Wednesday, May 24, 2006
Public Service – Public Good
Public Service Broadcasting is, I believe passionately, critical for the development and extension of a modern democracy. It’s that simple.
Nations without this valuable commodity at the heart of its culture and politics fail to engage effectively with its people and itself.
In the United Kingdom, the battle lines have been drawn and the very future of the BBC is under scrutiny. Every ten years or so, there is a renewal of its Royal Charter, in effect, its licence to broadcast.
This Charter is the result of several years of negotiations between the BBC and the government of the day. Each side will seek responses from other interested bodies; not least the viewer and listener.
The Charter round also confirms the level of the BBC’s licence fee for the coming years.
Last year at Tihany, and earlier at Pecs, I made a call for more “public value broadcasting”. I said at the time there must be a greater connection to the communities we seek to serve; and a continuing commitment to producing quality programmes that viewers and listeners demand.
“Public value” is a central tenet to the BBC’s current negotiations.
The licence fee has served the BBC – and the UK – very well. It has helped retain the independence of the BBC from governments and politics and underpinned its “ownership” by the people.
But this should be the final agreement on a licence fee of this kind. At the next Charter renewal round, beginning in around six or seven years from now, the core funding of the BBC should be reviewed and this form of taxation replaced.
A new formula should therefore be found to publicly fund the BBC.
At the heart of Public Service Broadcasting is universality: available to all.
So, what are the options?
Subscription. No. That is elitist and takes away universality
Indirect taxation. On utilities for example – rather like your electricity bill in France; or your phone bill in Switzerland
Direct taxation. A tax at source – with caveats and bandings for people on low income and benefits
Or perhaps look once again at introducing commercials on the BBC
In Britain, the BBC is advertising-free. Across radio, television and online services, there are no commercials.
But there are commercials on the BBC Prime and BBC World channels broadcast around the world. Currently, there is also a survey underway, asking regular users of the BBC’s online services if they would object to the introduction of advertising.
That survey is only targeted at users outside the UK; if the responses are positive, it opens the possibility of another income stream for the BBC, and one that could bring in considerable revenues to the organisation.
However, the BBC has no stomach to consider advertising on its radio, television or online services in Britain. As part of its argument for the retention of the licence fee, the BBC made the case that to introduce commercials on its outlets would have a detrimental effect on the commercial broadcasters as it would reduce their market.
The commercial broadcasters in Britain regularly complain about the BBC getting the licence fee. But you would be hard-pressed to find a senior executive in any of those companies to agree with any policy that allowed the BBC to take advertising.
Let’s get closer to home: work has begun on another new Media Law for Hungary.
How much of that will focus on the values of having a strong, independent public service television and radio service?
We can hope this will be the route map that will take PSB forward. At the very least, it must provide the pathway to real reform.
The fear is that we will need to wait for yet another generation before the broadcasters and the politicians realise that the public want good programmes that entertain and inform.
Here is a critical reality check: The public is as disinterested in petty politicking as those in the media and politics itself are mesmerised by it.
Public Service can serve Public Good if it distances itself from the state it is in now, both in Hungary and in our neighbouring lands including Croatia, Romania and Slovakia.
It won’t be easy, particularly when there are diehards who can be found on all corridors continuing their chant that “nothing will change”.
This is a vital opportunity for the Media Law to embrace and action change, not a short-term fix, but a wider approach.
It is also critical for the broadcasters to demand the changes and set in motion a set of policies that enable democratic development of the television and the radio.
For the Public Service to be Public Good, it must evolve to:
• Remain relevant
• Become more relevant
• Be valued and valuable
• Be free from political intervention and interference
• Be free from internal intrigue
• Be free from point-scoring and politicking
• Be run by professionals for the public good
Public Service Broadcasting under the model of the BBC, is critically charged with upholding democratic values, not least through delivering trusted and impartial news and information.
Through its cultural and creative programming, the BBC helps to enrich and further value Britain’s diverse cultural lifestyles.
The BBC has a range of learning skills programmes on radio, television and online. It is currently offering a range of focussed “bite size” factual education programmes to help youngsters with their exam revision.
Part of the definition of Public Service delivering on Public Good, is a need for it to undertake a role of responsibility in helping to build greater understanding, tolerance and social cohesion.
