Post-conflict media training expensive and ‘naïve’

Michael Hedges October 18, 2007

Immediately after the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords ending military and para-military action in Bosnia and Herzegovina Europe and the US rushed in the media specialists. ‘Hate radio’ may not have been invented in Bosnia but through years of conflict it flourished and, against all best efforts, pieces remain today. The international community’s intention was to use media for the good of that devastated civil society. With that end in mind, but hardly in sight, money poured in for equipment, from transmitters to printing presses, and for training.

Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) became administered territories after the Dayton Accords restored peace. The international community placed no faith in the remnants of leadership. The Office of the High Representative (OHR) was created in 1995 to oversee civilian authorities. The Stability Pact, OSCE, Council of Europe and the European Commission devised plans and sent experts. The context and operation of the divided country’s media became a priority since divisions within BiH used media effectively, it could be said, to promote further division and anger. That ethnic factions used media to drive conflict over the edge prompted all organizations involved to focus on changing media and using it to change Bosnian civil society.

Media structures and operations in BiH concerned the OHR and international organizations mandated to construct order. All discordant parties had used media to inflame tensions and showed little intent of changing their ways. A new media and telecom regulator Communication Regulatory Agency (CRA), created by laws imposed by OHR, took broad steps to establish a European-standard dual public/private broadcasting system.

Media development spending estimates for the western Balkans by international NGOs, foreign governments, the Stability Pact and European institutions since the mid 1990’s vary only in detail. It has been considerable, approaching €270 million. Most of that, €87 million, went to Bosnia and Herzegovina. And most of that went toward a wide range of media training programs.

It was as if the international community determined to use the Balkans as a laboratory for post-conflict rebuilding. Much of the European thinking appears to have been derived from post-World War II European media reconstruction; strong State institutions, ‘top down’ information flow, anxiety toward private, unfiltered communication distribution. American government and NGOs tended to follow the post- World War II Japan model of diminishing (or eliminating) State media in favor of ‘independent’ media.

ftm background

Croatia’s media: arrested development A decade ago European institutions saw Croatia’s media sector as hopeless, with little or no possibility developing to recognized standards. The new century brought considerable donor involvement in media but only modest attention from major broadcasters and publishers. The European Union declared Croatia last November a functioning market economy, another step toward EU accession and signal that the ‘post-donor’ era had begun. Public Broadcasters and Balkan Ghosts If counting stations best measured a regions broadcasting health, radio in the western Balkans would be called strong and thriving. It is not. Teaching Radio Best Practices Radio trainers roam the developing world, facing major challenges in difficult environments and, not infrequently, dangerous situations.

Money was spent on media training to change both the tone and context of media to a positive contributor to civil society. From the beginning policy differences between American and European donors set two opposing points of view against each other. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), America’s primary media training funding vehicle, encouraged development of ‘independent media,’ explicitly independent of the State. Europeans, as always, preferred the top-down model of State broadcasting. Internews and IREX/ProMedia, the two primary USAID media development contractors, differed in approach.

“Among many donors to the sector, only USAID has focused primarily on private sector development,” said the agency’s December 2006 report Giving Citizens a Voice. One USAID training program focused on organizing and using audience ratings for radio stations. Other training programs focused on business and financial basics, marketing and human resources management.

A patchwork of nominally ‘public’ broadcasters in BiH was established, reflecting ethnic and political divisions. A license fee system was imposed, tacked onto electricity bills, to help fund separate Bosniak, Serb and Croat public television and radio channels. Most financial support came from direct foreign aid. The intended – and mandated – creation of one multi-ethnic public broadcasting system for BiH has yet to materialize.

European institutions set up training programs for the new public broadcasters. The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) was involved in early stages. The European Commission provided training for regulators and politicians to build competence in the new and unfamiliar business of pluralistic media.

Journalists and editors at the nascient public broadcasting houses have been provided courses and seminars intending to raise standards, explicitely, and prevent a return to old practices. The Danish and Swiss governments were active in promoting ‘public service values’ through media training programs.

Donor supported media training in the Balkans began with focus on journalists. In later stages training efforts moved to media management and targeted, specific goals; such as election coverage.

