, the freedom of speech and opinion; in 58, the freedom of the press; in 60, the freedom of information; and in 103, freedom of opinion (Breunig 1994: 308). However, as is often the case, it would be wrong to equate 'quantities to qualities'. Even if freedom of the press is not explicitly mentioned, it does not mean that it does not exist. The term 'press freedom' is not found in the constitution of Sweden, for example, even though its press enjoys more freedom than in almost any other state on earth. And being printed in the constitution does, by no means, signify that it is implemented de facto. That is proven by the example of North Korea, ruled by one of the world's most repressive regimes. Another example: the freedom of broadcasting is only mentioned in two of the constitutions analysed by Breunig's expressis verbis: in the German 'Grundgesetz' – and in the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Often, constitutions contain limitations to the chartered freedom of communication which 'abrogate the positive content basic rights' (Breunig 1994: 307). And it is not rare for arbitrariness to prevail despite any particular legislation. A comparative law analysis alone, therefore, can not offer sufficient insight into the media situation. This observation is further underscored by the fact that the basic understanding of press freedom can differ significantly.
In authoritarian systems press freedom is often subsidiary to other government aims. In the German Democratic Republic, for instance, one had to look upon freedom of the press as the freedom from economic constraint as well as the possibility (or rather the duty) of taking part in the build up of socialism (see, for example, Holzweißig 1997). In the Development Media Concept, which to this day is advocated at least implicitly in many states of the so-called Third World, the media are, to a certain extent, allocated the task to first and foremost cooperate in the formation of a nation after the era of colonization. According to this view, the media's primary tasks are nation-building and, finally, contributing to social and economic development – pluralism and freedom of the press are often looked upon as second-rate, sometimes even as detrimental (Stevenson 1994: 231–59). For instance, in strongly religious-orientated states, the media almost voluntarily make a taboo out of numerous topics and events. In Turkey there is paragraph 301 of the penal law, which assesses 'defamation of Turkishness' as an element of offence – as many will be aware of after the murder of Hrant Dink and the arguments about Orhan Pamuk.
With reference to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, it can be said that the press is free – but in many places and in many ways, it is in bonds. How can these bonds be more precisely defined? How can freedom of the press and the media situation be focused on in an international comparison?
Comparing media freedom around the world: A short inspection of four surveys Up until the last four or five years, internationally comparative media research did not, unfortunately, rank very highly, at least in German communication science. In 2002, Hans Kleinsteuber mentioned that it is in a 'yet embryonic state' (Kleinsteuber 2002: 42). Since then the situation has improved, but even in the 'strongholds' of international media research, such as in the United States and in Great Britain, comparison has been only a side show of research for a long time. Methodical problems, such as the general question of various systems being comparable or the exact categories of comparison to be operationalized in comparative research, for the most part, still ,need to be clarified. There is a need for special clarification depending on the subject of research; the complexity is therefore high, the qualifications the researcher has to fulfil, immense. The British Media Researcher Sonia Livingstone points out: 'In personal communication, comparative projects are described as "exhausting", "a nightmare" and "frustrating", though also "exhilarating" or "stimulating"' (Livingstone 2003: 481). Cross-national comparisons are 'exciting but difficult, creative but problematic' (Livingstone 2003: 478). The field of studies is correspondingly clear. But currently the prominence of comparative media research is growing:
Funding bodies and policy imperatives increasingly favour comparative research. Stimulated also by the phenomena of globalization and the concomitant rise of globalization theory, researchers in media, communication and cultural studies increasingly find themselves initiating collaboration or invited to collaborate in multinational comparative projects. (Livingstone 2003: 477)
This general result applies also to freedom of the press as the subject of examination. Thus, for a long time, there were only a few international comparative studies to comply with exact scientific demands (see, for example, Holtz-Bacha 2003). In the last few years, this situation has become much better and there is a series of studies which attempt, sometimes extensively, international comparison of the limitations of press freedom. The concrete focus is somewhat different in each case, as is the research instrument.
I would brie y like to introduce four of these studies. I will describe their methodical approach and also mention problems or inevitable shortcomings. Finally, I would like to refer to a few of the results of these studies before reaching a conclusion. The four studies I will brie y present are:
* 'Freedom of the Press: A Global Survey of Media Independence' by Freedom House (last edition: Deutsch Karlekar 2007a)
* 'World Press Freedom Index' by Reporters Without Borders (2007b)
* 'Media and Democracy Report' by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (2005)
* 'African Media Barometer' by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in cooperation with the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) (2006/2007).
Other studies worth mentioning are, for example, 'News Media and Freedom of Expression in the Arab Middle East' edited by the Heinrich Boell Foundation (2004) and 'The World Press Freedom Review' of the International Press Institute (2006).
Freedom House: 'Freedom of the Press'
Let us begin with the oldest established survey, the study by the Washington based NGO Freedom House, conducted annually since 1980: 'Freedom of the Press: A Global Survey of Media Independence'. The survey considers communication and media freedom in more than 190 states, according to almost constant criteria and is an 'important instrument for metering continuously the global development of press freedom', as Christina Holtz-Bacha rightly emphasizes (Holtz-Bacha 2003: 408). The survey is published every year on 3 May, the 'World Press Freedom Day', when some media interest is guaranteed. The results are presented in form of brief country reports, an overview article (Deutsch Karlekar 2007b), sometimes some longer reports on special topics or problems, and always global and regional charts and scales. Since 2004, Freedom House compiles a ranking, too, in which every state gets a concrete position in the table of media freedom (or, as the case may be, bondage), although it cannot represent a scientifically correct scaling. The survey always attracts great attention, but it is not without controversy. For example, it is criticized for incorrect scaling and some methodical difficulties (for example Becker 2003: 109). Furthermore, Freedom House is sometimes accused of having a pro-American bias (for example UN 2001) – not least because more than three quarters of the NGO's resources derive from federal grants of the US government (Freedom House 2007a: 24).
