Un reto: La vida de los periodistas en Mexico

Gerardo Albarrán de Alba de Mexico habló en La Conferencia anual ONO en Buenos Aires sobre la vida de los periodista, es impresionante y da una vista entre bastidores:

Dilemas ante el tratamiento de imágenes y hechos violentos

  

(D 1)

Gerardo Albarrán de Alba

La prensa suele debatirse entre la necesidad de ser rentable y los límites deontológicos que se ha impuesto para ejercer un periodismo responsable. Tras este dilema suelen ocultarse consideraciones mercantiles de la industria que se expresan en la necesidad de rating, de circulación, de clics. En esa dicotomía se confunde el debate sobre el sensacionalismo y el periodismo ético, sobre la información y el entretenimiento, sobre el rigor y la espectacularización, sobre la estética y el morbo. Y a veces, todo se reduce a la sobrevivencia. Literalmente.

(D 2)

El espacio aquí es breve, así que me limitaré a plantear sólo un par de dilemas que son trasversales a toda la prensa mexicana, a su realidad y a sus retos del presente y de su futuro inmediato.

(D 3)

Dilema 1:

Periodismo vs sensacionalismo

La cobertura de la violencia tiene demasiados ángulos que analizar como para poder abordarlos en esta breve exposición. No es sólo una cuestión de calidad informativa, de rigor profesional, de estándares éticos. La cobertura de la violencia pasa por la seguridad de las víctimas y de sus familias, por la sobrevivencia de comunidades enteras, por la pertinencia social de la información y por la seguridad de los propios periodistas. Y también por la más elemental decencia.

(D 4)

En México, la guerra contra las drogas que en 2006 hizo estallar el entonces presidente Felipe Calderón tomó por sorpresa a los medios que no supieron reaccionar ante la escalada de violencia.

(D 5)

La mayor parte de los medios mexicanos se han dedicado al mero registro de sucesos: la numeralia de los asesinatos, de los atentados. Son coberturas anecdóticas que, en el mejor de los casos, apenas sirven para dejar constancia de que algo ocurrió, pero que no permiten comprender los fenómenos detrás de la violencia y la descomposición política y social que vive México. Es información sin contexto que carece de pertinencia social.

(D 6)

En el peor de los casos, hay medios que medran con la desgracia. Particularmente, algunos diarios de la Ciudad de México, la capital del país, encontraron en el sensacionalismo una veta comercial que explotan a través de tabloides que ellos mismos editan.

​Les presento dos ejemplos brutales.

(D 7)

El periódico El Universal, que recién acaba de cumplir 100 años, y entre los invitados a un coloquio internacional sobre periodismo tuvo a Fernando Savater, autor del célebre ensayo Ética para Amador, cuenta con un código de ética y, además, con una declaración pública sobre su compromiso deontológico frente a la cobertura de la violencia. Se trata de una declaración comprometida con el derecho a la información, el periodismo profesional, los más elevados estándares éticos y un estricto respeto a la vida privada y a los derechos de la personalidad.

Estas son dos de las principales cláusulas de su decálogo sobre cobertura de violencia:

1.- El Universal rige su cobertura de seguridad pública y violencia de acuerdo a los lineamientos generales de su Código de Ética, el cual exige la difusión de información veraz, equilibrada, sustentada en hechos y fuentes reales, siempre identificables.

4.- El Universal no explota la tragedia de terceros con el fin de generar mayor lectoría o audiencia, por lo que rechaza la información y los contenidos de corte sensacionalista, lo que incluye textos o imágenes expresas de víctimas de la violencia.

Compromisos encomiables, sin duda. Pero esto es lo que hacen en su tabloide:

(D 8)

Otro diario de referencia en la Ciudad de México, Reforma, suele presentarse a sí mismo como ejemplo de profesionalismo y de elevados estándares éticos. Es uno de los pocos periódicos mexicanos que desde su fundación cuenta con un código de ética.

(D 9)

Este diario pertenece al Grupo Reforma, cuya historia se remonta a 1922y posee en total nueve periódicos en las principales ciudades del país. El código de ética de Reforma es singular. Las normas de conducta para sus reporteros pasan incluso por la forma de vestir: los hombres, siempre de saco y corbata; las mujeres, sin escotes ni faldas cortas. El nacimiento de Reforma en 1993 significó una bocanada de aire fresco en la prensa de la Ciudad de México. Prometía ser un periódico en serio, y de hecho ha recibido varios premios internacionales. Pero muy pronto también mostró su apetito por las ganancias fáciles. Así es que decidió publicar el tabloide Metro. México es uno de los 23 países donde se publica, y Reforma es su editor.

​Tras el atentado en Bruselas, el mes pasado, Reforma no tuvo reparos en presentar esta enorme vulgaridad en la portada de su propio periódico tabloide:

(D 10)

Más que un dilema, me parece que esto es un problema. Un problema de doble moral de los medios.