By 2002, observing that upgrading technical skills had a better measurable result than changing the hearts and minds of those working in media, funders turned to training projects of high specialization. IREX/ProMedia, for example, launched a training program for computer assisted reporting, hoping to bridge the ‘digital divide’ and encourage investigative reporting.

Hearts and minds were not changing. In 2003 Muslim nationalists harassed and threatened staff at FTV after a report was broadcast about an Iranian-led para-military training camp operating in Bosnia. Police security was required to protect the journalists involved. 

Many critics fault donors and facilitators for assuming great public acceptance of new media systems in Bosnia. As early as 1995 Council of Europe media advisor Karol Jakubowicz predicted a “less than optimistic outlook for the future,” blaming naïve assumptions about free media within ethnically and culturally complex BiH.

Assumptions about independent, self-supporting media rising naturally before any semblance of a market economy took root were hopelessly naïve and, ultimately, compounded the problems. Independent media needs advertising or sponsorship of the combination of both. Owners and editors became dependent on governments, foreign NGOs, political bosses and ‘narrow economic interests.’ Journalists fresh from training seminars on investigative techniques found editors and owners would not tolerate controversial subjects.

The PeaceNow/Security Pact report commended local media NGO’s calling them “expensive and effective.” Sarajevo’s Mediacentar, founded by the Open Society Institute (OSI) and funded by several international donors, is widely considered the major success of media development aid to BiH. Mediacentar undertakes training programs in partnerships with major broadcast institutions, notably the BBC. It now offers a TV production house and public relations agency. Sustainability, a principle of OSI assistance, is considered the major indicator of media development success.

Self-assessments by foreign donors and NGOs of media training and development initiatives in BiH came under strong criticism in a report evaluating those assessments by Aaron Rhodes for the Stability Pact Media Task Force, Assessment of Ten Years of Media Assistance in South East Europe (2007). “Almost all of the formal reports and assessments claim success, improvement and progress,” he wrote.

“Training,” said the report about the western Balkans generally and not specifically mentioning BiH, “is often conflated with professionalism, although evidence from the evaluations does not necessarily show it results in professionalism. The need for training is considered self-evident, without need of justification, analysis, or assessment. It is too often viewed as a panacea. Training brings results only if targeted well, designed well, and provided under specific conditions.”

As international donors shift their regional interest from the western Balkans to the newest post-conflict zones independent media owners in Bosnia also shift their attention to available revenue streams, potentially coming with ‘strings attached’.  A study by academics Maureen Taylor and Michael Kent, Media Transitions in Bosnia, warned that Bosnians (Bosniaks, Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats) continue to distrust media and the support received, including support from the international community. Yet, said the authors,  “…it may be naive to believe that every media outlet that receives financial assistance from the international community is free from influence, (and) it is equally naive to believe that all independent media are merely mouthpieces of Western governments.”

Bosnians continue to be “…suspicious of journalists where were once communists, then nationalists and now democrats,” wrote Taylor and Kent.

University of Massachusetts Center of Media and Society Director Ellen Hume’s detailed study published in 2004 Media Missionaries describes many of the US funded media development projects in Russia, Eastern Europe and the Balkans in the 1990’s, complete with a listing of the many and varied competitors for media development funding. She concludes that independent media in the Balkans still lacks an ‘enabling environment.’ “Too much money poured in too fast, with too little planning or coordination,” she observed.

With international organizations moving into a lower gear in the western Balkans – the Stability Pact’s Media Task Force ended its work last year and OSCE’s media office is set to retire this year – evaluations of media training and development programs are now offered as lessons for the next, hopefully, post-conflict zone: the Middle East.

“We don’t want another Bosnia,” said one media trainer, quoted by USC Center on Public Diplomacy Senior Fellow Gordon Robison in a 2005 article on media training plans for Iraq and Afghanistan. Major indices of press and media freedom and development – all very subjective - show improvement in Serbia and Croatia, not so much in BiH. Now that the rush of spending has slowed it’s hoped that the influence of neighboring countries will have the most profound effect.

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