(ОPublished at proverkanafakti.mk)
Freedom of expression, including the freedom of the media as the fourth power in democratic societies is one of the universal human rights and as such is recognized and protected by the relevant documents of the highest international organizations. Today there is no society that can be considered democratic if it faces with complaints about dependant media or fear of public expression of opinions and views. Hence, the theme of the ways and means to protect these universal freedoms and rights is an extremely important topic for public debate in all modern societies.
Macedonia is no exception in relation to this matter. The relevant organizations and institutions on international and national level for a few years already publish extremely worrying reports on the situation of freedom of expression in the country, and they especially emphasize the bad media situation in relation to their basic function – freely and without pressures to inform the public on all relevant issues in the society. This leads to a continuous debate on these issues.
The views in these debates are polarized. While the state and its highest officials claim that there is no problem or that the problems are minimal, many media, professional organizations, NGOs dealing with the media sphere and freedom of expression, as well as a huge number of journalists, claim otherwise. Of course, by considering the facts, the truth is one – the situation is, to say the least, pessimistic, and the output is in finding tools that will realize universal rights in practice. In fact, mechanisms are needed that will provide practical functioning of the abovementioned rights and freedoms, which are integrated in Article 16 of our Constitution and in the Law on Media.
Starting from the numerous criticisms, the state tried to regulate this area. In recent years there have been several legal regulations that were supposed to fill the hole in which there was no major media law in two decades, which, in turn, somehow functioned contradictory at first sight, more freely and with less pressure. Thus, the state firstly adopted the Law on Protection of the Right of Access to Public Information, and over the last three years three more laws – the Law on Audio-visual media and Media Services, the Law on Media and the Law on Civil Liability for Defamation and Insult. The state, at the same time, established regulatory bodies of matters governed by laws.
Although these laws have, by and large, multiple weaknesses and vulnerabilities, the state, as a relatively new democracy which did not fully understand the essence of freedom of expression and freedom of the media, openly showed tendencies to control through regulation. Thus, a number of tricks (embedded in the regulations) and with the ruthless imposition of a political majority, derogated the better articles of the laws and the practical daily work of the regulatory bodies.
These trends are, certainly, not “endemic”. They were observed in developed democracies, but a long time ago where the problem was resolved and mechanisms of protection were found. One of the key tools, among others, is the self-regulation of the media – a principle derived from the media and their owners. The aim is to protect the basic interests – freedom of expression, and in the same time, public confidence in terms of their media content. Thus, self-regulation, which is rooted in the 19th century and the first Press Council was founded in Norway in 1903, today has been brought almost to perfection in terms of theory and practice, and it results in less regulation, more confidence in public media and a reduced number of trials related to the content in the media. After all, the frequently mentioned motto of the advocates of this system is “the more self-regulation the less (state) regulation”.
WHAT IS SELF-REGULATION?
Plainly said, self-regulation is a system of rules that establish the media to protect their own business and gain more confidence among the public. The essence of the media business lies in information, i.e. in delivering the truth with accurate objective and complete information to the public while respecting ethical rules. Thus, the self-regulation protects the aforementioned universal human rights – freedom of expression and right to information (free and professional media).
Participants in the process of self-regulation are the media and the public. Media, i.e. media owners (with editors and journalists) form a professional body whose primary role is a bridge between the media and the public when it comes to protecting professional and ethical standards, especially in journalism.
The basic tools of the self-regulatory bodies are the ethical codes. Worldwide, as outlined by Professor Sefer Tahiri, member of the first self-regulatory body in Macedonia, which was founded by media and non-governmental professional organizations, there are more than 400 codes. But the main principles of these codes are recognized and they lie in the nine principles of the International Federation of Journalists. Based on these principles, the Code of Journalists of Macedonia was adopted in 2001. It is functional, and besides this document, there is a Manual for ethics in journalism, publication of AJM, whose main goal is to promote ethical rules and self-regulation within the AJM, and there is a part which provides recommendations and guidance on interpreting articles of the Code.
This Code is consisted of principles and 17 articles and basically it covers all major professional and ethical norms that need to be observed by the journalists. But, as international experts also state, when there is more than one professional organization of journalists and media there should be more efforts made for a unified code accepted by all. That is the situation in Macedonia at the moment. The first self-regulatory body established, the Council of Media Ethics, works mainly according to the principles of the International Federation of Journalists and the Code of Journalists of Macedonia adopted by AJM, but preparations are underway for the adoption of a new code that would be agreed between all professional organizations.
From the promotion of the CMEM in Bitola, 23.04.2015. Photo: CMEM
HOW DOES THE SELF-REGULATION WORK?
Self-regulation works almost everywhere and is implemented in a similar way, and the procedure is based on the principle of mediation between the public (citizens) and the media. It is assumed that the two stakeholders approached this process with confidence that the process will achieve the desired effect – the media to achieve greater professionalism and observe the ethical standards, and the public to reach confidence, while citizens to exercise some rights which are considered threatened by a media or media group.
Mediator in this process is a professional organization which is commonly called the Press Council, Council of Media or Ethics Council. In Macedonia, the first such body was established early last year and its official name is Council of Media Ethics of Macedonia. (Just for a clarification – such type of a self-regulation among journalists has a long history within the AJM, the Council of Honor, but it has much narrower powers and mainly refers to the writings of journalists, members of AJM).
The Council of Media Ethics was established after an initiative of several years by part of the media and the AJM and it is now supported by two dozen national and regional media, including public service broadcaster – MRT, and the composition of the media is from all branches – electronic, print and new i.e. Internet media.
