“To get official information, you have to present yourself as someone other than a journalist.” New realities and challenges for independent media

A new real­i­ty con­front­ed the Belaru­sian media in exile. Have jour­nal­is­tic stan­dards changed? These and many oth­er ques­tions were dis­cussed at the con­fer­ence “Belaru­sian Mass Media. Con­tent Qual­i­ty and Issues of Self-Reg­u­la­tion”, orga­nized by the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists.

The Belaru­sian Mass Media. Con­tent Qual­i­ty and Issues of Self-Reg­u­la­tion Con­fer­ence. Sep­tem­ber 10, 2024. Pho­to cred­it: BAJ

Inde­pen­dent media lost adver­tis­ing mar­kets in Belarus after their forced mass emi­gra­tion. Donor fund­ing is how most news­rooms oper­ate. The free press has lim­it­ed human and tech­no­log­i­cal resources, as well as lacks up-to-date pho­tos sourced from Belarus. All the prob­lems are com­pound­ed by the activ­i­ties of fak­ers and provo­ca­teurs, who add to the dif­fi­cul­ties faced by inde­pen­dent media out­lets.

What is more, Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists are afraid to use their real names. Even experts are stay­ing anony­mous because they are wor­ried about poten­tial repres­sion against their rel­a­tives back home in Belarus.

Despite dif­fi­cult work­ing con­di­tions, how do inde­pen­dent media main­tain the qual­i­ty of their media prod­ucts? This was dis­cussed at a themed con­fer­ence held on Sep­tem­ber 10 in Vil­nius.

“Independent media has not slipped into barricaded journalism”

Nadzeya Belakhvost­sik, edi­tor-in-chief of the Medi­aIQ project, spoke about the dai­ly chal­lenges faced by the exiled inde­pen­dent press. The web por­tal doc­u­ments and tracks the main trends of the Belaru­sian media. What did the experts con­clude?

The edi­tor point­ed out that the resource doc­u­ment­ed the shift of the inde­pen­dent media to anonymi­ty as ear­ly as 2021. The anonymi­ty of authors and experts is sup­posed to reduce the cred­i­bil­i­ty of inde­pen­dent media. How­ev­er, this is not hap­pen­ing.

“We’ve built up a lot of trust over the past 30 years of work­ing in Belarus, so the qual­i­ty of free media con­tent has not suf­fered as a result of anonymi­ty,” says Nadzeya Belakhvost­sik.

Anoth­er extreme­ly seri­ous prob­lem is obtain­ing infor­ma­tion from sources in Belarus.

The Belaru­sian Mass Media. Con­tent Qual­i­ty and Issues of Self-Reg­u­la­tion Con­fer­ence. Sep­tem­ber 10, 2024. Pho­to cred­it: BAJ

“It’s pret­ty com­mon to see this hap­pen: To get offi­cial infor­ma­tion, you have to present your­self as some­one oth­er than a jour­nal­ist. You can pass as a cit­i­zen, a for­eign vis­i­tor, or do what­ev­er makes an offi­cial pro­vide infor­ma­tion. Sure, this is a bit of an unortho­dox approach to jour­nal­ism, but it’s the only way to get any com­men­tary at all.”

A big chal­lenge is to ver­i­fy the sources of infor­ma­tion. All jour­nal­ists should be doing fact-check­ing on a dai­ly basis.

Nadzeya Belakhvost­sik also brought up anoth­er top­ic, com­pli­ance with com­plete­ness stan­dards. It is pret­ty com­mon for authors to not include con­text for cer­tain events.

“We have mul­ti­ple mon­i­tor­ing spe­cial­ists on our team. They have report­ed at times that the news feeds of state and inde­pen­dent media are basi­cal­ly the same. For exam­ple, when it comes to tri­al reports. The back­ground of the case is not pro­vid­ed, and the pub­li­ca­tion may not indi­cate that the per­se­cu­tion is polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed. We expect our read­ers to know every­thing. But this is not the case, espe­cial­ly when we are address­ing a neu­tral audi­ence,” says Nadzeya Belakhvost­sik. “Or when it comes to so-called ‘extrem­ism.’ What the media often fails to empha­size is that there is in fact no extrem­ism at all in the ‘extrem­ism’ that is attrib­uted to the inde­pen­dent media. The regime is try­ing to impose its vocab­u­lary on the inde­pen­dent media, while the num­ber of ‘extrem­ists’ runs into the thou­sands. And thus the con­cept of ‘extrem­ism’ is legit­imized by the inde­pen­dent media.”