That is a key requirement of a modern public broadcaster; to do more to earn, build and maintain the trust of the audience and to ask the awkward questions on its behalf.
The public broadcaster has a crucial role in the demanding digital age. Public Service needs to reach out to become Public Good. But it must have the courage to step forward, claim its place, and show its public value.
Charles Fletcher
charles.fletcher@caledoniamedia.com
Public Service Broadcasting is, I believe passionately, critical for the development and extension of a modern democracy. It’s that simple.
Nations without this valuable commodity at the heart of its culture and politics fail to engage effectively with its people and itself.
In the United Kingdom, the battle lines have been drawn and the very future of the BBC is under scrutiny. Every ten years or so, there is a renewal of its Royal Charter, in effect, its licence to broadcast.
This Charter is the result of several years of negotiations between the BBC and the government of the day. Each side will seek responses from other interested bodies; not least the viewer and listener.
The Charter round also confirms the level of the BBC’s licence fee for the coming years.
Last year at Tihany, and earlier at Pecs, I made a call for more “public value broadcasting”. I said at the time there must be a greater connection to the communities we seek to serve; and a continuing commitment to producing quality programmes that viewers and listeners demand.
“Public value” is a central tenet to the BBC’s current negotiations.
The licence fee has served the BBC – and the UK – very well. It has helped retain the independence of the BBC from governments and politics and underpinned its “ownership” by the people.
But this should be the final agreement on a licence fee of this kind. At the next Charter renewal round, beginning in around six or seven years from now, the core funding of the BBC should be reviewed and this form of taxation replaced.
A new formula should therefore be found to publicly fund the BBC.
At the heart of Public Service Broadcasting is universality: available to all.
So, what are the options?
Subscription. No. That is elitist and takes away universality
Indirect taxation. On utilities for example – rather like your electricity bill in France; or your phone bill in Switzerland
Direct taxation. A tax at source – with caveats and bandings for people on low income and benefits
Or perhaps look once again at introducing commercials on the BBC
In Britain, the BBC is advertising-free. Across radio, television and online services, there are no commercials.
But there are commercials on the BBC Prime and BBC World channels broadcast around the world. Currently, there is also a survey underway, asking regular users of the BBC’s online services if they would object to the introduction of advertising.
That survey is only targeted at users outside the UK; if the responses are positive, it opens the possibility of another income stream for the BBC, and one that could bring in considerable revenues to the organisation.
However, the BBC has no stomach to consider advertising on its radio, television or online services in Britain. As part of its argument for the retention of the licence fee, the BBC made the case that to introduce commercials on its outlets would have a detrimental effect on the commercial broadcasters as it would reduce their market.
The commercial broadcasters in Britain regularly complain about the BBC getting the licence fee. But you would be hard-pressed to find a senior executive in any of those companies to agree with any policy that allowed the BBC to take advertising.
Let’s get closer to home: work has begun on another new Media Law for Hungary.
How much of that will focus on the values of having a strong, independent public service television and radio service?
We can hope this will be the route map that will take PSB forward. At the very least, it must provide the pathway to real reform.
The fear is that we will need to wait for yet another generation before the broadcasters and the politicians realise that the public want good programmes that entertain and inform.
Here is a critical reality check: The public is as disinterested in petty politicking as those in the media and politics itself are mesmerised by it.
Public Service can serve Public Good if it distances itself from the state it is in now, both in Hungary and in our neighbouring lands including Croatia, Romania and Slovakia.
It won’t be easy, particularly when there are diehards who can be found on all corridors continuing their chant that “nothing will change”.
This is a vital opportunity for the Media Law to embrace and action change, not a short-term fix, but a wider approach.
It is also critical for the broadcasters to demand the changes and set in motion a set of policies that enable democratic development of the television and the radio.
For the Public Service to be Public Good, it must evolve to:
• Remain relevant
• Become more relevant
• Be valued and valuable
• Be free from political intervention and interference
• Be free from internal intrigue
• Be free from point-scoring and politicking
• Be run by professionals for the public good
Public Service Broadcasting under the model of the BBC, is critically charged with upholding democratic values, not least through delivering trusted and impartial news and information.
Through its cultural and creative programming, the BBC helps to enrich and further value Britain’s diverse cultural lifestyles.
