andersen-Ottaway lecture

2004 Andersen Lecture
Henrikas Yushkiavitshus
Former Deputy Chairman of the Soviet Radio and Television Commission,
Current UNESCO Communications Advisor

Why Press Freedom is Disappearing in the Post-Communist World

The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union marked turning points in the history of humankind.

We, citizens of so-called communist countries, hoped that after these dramatic changes democracy would prevail, market economy would ensure high living standards and an era of real press freedom would start.

The post-Cold War reality very soon cooled off our euphoria and taught us some important lessons. One of them is that many politicians are for press freedom when they are fighting for power. They are much less enthusiastic about it when they are in power.

Another lesson is that market economy must not be given priority over basic freedoms, human rights and democratic values. Otherwise, free market may well turn into black market controlled by the mafia.

The mafia is one of the strongest factors that limit press freedom in many post-communist countries.

Almost every week we learn about new cases when journalists are beaten or murdered because they refuse to be influenced, bought or intimidated. Physical violence against journalists is the ultimate form of censorship.

Central governments in Georgia, Armenia and Moldova are too weak to protect journalists from violence and too intolerant of criticism.

In Azerbaijan, Belarus and Central Asia, most journalists are too frightened to criticize governments, but they are also targeted by the mafia.

Less than two months ago, on the 20th of October, the body of Veronika Cherkasova, a reporter for the newspaper Solidarnost, was found with multiple stab wounds at her apartment in Minsk, Belarus. Cherkasova was a general reporter, covering a wide range of subjects, but she also undertook investigative work on sects and organized crime.

In Ukraine, the murder in 2001 of the investigative journalist Georgiy Gongadze is still not elucidated. Recently, the authorities stated rather cynically that killers could not be found, because they themselves had been killed.

The murder in Moscow of the American investigative journalist and editor Paul Khlebnikov of the Russian edition of Forbes Magazine caught international attention. But, just like in so many similar cases over the last 10-15 years, the killers of the journalist have not been found.

The impunity of journalist killers is a terrible reality of today.

One day, the world mafia will erect a monument to the “Unknown Killer of Journalists” and some politicians will lay flowers to it.

So, market economy - yes, market society - no.

In Russia, privatization was done in a rather tough way. Priority was given to the market. There even was an excuse, that there are many recommendations on how to change from capitalism to socialism, but none how to move from socialism to capitalism.

The advisers from the West also gave priority to the market as the incarnation of democracy. All other values of democratic society including press freedom were neglected.

The media were forgotten in the different programs of assistance and got caught on the horns of a dilemma: how, after the cynicism of the communist era, based not on business but on totalitarianism, and after the euphoria of Glasnost, with its mission of freedom and democracy, not to slide into cynicism about the market economy. Instead of being a means of democratization it was more and more perceived as an end in itself.

It was intellectuals, those who had fought for democratization and free market- that became first victims of the market economy. As a result, the older generation of intellectuals is getting ever more skeptical and the younger one - cynical.

The lack of intellectual component in the market economy mechanism has resulted in many societal distortions and bitter deceptions among the populations.

Media, on their part, lacked experience in how to secure their financial independence and, thereby, editorial freedom.

Consequently, free market has led not so much to pluralism of the press but to increasing media concentration.

Without strong, pluralistic and independent media, the gangrene of corruption tends to infect the body of the state.

The annual total amount of money spent for corruption in Russia is estimated at some 40 billion dollars.

Life proves that government structures cannot function effectively without freedom of information. Left alone, these structures tend to believe in their infallibility, close in themselves and degenerate, like some royal dynasties of the past.

We can talk as much as we like about the independence of courts of law, but such independence can only exist if there are independent mass media. A court left one-on-one with the executive power will also sooner or later become de facto a tool in the hands of the latter. The independence of such a court is but an illusion.

Less press freedom means more corruption.

It is not that leading Russian politicians do not understand the danger of corruption.

Two years ago, President Putin spoke about the problem of corruption in the country. In his address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation on 18 April 2002, he said: “Corruption does not result from the absence of repressions...but is a direct consequence of the limited economic freedoms. No administrative barrier can resist bribes. The higher is the barrier, the bigger is the number of bribes and the number of officials that accept them”.