Inde­pen­dent media should always remind audi­ences of the con­text in which events unfold, accord­ing to MediaQ’s edi­tor-in-chief:

“A whole new gen­er­a­tion has grown up. For them, 2020 is becom­ing a myth from the past. With the com­plete cleans­ing of the infor­ma­tion space, it is becom­ing increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to find infor­ma­tion about 2020, and the media isn’t pro­vid­ing much clar­i­ty on what ‘extrem­ism’ actu­al­ly entails. This is leav­ing many young peo­ple in the dark about the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. What will it look like in a year, five years, 10 years?” the edi­tor asks rhetor­i­cal­ly.

How­ev­er, Nadzeya Belakhvost­sik says that “most media out­lets stuck to the stan­dards they had before 2020 and didn’t turn into bar­ri­cade jour­nal­ism, which was a con­cern. The prob­lems that are in place are what I would call chal­lenges. They lead to an objec­tive vio­la­tion of some stan­dards. We fix them, but we under­stand what caus­es them.”

On CyberPartisans aid and editorial dictatorship

Ali­ak­san­dr Yara­she­vich, co-founder of the media out­let Buro, reflect­ed on how the media man­ages to main­tain the qual­i­ty of con­tent.

Ali­ak­san­dr Yara­she­vich at the Belaru­sian Mass Media. Con­tent Qual­i­ty and Issues of Self-Reg­u­la­tion Con­fer­ence. Sep­tem­ber 10, 2024. Pho­to cred­it: BAJ

Buro is not a dai­ly pub­li­ca­tion, which allows them more flex­i­bil­i­ty in how they han­dle inves­ti­ga­tions. They typ­i­cal­ly pub­lish one such piece of con­tent per month, which allows suf­fi­cient time for ver­i­fi­ca­tion of the infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed. Con­cur­rent­ly, the edi­to­r­i­al pol­i­cy of the staff draws upon the expe­ri­ence of Belaru­sian mass media and that of inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions.

“This stan­dard is not much dif­fer­ent from that used by oth­er Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists. We give those we ask to com­ment the right to respond. Because the sto­ry can change face com­plete­ly,” explains Yara­she­vich.

The state with­holds infor­ma­tion from jour­nal­ists. But there are the Cyber­Par­ti­sans, a group of hack­ers who have hacked into var­i­ous state gov­ern­ment data­bas­es. Who can be “inves­ti­gat­ed” and who can­not is a moral and legal ques­tion.

Ali­ak­san­dr Yara­she­vich notes that Cyber­Par­ti­sans can be used to solve cas­es of great pub­lic impor­tance: bribery of offi­cials, eva­sion of sanc­tions, and sim­i­lar instances. The jour­nal­ist also said that even when they get some info from Cyber­Par­ti­sans, they will not be pub­lish­ing it until they can con­firm it’s true.

Iry­na Novik, who han­dles spe­cial projects at Hrodna.life, says that small­er media out­lets “can’t win the sprint race.”

Iry­na Novik at the Belaru­sian Mass Media. Con­tent Qual­i­ty and Issues of Self-Reg­u­la­tion Con­fer­ence. Sep­tem­ber 10, 2024. Pho­to cred­it: BAJ

“Algo­rith­miza­tion, peer review, and sup­port are three more stan­dards to add to the list,” says Novik.

She believes that the biggest issue at the moment is the peo­ple.