The final most simple, perhaps also most trivial, approach here is to differentiate between free and not free states. This is the approach which Freedom House takes in its annual inquiry. The result for 2007 shows that 72 out of 195 countries and territories examined were rated 'free' (having a 'free' media system), nine fewer than 2001; 59 fell under 'partly free' and 64 under 'not free', two more than six years before. The situation seems even more alarming when one does not differentiate according to the number of states but according to the number of inhabitants: less than one fifth (18 per cent) of the world population of 6.5 billion people live in states with a free press, but more than two fifths (43 per cent) live in systems characterized as not free (Freedom House 2008).
How is the survey carried out? 23 'methodology questions' are bundled up into three top categories. Top category A includes the normative frame: the legal situation comprising laws and regulations which influence the media content. Top category B includes the transformation of the legal status into factual action and the threat to media and journalists, also the political pressure, control by the executive, violence against media, and, generally, the working conditions relevant for the content. Lastly, top category C includes the economic situation, that is the economic pressure and control as well as concentration tendencies which influence contents (Freedom House 2007b).
The worst possible score is 30 points in categories A and C, and 40 in category B. All in all, results are presented within an assessment range from 0 (completely free) to 100 (completely not free). Optimum values not exceeding 12 points are currently reached by Finland, Iceland, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, and Switzerland; negative values of at least 90 points by Eritrea, Burma, Cuba, Libya, Turkmenistan, and – with 97 points, ranking last – North Korea (Freedom House 2007c).
So how are the free, the partly free and the not free media systems distributed on the globe? Freedom House offers a descriptive world map (Freedom House 2007d). 'Free' states are coloured in green, 'partially free' ones in yellow, the 'not free' ones in blue. One recognizes at first glance a conglomeration of blue, that is 'not free' states, particularly in Africa, in the Arabian region, in South and East Asia, as well as in the Caribbean (including Cuba and Haiti) – thus, in large parts of the Third World, though this is in addition to many successor states of the Soviet Union (such as Russia, Belarus, and Moldova, also the only European states). The green areas on the map, on the other hand, concentrate in the highly developed states of the 'North', particularly in North America and Europe. It is a shame, by the way, that a state which has been a founding member of the European Union was only listed as partly free in 2006: Italy under Berlusconi (Freedom House 2006). The new EU member states Romania and Bulgaria were still considered only partly free in the 2007 survey.
Sources for the evaluation of each country were correspondent reports and statements from travellers, research results by staff members of Freedom House, expert inquiries, analyses of reports from aid organisations and public agencies as well as current reports of NGOs, and finally analyses of local and international media themselves. The data is sent to New York and evaluated there. However, the exact basis of the data and the concrete procedure of evaluation are not made public. Peter Schellschmidt of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation critically remarks: 'The outcome is often far removed from the lived reality in the countries under review. Such surveys are also likely to be incomplete' (Schellschmidt 2005b: 2). For instance, the inquiry does not really include the possibilities of access to the media – and the quality of coverage in the media is hardly considered, either.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Press Freedom and Pluralism in Europe by Andrea Czepek, Melanie Hellwig, Eva Nowak. Copyright © 2009 Intellect Ltd. Excerpted by permission of Intellect Ltd.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction: Structural Inhibition of Media Freedom and Plurality across Europe Andrea Czepek, Melanie Hellwig and Eva Nowak,Part One: Concepts,
Measuring Media Freedom: Approaches of International Comparison Markus Behmer,
Pluralism and Participation as Desired Results of Press Freedom: Measuring Media System Performance Andrea Czepek,
Is the Clash of Rationalities Leading Nowhere? Media Pluralism in European Regulatory Policies Beata Klimkiewicz,
The Challenges of ICT to Media Pluralism Lilia Raycheva,
Press Freedom and Pluralism on the Micro Level: Journalistic Qualifications and Professionalization Eva Nowak,
Media Systems, Equal Rights and the Freedom of the Press: Gender as a Case in Point Elisabeth Klaus,
Media Governance and Media Quality Management: Theoretical Concepts and an Empirical Example from Switzerland Vinzenz Wyss and Guido Keel,
Part Two: Conditions (Case Studies),
Assessing Pluralism and the Democratic Performance of the Media in a Small Country: Setting a Comparative Research Agenda for the Baltic States Aukse Balcytiene,
Media in Poland and Public Discourse Ryszard Filas and Pawe P aneta,
Mass Media Developments in Bulgaria Lilia Raycheva,
Press Freedom and Media Pluralism in Romania: Facts, Myths and Paradoxes Mihai Coman,
Media Freedom and Pluralism in the United Kingdom (UK) Peter Humphreys,
Mind the Gap? Press Freedom and Pluralism in Finland Inka Salovaara-Moring,
Pre-Conditions for Press Freedom in Germany Andrea Czepek, Melanie Hellwig and Eva Nowak,
The Austrian Media System: Strong Media Conglomerates and an Ailing Public Service Broadcaster Martina Thiele,
Pluralism in the French Broadcasting System: Between the Legacy of History and the Challenges of New Technologies Thierry Vedel,
The Freedom of the Spanish Press Ingrid Schulze-Schneider,
Pluralism of Information in the Television Sector in Italy: History and Contemporary Conditions Cinzia Padovani,
The Authors,