I would add that corruption is also a consequence of limited press freedom.

So why do we witness limitations of press freedom?

The explanation lies in the resistance of the selfish establishment which does not hesitate to use the power of the state for its own purposes. The establishment would like to have free hands and does not want the press to point fingers at the cases of “conflict of interests”, that is to say at corruption.

The establishment is composed not only of government bureaucrats. So-called oligarchs are and have always been part of the establishment. Different oligarchs played different games with the state machine, very often corrupting it.

More often than not those games affected press freedom.

The day in 1996 when a leading manager of the Russian Independent Television (NTV) company joined President Yeltsin’s reelection team and when the President ordered GAZPROM to transfer 800 million dollars to NTV, was the beginning of the end of independent television in Russia.

The intentions were good: not to let the communists return to power. But exactly the same principle had been used by the communist regime: the end justifies the means. Those elections left the Russian TV forever economically dependent on the state.

So, were those leading journalists so naïve that they played with fire when they accepted investors with political goals and thus made themselves  vulnerable to Government pressure?

This is not an easy question to answer.

What happened to NTV was “wholesale corruption” of journalism, starting at the top of the profession. So it is not surprising that there is also “retail corruption”, with journalists being commissioned by this or that company to write articles on demand.

Newspapers not only know about this practice, they take their share, and public relations firms are happy to provide this kind of service at established rates. This system of paid-for articles masquerading as straight news reports even has a name: Zakazukha. It will be possible to root out this phenomenon only if and when journalists can earn decent wages and when newspapers can be profitable from such normal income sources as advertising and circulation sales.

Even such an expert as Geoffrey Saks, former adviser to the Russian Government, once said  about the situation in Russia: “We felt like we were invited to treat a sick person, but when we put him on the operation table and opened him up, we suddenly found that he had an absolutely different anatomy and organs which we had not studied in our medical institute”.

Many factors affect press freedom in the world. One of them is terrorism.

Terrorism kills not only people, it also kills press freedom.

After the Nord-Ost theater tragedy in Moscow, when some 130 hostages died, President Vladimir Putin vetoed a law restricting reporting on terrorism. If passed, this law would have seriously limited press freedom in Russia. The “power” ministries, such as the ministry of interior or defense, were, of course, interested in such a law, as it would have made it impossible for the public to know about their numerous mistakes made during counter-terrorist operations.

After the Beslan school tragedy, there are again attempts in the Russian Parliament (Duma) to limit press coverage of terrorist attacks.

It is clear that terrorists try to use the press for their own purposes, but some of the proposals discussed in the Duma go too far. It is proposed, for example, that information about such events should be released only after the incident is over.

We still have to wait and see what will be the decision of the Duma and that of the President.

By the way, some Russian journalists proposed to call this draft law the “Russia PATRIOT Act”.

Vladimir Putin is the youngest president in the Russian history and I am sure he is eager to learn from more experienced politicians elsewhere in the world.

Russia has very little historical memory of democracy. It first had tsars, then Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev. None of them was a democrat. Gorbachev also lacked experience in democracy. So it is logical for President Putin to seek friendly advice from his new friends in the old democracies.

The Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi has the most extensive experience of managing media among the European state leaders.

One has the impression that the echo of this experience can be heard in Russia. The relationship between the Russian TV stations and the Russian government resembles more and more that between the Berlusconi government and television and radio in Italy.

Both in Russia and Italy, we are witnessing a marriage of the executive power with the mass media.

It is no secret that there is less and less criticism of the government policies on TV in Russia.

Programs of “Radio Liberty” and the “Voice of America” are regaining popularity in Russia.

More than a quarter of a century ago, the well known American journalist Walter Cronkite said. “Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy”.

For many years, his country the USA has been the best example of real press freedom and democracy. The US-based World Press Freedom Committee has done a great job. The “Voice of America”, “Radio Free Europe” and “Radio Liberty” had for many years supported the spirit of freedom behind the Iron Curtain and are still playing a very important role.

Recently, however, there have been many disturbing facts. Some of them were discussed in May this year in Warsaw, Poland, during the General Assembly of the International Press Institute, a global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists.

