Implementation: Councils and Ombudsmen

Latvia, unlike Estonia, Lithuania and Norway, has no press council or any other structure to deal with the relevant tasks.

There have been suggestions in Latvia that a press council be established, but there has been nothing more than debates among some journalists about the need for a structure which would evaluate media performance in the area of ethics.

Latvia has no media ombudsman. In late 2003 and early 2004, some politicians, in alliance with clergymen and others, activated a debate on the need for introducing ethical standards in the form of a law. This initiative was severely criticised by leading media organisations. By the summer of 2004, it appeared that the initiative had disappeared.

All three other countries have councils, and Lithuania also has an ombudsman.

The Estonian Newspaper Association established the country’s Press Council in 1991. The Estonian Press Council (EPS) was modelled on a similar organisation in Finland. The Lithuanian system, for its part, has mostly been influenced by the system in Sweden. Estonia, it might be added, is in a very peculiar situation – it has had two councils since 2003. This will be discussed later in this paper.

Six criteria have been selected to evaluate the functioning of these self-regulation systems:

1) Coverage (national or in-house ombudsman; channel-based or cross-media evaluation council)

2) Composition (representatives of media organisations, the public, academic bodies) 3) Funding (national budget, independent fund, professional organisations) 4) Sanctions (publication of decisions, withdrawal of published information,

monetary fines, mandatory public announcements) 5) Causes for accepting or rejecting a case 6) Decision making procedures

This is not an exhaustive list, but it does provide sufficient grounds for assessing the role of the various councils.

The category of “coverage” concerns the scope of the media which are assessed. “Composition” refers mostly to the extent to which the public are involved in the debate over media and communications ethics. Financing is important if the state is involved, because then it becomes important to examine how the council is protected against political interference.

The category of “sanctions” is vital, because this is the main criticism against the self-regulation system – that it is toothless.

The final two factors have to do with the efficiency and transparency of the system. Any organisation which deals with complaints may try to avoid complicated or uncomfortable cases. It is necessary, therefore, that the system provide a very clear definition of which cases are handled, which ones are not, who makes the decision and what is the possibility for appeal. At the Estonian Press Council, which was established in 1991, the executive secretary, the chairman and the deputy chairman draft an adjudication. In this, the EPC differs from the operations of the Press Council (PC) which was established in 2002. In short, before we can assess the role, status and efficiency of any council as a quality control mechanism, it is important to analyse everyday practice from various aspects (for more on this, see “Accountability Systems and Media Ethics: Landscapes and Limits” by Røssland, elsewhere in this volume).

How are the self-regulation systems functioning in the four selected countries?

In Norway, the Press Council is made up of three representatives of the public and four of the media – seven people in all.

The Council is funded by the Norwegian Press Association. Individuals, organisations, institutions and public authorities can complain to the Council. It can also take up matters at its own initiative. The time limit for filing a complaint is three months after the alleged offence.

In Estonia, member organisations delegate representatives to the Estonian Press Council (10 members, three of whom come from the Union of Journalists). The EPC is funded through membership fees. Here, too, complaints can be filed, or the Council can consider cases at its own initiative. The EPC does not examine cases which have already been considered by the courts or are being investigated by the police, ones which have nothing to do with media matters, ones in which the complaint is indecent, or ones in which the complaint is anonymous.

The Press Council, by contrast nine members, three of whom come from outside the press, and each member has a deputy (the Association of Estonian Newspapers). Private individuals and legal entities can complain to the PC about materials in the press (excluding advertising). The PC declines complaints if court proceedings are pending in the relevant matter, if the complainant cannot be identified, or if the complaint does not concern the breach of good journalistic practices. When there is doubt about whether a complaint falls under the authority of the PC, the decision is taken by the organisation’s chairman, deputy chairman and executive secretary. The first step when a complaint is received is that the executive secretary tries to negotiate a settlement between the complainant and the publication.