Cuando se habla de „doble moral“, pareciera que el lado oscuro de la conciencia es la excepción, lo anormal. Creo lo contrario. Creo que los principios y valores de los que presumen algunos medios son una mera coartada que emboza su interés primario: el dinero antes que el lector, la ganancia antes que la audiencia. El morbo como mercancía. La prensa como instrumento de lucro.

¿Cómo justifican Reforma y El Universal la mera existencia de tabloides como Metro y de El Gráfico? Y aun si pudieran hacerlo, ¿de qué tamaño es la hipocresía de dueños y directivos que, desde el autoengaño, se erigen como referente ético? ¿Cómo hace para sostener la mirada esa prensa que presume un periodismo con los más elevados estándares éticos y, al mismo tiempo, recicla la información de sus reporteros con el único fin de vender la versión más vulgar de sí mismas?

No exhibir y condenar esta falsa moral es complicidad.

 

================

 

(D 11)

 

Dilema 2:

Plata o plomo (coberturas seguras)

 

Ustedes son periodistas. Saben tal vez por experiencia propia o por la de algún colega cercano lo que implica cubrir una guerra. En México lo estamos descubriendo, tristemente muy mal.

En general, los medios mexicanos no capacitan ética y psicológicamente a sus reporteros para realizar coberturas de violencia ni les asisten después para enfrentar el estrés postraumático que genera este tipo de coberturas, similares a las de un corresponsal de guerra. Porque México está en guerra. Alguien podrá decir que exagero, pero quien me acuse de alarmista no será ninguna de las 186 mil 372 personas asesinadas en 9 años. Eso es un promedio de 20 mil 708 muertos por año. Casi 57 personas asesinadas todos los días. Más de 2 homicidios relacionados con el crimen organizado cada hora durante los últimos 9 años. En las ocho horas que llevamos hoy aquí, en mi país han sido asesinadas al menos 16 personas. Y no es imposible que alguna de ellas sea alguien a quien yo conozca.

(D 12)

¿Cómo se cubre una guerra que ninguna autoridad internacional se atreve a reconocer como guerra? ¿Cómo se cubre una tragedia humanitaria a la vista de todo el mundo, pero que todos ignoran? ¿Vale la pena jugarse la vida para reportar una realidad que parece imponerse sin piedad a la esperanza?

México es una gran fosa común cubierta por amplias zonas de silencio, donde la prensa es callada.

Esta es una guerra en la que no se distinguen los bandos. ¿Quiénes son los buenos? ¿Quiénes son los malos? Este video se difundió la semana pasada y ha causado indignación en México.

 (D 13)

 

Algunos medios en el mundo están conscientes de esto. No es gratuito que en 2010 Los Angeles Times enviara a México a su reportera Tracy Wilkinson, una experimentada corresponsal de guerra que antes cubrió la guerra de los Balcanes y los conflictos en Medio Oriente, en Israel y en Irak, así como las guerras civiles de Nicaragua y El Salvador. Actualmente es corresponsal en Washington.

​Mientras fue corresponsal en México, Wilkinson aplicó las llamadas “reglas de Bagdad” para la cobertura de conflictos armados: llegar rápido, reportear y salir. Los periodistas mexicanos no podemos hacer eso. Nosotros llegamos rápido, reporteamos y nos quedamos. Y en el caso de muchos colegas míos, ni siquiera cuentan con el respaldo de sus propios medios, trabajan en condiciones infrahumanas percibiendo salarios ridículos y a veces poniendo en riesgo a sus propias familias que pueden ser víctimas, junto con ellos, de represalias del crimen organizado. Y todo esto, en un clima de absoluta impunidad.

(D 14)

La frase “plata o plomo” que marca a este dilema se refiere a las condiciones en que trabajan muchos periodistas mexicanos en más de la mitad del país, donde el crimen organizado (a veces organizado desde oficinas de gobierno municipales o estatales) les impone la agenda informativa diaria y los somete a censura. Cuando se resisten, les cobran caro. El mapa que ven muestra el registro de 56 ataques contra la prensa en 13 estados del país, ataques que incluyen granadas arrojadas dentro de sus instalaciones y redacciones acribilladas con armas de grueso calibre.

Esta es la brutal realidad para demasiados periodistas en México. Informar en estas condiciones ha dejado de ser un acto periodístico para convertirse en un acto de valor o en un acto de rebeldía

(D 15)

Esta otra gráfica muestra los lugares donde han sido asesinados 92 periodistas en México.

Y la fuente de la violencia contra la prensa mexicana no se limita al crimen organizado ni a funcionarios públicos corruptos, sino que se ha extendido a organizaciones civiles, sindicatos e incluso a partidos políticos.

(D 16)

Plata o plomo. Este es el dilema más fuerte que enfrenta todos los días buena parte de la prensa en México, un país con más de 1,000 noticieros de radio y de televisión y más de 5,000 periódicos y revistas, cuya agenda informativa a veces es un dilema: informar o morir.

Gracias.

(D 17)

 

Terror, rampage, attacks and the role of the media

The role of the media was doubtful in this terrible attack: A teenager with German-Iranian citizenship has shot and killed several people and wounded more than 15 at a shopping centre in Munich, in the third attack on civilians in Europe in eight days.