The BBC has a range of learning skills programmes on radio, television and online. It is currently offering a range of focussed “bite size” factual education programmes to help youngsters with their exam revision.
Part of the definition of Public Service delivering on Public Good, is a need for it to undertake a role of responsibility in helping to build greater understanding, tolerance and social cohesion.
That is a key requirement of a modern public broadcaster; to do more to earn, build and maintain the trust of the audience and to ask the awkward questions on its behalf.
The public broadcaster has a crucial role in the demanding digital age. Public Service needs to reach out to become Public Good. But it must have the courage to step forward, claim its place, and show its public value.
Charles Fletcher
charles.fletcher@caledoniamedia.com
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Extending democracy
Ten years ago, young Romanian journalists training at the BBC School in Bucharest dismissed guidelines on the use of violent pictures in television news.
The BBC guideline calls for more sensitivity, restraint on the amount of violent images that can be screened, particularly together in one bulletin.
The BBC says “there is a balance to be struck between the demands of truth and the danger of desensitising people”. But the young Romanians insisted that “the viewers wouldn’t believe the journalists unless they could see the evidence for themselves”.
In other words, to be believed, they said they must show pictures – often close-ups – of the continuing atrocities in the Balkans War; dead and injured in accidents; and in one particularly disturbing incident in the early days of commercial television in Romania, the shocked reaction of a young woman to the news that her husband, an airline pilot, had been killed in a plane crash.
All of this was deemed acceptable in those opening days following the Romanian Revolution – or “The Event” as it was often caustically and sarcastically referred to.
There was a sudden dash to embrace their version of freedom, liberation.
There was a belief, genuinely held among people in an industry that had never been taught otherwise, that with this break from the yoke of Communism and the suppression of the Securitate, they could say anything about anyone. After all, wasn’t this the so-called “Freedom of the Press” often heard of from people who had access to the West?
Well, of course it wasn’t. But trying to explain that to many of the young journalists who were also holding down two or three other jobs at the same time was challenging.
It was rather like bringing up your own children when they have reached that awkward stage of asking “but why?” to everything you say.
There were some of the journalists in those early days, during the initially difficult transition from dictatorship towards democracy, who actually did understand and undertake to develop their industry into one staffed with professionals. But they were few.
The badge “professional” was much sought after, even more than money.
“Will I be a professional after this course?”… “Will this make me a professional?”… “Does this diploma make me a professional now?”… All genuine and serious questions raised by the young – and they were in the main in their early 20s – journalists wanting to make a career in the media.
Some of them now work in decision-making positions in Romania’s national public service radio and television, others in similar posts in commercial broadcasting. Yet others work for the BBC, Euronews, Eurosport, while one is teaching media in Paris.
In little over ten years, the Romanian economy has been transformed and the country stands on the edge of accession to the European Union, expectant of successful entry on January 1, 2007, the next stage of proposed enlargement of Europe.
But much work needs to be done to this society over the summer to convince Brussels to finally agree to entry next year.
The media in Romania is unrecognisable from a decade ago, perhaps mostly in its television news and the picture content. Today, the journalists will tell you that they prefer not to show close-up scenes of death, violence, injury, as it is disturbing and unnecessary if they tell the story properly and professionally.
So, that all sounds perfect then. No need for further media training in Romania. All is in good shape…
Wrong. That there is considerable improvement, there is no doubt, by any measurement that the media output in radio, television and, to a certainly lesser degree, in the Press.
There is always room for improvement wherever the media operates. as in the standards of BBC news output, infamously shaken to its core by the misguided handling of the reporting of the Iraq War by the defence correspondent of BBC Radio Four’s Today Show.
The subsequent mismanagement of his initial mistake served only to compound the incident rather than deflate it.
BBC Scotland recently repeatedly broadcast the news that the Scottish government was about to make extensive changes to the higher education system that would wipe out the university status earlier awarded to a swathe of colleges across the country. It was wrong.
In the UK Press, the Daily Mirror apologised unreservedly for printing fake pictures of Iraqi prisoners being beaten and tortured by British servicemen.
The company admitted its mistake, sacked the editor, then robustly called on the British and US administrations to admit their mistakes in the war in Iraq.
The media is important in helping to develop and build a strong economy, a stable democracy. Undoubtedly, mistakes will be made by reporters. But genuine mistakes, as irritating –and sometimes dangerous – as they may be, are very different from the people who deliberately set out to tell falsehoods, to mislead, to lie to the people.