“We are anony­mous, our sub­jects are anony­mous, the coun­try is anony­mous. So when a jour­nal­ist gets a name that can be ver­i­fied by reli­able sources, it is tempt­ing to pub­lish it. But some­times you release a name, it goes by once or twice, and then we stop using it. That is to say, we adhere to the stan­dards to a cer­tain extent, but the extra­or­di­nary work­ing con­di­tions force us to look for indi­vid­ual, per­son­al solu­tions to nav­i­gate between Scyl­la and Charyb­dis in every sit­u­a­tion,” says the edi­tor.

Andrei Shauluha talked about the stan­dards RFE/RL Belarus adheres to.

Andrei Shauluha at the Belaru­sian Mass Media. Con­tent Qual­i­ty and Issues of Self-Reg­u­la­tion Con­fer­ence. Sep­tem­ber 10, 2024. Pho­to cred­it: BAJ

“The rules are pret­ty straight­for­ward. Some­times it’s bet­ter to be late with a news sto­ry, but you’ve always got to stick to the two-source rule (ver­i­fy­ing infor­ma­tion from at least two inde­pen­dent sources).”

As work­ing con­di­tions get worse, it is eas­i­er to cut cor­ners and low­er stan­dards.

“We can’t afford such indul­gences. We can always just call our sub­ject. Even if they don’t answer, we can still refer to the lack of response.”

The cur­rent and future chal­lenges of Belaru­sian jour­nal­ism

Maryia Sadouskaya-Kom­lach, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Free Press for East­ern Europe, spoke about cur­rent and imme­di­ate chal­lenges:

“When I talk to lead­ing Pol­ish media, they say clicks and views are the most impor­tant thing they have to show to their man­agers, adver­tis­ers, and investors as com­mer­cial enti­ties. The edi­tor-in-chief of a Pol­ish news por­tal said that he’d now be ‘trim­ming the fat’ from his por­tal. He final­ly got the green light from the strat­e­gy team to put the audi­ence first.

It’s not about your writ­ing stan­dards, it’s about putting your reader’s inter­ests first. And if you get your read­ers used to bet­ter con­tent, that can help in the future.”

Maryia Sadouskaya-Kom­lach at the Belaru­sian Mass Media. Con­tent Qual­i­ty and Issues of Self-Reg­u­la­tion Con­fer­ence. Sep­tem­ber 10, 2024. Pho­to cred­it: BAJ

Maryia Sadouskaya-Kom­lach char­ac­ter­izes the qual­i­ty of the Belaru­sian media as “being in the bor­der­land.” This term describes the media’s sta­tus as part of the glob­al media land­scape, sit­u­at­ed with­in the legal and reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works of the Euro­pean Union.

“Inter­views with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of exiled media out­lets revealed that 90% of finan­cial sup­port for their oper­a­tions is derived from donors. On the one hand, it is not com­merce-relat­ed mon­ey. It appears that there is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to pur­sue jour­nal­ism for its own sake, with­out regard for com­mer­cial con­sid­er­a­tions. It is, how­ev­er, a fact of life that tax­pay­er mon­ey is man­aged by investors who are rep­re­sent­ed by states, offi­cials, or donors. In turn, tax­pay­ers inquire of their gov­ern­ments how their mon­ey is being spent. Regret­tably, there is no con­sen­sus on which indi­ca­tors to adopt as qual­i­ty cri­te­ria. Very often the pri­ma­ry mea­sure is quan­ti­ty.”

But as soon as Belaru­sian mass media are labeled “extrem­ist,” all these indi­ca­tors make no sense. The media can still do qual­i­ty jour­nal­ism, but you have to show that you are wor­thy to your read­ers, col­leagues, and the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

“Unless we, as a sec­tor, start think­ing about how we can col­lec­tive­ly move beyond our cur­rent con­straints (which are neg­a­tive­ly impact­ing the qual­i­ty of our jour­nal­ism), we will not take a step for­ward in our devel­op­ment. The edi­tor of the afore­men­tioned Pol­ish por­tal men­tioned that one of their jour­nal­ists received an envi­ron­men­tal schol­ar­ship in Oxford, where he spent six months. I asked him: ‘How so, are you going to pay more atten­tion to the envi­ron­men­tal issues now?’ And he replied: ‘You don’t under­stand, we have become hostages of our field.’”