In Lithuania, Parliament appoints an inspector of journalist ethics for a five-year term, doing so on the basis of a recommendation from the Commission of Journalists and Publishers. The inspector must be a Lithuanian citizen, possess an excellent reputation, have a higher education and be possessed of the competence that is required in the performance of his or her duties. The inspector is a state official and answers before Parliament. The inspector’s work is financed from the national budget, and every private individual or legal entity can turn to the inspector with a complaint about materials that have been published or broadcast. When a journalist or a media outlet is the subject of a complaint, the inspector weighs the nature of the complaint on the basis of the 63-item Code of Ethics.²The inspector may reject the complaint, or he may call on editors or media owner to retract information or offer the wronged party a chance to respond. If the media organisation refuses to do so, the case then proceeds to the full Ethics Commission of Journalists and Editors, which makes a final and binding decision. The members of the Commission are appointed by various media and public organisations (12 members in all). The Commission is funded through the Fund for the Support of the Press, Radio and Television.

Table 3.A summary of the self-regulation systems in the various countries

2 The website of the inspector includes information about how a complaint is to be written. See http://www.lrs.lt (accessed 27 November 2003).

Countries, institution Norway Estonia, EPC

Estonia, PC

Lithuania, inspector (ombudsman)

Lithuania, Ethics Commission of Journalists and Publishers

Coverage All types of media

Composition 9 members 10 members 9 members

1 inspector

12 members

Funding

Membership fees Association of Estonian Newspapers

National budget

Fund for the Support of the Press, Radio

and Television

Sanctions

Announcements in the accused newspaper Announcements on public radio, decisions

published on the Internet . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . .

. . . .

. . . .

4.2.1 A Case Study: the Estonian Press Council – History and Crisis in 2001–2002

The first press council in Estonia was established by the Association of Newspapers. The Estonian Press Council was subsequently reorganised in 1997 by six media-related organisations – the Newspapers Association, the Association of Broadcasters, the Association of Media Educators, the Journalists Union, national public radio and television, and the Consumers Union. The Network of Non-Profit Organisations and the Council of Churches joined the EPC in 1999.

After the reorganisation of the EPC in 1997, it was financed by membership fees. Media organisations paid more than non-media organisations did. Each organisation could contribute as many representatives as the general assembly of member organisations permitted. Usually the proportions between non-media and media representatives were 50:50. Complex cases demanded analytical experience, and so the personnel of the Estonian Press Council rotate through staggered terms. Some people have served on the Council for two or four years, while others have served for eight or 10 years.

In order to guarantee more objectivity and impartiality, the Council does not discuss drafts of adjudications, instead formulating these collectively through discussions among members. Adjudications are published on the Council’s Web site.

The relevant news media are obliged to publish or air the full text of the adjudication within seven days’ time. Publishers, however, appear to be rather sensitive to criticism. In several cases they have ignored the commitment to publish the Council’s adjudications. In others, publishers have changed the text of the adjudication.

Increasing dissatisfaction among publishers and the editors of the six largest newspapers eventually developed into a conceptual conflict between the Estonian Press Council and the Estonian Newspaper Association (ENA). In late 2001, the association accused the chairman of the Council of being authoritarian. The members of the Council issued their disagreement with this accusation in December 2001, and the ENA announced that the activities of the Council should be shut down.

Activities were paralysed for the next five months. Finally the system was split up into two different councils. Broadcasting organisations withdrew their participation in self-regulation altogether. The irony here is that the Broadcasting Act orders them to observe the rules of good conduct anyway. Three Internet service providers (Delfi, Tele2 Eesti and Eesti Telefon) which operate news portals informed the Press Council in December 2002 that they recognise it as the self-regulatory body of the media.

There is one well documented process which enables us to analyse the motives and positions of media self-regulation in Estonia. In the summer of 2000, the leading Estonian weekly,Eesti Ekspress, which is a member of the Estonian Newspaper Association, refused to publish the Estonian Press Council adjudications on three separate occasions. In two other instances, it published the adjudications imprecisely. In April 2001,Eesti Ekspresspublished an exculpatory adjudication with a photograph of the complainant. The Estonian Association of Media Educators, which is represented on the Council, filed an inquiry with the Estonian Newspaper Association about this fact, but the association declared the Estonian Press Council to be incompetent and accused its chairman of mismanagement (Harro & Lauk 2003).

