Serbia Promises Mladic Action Plan
By Zelimir Bojovic and Dragana Nikolic-Solomon

Author: Yasha Lange in Amsterdam
Source: BIRN

There is no doubt that support offered to media outlets in the Balkans has had an impact. And well it might, given that foreign governments have spent more than 250 million euro on media-development work in southeast Europe in the past decade.

Was it all worth it? On balance, I am tempted to say yes. But, as is the case with all development work, there have been good and bad points.

On the positive side, I have no doubt that foreign support has helped to sustain media outlets with the courage to raise awareness of issues which, while not always welcome amongst audiences, have had a direct impact on history. B92 is an obvious example, but the same applies to ATV in Banja Luka or the Beta news agency in Belgrade.

An abundance of journalistic training may not have done much to address structural problems within the Balkans media. But it has helped to create an awareness of professional standards, has bolstered technical skills in some areas and may even have contributed to the better management of some individual outlets.

Dozens of non-governmental organisations, NGOs, have played a role in spurring debates, drafting laws, or just being a pain in the neck for those who deserve it. Such bodies have helped to stir up discussions about reforming the legislation that governs the local media - changing libel laws, granting true independence to regulatory bodies and introducing laws which guarantee access to information.

They have also helped to protect journalists by raising issues such as editorial interference, physical harassment and other questions of press freedom both domestically and abroad.

While donor coordination in the Balkans has been relatively good, it has mostly been confined to several international implementing organisations which act on behalf of foreign ministries, along with a few major projects like Radio Television in Kosovo, RTK.

At the same time, however, the same difficulties seen in other regions still apply. Donors have many choices and find it hard to determine what to do. They sometimes choose proposals that seem to offer easy answers to very complex problems and they spend too much on training without creating lasting institutions. They have also fallen into the trap of supporting the establishment of various competing organisations, and then demanding that all of them remain sustainable in a difficult environment.

The NGO community has also not achieved as much as might have been hoped, partly because much of the support that such groups offer has been funnelled into fringe organisations which are not integrated into the mainstream media industry and therefore did not have much lobbying power or impact.

Having received money to reform legislation, such fringe organisations have achieved little more than drawing up nice draft proposals. Support has been offered to journalists' associations which had scant membership, little power to protect their members anyway and in general little or no clout within the industry. In addition, training institutes were given money to provide courses on topics which predominantly appealed to donors rather than to the media industry itself.

Even when backing was given to high-profile sectors such as the state media, other problems have arisen. Most notably, money has been thrown into the task of turning state media outlets into public broadcasters without ever securing sufficient political will to ensure that this transition will be successful.

Donors have also not been strict enough in demanding results and have found it hard to withdraw their support from projects in which they have invested money. Consequently, some organisations have been allowed to continue to offer training which few people appreciated, to publish reports and studies which reached only a very limited audience, and to organise conferences intended to create understanding between people who already understood each other pretty well.

Why, considering all this, do I believe it was all still worth it?

In answering this question, a distinction has to be made between support provided in countries which were still governed by repressive regimes -Croatia before 1999, for example, or Serbia before 2000 - and support provided during the transitional period after these governments fell from power.

Under repressive regimes, media-development work undoubtedly had a very valuable impact in terms of sustaining plurality. But the most promising organisations should have been identified at an earlier stage and given the support necessary for them to succeed. Instead, with the change in governments, donors often gave in to the urge to diversify and divide their assistance among too many recipients.

Having said that, many activities in the transitional period have still been useful. Laws have been changed, valuable media outlets have survived which otherwise might not have, and local training capacity has been created. So, despite my critique that support during the transitional period could have been better, even this was definitely worthwhile.

In the future, I believe media assistance to the Balkans needs to focus on three things.

Firstly, there should be support for watchdog organisations tasked with monitoring public broadcasters, media legislation, press freedom, concentration of ownership and other related areas to ensure that the public is kept well informed about these issues.

Secondly, support must be provided for postgraduate courses for journalists within local university faculties or vocational centres, in order to allow graduates to develop important journalistic skills.

Finally, it is necessary to select a limited number of important, responsible media outlets and provide them with loans and other assistance in order to help them develop.

Yasha Lange is a media development consultant, based in Amsterdam