In the example of the Daily Mirror, it would be the easy option for the newspaper to apologise then cower in the back alleys off Fleet Street, seeking a quiet life as it licked its wounds.
To do so would deny the basic tenets of democratic media: question, quiz, challenge authority. You are the watchdog for your reader. You can ask that awkward question and you must. The Daily Mirror was wrong to publish the fake pictures, but it seems to have been a genuine mistake, however misguided the decision to publish appears to be.
It was correct to sack its editor and apologise to the readers – but it was critical that the newspaper would then raise its game and ask the awkward questions, make the demand of politicians to account for and admit their mistakes. And in turn, where appropriate, resign or be sacked.
In Scotland, as in other parts of the world, we refer to the media as “The Fourth Estate”.
In an odd way, it adds a sense of gravitas to the industry, makes it seem almost part of the Establishment; a strange phenomenon when you consider that the media generally rails against anything to do with the establishment, rather seeking to knock it than join it.
Across the extended Europe, now a club of 25 nations through the continuing process of what could perhaps be well described as "Eunification", the media has arguably a far greater responsibility than it has had in the past.
As the economies develop, so must the media. It needs to be there to reflect town and country, raise issues, investigate concerns, encourage growth in business and culture and hold each nation’s leaders to account.
In Hungary, there is a continuing process of education through the media, in radio and newspapers in particular. The “big picture” of Europe has been explored and perhaps more importantly, in the past three years, there have been useful reports by sensible journalists who stripped Europe down to the very basic question: what will it mean to the price of eggs?
It was in no way downplaying the overall growth and development: it was, in fact, recognising what the media can do so very well, connect directly with people. “Europe: What Does It Mean For You? How Will It Impact On Your Life?”
One group of young Hungarian journalists travelled to Belgium and Scotland with the international development broadcaster Caledonia Media to get first-hand experience and understanding of what the EU was all about.
They went first to Bruxelles to see what impact the Euro was having on the economy. They met members of the great and good from the EU Parliament and institutions – and once the officialdom was concluded, they spoke to real people on the streets to get a measure of the real impact on their real lives.
By contrast, when they came to Edinburgh they met people in a country functioning outside the Euro Zone.
They spoke with the great and the good of the Scottish Parliament, where they had a working lunch with elected representatives before observing a session in the chamber.
As in Bruxelles, as useful as the official encounters were, it was the contact with real people in Edinburgh and nearby Dunfermline that helped to colour in their picture of Europe and report that back to their readers and listeners in Hungary.
As nations continue through transition, the media must be encouraged to develop and it in turn must ensure that it reports responsibly.
A strong media is critical in the 21st Century. It plays a crucial role in the development of nationhood and its people. A free, responsible media is an integral part of a modern democracy and one that has to be encouraged, nurtured and protected.
In The Visegrad Guidelines, a code of media ethics translated into seven languages, the former UK Defence Secretary, Michael Portillo, says: “Politicians will have to come to terms with the reality of a critical, unbiased media. It is a challenge for you to understand that, to welcome its development and to take it as a sign measuring your success in creating a democracy that is on its way to maturity.”
In little more than a decade much has changed in the media across Europe, and most especially in the new entrants to the EU and countries on the new eastern border like Bulgaria, Ukraine and Romania.
Much also has changed in the media in Serbia, Montenegro and in Croatia, similarly aiming to enter the EU. But there remains considerably more to be done.
It is no longer astonishing; rather it is pitiful, when departmental managers, companies and donor agencies, in their rush to save money, in their dash to cut costs, reduce or withdraw in entirety their support for training and development.
In reality, it is inappropriate to cut training budgets when people, the keystone to any organisation, are the very tools that can help improve output and market positioning.
Journalists in the new entrant countries to the EU are at varying, sometimes dramatically varying, levels of professional competence.
Training by organisations like Caledonia Media, has played important parts in helping to develop the standards of the industry.
Now, as funding bodies look to engage their resources in other ways in other nations, there is perhaps even more necessity to help support the media across Central and Eastern Europe, to develop all of the industry, improve its quality, build a better reputation for responsibility, reliability, quality, trust.