The 18-year-old man, who police believe acted alone, is understood to have lived in Munich for up to two years. He reportedly shouted “I am German” during the prolonged attack, at the end of which he killed himself.

At first the media  considered the evidence as a terror attack, too early? Too quickly? Were they too gullible in the hype of Social media, neglecting and ignoring the journalistic standards of care? Because of the fact that the competition gets worse and everbody wants to have the news at first? But not only the media is on the focus, on the spotlight, it is the role of the social media and the quick rumours  which spread on the social platforms, mostly uncontrolled. Almost all the coverage focused on the allegedly political motivated terror aspect, over-hasty?  Later it was found out: „His motive was “completely unclear”, said Munich police chief Hubertus Andrae. There was no immediate evidence of an Islamist or other terrorist motive.The Munich shooter had conducted research into mass shootings and does not appear to have had links to Islamic State, a police press conference has heard. It was a shooting rampage.

Another aspect : It is strange and alarming how the perpetrator apparently used Facebook to try to lure young victims to a McDonald’s restaurant across from Munich’s Olympia shopping mall, where he shot seven of his victims. (According to investigators, he may either have hacked a teenage girl’s account or created a phony Facebook page where he promised free food at the restaurant.) And that videos about the crime wer posted…

My conclusion, the lesson is clear: This is also a duty and responsablity of the media,  not to report too quickly and over-hasty, but to maintain and uphold the ethic and journalistic standards, especially in cases and attacks, that shake and frighten the world.

Argentina: How to cope with the media? The Defender helps…

Buenos Aires

The ONO annual Conference in Buenos Aires, one issue: What can readers in Argentina do when they face problems with the media?  How can they cope with that?  In Argentina the „Defender of the Public“ helps. This post was created by the Audiovisual Communication Service Law to promote, divulge and defend the audience´s rights to deomocratic communication and audiovisual services throughout the country. Ms Cynthia Ottaviano , a Journalist, teacher  and writer, was appointed head of the office in 2012. 

  The office receives and processes the public´s enquiries, complaints and reports so that their civil rights as radio and television audiences are respected, in order to do so to reach the objectives, it fosters particiption and debate and carries out permanent pedagogical tasks to explain what the right to communication is about and how to exercise it and how to file a complaint if it is not respected and violated by the media.

Here are the results: From december 2012 to the same month in 2015 the Defender of the Public of Audiovisual Communication Services of Argentina received more than 6.000 complaints, requiries and reports, trained more than 57.000 people, held 17 public hearings and more than 30 workshops during  100 hours. 

The 17 public hearings, which in 2014 focused on boys, girls and adolescents, whose eloquence, intelligence, spontaneity and feelings were surprising, reported the the Defenders´s office.  Also in 2015, 90 mutual cooperation agreements were signed with different public organizations and representatives of communication services. 

Singe 2012 the Defender of the Public has accompanied native peoples throughout the country in the creation of new radio stations. The Audiovisual Communication Service Law was translated into five of their languages and in 2015 the Defender organized the first Latin American Meeting of native peoples and farmers about audiovisual communication services. The event was made up of 50 projects from 16 provinces and 18 native peoples in the region.

ONO Conference, Buenos Aires, 2016

1.   La Conferencia anual de la ONO, esta vez in Buenos Aires,  reúne a defensores y defensoras de 22 países, 5 continentes, uno de los temas: medios y audiencias ante la crisis los refugiados en Europa: 
2. Tom Naegles , de Standaard, Belgia, dice: media debe ser una plataforma para discutir sobre este asunto
3. Stephen Pritchard , the Observer, UK: los redacciones deberían enviar especialistas a los países, sería útil. 

 

  

 #ONO BA2016 Guy Gendron,Radio-Canada: „Regulating online comments, implications for freedom of expressions“ Deficil!

#ONO BA2016 Olga Restrepo,Colombia:falta de estabilidad laboral de los defensores afecta el trabajo de las veedurias

 #ONO BA2016Cynthia Ottaviano, defensora del Público de Argentina:Communication es un derecho humano

 Cynthia Ottaviano:ombuds son importante en una democraticia
 

„Los periodistas mismos no tienen tiempo de involucrarse con los lectores“ Tom Naegels #Bélgica #ONOBA2016
„La gente que aporta comentarios quiere ser valorada, deberíamos hacerlo“ Tom Naegels #ONOBA2016 #Bélgica
  

    
 
   
    
   

Wo „Arnie“ Schwarzenegger groß wurde — Besuch am Muscle Beach in L.A.