The Estonian Press Council continued adjudicating complaints, but it has increasingly become a provider of expert opinion and evaluations of the quality of media content and performance. The Union of Journalists and several other public organisations have remained faithful to the “old” Estonian Press Council, while the organisation of employers – the Estonian Newspaper Association – set up a new one entirely.

4.2.2. The Lithuanian Accountability System: Problems and Prospects

In Lithuania, the structural arrangements of the self-regulation system (e.g., the existence of the institution of the inspector, the publication of decisions, etc.) appear to be all in order, but there is an important question about the system’s efficiency.

Do the media observe ethical conduct? Do the public care about this in the media which they consume?

The fact is that codes of ethics are a contract which allows parties (in this case, journalists and the state) to resolve conflicts without the involvement of the authorities. The question is, however, whether journalists are observing the written agreement and whether the code of ethics is at all effective.

In most cases, according to studies, audience reaction to violations of journalistic ethics is apathetic. Audiences cannot discuss ethics, because most people are not familiar with the relevant issues. Audience studies have shown that respondents will easily answer the question of what kind of a person a professional journalist should be (“non-intrusive, polite, moderate, fair to the viewers, not accusing someone before the courts have done so, not using profanities, etc.”).³Respondents are also happy to talk about those characteristics among journalists which are negative – intrusion into the personal lives of individuals (as, for example, the television programme “Be Tabu” (Without Taboos) has done), repetition of commercially beneficial topics, intrusiveness, presentation of only one party’s opinion, mocking people, encouraging criminal behaviour (i.e., by presenting criminals as heroes), violence in children’s programming, etc.).

The situation with public control over media performance, in other words, is not as simple as may seem at first glance.

There are some voices from above (the self-regulatory bodies of the media, complaints by certain intellectuals), but the fact is that most Lithuanians do not see any major problems in the media. Why, in fact, should the media care whether those who read or watch them are happy? The truth is that media professionals themselves are the audience segment which should look critically at the journalistic products which are produced. Reflexivity in the profession must become an integral component in the education of journalists. Only then will it be possible to talk about consolidation and professional maturity in Lithuanian journalism.

Some steps have been taken in this direction, and journalists and the public are reaching a level of consensus. Media professionals themselves acknowledge that self-regulation within the industry is weak, and in many respects they look at journalistic wrongdoing “through their fingers.”

In conclusion, Lithuania was one of the first post-Communist countries to adopt laws on the self-regulation of the media.

Legislation which covers this issue includes the Law on the Provision of Information to the Public, the Law on Lithuanian Radio and Television, the Law on Telecommunications, and others. Parliament has ratified the Resolution of the European Council on Journalistic Ethics. Journalistic and publishing organisations have reached agreement on adopting the Lithuanian Journalists and Publishers Ethics Code.

It is one thing, however, to set up an institution, it is another thing entirely to make it work. The self-regulation mechanism as such is ineffective. There have been very few cases in which the media have been sanctioned for publicising private data (one case involved the newspaper Lietuvos rytas, which disclosed the personal data of a drugs addict with HIV).

Journalists lack a sense of self-responsibility, and the professional culture suffers.

Public debates on media policy are non-existent, and little in the way of incentive comes from journalists and the media industry when it comes to critical media discussions. The audience is uninformed about key human rights concerns, is uncritical about media performance, and is reluctant to speak up. Non-governmental media organisations are too few in number (one is the Lithuanian Journalism Centre, which was established by the OSF in 1995). Those that are in place do not regularly cover the critical issues of media performance.

3 Study conducted within the PHARE Research Programme, study results accessed from the Web site of the Radio and Television Commission of Lithuania, http://www.rtk.lt