All of which costs money, and in some cases, will require media companies to self invest rather than rely on external funding support.
In Slovakia, the general director of the national broadcaster, STV, looked outside of the country for professional support to develop the network’s news and current affairs outputs. But it funded the project internally.
In Hungary, there is ongoing restructuring at the national radio, funded internally; but at the national public television, a similar programme of development has stalled because there is no internal funding available and so far, much to the chagrin of their general director, no external financial support.
By contrast, that external support has been on the table for Belarus for a considerable period of time, yet has never come to any great realisation.
Funders who want to support training and development are thwarted and left to express their grave concerns about the continuing political direction of the country and the dictatorial thumb on the throat of the media.
In contrast again, Ukraine has opened its doors, outstretched its arms, not as some cynics suggest, its palms, and is positively encouraging external support to help develop its media.
A little over ten years ago, Western professionals, a handful of people steeped in the industry as opposed to academics, pioneered media training across Central and Eastern Europe helping develop journalists, the managers and editors of today, to encourage growth of responsible television and radio stations. As well as building the industry, it was also to take a role in the development of democracy, and in doing so, have a direct input into nation-building.
There are examples of successes worldwide because of these initial interventions. In Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, the Baltic States, the Balkans, media training and development has secured a generation of responsible broadcasters and journalists.
Part of that success is that we now see journalists from Romania training their counterparts in Asia; journalists from Hungary training colleagues in Kosovo.
They are the beneficiaries of investment in their skills and talents and they are determined to pass it on. That spend on the young Romanian talent has been paid back in spades as we count the hundreds of young broadcasters who have benefited from the experience, beginning in the classroom of the Scoala BBC at the National Film and Theatre Academy in Bucharest.
Their learning is a model to be rolled out further afield.
They can’t do it on their own. They still need support and help in training the next generation. A friend in Budapest says of trying to do his job to the high professional standards he believes in: “I still have to struggle every day, it’s better, but it’s still a struggle. I’m doing all this for my son and his son. My country will be better for them than it is for me.”
It is a measure of his determination to help build and grow Hungary that he stays there, rather than move elsewhere, for he could.
He may be a unique person, but the attitude isn’t.
There are many more like him who want to do what they can to extend democracy through the media.
They are all there, across Central and Eastern Europe. And they still need support.
And that means recognising investment in continuing training and development. It needn’t cost a fortune. It is an investment that can accelerate the democratisation of a country. And a continent.
Charles Fletcher
charles.fletcher@caledoniamedia.com
Ten years ago, young Romanian journalists training at the BBC School in Bucharest dismissed guidelines on the use of violent pictures in television news.
The BBC guideline calls for more sensitivity, restraint on the amount of violent images that can be screened, particularly together in one bulletin.
The BBC says “there is a balance to be struck between the demands of truth and the danger of desensitising people”. But the young Romanians insisted that “the viewers wouldn’t believe the journalists unless they could see the evidence for themselves”.
In other words, to be believed, they said they must show pictures – often close-ups – of the continuing atrocities in the Balkans War; dead and injured in accidents; and in one particularly disturbing incident in the early days of commercial television in Romania, the shocked reaction of a young woman to the news that her husband, an airline pilot, had been killed in a plane crash.
All of this was deemed acceptable in those opening days following the Romanian Revolution – or “The Event” as it was often caustically and sarcastically referred to.
There was a sudden dash to embrace their version of freedom, liberation.
There was a belief, genuinely held among people in an industry that had never been taught otherwise, that with this break from the yoke of Communism and the suppression of the Securitate, they could say anything about anyone. After all, wasn’t this the so-called “Freedom of the Press” often heard of from people who had access to the West?
Well, of course it wasn’t. But trying to explain that to many of the young journalists who were also holding down two or three other jobs at the same time was challenging.
It was rather like bringing up your own children when they have reached that awkward stage of asking “but why?” to everything you say.
There were some of the journalists in those early days, during the initially difficult transition from dictatorship towards democracy, who actually did understand and undertake to develop their industry into one staffed with professionals. But they were few.
The badge “professional” was much sought after, even more than money.
“Will I be a professional after this course?”… “Will this make me a professional?”… “Does this diploma make me a professional now?”… All genuine and serious questions raised by the young – and they were in the main in their early 20s – journalists wanting to make a career in the media.
