Kiev Media Conference: Globalized Media Leads to “Adult Contemporary Music”

Michael Hedges March 17, 2005

Council of Europe Ministers and NGOs met in the Ukraine capital exploring all the ills of big media and bad governments.

The 7th Council of Europe (CoE) Ministerial Conference on Mass Media Policies, held in Kiev last week (March 10-11), produced one startling conclusion: the debate on media and globalization hasn’t changed in 20 years. Placing the conference on Europe’s periphery, closer to Minsk and Bucharest than Brussels or Paris, pointed the message to States aspiring to greater integration with Europe.

The resolutions adopted by the conference, mostly negotiated beforehand, stepped lightly through the mire of globalized media – condemning it, as usual. Media controlled by politicians, often referred to as State broadcasting, was also condemned, with Western Europe’s public service broadcasting model touted as essential for democracies. Threatening and killing journalists was also condemned, new Ukrainian president – who attended – providing a stark reminder of the recent past.

“Over the last 20 years there have been lots of declarations from ministerial conferences and from the Committee of Ministers, but there has been a lack of concrete achievements,” said Gabrial Nissim, president of the Human Rights Grouping of INGOs. in a statement released by the CoE prior to the conference. “We really need to make some progress.”

“The Council of Europe should monitor media independence with regard to politicians much more closely, “ said Nissim, who chaired the NGO conference preceding the Ministerial conference. “The council should say something about the situation in Italy and also in those member states where the public media is actually the state media.”

Acting more as a debate forum to influence decision makers and unable to force its 46 members States to act or abide, the Council of Europe faces the same problem as other multi-party international institutions. Declarations, resolutions and conclusions are debated into forms acceptable to all and, good or bad, its’ only teeth is in its power of persuasion.

And that’s certainly frustrating.

“It’s time for the council to monitor the implementation of its policies,” said CoE’s Pierre-Henri Imbert in remarks opening the conference, reported by Inter Press Service.

“But we know the value of international documents,” said Dr. Karol Jakubowicz, chairman of CoE’s Steering Committee on the Mass Media, “because they are not formulated by one or another party to political battles inside the country, but by the international community which is not involved in those battles. That gives them more credibility and authority.”

Fairness and the Ukraine

Recent events in Ukraine served as a potent backdrop to conference discussions about media’s political role and journalist’s independence – and safety. Newly elected President Viktor Yushchenko made a surprise appearance at the conference’s opening session and spoke about “cleaning Ukraine from the dirt and shame of the past.” He also invited international media organizations to open offices in Kiev.

“Freed from fear and vestiges of self-censorship,” remarked CoE’s Deputy Secretary General Maud de Boer-Buquicchio as she shared the opening platform with President Yushchenko, “the media in Ukraine were not only witnessing history – they were making history by providing truthful information, regaining public trust.''

“During the recent presidential elections in Ukraine,” said Dr. Jakubowicz, “monitoring by international organizations would not have found highly disproportionate amounts of airtime being given to one candidate, and highly biased coverage of the other candidate, if this had been complied with.”

Journalist Giorgy Gongadze

Sensitive to the brutal murder of Ukrainian journalist Georgy Gongadze and the apparent suicide of key witness Yuriy Kravchenko only a few days before the conference, journalists remain anxious “that the mission of journalism is being derailed by turbulence in the relations between governments and media and the changes taking place within the media sector,” said Aiden White of the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ). Gongadze was found dead and decapitated four years ago with little serious investigation.

“The Gongadze case is finished,” said President Yushchenko, who had promised an investigation into Gongadze’s death upon election. That investigation was to interview former government internal minister Kravchenko on March 4th, but that morning he was found dead in his cottage of firearm trauma to the head. The EFJ promised a forthcoming independent report on the Gongadze case as well as one on the role of journalists in the “Orange Revolution” that brought Vitkor Yushchenko to power.

Diversity is as diversity does.

The subtitle of the CoE conference was “Integration and Diversity.” The integration theme refers to integrating States of the former Soviet Union’s orbit into Western European ideas of media – particularly public media.

Diversity is slightly more tricky, There is diversity of ownership, not letting concentrated media become politically powerful or serve bad political interests. One resolution called for more monitoring of media ownership.

“The public should have information on who owns the media,” said Dr. Jakubowicz, “to enable them to form an opinion on the value to be given to information, ideas and opinions disseminated by the particular newspaper or station.”

And there is diversity of content, giving voice to the whole of civil society. In the theoretical politic, these are separate issues. In practice, they are not, as the Swedish delegation pointed out in the relationship between private, commercial media and program content suggesting that diversity is at risk with private media ownership and the unintended consequence of “allowing” local commercial radio has been fewer voices, fewer owners and short play-lists.

“Within a few years, the market had formed a radio landscape with a small number of extremely strong actors and owners,” reads the Swedish statement. “Radio stations with ambitions other than playing so called ‘adult contemporary music’ soon disappeared from the market. In recent years there has been even greater uniformity, when what is mostly played, increasingly frequently, are a limited number of songs from current hit lists. It is not surprising that other types of music and music produced locally and regionally are finding it increasingly difficult to establish themselves in spheres other than their own limited circles.”

Several delegates raised the idea of media literacy – teaching people how to use media –as a possible educational commitment for the CoE.

“We need to raise citizens’ awareness as users, rather than consumers, of media,” said Gabriel Nissim. “We don’t want the media to be seen as a commodity. Citizens are often treated as targets by the media.”

The Swiss delegation took up the weighty question of “reality TV.” Are those programs, they asked, a human rights infringement? The Swiss broadcast standards agency has received no complaints about “reality TV” programs because, the Swiss delegates offered, the private channels “who seem to be particularly fond of this type of program” have gone off the air.