Wo „Arnie“ groß wurde

Von Ralf Nehmzow

Der Muscle Beach bei Los Angeles ist eine Touristen-Attraktion – hier löste Arnold Schwarzenegger in den 1970ern den Fitness-Boom aus, und noch heute folgen ihm unzählige Kraftprotze

Die Augen der Kraftsportler leuchten. Man muss nur seinen Namen nennen, dann werden die Männer, die sich an diesem Sonntagmorgen hier versammelt haben und ihre Muskeln stärken, euphorisch. Arnold Schwarzenegger? Einer von ihnen, Mike, macht eine ernste Miene, als wolle er seine gleich folgende Botschaft mit angemessener Würde verkünden, dann sagt er: „Arnie? Ja, heute Morgen war er hier, so gegen acht Uhr. Er hat kurz gegrüßt, dann joggte er am Strand.“ Arnie sei immer mal wieder dort, ergänzt er, am Muscle Beach, dem berühmten Strandabschnitt bei Venice und Santa Monica. Es ist die legendäre Meile, wo einst der Fitness-Wahn entstand, die Keimzelle des Boom.

Mike ist 36 Jahre alt. Er hat Bizeps wie Arnie und einen von der Sonne Kaliforniens oder Sonnenstudios gebräunten Körper. Mit anderen Sportlern, ebenso reich bestückt mit Muskeln, trainiert er regelmäßig am Venice Beach. Dort, wo Arnold Schwarzenegger vor Jahrzehnten das erste Mal für seine Bodybuilding-Profi-Karriere schuftete, seinen Bizeps von 58 Zentimetern aufbaute, seinen sogenannten Masterplan ersann, der ihn zum fünffachen Mr. Universum, zum fünffachen Mr. Olympia, zum Filmstar und zum Gouverneur von Kalifornien machte, tummeln sich heute Touristen. Es ist ein Kultort. Und Drehort für unzählige Filme. Klar, Hollywood, Beverly Hills und den Walk of Fame auf dem Hollywood Boulevard, wo sich die Superstars verewigt haben, muss man gesehen haben, wenn man für ein paar Tage in Los Angeles ist. Andere Hotspots der Welt-Metropole oder Kunstmonumente wie etwa die Walt Disney Concert Hall mit ihrem futuristischen Architekturstil auch. Aber ein Abstecher nach Santa Monica ist etwas ganz Besonderes, eine Oase zum Durchatmen, Pause von der Hektik in Los Angeles und nur 30 Kilometer davon entfernt. Mit dem Bus „Rapid“ No. 10 geht es von der Hope Street, Ecke First Street, für zwei US-Dollar über Downtown L.A. und den Highway durch einige Stadtviertel, und man ist nach knapp einer Stunde am Ziel.

Ja, er ist noch zu spüren, der Mythos vom Muscle Beach aus den 1940er- oder 1950er-Jahren. In den 70ern machte dann Arnold Schwarzenegger Bodybuilding und Wellness endgültig in den USA populär. Auch viele Prominente drehen heute dort ihre Runden, skaten, rollern oder zeigen sich einfach nur. Auf der Promenade reihen sich die Souvenirläden aneinander gleich einer Perlenschnur. Kettchen hier, T-Shirts da, Pullover und mehr, von Schrill-pink bis blütenweiß kann man sie erwerben, Kitsch und Kunst. Der Muscle Beach, das ist eine weitläufige Strandmeile, aber streng genommen ist es heute ein mehrere Meter hoher Betonklotz, der zu Ehren der avantgardistischen Athleten von einst errichtet wurde. Der Muscle Beach Gym ist ein Bodybuilderstudio unter freiem Himmel. Eine Bühne mit einem kleinen Zaun. Ein paar Fitnessgeräte sind dort aufgebaut. Wer will und die Power dazu hat, kann sich für eine Tagesgebühr von zehn Dollar oder mit einer Jahres-Mitgliedskarte zu 170 Dollar in Form bringen. Gewichte stemmen, sich dehnen und strecken, sich quälen wie einst Schwarzenegger und all die anderen Idole und Fitness-Freaks. Ein Bild hängt von Arnie im Kassenhäuschen, mit seinem Autogramm versehen, Ehrensache. Dahinter sind ein paar Felder mit Körben für Basketball. Im übertragenen Sinn bezeichnet Muscle Beach heute auch die Umgebung in Venice, in der eine große Zahl von Bodybuilding- und Fitnessstudios eingerichtet wurden.

Bodybuilder Mike stemmt an diesem Morgen seine Gewichte. Er sei Jura-Student und Schauspieler, erzählt er knapp, und „in Hollywood zu Hause“. In welchen Rollen er auftrat? Da schweigt er, während er sich mit dem Handtuch den Schweiß von der Haut wischt. Ein paarmal in der Woche trainiere er. Muskeln zu formen sei sein Hobby und Arnie sein Vorbild. „Natürlich möchte ich einmal so bekannt sein wie er.“ Auch er kenne und verehre den Österreicher, sagt Gregg Donovan. Jahrelang war er der „Beverly Hills Ambassador“, der Botschafter von Beverly Hills, eine Art Empfangsherr für Besucher des Rodeo Drive, einer der Touristenattraktionen von Los Angeles, jener Straße, in der Stars einkaufen gehen. Jeden Tag stand Gregg Donovan an der Kreuzung, lächelte Touristen an, beantwortete ihre Fragen. Immer wieder trainiert er hier am Muscle Beach. „Thomas Gottschalk, Arnold Schwarzenegger, ich kenne viele Berühmtheiten“, erzählt er wichtig, nachdem er ein paar Klimmzüge absolviert hat.

