DOCUMENT RESUME CS 508 557 ED 369 119 Nordenstreng, Kaarle, Ed.; Kleinwachter, Wolfgang, AUTHOR Ed. CSCE and Information: Proceedings of a Setinar of TITLE Experts (Tampere, Finland, April 24-27, 1992). Publications Series B 36/1992. INSTITUTION (Finlafid). Inst, of Journalism and Mass Tampere Univ. Communication. REPORT NO ISBN-951-44-3214-2; ISSN-0358-4151 PUB DATE 92 NOTE 183p. Conference Proceedings (021) PUB TYPE Collected Works EDRS PRICE MF01/PC08 Plus Postage. *Civil Liberties; Foreign Countries; *Government DESCRIPTORS Role; Higher Education; Information Sources; *Legislation; *Mass Media; *Mass Media Role; Media Research Europe; Glasnost; Global Change; *Media Government IDENTIFIERS Relationship; Perestroika; Rumania; Russia; USSR *ABSTRACT This report provides the proceedings of an expert seminar, held during the preparatory meeting of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) summit, which was designed to contribute to the new media orientation of the CSCE. The proceedings notes that the main media issue in the 1990s is no longer to legitimize freedom over censorship but to guarantee that the mass media will actually serve the citizen's right to communicate as prescribed by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Papers in the proceedings are: (1) "The Human Right to Communicate in a Civil Society" (Cees Hamelink); (2) "From Governmental Regulation to Market Regulation: Press Law and the Meaning of Article 10 of the European Human Rights Convention" (Dirk (3) "Old Problems in a New Environment: Broadcasting Vorhoof); Legislation in Eastern Europe and the Republics of the Former Soviet Union" (Wolfgang Kleinwachter); (4) "New Freedoms--Old Problems? The Role of Journalists in Times of Change" (Colin Sparks); (5) "Subject, Object or Equal-Participant? In Search of a Realistic Goal of Communication Democratization. in Poland" (Karol Jakubowicz); (6) "Russia: Is Law on the Press Still Pressed by 'Sandwich Law'?" (Yassen Zassoursky); (7) "From Perestroika and Glasnost to Independent Media? A Russian Perspective" (Yuri Baturin and Yegor Kouznetsov); (8) "The Role of Audience in the Present-Day Media (9) "One Step Situation: The Case of Estonia" (Halliki Harro); Forward and Two Steps Back? The Romanian Broadcasting Law" (Cristian Constantinescu); (10) "The Council of Europe and the CSCE Process in the Area of Information Policy" (Lawrence Early); (11) "The Development of Media Cooperation between European Countries" (George Wedell); and (12) "Framework, Structures and Mechanisms" (Bernard Blin). Excerpts from the Helsinki CSCE document, other key CSCE documents, documentation of the seminar, and a summary report of the Round Table on Media Law in Europe are attached. (RS) Kaarle Nordenstreng & Wolfgang Kleinwachter (Eds.) CSCE AND INFORMATION Proceedings of a seminar of experts Tampere, April 24-27, 1992 "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS EMPARTIMINT OF EDUCATION MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY Mese/ Educaopet Deseerca sod Imporedstot EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER IERICI s "IMP daimoni has been reproduced received from toe poison Or Otoilnizahon 14 Oteneting 0 Minor cosmos nave Pen made to Porove telirOducaon Quality TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES NW* Of ve* O. *Omani Slated m thclOctr tnont on not mein/tray tiprolont Whom INFORMATION CENTER (EMI." OERI Doeltazto or cams Tampereen yliopisto Tiedotusopin laitos University of Tampere- Department of Journalism and Mass Communication 2 Kaarle Nordenstreng & Wolfgang Kleinwächter (Eds.) CSCE AND INFORMATION Proceedings of a seminar of experts Tampere, April 24-27, 1992 Tampereen yliopisto Tiedolusopin laitos University of Tampere Department of Journalism and Mass Communication Julkaisuja/Publications Sarja/Series B 36/1992 2 SARJA SERIES A Tutkimuksia Studies B Raportteja Reports C Keskusteluja ja katsauksia Discussions and reviews D Opetusmonisteita Textbook materials E Bibliografioita ja luetteloita Bibliographies and catalogues Nordenstreng, Kaarle and Kleinwächter, Wolfgang (Eds.) CSCE and Information: Proceedings of a seminar of experts, Tampere, April 24-27, 1992/ ed. by Kaarle Nordenstreng & Wolfgang Kleinwächter. Tampere - University of Tampere, 1992. - 187 p.