Some of them now work in decision-making positions in Romania’s national public service radio and television, others in similar posts in commercial broadcasting. Yet others work for the BBC, Euronews, Eurosport, while one is teaching media in Paris.
In little over ten years, the Romanian economy has been transformed and the country stands on the edge of accession to the European Union, expectant of successful entry on January 1, 2007, the next stage of proposed enlargement of Europe.
But much work needs to be done to this society over the summer to convince Brussels to finally agree to entry next year.
The media in Romania is unrecognisable from a decade ago, perhaps mostly in its television news and the picture content. Today, the journalists will tell you that they prefer not to show close-up scenes of death, violence, injury, as it is disturbing and unnecessary if they tell the story properly and professionally.
So, that all sounds perfect then. No need for further media training in Romania. All is in good shape…
Wrong. That there is considerable improvement, there is no doubt, by any measurement that the media output in radio, television and, to a certainly lesser degree, in the Press.
There is always room for improvement wherever the media operates. as in the standards of BBC news output, infamously shaken to its core by the misguided handling of the reporting of the Iraq War by the defence correspondent of BBC Radio Four’s Today Show.
The subsequent mismanagement of his initial mistake served only to compound the incident rather than deflate it.
BBC Scotland recently repeatedly broadcast the news that the Scottish government was about to make extensive changes to the higher education system that would wipe out the university status earlier awarded to a swathe of colleges across the country. It was wrong.
In the UK Press, the Daily Mirror apologised unreservedly for printing fake pictures of Iraqi prisoners being beaten and tortured by British servicemen.
The company admitted its mistake, sacked the editor, then robustly called on the British and US administrations to admit their mistakes in the war in Iraq.
The media is important in helping to develop and build a strong economy, a stable democracy. Undoubtedly, mistakes will be made by reporters. But genuine mistakes, as irritating –and sometimes dangerous – as they may be, are very different from the people who deliberately set out to tell falsehoods, to mislead, to lie to the people.
In the example of the Daily Mirror, it would be the easy option for the newspaper to apologise then cower in the back alleys off Fleet Street, seeking a quiet life as it licked its wounds.
To do so would deny the basic tenets of democratic media: question, quiz, challenge authority. You are the watchdog for your reader. You can ask that awkward question and you must. The Daily Mirror was wrong to publish the fake pictures, but it seems to have been a genuine mistake, however misguided the decision to publish appears to be.
It was correct to sack its editor and apologise to the readers – but it was critical that the newspaper would then raise its game and ask the awkward questions, make the demand of politicians to account for and admit their mistakes. And in turn, where appropriate, resign or be sacked.
In Scotland, as in other parts of the world, we refer to the media as “The Fourth Estate”.
In an odd way, it adds a sense of gravitas to the industry, makes it seem almost part of the Establishment; a strange phenomenon when you consider that the media generally rails against anything to do with the establishment, rather seeking to knock it than join it.
Across the extended Europe, now a club of 25 nations through the continuing process of what could perhaps be well described as "Eunification", the media has arguably a far greater responsibility than it has had in the past.
As the economies develop, so must the media. It needs to be there to reflect town and country, raise issues, investigate concerns, encourage growth in business and culture and hold each nation’s leaders to account.
In Hungary, there is a continuing process of education through the media, in radio and newspapers in particular. The “big picture” of Europe has been explored and perhaps more importantly, in the past three years, there have been useful reports by sensible journalists who stripped Europe down to the very basic question: what will it mean to the price of eggs?
It was in no way downplaying the overall growth and development: it was, in fact, recognising what the media can do so very well, connect directly with people. “Europe: What Does It Mean For You? How Will It Impact On Your Life?”
One group of young Hungarian journalists travelled to Belgium and Scotland with the international development broadcaster Caledonia Media to get first-hand experience and understanding of what the EU was all about.
They went first to Bruxelles to see what impact the Euro was having on the economy. They met members of the great and good from the EU Parliament and institutions – and once the officialdom was concluded, they spoke to real people on the streets to get a measure of the real impact on their real lives.
By contrast, when they came to Edinburgh they met people in a country functioning outside the Euro Zone.
They spoke with the great and the good of the Scottish Parliament, where they had a working lunch with elected representatives before observing a session in the chamber.