Fast jeder dort hat offenbar Schwarzenegger-Geschichten zu erzählen. „Früher habe ich ihn mal in seinem Restaurant in Santa Monica gesehen“, sagt Thorsten Hoins, Unternehmensberater aus Hamburg-Altona. Seit 27 Jahren lebt er mit seiner Familie in einem Vorort von Los Angeles. Einmal, vor vielen Jahren, habe er Schwarzenegger auch mal kurz gesprochen. Für eine Agentur aus Deutschland hatte Thorsten Hoins damals Drehbücher gesichtet. Einmal lieferte er eines in Hollywood ab. „Am Set war dann plötzlich Arnie, wir haben nett geplaudert.“

Auch Thorsten Hoins, der in seiner Kindheit oft in St. Peter-Ording war und heute schon mal „den frischen, kräftigen Nordseewind“ vermisst, hat seine Erinnerungen an Santa Monica und Venice Beach. „Dort habe ich viele Jahre gesurft, dort habe ich das Fahren auf Motorrollern gelernt“, sagt der Familienvater von drei Kindern. Vor allem an den Wochenenden hat die Strandpromenade, der Ocean Front Walk oder kurz Boardwalk, eine besondere Anziehungskraft für Bewohner von Los Angeles wie auch für Touristen. Ein buntes Völkchen tummelt sich dort: Spaziergänger, Straßenkünstler, Musiker, Maler, Wahrsager, Artisten. Der Strand selbst ist Treffpunkt von Beachvolleyballspielern, Wellenreitern, Wind- und Kitesurfern.

Und, die Fitness-Strandmeile hat eine lange Tradition: Der ursprüngliche Muscle Beach befand sich seit den 1930er-Jahren in der Nähe des Piers von Santa Monica, ein paar Kilometer nördlich. Schillernde, vergilbte Bilder erinnern an den Kult: Auf dem Gelände gab es einst öffentliche Vorstellungen von Turnern und Athleten. „Muscle Beach, die Geburtsstätte des Fitness-Booms des 20. Jahrhunderts“, steht auf einem Schild, das unweit des Piers in den Sand gerammt ist. In den 1950er- Jahren ging die Popularität des ursprünglichen Muscle Beach stark zurück. 1959 wurde er schließlich ganz geschlossen, nachdem es auf dem Gelände eine Vergewaltigung gegeben hatte. Ein paar Fitnessgeräte stehen dort heute noch, für einfache Turnübungen. John, ein Psychologie-Student, hangelt sich gerade an Seilen von Pfahl zu Pfahl. „Das ist eine Abwechslung zum Studium“, sagt der junge Mann. Ein paar Meter weiter machen die Schüler Narcis und Dominic ihre Surfboards startklar fürs Wellenreiten. „Wir sind damit aufgewachsen“, sagt Dominic, „surfen hier immer nach der Schule.“

Holzhäuschen mit Jeeps davor, sportliche Frauen und Männer in gelben Polo-Shirts am Strand erinnern an „Baywatch“, an die Bademeister aus der gleichnamigen weltberühmten TV-Serie. Am Muscle Beach wurden manche Szenen dafür gedreht. Da ist auch der Santa Monica Pier, 1909 gebaut, eine der bekanntesten Attraktionen. Er beherbergt neben dem kleinen Vergnügungspark Pacific Park mit Achterbahn und Riesenrad auch zahlreiche Restaurants und Geschäfte. Im Looff-Hippodrome-Gebäude am Anfang des Piers befindet sich seit 1947 ein altes Pferdekarussell. Den Eingang an der Ocean Avenue bildet ein weiß-blaues Tor. Nachts ist es mit Neonlicht angestrahlt – eine Kulisse für Kultfilme wie „Forrest Gump“ mit Tom Hanks. Nur ein paar Gehminuten sind es zur Fußgängerzone Third Street, zur Promenade. Geschäfte, Restaurants und Kinos findet man über drei Blocks zwischen dem Einkaufszentrum Santa Monica Place und dem Wilshire Boulevard. Für Nostalgie-Fans: In Santa Monica endet auch die historische Route 66 an der Ecke Lincoln/Olympic Boulevard.

Breite Wege wurden für die Freizeit-Sportler angelegt

Überall kann man Surfboards und andere Fitness-Ausrüstung mieten. Und natürlich Fahrräder, zum Beispiel bei Sea Mist Rentals, 1619 Ocean Front Walk, direkt unter dem Pier. Ein Rad gibt es für sieben US-Dollar die Stunde. Es ist Mittag geworden, und die Radler und Skater stürmen die Meile am Strand zwischen Santa Monica und Venice Beach. Breite Wege wurden für die Freizeit-Sportler angelegt. Die Sonne ist hoch über die Berge von Santa Monica aufgestiegen, Siesta in Kalifornien. Familien haben es sich am Strand bequem gemacht, ihre Kühltaschen fürs Picknick ausgepackt. Es ist kaum noch ein freies Plätzchen zu finden.