- University of Tampere, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, Publications, Series B, ISBN 951-44-3214-2. ISSN 0358-4151 This report provides the proceedings of an experr seminar, held during the preparatory meeting of the CSCE summit. It was organized by the University of Tampere in co-operation with the International Association for Mass Communication Research (IAMCR) and the Finnish Association for Mass Communication Research on April 24-27, 1992. ISBN 951-44-3214-2 ISSN 0358-4151 TAMPEREEN YLIOPISTO Jaljennepalvelu Tampere 1992 TIMM9.511/' 3 Contents 5 Preface 7 Cees Hamelink The Human Right to Communicate in a Civil Society 19 Dirk Vorhoof From Governmental Regulation to Market Regulation: Press Law and the Meaning of Article 10 of the European Human Rights Convention 43 Wolfgang Kleinwächter Old Problems in a New Environment: Broadcasting Legislation in Eastern Europe and the Republics of the Former Soviet Union 55 Colin Sparks New Freedoms - Old Problems? The Role of Journalists in Times of Change 67 Karol Jakuhowicz Subject, Object or Equal Participant? In Search of a Realistic Goal of Communication Democratization in Poland 85 Yassen Zassoursky Russia: Is Law on the Press Still Pressed by "Sandwich Law"? 89 Yuri Baturin and Yegor Kouznetsov From Perestroika and Glasnost to Independent Media? A Russian Perspective 93 Halliki Harro The Role of Audience in the Present-day Media Situation: The Case of Estonia 99 Cristian Constantinescu One Step Forward and Two Steps Back? The Romanian Broadcasting Law 5 4 Lawrence Early 105 The Council of Europe and the CSCE Process in the Area of Information Policy George Wedell 113 The Development of Media Cooperation Between European Countries Bernard Blin 119 Framework, Structures and Mechanisms Annex I : 129 The Challenge of Change: The Helsinki CSCE Document 1992, Helsinki, 10 July 1992 (Excerpts) Annex 11: 153 Other key CSCE documents Report to the CSCE Council from the CSCE Seminar on Democratic Institutions, Oslo, 15 November 1991 Prague Document on Further Development of CSCE Institutions and Structures, Prague, 20 January 1992 (CSCE-Doc. 2-C/Dec.2/ Excerpts) Seminar on Free Media, Proposal submitted by the Delegations of the USA and Ukraine, Helsinki, 9 June 1992 (CSCE-Doc. HM/ W03/19) Annex III: 169 CSCE and Information: Documentation of the Seminar Resolution to the CSCE Summary Report of the Seminar Agenda List of participants Annex IV : 183 Round Table on Media Law in Europe (1989): Summary Report 6 5 Preface The Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) held its latest summit in Helsinki in July 1992 and decided among other things that its newly established Office on Democratic Institutions and Human Rights in Warsaw will convene a seminar on "free media" in the second half of 1993 (see Annex I, page 151). Accordingly, information issues - brought to the CSCE agenda as part of the original "Basket III" of the 1975 "Helsinki Accords" - were confirmed to remain on the CSCE also under the post-Cold-War conditions. (For key CSCE documents preceding the summit and relating to the media issues, see Annex II.) It is symptomatic that the media question is now placed in the context of human rights and democratic institutions, with a significant input from non- governmental civic organizations. The main media issue in the 1990s is no longer to legitimize freedom over censorship - now agreed at least in principle by all parties - but Lo guarantee that the mass media will actually serve the citizens' right to communicate as is prescribed by Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human RightS, instead of being used as instruments of vested interests (not least commercial interests). This report provides the proceedings of an expert seminar, held during the preparatory meeting of the CSCE summit, which in its own modest way contributed to the new media orientation of the CSCE. Its organizers, in particular the International Association for Mass Communication Research (IAMCR/AIERI, a "category A" NGO at UNESCO), are gratified that media professionals and scholars have been able to participate in a historical process in the interest of citizens at large. They will continue to do so by mobilizing the preparing and conducting the media expert community to cooperate in forthcoming seminar on free media. The present report reproduces the papers presented at the seminar in Tampere (except that by Karol Jakubowicz who was prevented from attending and sent his paper later). A summary of discussions is provided in Annex Ill. For reference, Annex IV reproduces the report of a Round Table on media laws in Europe convened in Tampere three years earlier - on the eve of the CSCE Information Forum in London - and attended by largely the same experts. 