The IPI leaders wrote a letter to the then US Secretary of State Colin Powell concerning the exclusion of journalists from the US Visa Waiver Program for Visitors from Friendly Countries.

The letter recalled that over the previous 12 months a number of foreign journalists had been seized at US borders and deported forcibly to their home countries. Many were mistreated and prevented from making telephone calls that could have clarified their status. This is a violation of the rules concerning persons arrested in a foreign country.

Today we are happy to see friendly family photos of our leaders. It is a rare chance for us all to benefit from good personal relations between them. It is good to know that they have a common understanding of the dangers of terrorism in the world. But is there a common understanding of press freedom?

Without a free press it is not possible to fight corruption and today, corruption feeds terrorism.

Do Western democracies still care about press freedom in the world?

In the annual Report on Press Freedom, prepared by the non-governmental organization “Reporters without Borders”, Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia lag behind.

Close to the bottom of the list is Belarus - 144th. President Lukashenka’s regime tolerates no criticism and systematically uses all possible means to reduce the few dissident voices to silence.

Uzbekistan occupies the 142nd place in the list, not far from Belarus, because of the government’s brutal repression of independent media that are almost non-existent. Five journalists were in prison at the beginning of this year.

Yet, if Belarus is condemned in every possible way, Uzbekistan is a partner and a friend of the West.

This shows that human rights and press freedom are not really held in much value in international relations. Much more important is the number of Boeings, Airbuses or MiGs sold or military bases established.

Indeed, times have changed very quickly. Just a few years ago, the old democracies had clear priorities: human rights, freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Those were the main slogans of the leading world politicians.

President Jimmy Carter in the Vienna meeting shared that famous kiss with Leonid Brezhnev. But already in their first meeting, Carter brought up the problem of human rights in the USSR.

Today, press freedom in the world depends not only on so-called “old democracies”.

Some former communist countries value press freedom very highly. They understand what it means not to have it.

By the way, President Vaclav Havel was probably right when he said that it was time to stop calling those countries “former communist countries”. Communism was a short period in their long histories, otherwise, he said, we should call the USA a “former British colony”.

The same can be said of the former Soviet republics. Each of them has a different history and traditions. And all that influences significantly their respective situations with regard to press freedom.

In those countries that have historical memory of market economy and democracy, like the Baltic States - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - both economic development and press freedom situations are similar today to those in the old democracies.

According to the press freedom ranking for 2004 by Reporters without Borders, there is more press freedom in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania than in Austria, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and, I am sorry, in the United States. Latvia occupies the 10th place, Estonia - the 11th, Lithuania - the 16th and the USA...the 22nd.

There are still islands of paradise for press freedom. They can be found in Northern Europe: in Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Iceland, the Netherlands and Norway. By the way, these countries are rated as having the lowest levels of corruption in the world.

Since the European Union’s decision to accept new members from the so-called post-communist countries, a debate has been going on for 15 years about the old and new democracies. In this debate, for the traditional West “new” are those who do not have historical experience of democracy, do not understand market economy and, therefore, are to be taught and, if necessary, reprimanded.

One has a tendency to forget that Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, even Lithuania historically have more ancient experience in democracy than France or Germany, not to mention Spain, Portugal or Greece.

Of course, I should say that the new democracies sometimes are not fair to the West. There are politicians in those countries who claim that their nations do not owe anything to the West, because its assistance to their fight for freedom was only the correction of the Western betrayals of the democrats to the Soviets at Yalta in 1945, Budapest in 1956 and Prague in 1968.

Still the majority of the people, especially young ones are enthusiastic about the political changes. There are many young journalists, who are eager to learn from the best examples of the professional and free press in the West. They know foreign languages, they read your newspapers and they trust you, as we - the older generation - trusted you from behind the Iron Curtain. Maybe sometimes we were over-idealized you.

These young people will not allow the rebuilding of jamming stations in their countries and they will fight against any restrictions on Internet for whatever reasons.

Let us hope that one day all political leaders will understand that although both freedom of speech and press freedom do often provoke public and political controversy, as experience shows us again and again, when freedom is sick the only cure is more freedom.