Zurück nach Venice Beach. Zur Meile. Ein Mann dreht auf Rollerblades seine Runden. Harry Perry ist sein Name, mit seiner Elektro-Gitarre tourt der 62-Jährige seit 1973 regelmäßig über den Boardwalk. Der Mann ist ein Unikum, jeder kennt ihn hier. Er kurvt umher, spielt Songs und lässt sich von Touristen dabei fotografieren. Eine Legende, die auch in zahlreichen Filmen zu sehen ist, wie er nicht müde wird zu erzählen. „Hierher kommen viele Stars“, sagt er, zum Beispiel unlängst Talkshow-Gastgeber Jay Leno. Perry erzählt hastig seine Vita. „Sorry, heute sind viele Touristen hier, ich muss arbeiten“, sagt er und saust nach ein paar Minuten von dannen. Wenig später hat er zwei japanische Frauen an seiner Seite, ein schnelles Fotomotiv als Souvenir, für ein paar Dollar.

Am Muscle Beach trainiert am Nachmittag niemand mehr. Verwaist ist die kleine Trainingsbühne. Kein Arnie weit und breit. Wer den Bodybuilder-Senior in Aktion sehen möchte, der muss früh morgens kommen. Oder die Website von Schwarzenegger besuchen: Dort gibt es Fotos und Videos von Arnie im Muscle Beach Gym, umgeben von Gleichgesinnten und Fans, die ihrem Idol hautnah kommen wollen. Der Fitness-Wahn am Muscle Beach, multimedial und rund um die Uhr zu bestaunen – die Show muss weitergehen.

Is the phrase “Voodoo economics” racist?

 

We had an interesting discussion in our ombuds group: 

Kathy English, Public Editor, Toronto Star had this case, poses the following query: 

Has anyone ever received any concerns that the phrase “Voodoo economics” is racist?

 

Does anyone have any style or policy guidelines on using this phrase?
I have a complaint from a group in the Black community taking issue with an editorial page headline “Voodoo budgeting” from and the sentence: “So, year after year, city hall is stuck relying on voodoo economics.”
They believe the reference to voodoo economics is racist and that it denigrates the “cultural and spiritual practices of Africa and Haiti.”
“”There is really no excuse for the Star’s carelessly racist use of the word.”

This is a new one for me and I wonder if anyone has ever dealt with this- or if you have any views to guide me in responding.

Many Thanks
Kathy English, Public Editor
Toronto Star

———————

 

 

 

I’m sure the word has made it into AP copy now and then but I’d
recommend avoiding it because of the connection to the Haitian
religion and its tiredness by now — was it George Bush Sr. who firs
used it? Also, of course, there’s a debate about whether it should be
voodoo or voudou …

Tom Kent, AP:

———————————–

 

 

Interesting one. From what I can tell it doesn’t appear to be practitioners of the religion who are complaining. I’ve played around with different contexts – eg. „Doukhoubour economics“ would be rather obviously insulting – and different phrasing that might offend a different group, eg. „this is wizardry, not economics“.
I don’t consider it racist by any definition, but I can appreciate the sensitivities. It’s not a precise word and there’s no need to use it. I too believe it’s a phrase best avoided.

 

 

I agree with Patricia and Tom. I don’t consider it racist, but it is tired and not very precise. Is the implication that there is „magic thinking“ going on? I have never had an inquiry about this one, but very early on in my career I remember a long and painful phone call with someone who felt it racist to ever use the word black in a negative sense –as in it’s a black day for…
The real lesson here is stay way from cliche.

Esther Enkin
CBC Ombudsman

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But I’m not sure I would apply it to the rule out the use of voodoo economics. There is a tendency these days for minority groups to be offended by the use of words depicting specific aspects of their culture or religion out of context or figuratively. For instance, there was a debate a few weeks back in Québec when Radio-Canada announced a new show for next fall which was supposed to be call « Pow Wow ». But the management people changed their mind after first nations representatives remonstrated, arguing there was a spiritual side to a Pow Wow which is not just a big party and that using it for the kind of show Radio-Canada intended to air was an insult to aboriginal culture.

It’s not useless to remind that the expression voodoo economics has been used for 35 years to point out the magical thinking some saw (G. H.W. Bush in the first place who invented the expression) in the economic hypothesis of Ronald Regan. One could always take offense with the use of religious or cultural terms out of context, but I’m not convinced it would be reasonable to rule it out. What would you do if someone protested the use of an expression like « it’s not very kosher », or as we say in french « ça n’est pas très catholique » (not very catholic) ?

I’m more familiar with those in french, but i’m sure there are lots of expressions in all langages referring to religion, or religious terms in everyday language, or culture generally speaking in the same manner. Don’t you say in english « turkeys voting for Christmas », « judgment of Solomon », « baptism of fire », or « white bread », or « it’s greek to me », and so on ? To sum up or to put it more simply, I don’t think it would be wise to ban metaphoric use of religious terms.