7 6 The organizers gratefully acknowledge financial assistance from the University of Tampere and the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture as well as hospitality by the City of Tampere and the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE). Wolfgang Kleinwdchter Kaarle Nordenstreng 8 7 The Human Right to Communicate in a Civil Society Cees Hame link 1. Why should we apply the idea of international human rights to the normative assessment of the political arrangements governing the mass media and their cross-border operations? Contemporary discourse on the state of the world frequently refers to a metaphor which is attractive, lucid, simple, and wrong. It is the projection of Particularly striking about the use of this equation the world as a global village. life. One of its its authors must know very little about village that is characteristics is that most villagers know what is going on and that most of them know each other. The opposite is true of our "shrinking" world: there is more going on than ever before, yet most of us know very little about it and the majority of the world's citizens have little knowledge or understanding of each another misguided The imagery yet of world shrinking other. is a representation. In .a real sense, our world is expanding. There is more world thtin ever before in history: more people, more nations. Precisely, the fact that we have mofe world than we can personally know. makes us in unprecedented ways dependent upon a caste of professional intermediaries. They form the real priesthood of our times: telling us what is and what is not, filtering for us the truth from the lies, and providing us with an authoritative exegesis of current events. As they stand between us and our world environmerit, the quality of their mediation becomes essential to the quality of our lives. Let us briefly look at how well they operate. In 1983 there was a clear prospect of a very serious famine in Africa. However, people were not yet dying like flies. Among the comments by TV station NBC on footage that showed a food distribution in Eritrea was "It is not yet a Biafra". As long as hunger does not have sufficient news (entertainment) value, it can be ignored and under-reported. Once, however, people began to die on camera, the famine became a media-event. Then it was over-reported Wand hordes of anonymous Africans, without dignity, became media objects. Then also the sensationalizing began and the 8 international media stated that some 125 million Africans were threatened by starvation. The situation was bad enough, but never over some 10 million people were actually near to starvation. Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s Africa was and remained un-reported, under-reported, or over-reported. In October 1988 three grey whales got stuck under the ice in Alaska. 150 reporters, and 26 camera crews came to report the 'whale-drama' to over 1 billion viewers in the world. No medium report said anything about the socio-economic conditions of the Eskimos in the same location. In 1989 the events at Tien An Men square took place. The New York Times reported 2.600 students killed in a massacre. On 21 June 1989 the Times admitted that about 400 may have lost their lives and that the original figure was based on rumours. In December 1989 East-European agencies reported the sensational discovery of a 4.000 people mass grave in Timisoara, Romania. The images were shocking and looked very real. In reality, as it turned out, in Timisoara never more than 150 people were killed and the grave was an old poor people's graveyard hastily dug up. The 1991 Gulf War reporting provided prime examples of distorted mediation. Many TV stations, for example, did broadcast the videotapes manufactured for propaganda purposes in the 10 million dollar campaign conducted for the Bush administration by the Washington-based Public Relations firm Hill and Knowlton. Many important stories about the war were not reported. Videotape footage the US did show that civilian damage was much heavier than that administration cared to admit, was spiked by most TV networks. Most media selected not to report about the Allied Desert Storm casualties. Satellite photos taken on September 11, 1990 demonstrated no evidence of the massive Iraqi army threat to Saudi Arabia that president Bush referred to the saMe day when he tried to generate public support for the war. The news media were censored and allowed themselves to be censored. These examples could easily be multiplied and complemented by analyses of highly wanting coverage provided by the international newsmedia of such events as the invasions of Grenada and Panama, the bombing of Tripoli or the trial of Panama's president Noriega. In all of this professional mediation there is a great deal of misleading (partly by design, partly by default) that affects the sovereign capacity of people to deal in dignity and liberty with their social reality. In summary: The daily lives of the world's citizens are deeply affected by tlw quality and scope of civss-border conummications and by the political arrangements governing, dies(' communications. In unprecedented ways more and more of reliability and security people hare become dependent upon the communication hanlware and software. 1 0