Council of Europe, Strasbourg, 27 June 2011
Ladies and gentlemen, I warmly welcome you to this workshop on media, ethics and power. We shall have the pleasure of hearing leading journalists on our panel this afternoon.
Let me first remind you what is the place of media in society: There are three basic levels of any consideration of society:
1) the State and related governmental institutions,
2) the Market and related property and commercial phenomena, and
3) the Civil Society made up of people and citizens apart from the two preceding spheres.
The mass media are floating between the three pillars. In the history of European countries the media have found their place first close to both the State and the Capital, emerging from late-feudal patronage and boosted by mercantile capitalism. With the rise of modern democracy and party structure, the press became part and parcel of the Civil Society, while broadcasting remained closely tied to the State. The second half of the 20th century has brought the media – both print and electronic – increasingly towards the commercial markets. Yet the triangle does not suggest that market forces completely absorb globalizing society in a contemporary world. It is increasingly the civil society with its so-called new social movements and social media that dominates the arena as we have seen when information and knowledge empower people and may therefore threaten autocratic rulers, who try to keep the power in their own hands.
Europe is composed of democratic states today, with the sad exception of Belarus. Therefore, European governments should not be afraid of their citizens being informed through independent or even critical media.
In political reality, however, competing political parties in a democracy will always try to have some influence over media. In addition, media have become an important tool in the commercial and financial world: most news on television end with the daily changes of stock markets and currencies just like the daily weather report. Consumer confidence and behaviour is hereby influenced.
As freedom of expression and information is a fundamental human right under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, governments must not exercise political control over the media. Legal restrictions are only admissible, if they are necessary in a democratic society, which means that they are a proportional response to a pressing social need, as the European Court of Human Rights has often said.
Therefore, self-regulation is an important voluntary guidance for professional and credible media. Media ethics would not allow that journalists write false information and propaganda, just because they received some money for this or because they are part of a political movement.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe passed in 1993 the Resolution Nr 1003 on ethics of journalism, which contains a list of 38 principles. Some media’ organisations felt at that time that it was not right for a public authority to define journalistic ethics, and they were probably right. But the Parliamentary Assembly felt in 1993 – at a time of democratic transitions in many countries in central and eastern Europe – that it would be helpful to support democratic journalistic ethics against the practice of self-censorship and party censorship under Communism. In fact, this resolution still remains topical and deserves to be recalled.
In its Resolution Nr 1636 of 2008, the Parliamentary Assembly adopted 27 indicators for media in a democracy. I would like to mention ten principles which seem relevant for our conference:
- journalists should have adequate working contracts with sufficient social protection, so as not to compromise their impartiality and independence;
- media outlets should have editorial independence from media owners, for instance by agreeing with media owners on codes of conduct for editorial independence, to ensure that media owners do not interfere in daily editorial work or compromise impartial journalism;
- regulatory authorities for the broadcasting media must function in an unbiased and effective manner, for instance when granting licences;
- media ownership and economic influence over media must be made transparent;
- public service broadcasters must be protected against political interference in their daily management and their editorial work. Senior management positions should be refused to people with clear party political affiliations;
- public service broadcasters should establish in-house codes of conduct for journalistic work and editorial independence from political sides;
- “private” media should not be run or held by the state or state-controlled companies;
- members of government should not pursue professional media activities while in office;
- there should be a system of media self-regulation including a right of reply and correction or voluntary apologies by journalists. Media should set up their own self-regulatory bodies, such as complaints commissions or ombudspersons, and decisions of such bodies should be implemented. These measures should be recognised legally by the courts;
- journalists should set up their own professional codes of conduct and they should be applied. They should disclose to their viewers or readers any political and financial interests as well as any collaboration with state bodies such as embedded military journalism.
Ethics are the backbone of professional media. Non-ethical media will not be taken serious and will eventually not be read or viewed. This is even more likely in a media environment, which is converging rapidly on the Internet.
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