Description

Professionalization makes the media more independent and improves standards in collecting, editing, reporting and disseminating objective and balanced information. Professionalization measures include journalist training, editorial training, sponsoring joint journalist teams, promoting diversification of media sources, and expanding distribution.

Objectives

Professionalization should encourage fair and truthful coverage of an issue’s different sides along with improved standards for reporters and editors in collecting, editing, reporting and disseminating information and in taking measures to make this information more objective and balanced.

Expected outcome or impact

Professionalizing the media should reduce control by government or partisan private entities over the media; broaden media outlets and access; encourage alternative viewpoints; reduce partisan and biased reporting; improve media standards; and improve how diverse groups are represented to encourage a more balanced depiction of events.

Relationship to conflict prevention and mitigation

The media are often deliberately used to incite civil unrest; government control or partisan ownership of news, commentary, documentary, and entertainment can aggravate conflict when those controlling the media restrict media freedom, prevent communications between certain groups, or limit information sources to their own group’s perspective. A regime can manipulate the media to divide groups which could oppose it or to conceal its own violent activities from the majority of citizens. Media used with appropriate professionalism and attention to preventing conflict can help to reverse these tendencies towards conflict, reaching diverse groups and exposing them to viewpoints which may make them less inclined to use violence against others.

Supporting independent media in emerging democracies helps to consolidate and nurture a democratic society: successful media professionalization projects’ contribution to "promoting democracy, pluralism, conflict resolution, and the growth of active, well-informed civil societies in emerging democracies is undeniable."

Implementation

Organizers

Participants

Current and prospective journalists, editors, and media owners can participate in media professionalization efforts. Implementation staff have included members of foreign media, representatives of international media associations, NGOs, and foreign educational institutions’ media departments.

Activities

Professionalizing the media can include measures to:

· Sponsor ethnically diverse teams of journalists and train them to act together to present a more balanced view of issues and reduce partisan reporting.

· Sponsor conferences on issues surrounding media professionalization and training.

· Sponsor exchange visits between journalists and other media personnel.

· Provide hands-on training to reporters and editors to enhance their professional capabilities in the basics of good journalism: reporting standards, rumor control, fact-checking and validation of sources, reducing bias, the need for objectivity and for presenting more than one side, programming, management techniques, attracting advertisers, and other commercial survival skills to station personnel and other media professionals. Peace training is another possibility.

· Engage journalists in scriptwriting and interviewing exercises focused on avoiding stereotypes and bias in covering ethnic minorities; develop a seminar on covering ethnic minorities in their region during which journalists and station managers can discuss problems and solutions in covering ethnically and culturally sensitive topics and in serving their diverse audience.

· Grant video and other equipment to independent stations and media.

· Diversify the local media and expand distribution.

¨ Support and encourage growth of private media, especially where governments control all or most of the information.

¨ Encourage reduction of government control and restrictions of the media.

¨ Reduce media dependence on the government and on government information.

· Encourage broadcasting of quality local programming throughout the country.

· Organize nation-wide networks of independent television stations to help pool limited programming resources.

· Support equal opportunity in the media for ethnic, religious and regional groups.

· Advocate reform of media laws and adoption of a journalists’ code of ethics.

· Establish and support indigenous institutions to monitor the media. · Support the production of docudramas on topical legal and political issues including commercial and law.

· Acquire and distribute quality western and domestic documentary programming to stations free of charge to attract viewers and advertisers to increase the stations’ economic viability during the transition period.

· Sponsor a media partnership program to place US media organizations with local counterparts to facilitate the transfer of US management expertise, training, equipment, and other resources.

· Provide alternative information and communication sources to help mitigate conflict. Expanded media information sources include public libraries, NGO information centers, academic libraries, and international networks of computer bulletin boards.

Cost considerations

Training and media exchange programs can be relatively inexpensive. Media equipment can be more costly (several million dollars).

Other resource considerations

Media professionalization can require equipment, trainers and technical assistants depending on the program and goals.

Set-up time

Some media professionalization activities can be implemented relatively.

Timeframe

to see results

Many media professionalization measures can show quick results and have a significant, long-lasting effect on conflict prevention and mitigation.

Conflict context

Stages of conflict

Professionalization of the media can be effective at all stages of conflict, including the early stages, during the peak of a conflict, and during the reconciliation stage. However, it may be difficult to institute such programs when conflicts are "hot" because governments may view these efforts with suspicion.

Type of conflict

This tool is especially useful for ethnic and regional conflicts.

Causes of conflict

Media professionalization activities can contribute both to operational and structural conflict prevention. In the near term, media professionalization can contribute to operational conflict prevention by presenting a more balanced view, portraying issues fairly from rivals’ perspectives, cooling down tempers and opening dialogue. Over time, increased professionalization can contribute to greater democracy which can help encourage political conflicts to be played out in the political realm instead of through violence.

Prerequisites

Effective media professionalization requires the ability to institute professional journalistic standards; willingness on the part of media professionals to undergo training and to apply their training; willingness of media owners to permit such training and adopt professional standards; and professional media specialists who can speak the local language to serve as trainers.

