3 May is World Press Freedom Day. It’s a key issue for us around the world and the Foreign Secretary has paid tribute to journalists, bloggers and media organisations.
I spent part of the weekend at a meeting arranged by the Armenian Ombudsman (supported by the EU, Council of Europe and OSCE) with media and civil society to mark the day by discussing some of the most urgent media freedom issues in Armenia.
We welcomed the decision last year to set up a working group, including civil society members, to look at the key reforms required to the broadcasting law. There has also been a lot of expert advice from the OSCE and Council of Europe (in the form of a British consultant, Eve Salomon). And the end goal is plain: to have media in Armenia which are genuinely diverse and represent a range of different views.
3 May is World Press Freedom Day. It’s a key issue for us around the world and the Foreign Secretary has paid tribute to journalists, bloggers and media organisations.
I spent part of the weekend at a meeting arranged by the Armenian Ombudsman (supported by the EU, Council of Europe and OSCE) with media and civil society to mark the day by discussing some of the most urgent media freedom issues in Armenia.
We welcomed the decision last year to set up a working group, including civil society members, to look at the key reforms required to the broadcasting law. There has also been a lot of expert advice from the OSCE and Council of Europe (in the form of a British consultant, Eve Salomon). And the end goal is plain: to have media in Armenia which are genuinely diverse and represent a range of different views.
I was struck by comments from Eve that, as the digital era opens up the scope for many more channels, licensing should be lighter and the goal of the state should be to increase pluralism in the media. The state should ensure compliance with technical and ethical standards, but it should be for the market to decide what and how many channels are viable. So far that’s not happening. It’s still strange to be looking at a digitalisation process which is decreasing the number of channels on the air for some years to come.
There are some independent print and electronic outlets. But the most accessible media are the public broadcasters. It’s important that they also represent independent and diverse views. More positively, the proposed changes to the law would at least ensure that satellite and internet broadcasting would not be heavily regulated. It’s been slow going so far, but I still hope that the working group can produce agreed recommendations soon and move forward the process of reform.
There’s been a lot of attention on use of the libel laws to impose crippling fines on opposition newspapers. I hope we will see some improvements through the Ombudsman’s announcement of a new public council to help mediate and advise impartially on resolution of these cases. Decriminalisation of libel is a positive step and the comments I’ve heard from international experts suggest the law is fine in itself. As so often, the critical question is how it’s implemented. Of course, reporting should be accurate and fair. It’s important that media themselves act professionally in what they print and broadcast and don’t open themselves to what may sometimes be perfectly reasonable libel suits. It seems that Armenia is still feeling its way to a balance between what is fair opinion and critical comment, and what is genuinely libellous.
But there should be scope for robust debate. One area which definitely still has room to grow here is satire, despite a fine tradition of jokes and humour. Britain is one of the homelands of political satire and I miss it. So I can only applaud the brave efforts of the Armcomedy team (www.armcomedy.com) to remedy that, including producing material in English for those of us unable to enjoy the subtleties of humour in Armenian. And full marks to the Civilitas Foundation (www.civilitasfoundation.org) for supporting them. On this theme, I leave the last word to Lord Byron, from his satire “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers” published a little over 200 years ago:
“When Vice triumphant holds her sov’reign sway,
Obey’d by all who nought beside obey;
When Folly, frequent harbinger of crime,
Bedecks her cap with bells of every clime;
When knaves and fools combined o’er all prevail,
And weigh their justice in a golden scale;
E’en then the boldest start from public sneers,
Afraid of shame, unknown to other fears,
More darkly sin, by satire kept in awe,
And shrink from ridicule, though not from law.”
Image source Flickr
Source` http://blogs.fco.gov.uk