Media in Belarus Conference: Challenges and Chances

Boris Navasar­dian (Yere­van Press Club):

“Press free­dom means hav­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty to pub­lish some­thing which some­body would not want to see pub­lished. Nowa­days, pol­i­tics is sub­sti­tut­ed by polit­i­cal tech­nolo­gies, and jour­nal­ism is sub­sti­tut­ed by PR. These process­es are mutu­al­ly relat­ed. Polit­i­cal tech­nol­o­gists and pop­ulist politi­cians took the most advan­tage of the infor­ma­tion soci­ety.”

“The Inter­net enabled larg­er access to free con­tent, which cut down on rev­enues of pub­lish­ers. A cus­tomer would not pay for jour­nal­ists’ work if there were a pos­si­bil­i­ty to get infor­ma­tion for free. Thus, the pro­duc­er of infor­ma­tion­al con­tent becomes the one who is ready to pay authors. An exam­ple here are free-of-charge papers in pub­lic places, adver­tise­ment out­lets etc. There is a grow­ing seg­ment of the media ready not to pub­lish some­thing what some­body would not want to be in the pub­lic eye.”

“Paid jour­nal­ism (plu­go­la, the local term jeansá) is part of this sit­u­a­tion. Fif­teen years ago, it was an anom­aly, where­as now nobody minds hav­ing a pos­si­bil­i­ty to pub­lish some­thing for mon­ey. Some­times, rack­et takes place. There is a tri­al nowa­days in Yere­van over an edi­tor who had demand­ed a bribe for not dis­clos­ing infor­ma­tion that there were Azer­bai­jani share-hold­ers in a bank.”

“What can be done here? Enhanc­ing pub­lic media that would serve to the pub­lic inter­est. An exam­ple can be the Radio Svabo­da or Bel­sat. But we see prob­lems here, main­ly, the finan­cial ones, and the influ­ence of politi­cians who decide on finan­cial issues.”

“I see a way out in pub­lic ini­tia­tives and civ­il soci­ety: self-reg­u­la­tion, strength­en­ing jour­nal­ists’ ethics, cre­at­ing qual­i­ty con­tent, expand­ing media lit­er­a­cy; also research­ing the infor­ma­tion­al field and iden­ti­fy­ing pro­pa­gan­da ele­ments.”

Ole­na Gol­ub (Insti­tute of Mass Infor­ma­tion, Ukraine):

The media sphere has changed in Ukraine since the rev­o­lu­tion of 2013 – 2014. There is an ongo­ing dena­tion­al­iza­tion process, lots of doc­u­ments have been made pub­lic, infor­ma­tion on ten­ders has become open. Mean­while, there stays the prob­lem of media depend­ing on own­ers. All oli­garchs are polit­i­cal­ly engaged, and it would be naïve to think that mass media would cov­er polit­i­cal events in an unbi­ased way.” On the pos­i­tive side, Ole­na Gol­ub men­tioned the recent law oblig­ing to pub­li­cize the names and infor­ma­tion about media own­ers.

“The ques­tion of pro­pa­gan­da has emerged four or five years ago, and we real­ized the true threat of this phe­nom­e­non… Sev­er­al years ago, we arrived at the con­clu­sion that there should not be coun­ter­pro­pa­gan­da. There should be qual­i­ty jour­nal­ism which sticks to eth­i­cal stan­dards.”

“Anoth­er issue is how pro­fes­sion­al jour­nal­ism can com­pete with social jour­nal­ism. I think the only means to com­pete is to pro­duce qual­i­ty mate­ri­als. Not speed, but pro­fes­sion­al­ism.”

Mikhas Yanchuk, deputy chair­per­son of BAJ

Mikhas Yanchuk pre­sent­ed a roadmap for mod­ern­iza­tion of media law of Belarus, the doc­u­ment devel­oped joint­ly with BISS with­in the project Refo­rum. The project Mod­ern­iza­tion of Media Law of Belarus in the sphere of nation­al pro­tec­tion of infor­ma­tion space defines major prob­lems of the Belaru­sian media field and offers a three-stage reform.

The steps include encour­ag­ing Belaru­sian lan­guage in the media, switch­ing on a larg­er num­ber of Euro­pean TV chan­nels; respond­ing to infor­ma­tion­al chal­lenges, such as pro­pa­gan­da; mak­ing media leg­is­la­tion more dis­tinct and mech­a­nisms of media reg­u­la­tion more pre­cise and trans­par­ent, turn­ing state TV into pub­lic TV, etc.

Aidar Bota­garov (Office of the OSCE Rep­re­sen­ta­tive on Free­dom of the Media)

“The OSCE direct­ly com­mu­ni­cates with the Belaru­sian For­eign Affairs Min­istry.

For the last two years, we active­ly touched the issues of accred­i­ta­tion of for­eign jour­nal­ists and the sta­tus of free­lancers. OSCE Rep­re­sen­ta­tive has reit­er­at­ed that accred­i­ta­tion should not be regard­ed as work per­mit. Last year the OSCE pre­sent­ed a report includ­ing this rec­om­men­da­tion. The OSCE is ready to pro­vide its expert poten­tial.”

“We are an inter­gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion and work on the basis of the man­date. The first lev­el of coop­er­a­tion stems from the inten­tion of the state, a lot depends on the polit­i­cal will.”

Aidar Bota­garov set a pos­i­tive exam­ple a round-table dis­cus­sion of 2014 on rela­tions between law enforce­ment agen­cies and jour­nal­ists. “Since then, the num­ber of short-term deten­tions decreased, and there have not been admin­is­tra­tive penal­ties for lack of accred­i­ta­tion since April, 2016.”

Ale­na Anisim, one of the two oppo­si­tion MP in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives:

“It is quite hard to intro­duce some­what changes in law because there are hard­ly five peo­ple in the Belaru­sian Par­lia­ment sup­port­ing lib­er­al­iza­tion. I think it is impor­tant to con­tin­ue a dia­logue with my col­leagues in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives. The stand­point of the civ­il soci­ety and their state­ments are of help. I hope that out­er and inside cir­cum­stances will meet one day.”

When answer­ing ques­tions, Ale­na Anisim dis­cour­aged jour­nal­ists that the Par­lia­ment saw no point in orga­niz­ing live stream­ing from ses­sions because, in somebody’s view there in Par­lia­ment, state media cov­er Parliament’s work well enough. She promised to raise the issue of mak­ing draft laws avail­able for the pub­lic, as well as the infor­ma­tion on how MPs vote.

Han­na Kana­p­atskaya, the oth­er of the two oppo­si­tion MP in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, sup­port­ed her col­league and added that such restric­tions on the media are unnec­es­sary: “All media should be inde­pen­dent and cov­er the sit­u­a­tion tru­ly; this is what soci­ety demands today.”

Media in Belarus Con­fer­ence, Day Two