Past practice

Outside the Greater Horn

Internews is an international non-profit organization specializing in global communications, working to enhance tolerance and understanding by supporting independent non-governmental television, radio and print media in emerging democracies. Internews produces and distributes innovative television programming on national and international issues and uses electronic media as a tool to reduce conflict within and between countries.

· Internews supports the creation of regional networks of independent television stations which co-produce TV shows and share programming, advertising, and marketing.

· An extensive Internews training program for independent television stations teaches production skills, journalistic integrity, and management techniques.

· Internews helped establish a Palestinian Media Center (PMC) in the West Bank and Gaza which is training the first generation of Palestinian broadcast journalists and produces television news pieces for the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation.

· Internews arranged for broadcasts of the War Crimes Tribunal in much of Bosnia; project directors believe such broadcasts can help provide catharsis and prevent acts of revenge. Most of the $1.5 million cost has been sponsored by the Soros Foundation.

· Internews has assisted the hundreds of small, non-governmental TV stations that sprang up as the Soviet Union began to disintegrate, to aid in establishing an independent, self-sustaining new network to facilitate alternatives to state-owned television; Internews has strongly promoted ethical conduct and professionalism. Internews’ three-year Media Development Program (MDP) in Russia, funded with $10 million from USAID, supports the commercial viability of independent print and broadcast media in Russia. Project components include: journalist and management training programs; equipment procurement; production and distribution of a weekly news program utilizing news reports from local stations; production of public affairs documentaries; and acquisition and distribution of low-cost, quality programming to participating stations to raise viewership and advertising revenue. Internews manages a partnership program between western and Russian media companies, working to strengthen the financial viability of fledgling independent Russian TV and radio stations, newspapers and magazines. A series called Local Time produced by Internews Moscow combines local news stories from across the country into a news magazine broadcast to much the country, the only program bringing local news to other regions. Another Russian program broadcasts dramatizes new legal rights. A USGAO review of this project indicated it has made a significant contribution toward achieving its purpose of establishing an independent, self-sustaining television news network and providing alternatives to state-owned media. The technical assistance, training and programming Internews has provided have helped some local stations become commercially viable, and has helped others enough to forestall bankruptcy, reach sponsorship arrangements, or become affiliates of larger networks. Stations’ ability to produce their own local programming diversifies the traditionally Moscow-centric news and information.

· In the war-torn Caucasus region of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and southern Russia, an Internews-sponsored media conference spawned an association of independent Caucasian broadcasters who, in an unprecedented cooperative effort, overcame national hostilities to co-produce the first pan-Caucasian television programs. Internews’ electronic mail conferences in regions such as the Balkans provide a critical channel for communications in areas of regional conflict.

Media and Conflict Education, Macedonia. In 1994, the Center for War, Peace, and the News Media, a unit of New York University’s Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, and Search for Common Ground launched a media and conflict education program in Macedonia. The program’s purpose was to explore the media’s role in inter-ethnic relations and to develop innovative approaches to covering ethnic tensions. They designed and organized a cross-ethnic feature reporting project in July 1995. The four goals of the project were as follows:

· To give a small team of Macedonian reporters a hands-on experience with in-depth, American-style feature reporting.

· To provide the reporters with experience as a cooperative team.

· To demonstrate to participants, their professional colleagues and the Macedonian public what a multi-ethnic approach to reporting can produce.

· To lay the groundwork for ongoing programs of multi-ethnic reporting as a mechanism to improve coverage of all communities in Macedonia and to foster greater cross-ethnic understanding among journalists and the public.

The four participating journalists were on leave from their normal media organizations and received a stipend from Search for Common Ground. The project was funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Winston Foundation for World Peace, and the Soros Foundations. Project organizers believe this type of collaborative reporting across ethnic lines was new in Macedonia and contrasts with the Macedonian media’s traditionally ethnically partisan reporting. Interviewing ordinary people rather than officials and "experts" was a new style of reporting for the participants, and made the reporters more aware of stereotyping, and each experienced personal revelations. Minor ethnic tensions sometimes surfaced around word choices and interview subjects’ ethnic mix. The editor constantly recommended steering clear of political arguments. She was cautious not to lecture them on how to do "proper journalism," pressing instead for more details, restructuring stories based on information they collected together, and encouraging reporters to re-examine their notes for key points left out.

The participants reacted very positively. The team of four participating journalists produced a series they titled "How We Survive" that examined how ordinary citizens of all classes, ethnicities and religions fare under difficult economic conditions in Macedonia. The articles were published simultaneously in three newspapers represented by the print reporters of the team (the leading Macedonian-, Albanian-, and Turkish-language papers in Macedonia) and adapted for radio broadcast. The products were well-received by the public and the editors. A press conference resulted in additional stories in the main newspapers, and radio and TV interviews. The organizers consider the project to have been "successful on every level." The project’s direct or indirect contribution to conflict prevention or mitigation has not been evaluated, and would be difficult to determine. No independent evaluation has examined the project and its impact.