As in Bruxelles, as useful as the official encounters were, it was the contact with real people in Edinburgh and nearby Dunfermline that helped to colour in their picture of Europe and report that back to their readers and listeners in Hungary.
As nations continue through transition, the media must be encouraged to develop and it in turn must ensure that it reports responsibly.
A strong media is critical in the 21st Century. It plays a crucial role in the development of nationhood and its people. A free, responsible media is an integral part of a modern democracy and one that has to be encouraged, nurtured and protected.
In The Visegrad Guidelines, a code of media ethics translated into seven languages, the former UK Defence Secretary, Michael Portillo, says: “Politicians will have to come to terms with the reality of a critical, unbiased media. It is a challenge for you to understand that, to welcome its development and to take it as a sign measuring your success in creating a democracy that is on its way to maturity.”
In little more than a decade much has changed in the media across Europe, and most especially in the new entrants to the EU and countries on the new eastern border like Bulgaria, Ukraine and Romania.
Much also has changed in the media in Serbia, Montenegro and in Croatia, similarly aiming to enter the EU. But there remains considerably more to be done.
It is no longer astonishing; rather it is pitiful, when departmental managers, companies and donor agencies, in their rush to save money, in their dash to cut costs, reduce or withdraw in entirety their support for training and development.
In reality, it is inappropriate to cut training budgets when people, the keystone to any organisation, are the very tools that can help improve output and market positioning.
Journalists in the new entrant countries to the EU are at varying, sometimes dramatically varying, levels of professional competence.
Training by organisations like Caledonia Media, has played important parts in helping to develop the standards of the industry.
Now, as funding bodies look to engage their resources in other ways in other nations, there is perhaps even more necessity to help support the media across Central and Eastern Europe, to develop all of the industry, improve its quality, build a better reputation for responsibility, reliability, quality, trust.
All of which costs money, and in some cases, will require media companies to self invest rather than rely on external funding support.
In Slovakia, the general director of the national broadcaster, STV, looked outside of the country for professional support to develop the network’s news and current affairs outputs. But it funded the project internally.
In Hungary, there is ongoing restructuring at the national radio, funded internally; but at the national public television, a similar programme of development has stalled because there is no internal funding available and so far, much to the chagrin of their general director, no external financial support.
By contrast, that external support has been on the table for Belarus for a considerable period of time, yet has never come to any great realisation.
Funders who want to support training and development are thwarted and left to express their grave concerns about the continuing political direction of the country and the dictatorial thumb on the throat of the media.
In contrast again, Ukraine has opened its doors, outstretched its arms, not as some cynics suggest, its palms, and is positively encouraging external support to help develop its media.
A little over ten years ago, Western professionals, a handful of people steeped in the industry as opposed to academics, pioneered media training across Central and Eastern Europe helping develop journalists, the managers and editors of today, to encourage growth of responsible television and radio stations. As well as building the industry, it was also to take a role in the development of democracy, and in doing so, have a direct input into nation-building.
There are examples of successes worldwide because of these initial interventions. In Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, the Baltic States, the Balkans, media training and development has secured a generation of responsible broadcasters and journalists.
Part of that success is that we now see journalists from Romania training their counterparts in Asia; journalists from Hungary training colleagues in Kosovo.
They are the beneficiaries of investment in their skills and talents and they are determined to pass it on. That spend on the young Romanian talent has been paid back in spades as we count the hundreds of young broadcasters who have benefited from the experience, beginning in the classroom of the Scoala BBC at the National Film and Theatre Academy in Bucharest.
Their learning is a model to be rolled out further afield.
They can’t do it on their own. They still need support and help in training the next generation. A friend in Budapest says of trying to do his job to the high professional standards he believes in: “I still have to struggle every day, it’s better, but it’s still a struggle. I’m doing all this for my son and his son. My country will be better for them than it is for me.”
It is a measure of his determination to help build and grow Hungary that he stays there, rather than move elsewhere, for he could.
He may be a unique person, but the attitude isn’t.
There are many more like him who want to do what they can to extend democracy through the media.
They are all there, across Central and Eastern Europe. And they still need support.
And that means recognising investment in continuing training and development. It needn’t cost a fortune. It is an investment that can accelerate the democratisation of a country. And a continent.
Charles Fletcher
charles.fletcher@caledoniamedia.com
