Media Donors - Partly Guilty

Some money was wasted, but it's also thanks to donors' aid that some of the best independent media in the Balkans are alive today.

Author: Gordana Jankovic
Source: BIRN

Despite all the money poured into the Balkans in the 1990s, South East Europe's media sector still has a long way to go.

Of all the achievements over the past fifteen years, perhaps the most significant is the fact that some of the best journalists were encouraged to remain in the region. While most of the local media were turned into government propaganda tools, these journalists offered balanced, timely coverage of regional issues. Instead of fleeing to Western Europe, they stayed to set an example of informative, rigorous reporting that didn't resort to hate speech or partisanship.

As war raged in Bosnia and Croatia, donors helped keep alive high quality information outlets, such as Belgrade's Radio B92, the Croatian weekly Feral Tribune and Bosnian TV network MREZA PLUS. If today they are not as influential as one might hope, they have nevertheless planted a seed. The standards they have set are now followed by media that once thrived on ethnic tensions but which have since changed editorial policy.

Donors should have learned from this experience about the importance of relying on local expertise, rather than imposing ideas developed elsewhere-as is too often the case in the Balkans.

When criticizing donors' early mistakes, however, it should not be forgotten that an international media development sector barely existed before the outbreak of war in the former Yugoslavia. This was one reason for the overall lack of strategy among donors. Private foundations, foreign governments, and individuals all wanted to help but had no idea of where to start. They simply wanted to help stop the war.

This was the position of the organization I work for, the Open Society Institute, OSI, which supported efforts to end the fighting by developing democratic dialogue.

By then, war was raging in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the regime of Slobodan Milosevic had full control over Serbia and the independent media in the entire region had been brought to their knees. With the entire economy in the grip of Milosevic and his cronies, the media was unable to earn any income from advertising agencies which were largely politically controlled. This led to the dangerous phenomenon of self-censorship.

The sanctions on Serbia didn't have much effect on the media outlets which were loyal to Milosevic. So OSI jumped in to help Studio B, B92, Radio Smederevo, and Radio Cetinje in Montenegro, providing tapes for television production, for example, while the state supported its own media generously.

Until 1994, international donors mostly believed that Serbia should be isolated and under sanctions, and only gave occasional grants to the media. Press Now, the Swedish Helsinki Committee and the Soros Foundation were the main donors present, rather than the big Western government agencies. And in Bosnia, money was given to the media as humanitarian aid.

The big policy shift came in 1995 during the preparations for the Dayton peace agreement, when an understanding developed about the need for a regional approach to secure the free flow of information across the borders of the warring countries. At that time, USAID, the European Union, Western governments and their agencies all came on the scene. Their presence helped make way for the creation of the news agency BETA in Serbia, as well as the Bosnian ONASA news agency. Private foundations and big governmental agencies started coordinating their approach to media support.

Of course, differences arose. While American donors wanted to boost the private media, the European priority was the transformation of the public media.

After Dayton, there was also a strategy to cast the net as widely as possible. The current approach, to focus on a few potentially successful outlets, had not yet taken shape. A wide range of initiatives won support, giving rise to some important developments, such as new professional associations or self-regulatory procedures or the creation of ethical codes.

Much money was invested in training. Many now say that was money wasted, as standards remain low. I disagree. Journalistic standards have improved while the media has struggled through a difficult period of economic and political transition. The changes in the media took place against a background of transition from a one-party system-a process that was distorted by the war-but it is key to bear in mind that the region was undergoing a social transformation.

Thanks to the regional training programs, many media workers across the region got into contact with each other and regional networks were established, as well as connections between the local and international media.

There were also some projects after Dayton that I bitterly opposed, such as the OBN television station in Bosnia, which received large grants for years and was a huge failure. I was against donating to OBN, but the Soros network joined most of the other media donors and initially supported OBN with a grant of one million US dollars. This was a typical initiative coming from the outside. Local voices were sidelined, as international figures and retired international journalists, all with good intentions but with limited knowledge of local politics, sensitivities, and capacities were deployed at the station.

But even that failure gave birth to something good. For without OBN, we never would have had ATV Banja Luka, now one of the most successful and important television stations in Bosnia, which, earlier one, was one of OBN's local offices.

In general, investments in media development in Bosnia were much larger than the number of successful projects. It was difficult to come up with workable ideas on how to enhance the information flow between three ethnic groups that had just emerged from war. Donors were also impatient and expected quick results, dropping hundreds of millions of dollars here and there in the hope of creating instantaneous interethnic dialogue.

However I find myself irritated by the simplified and frequently used characterization that too much money was given for too long and the overall results are poor. The strategies were inconsistent and often insufficiently coordinated, but there were also many excellent initiatives, and great coordination efforts. Today there are many professional media active in the region. Yet, the fact is that many of the donors left too soon for some of those media to have a chance of success.

Media grants invariably come in the wake of political crisis and as the crisis eases, they leave. By 1998, in Croatia, only trace amounts of media development money could be found, while donors were already working on their exit strategies right after the overthrow of Milosevic in 2000.

That would have been fine if the changes in each country of the region had created a situation of equality for all in the media, so that the independent media could survive. But that didn't happen.

In Serbia, after Milosevic was overthrown and the donors left, the well-developed, resource-rich, pro-governmental media, which had already secured television and radio frequencies and their infrastructure, remained firmly in place. Up against them were weak and formerly suppressed independent media outlets.

Many donors left these independent media outlets out in the cold, as they switched investments to other fields. Meanwhile, governments and politicians still wield great influence over the media, while the local economies are too poor for advertising to support their independence.

As the international donors have left, local donors, often tycoons, have filled their places. These are local people who made money as war profiteers and are now keen to buy media influence. But they are not desirable patrons for genuinely independent editors. This leaves the independent media weaker than those who throughout the war served the regimes, spreading the message of war. In Bosnia, for example, the powerful TV Pink, originally from Serbia, but now one of the biggest regional TV stations, is rapidly taking over the advertising market and leaving little space for local media initiatives.

The good news is that the editorial policy of such media outlets has been forced to change. They now enforce much higher standards than they did - standards that were set by the independent media and often supported by the donors. The change in Pink is obvious - and I can only view it positively in the hope that spreading hatred will never again form any part of their programming.

The most important outcome of all the investments in media development work in recent years is experience, which is collected and to some extent can be applied in different crisis zones, where similar patterns of political pressure on media and self-censorship have emerged.

In Africa, Asia and even Latin America, we are able to draw on a methodology drawn in part from the experience of South East Europe. But, if we are to give any real help to those regions, we still have a huge task to properly assess local conditions and populations.

Overall, we have provided some media with the means to keep pace with the modern world. That is why donors should only feel partly guilty because they can take some pride in the fact that there are now modern media houses in the Balkans, not to mention blogs, the internet, digital television, and so on. The Balkans are taking steps forward into the new information era. We helped that to come about.

Gordana Jankovic is director of the Open Society Institute's Network Media Program