The two organizers partnered again to organize a similar project working with a new team of reporters, again from four different media organizations in Macedonia, this time on health care issues. As with the previous project, the reporters are conducting interviews in cross-ethnic teams to gain access to individuals from a range of ethnic groups and social classes and to present a balanced view of the issues.

Other examples.

· Search for Common Ground is working with NDI to schedule conferences and workshops for members of the press to improve their professionalism in several countries.

· The International Peace Academy is proposing to train journalists in objective reporting skills in several countries.

· USAID has sponsored projects to professionalize journalism, and has activities in several countries to strengthen the free flow of information on public issues.

· The US State Department has supported independent media in East European countries through training and development.

· The Asia Foundation has supported journalism training programs, journalists’ associations, and reforms of media laws.

· The Eurasia Foundation, which sponsors economic reform and democratic institution building in the Newly Independent States (NIS) of the former Soviet Union, makes grants in, among other areas, mass media and communications, including a project to expand access to computer communications (electronic mail, on-line services, and electronic databases) and to support new e-mail networks throughout the former Soviet Union.

· The African-American Institute has been involved in supporting democratic mass media in Nigeria and Liberia, sponsored by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

· The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) and the Vienna-based International Press Institute (IPI) both monitor the state of press freedom in the world, exposing and protesting abuses of press freedom and pressuring for openness and change.

· Funded mainly by the private sector, the Center for Foreign Journalists, based in Virginia, offers foreign journalists and news executives advanced training and consultation in the US and in their own countries, donates textbooks, and operates related support services. CFJ has a fellowship program for US news media professionals to locate abroad for up to nine months to provide practical journalistic, management, business, and technical assistance to the developing independent press in the former East Bloc countries. Press training programs are also conducted by IPI; numerous press fellowship programs and by the Independent Journalism Foundation (IJF), which operates Centers for Independent Journalism in Prague, Bratislava, and Bucharest.

· In South Africa, a national magazine in collaboration with an NGO involved with mediation and mediation training has initiated a Mediation and Conflict Training for Journalists Project, which intends to make journalists more sensitive to conflict dynamics, the impact of reporting, and the potential for promoting conflict resolution.

· USAID created a fund in Nicaragua for making matching grants of up to $50,000 to media enterprises to improve their journalistic performance.

· USIA administers a wide range of media professionalization activities. Under USIA’s "Professionals in Residence" program, experts have advised public and private sectors on media and information issues in several countries. It brings hundreds of foreign professionals, including media specialists, to the US each year for month-long visits, places "professionals in residence" for limited periods (up to six months) to help establish media, and helps train Eastern European journalists. USIA, through its US Information Service posts in 160 countries, provides print and electronic media, reference services, training workshops, computer data bank links, and satellite systems, and provides information on developing a free and independent media.

· Robert Manoff of NYU’s Center for War, Peace, and the News Media is exploring the feasibility of a "Media Rapid Response Team" composed of Western media professionals to help bolster journalistic ethics in areas where the media may be exacerbating conflict..

Evaluation

Strengths

Independent media are essential to a free society. Sponsoring cross-ethnic journalist teams teaches the value of cross-ethnic cooperation. Cross-ethnic teams and methods such as professionalization seminars and group exercises can make reporters more aware of ethnic stereotyping and bias, and their effects.

Weaknesses

Privatized media may concentrate media ownership in the hands of the wealthy few, leading to another bias. Privatized media can run the risk of remaining or falling into the hands of former directors who continue or turn to graft, corruption, and bankruptcy.

Lessons learned

Foreign efforts to professionalize and encourage independent media must respect ethnic, cultural, national and religious diversity and encourage these values in reporting.

It is important for foreign sponsors to help independent media find ways to become commercially self-sustaining instead of maintaining sponsorship. Providing free or low-cost popular foreign programming for a limited time can help newly independent stations attain commercial success during their critical transition period. Joining independent stations into a network or pooling programming and funds can help local stations stay solvent.

Little has been written about the media’s potential role in preventive diplomacy. One project proposed by the NYU Center intends to analyze the media’s role in recent preventive diplomacy efforts, hoping to address how those involved in preventive diplomacy can make better use of national and international media resources, activities available through peace media in support of preventive diplomacy, practical and procedural information and resources necessary to implement those activities, and the role of non-news-related media such as "entertainment programming" in avoiding or moderating conflict.

References and resources

Peter Gastrow, Search for Common Ground, Washington, DC.

Robert Karl Manoff, Center for War, Peace, and the News Media, New York University, New York City.

Nik Growing (writing a paper analyzing national and individual bias in the coverage of conflicts, forthcoming).

Baumann, Melissa and Hannes Siebert. "The Media as Mediator," Forum (Winter 1993).

Frank Chalk, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec.

US Information Agency, Washington, DC.

Internews, headquarters in Arcata, California, with regional offices in Paris, The Hague, Jerusalem, Sarajevo, Moscow, Kiev, Kazakhstan, Kyrghyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, and Armenia.