Pierre Tourangeau
Ombudsman des Services français

 

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I find myself in substantial agreement with Pierre. There is a growing tendency for ethnic and religious groups to attempt to appropriate language and determine for themselves what is or is not offensive. Voodoo economics is a well-known use referring to the magical properties such economics would have to have in order to be believed. More recently in the UK I have referred to Voodoo (opinion) “polls” – normally self-selecting online samples. Within the meaning of voodoo – which has long since moved beyond the quasi-religious – these uses seem perfectly reasonable. I would prefer to defend the development of language and not allow it to be colonised and depicted and, in the case of voodoo, as causing some (wholly unintended) slight based on a narrow former meaning.

Incidentally, whatever else voodoo is, it is not racist – at worst it could be described as religiously insensitive, but only in you accept its original narrow meaning.

David Jordan

Director, Editorial Policy and Standards
BBC

 

 

La figura de la Defensoría de Audiencia – muy interesante y importante, bien para Mexico?

Mg. Flavia Pauwels , Relaciones Internacionales
Defensoría del Público de Servicios de Comunicación Audiovisual, Argentina sends the following information, ella envia informationes interesantes:

Mexican News Ombudsmen suggests creating a Defender of the Public like as the Argentinian
The News Ombudsmen of public and private media of Mexico signed a document in which they recommended the Congress to include an entity similar to the one in Argentina in the bill about radio and television. They said that the Defender of the Public of Argentina is “a valuable contribution to the new model of communication that is being built in Mexico”.

 

Posicionamiento de los defensores de las audiencias sobre la Iniciativa del presidente Enrique Peña Nieto en materia de radiodifusión y telecomunicaciones
El 24 de marzo de 2014, el presidente Enrique Peña Nieto presentó ante el Senado la iniciativa de Ley Federal de Telecomunicaciones y Radiodifusión y la Ley del Sistema de Público de Radiodifusión en México.

Por tratarse de propuestas legislativas que abordan, entre otros temas, los derechos de las audiencias, competencia de estas defensorías, hacemos público nuestro posicionamiento al respecto:

1. Nos parece un acierto que, por primera vez en la historia de la regulación en materia de medios de comunicación, se incorpore en una propuesta del Poder Ejecutivo la figura de la Defensoría de Audiencia, como “responsable de recibir, documentar, procesar y dar seguimiento a las observaciones, quejas, sugerencias, peticiones o señalamientos de las personas que componen la audiencia”, de acuerdo con lo establecido en la Sección II del Capítulo IV, relativo a los “Derechos de las Audiencias”.

2. También nos parece positivo que cada emisora de radio y televisión cuente con un Código de Ética, como parte de sus compromisos de autorregulación frente a sus audiencias, ya que el cumplimiento de lo establecido en este tipo de documentos contribuye a hacer realidad la función a la que están obligadas las estaciones de radio y televisión, a producir contenidos de mayor calidad -apegados a los principios éticos a los que se comprometen los concesionarios-, a respetar la legislación y a sus audiencias, y a evitar a futuro algún tipo de sanción administrativa en esta materia.

Sin embargo, la propuesta del Poder Ejecutivo tiene a nuestro parecer diversas omisiones e inconsistencias, como las que se precisan a continuación:

1. LOS DERECHOS DE LAS AUDIENCIAS PUEDEN CONVERTIRSE EN LETRA MUERTA

Los ocho derechos de las audiencias (que se detallarán más adelante) incorporados en la iniciativa no sólo son insuficientes, sino también podrían convertirse en letra muerta, ya que su debido cumplimiento queda a voluntad del medio de comunicación y del Defensor de las Audiencias. Establece el documento: “La promoción y defensa de estos derechos deberán ser incorporados en el contenido de los Códigos de Ética de los concesionarios de radiodifusión o de televisión o audio restringidos” (artículo 257).

Ante su incumplimiento, no existe ni un solo mecanismo de sanción, lo que deja en un nivel de alta vulnerabilidad a los radioescuchas y televidentes. Lo mismo sucede con la mayoría de las disposiciones contenidas en el artículo 227 de la propuesta, relativas a la programación destinada al público infantil.

Si bien coincidimos en que siempre será mejor la autorregulación que la sanción, consideremos que los derechos de las audiencias deben quedar garantizados y no deben dejarse desprotegidos ante incumplimientos de las defensorías de las audiencias, los medios de comunicación y sus respectivos códigos de ética.