The Council of Media Ethis is composed of three parts: Managing Board, Executive Office and a Press Complaints Commission. The procedure of work is the following:
The citizen, legal entity or institutions send a press complaint to the CMEM;
The Executive Office sends the press complaint to the Press Complaints Commission;
The Press Complaints Commission meets and if it considers the press complaint formally and content wise correct, it obliges the Executive Office to start the process of mediation;
The Executive Office gets in touch with the editors of the media, introduces them with the press complaint and asks for an opinion by the media if it agrees entirely or partially with the contents of the press complaint or it rejects it.
If the media agreed in whole or in part, then a written explanation follows with a possible apology to the complainant. Hereby the procedure ends if the complainant agrees with the explanation or the apology, and the Press Complaints Commission concludes this and the case is considered successfully completed with a mediation.
If the media rejects the press complaint, the Commission discusses the case and makes a decision. The decision may be rejection of the press complaint or its acceptance.
The decisions of the Press Complaints Commission (i.e. the Council), which are backed up with serious explanations, are published on the website of the CMEM and transmitted to the parties concerned. The media that is a member of CMEM is obliged to publish the conclusion at a prominent place. This is so far the biggest problem that the Council faces, because a number of cases resolved so far have not been published in the media concerned, especially if it is an accepted complaint or a negative conclusion about the media.
The decision of the Press Complaints Commission is a kind of a verdict with a moral dimension. There are no sanctions for the media other than the moral nature of the conclusion that the media did not comply with the ethical and professional standards in some respect, thus violating the professionalism in its work.
IS THE SELF-REGULATION OVERESTIMATED AND IS IT SUFFICIENT?
These debates, which started in our country as well after the establishment of CMEM, are still present in the world. Especially after the affair with the wiretapping of the media owned by Rupert Murdoch in the UK several years ago, which led to the collapse of the local press complaints commission, because the biggest finances were coming from the mentioned media and the commission did not react in time and failed to deal with the consequences. However, last year a new body was established with a recommendation to incorporate protective mechanisms to avoid repeating the same mistakes.
The experiences from most of the old democracies are, however, positive. The experiences from the region slowly become positive. Recently in Belgrade, under the auspices of the Council of Europe, a regional conference was held with representatives from the self-regulatory bodies from Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Macedonia, as well as initiators of such a body in Albania. It was concluded to establish a regional network of self-regulatory bodies, which in closer co-ordination and exchange of experiences would help achieve more results in their own communities and the region as a whole.
The previous months of experience of the CMEM are also very positive, or at least generally positive. For a short period, the Council has decided upon thirty complaints received (several others were rejected because of lapse of submission which should be made within 30 days after the publishing of the controversial material). Out of the cases resolved, several are done with mediation (the figure is roughly one-third), which only confirms the interest of the public for the existence of this body and the media interest for the same.
According to the international experiences presented by professor Tahiri at the debates in Bitola and Ohrid, there are at least five reasons why self-regulation is needed:
It preserves editorial independence;
Minimizes state intervention
Encourages quality in the media
Proves the responsibility of the media
Enables readers (listeners, viewers, public of the Internet media) to have access to the media.
But there are at least two important reasons related to our experience and indicating why the existence and operation of CMEM is necessary.
The first is mediation. Mediation, as it was noted at the first press conference of the Press Complaints Commission, is expected to contribute to reduced number of court cases for insult and defamation. The last experience, when the Commission decided upon a case that had involved two university professors and a national television confirmed this. With mediation by the CMEM, the media apologized and the complainants publicly stated that if the media apologizes they will give up the intention for a court procedure.
The second major reason is that the decisions of the CMEM, de facto, can be used as an expert opinion in any proceedings for insult and defamation. In fact, as was pointed out by Filip Gjurcinovski, a member of the Press Complaints Commission, at the recent debate in Bitola, the current Law on insult and slander embeds Article 5 with interpretations of terms and the terms in the law. In paragraph 3 of that article it is stated that, “the rules for the collection, analysis and publishing of information set forth by the professional organization of journalists are considered as professional rules of the journalistic profession”.
Since the Council is an organization formed by the media and since the major work of the Council is interpretation of the professional rules by evaluation of the Code, principles, and practices of the decisions of the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, it is quite clear that assessment or opinion or decision of the CMEM would be a relevant opinion or part of a trial for insult or defamation.
The stated reasons are just some of the many that confirms the need for the existence of self-regulation in Macedonia. Of course, the challenges are great, and one of the most serious is funding of this body. For the time being, it works successfully, among other things, due to the support from the Netherlands, but also from UNESCO, which understood and supported the idea. As a rule, these councils are funded by members, but also from the state and without setting of any preconditions about its work. There are opportunities to achieve this in Macedonia as well. So far, there is no doubt that real self-regulation in Macedonia becomes mission possible.
Written by: Teofil Blazevski*
*(The author is a journalist and a member of the Press Complaints Commission of the CMEM)
This journalistic lesson was prepared as part of the USAID Programme for Strenghtening Independent Media in Macedonia – Component Service for fact checking in the media, implemented by Metamorphosis. The journalistic lesson is enabled with a support from the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The content of journalistic lesson is the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Metamorphosis, USAID or the US Government. For more information on the work of USAID, please visit the website (http://macedonia.usaid.gov) and Facebook page USAID (www.facebook.com/USAIDMacedonia).