We discussed with Katerina Blazevska about the situation with respect to the professional and ethical standards in the journalistic profession in Macedonia, from the perspective of the situation during the transition and in the last 15 years.
CMEM: How would you briefly describe the situation in regard to the observance of professional and ethical standards in the journalism today?
Taking into consideration the small number of exceptions, professional and ethical standards in journalism media in Macedonia are almost entirely driven out of the profession. In a word, there are to be brutally trampled on a daily basis.
CMEM: Given that for many years you are in the journalistic profession, both as a journalist and an editor, which trends and stages would you identify in the respect of professional standards in journalism, since the independence of Macedonia, up to now?
In the period immediately before and after independence, the importance and the role of professional standards marked intensive upward in the quality of their observance. Party pluralism, which was in its infancy stage, was also reflected in the media. This largely resulted in a pluralism of opinions, debates, objective and professional journalistic products, which, with no restrictions or censorship, contained different views.
It was the period in which the media have begun to build their essential, and not only phraseological meaning of a “seventh force” or “fourth power”. They were also a professional and a democratic window in 1994, when the Assembly remained without parliamentary opposition. After that year, the party political coloring of the media started, primarily of television stations, by using coalition or parliamentary engagement of their owners. This influence continued later as well. Throughout that period until today, due to the big party-political and governmental influence and pressure on the mainstream media, journalism is in a free fall, and professional standards are two meters underground. An exception of this is the period of the Government of Ljubco Georgievski, in which the media were at least not under Government’s pressure.
CMEM: Which aspects of the violation of professional and ethical standards, in your opinion, are most worrying?
The elementary disregard of the Code of Journalists is of biggest concern. But it’s not the only problem. If the previous decade was marked with the beginning of political conquest of the media, in the second decade this trend would not only continue more intensively, but would be upgraded with a thorough regression of journalism, by installing thin media filter which opened the doors for many people with a basic illiteracy. The result today is: controlled and illiterate journalism!
CMEM: To what extent and from which aspect the expansion of new Internet media in the recent years influenced the situation?
In a situation when anybody can become a journalist without meeting certain educational criteria and professional standards, and when social networks have evolved into a major platform for the production and exchange of information, most often being “semi-products”, part of the Internet media have become major distributors and recyclers of exactly these “products”. On the other hand, part of the Internet media which insist on observing the professional standards become invisible in this chaos, following the principle “cannot see the forest for the trees.” Metastasis of unprofessionalism in the Internet space throws a stain to these media as well, in an unjustified way. Overall, part of the Internet media further exacerbate the existing image, and the others who are a minority in their professionalism, although giving great hope, yet fail to deeply influence the change of the overall conditions.
CMEM: How would you assess the role of the media community in the observance of the professional standards, in the past and from today’s perspective?
As diffuse, uncoordinated and divided. The collective defense of professional standards can be effective only if it is based on their individual defense. The community can not succeed if the individuals go beyond those standards.
CMEM: According to you, how should the “rehabilitation” of the profession start and the return of the basic journalistic standards, and where do you see the role of the self-regulatory mechanisms?
The rehabilitation should start from the individual. Every journalist should consider whether and how to comply with professional standards, if he is overwhelmed by censorship or self-censorship, whether journalistic freedom is subjugated by the economic non-freedom, i.e. by the dependence on wages and political preferences of the employer and to whom does the journalist serve in such conditions and circumstances? Then everyone has to make a decision, but to also take responsibility if that decision is not in the interest of the profession.