ONO-board-member Ralf Nehmzow (r.) and Stephen Pritchard, former ONO-President, at a presentation in the headquarters of Axel Springer Group, Publishing House in Berlin, 2013.
2. LOS DERECHOS DE LAS AUDIENCIAS PROPUESTOS NO RECUPERAN PLENAMENTE LOS PRINCIPIOS DE LA REFORMA CONSTITUCIONAL EN MATERIA DE TELECOMUNICACIONES

El artículo 257 de la iniciativa establece sólo ocho derechos de las audiencias:

“I. Recibir contenidos que reflejen el pluralismo ideológico, político, social y cultural y lingüístico de la Nación;

II. Recibir programación que incluya diferentes géneros que respondan a la expresión de la diversidad y pluralidad de ideas y opiniones que fortalezcan la vida democrática de la sociedad;

III. Que se diferencie con claridad la información noticiosa de la opinión de quien la presenta;

IV. Que se aporten elementos para distinguir entre la publicidad y el contenido de un programa;

V. Que se respeten los horarios de los programas y que se avise con oportunidad los cambios a la misma;

VI. Ejercer el derecho de réplica, términos de su ley reglamentaria;

VII. Que se mantenga la misma calidad y niveles de audio y video durante la programación, incluidos los espacios publicitarios, y

VIII. Los demás que se establecen en ésta y otras leyes”.

Si bien los derechos mencionados son adecuados y pertinentes, el articulado no incluye otros derechos que se encuentran definidos en la propia reforma constitucional de materia de telecomunicaciones aprobada el año pasado y otros ordenamientos legales, por lo que proponemos la incorporación de los siguientes:

– Contar con servicios de subtitulaje, doblaje al español o lengua de señas mexicana para accesibilidad a personas con debilidad auditiva. Estos servicios deberán estar disponibles en algún segmento de al menos uno de los programas noticiosos,

– Garantizar la transmisión de contenidos no discriminatorios de ningún tipo;

– Proteger la identidad de los menores involucrados en informaciones periodísticas relacionadas con niños y niñas en procesos administrativos y judiciales;

– Garantizar el acceso a contenidos plurales que atiendan a las necesidades de comunicación de grupos en situación de vulnerabilidad como es el caso de mujeres, niñez, inmigrantes, personas con capacidades especiales, refugiados, así como comunidades lingüísticas y culturales;

– Garantizar la protección de datos personales, intimidad y vida privada de las personas, y

– En informaciones periodísticas, garantizar la presunción de inocencia de cualquier persona que se vea involucrada en procesos judiciales y de investigación de los delitos.

3.      SIN PROTECCIÓN LOS DERECHOS DE LAS AUDIENCIAS INFANTILES

El artículo 227 de la iniciativa, incorpora una serie de obligaciones en la programación de la radio y la televisión para “promover un desarrollo armónico e integral de la niñez y la juventud, así como contribuir al cumplimiento de los objetivos educativos planteados en la artículo tercero constitucional y otros ordenamientos legales”.

Dichas obligaciones nos parecen adecuadas, pero consideramos que deben incorporarse como parte de los derechos de las audiencias para apoyar las acciones de autorregulación y regulación, más aun por tratarse de contenidos sensibles para una población vulnerable como la niñez.

4. LAS AUDIENCIAS DE SISTEMAS DE TV DE PAGA NO TIENEN DERECHOS

No obstante que la mitad de los hogares en México ya cuentan con servicios de televisión de paga, la iniciativa sólo obliga a las estaciones de radio y televisión abiertas a contar con Defensoría de Audiencias.

Consideramos que los sistemas de televisión de paga deben tener también mecanismos de autorregulación y compromisos con sus audiencias. La creación de defensorías en sistemas de televisión por cable, por satélite o IPTV es obligada porque decenas de concesionarios producen contenidos propios o compran producción nacional, cuyos contenidos deben cumplir la función social que les obliga la Constitución y les debe obligar la legislación secundaria.

5. SECRETARÍA DE GOBERNACIÓN YA NO DEBE REGULAR CONTENIDOS

La iniciativa propone mantener en Secretaría de Gobernación la regulación de contenidos. Consideremos que esto no debe continuar así porque cuando este tipo de regulación se encuentra atribuido al gobierno federal, se corre un riesgo mayor –por el uso político de este instrumento- en la vulneración de dos derechos fundamentales: la libertad de expresión y el derecho a la información, tal como ha sucedido en décadas anteriores.

Asimismo, en la mayoría de los países desarrollados, la regulación de contenidos se encuentra entre las facultades de los órganos independientes de radiodifusión y telecomunicaciones. Hay dos casos destacados: la Comisión Federal de Comunicaciones (FCC) de Estados Unidos y la Oficina de Comunicaciones (Ofcom) de la Gran Bretaña, que regulan espectro radioeléctrico, redes de telecomunicación, comunicación satelital y contenidos.

La regulación de contenidos debe ser trasladada al Instituto Federal de Telecomunicaciones (IFT). La reforma constitucional estableció al menos tres facultades explícitas en esta materia para el órgano autónomo: supervisión de máximos de publicidad en radio y televisión, de la publicidad y contenidos dirigidos a la población infantil, y regulación en la retransmisión de los canales abiertos de TV en los sistemas de TV de paga.

La iniciativa incumple con estas disposiciones. Esto debe corregirse y mejorarse con lo que se buscaba: dotar al IFT de la atribución plena para regular contenidos y convertirse en el órgano garante del cumplimiento de las obligaciones relacionadas con los derechos de las audiencias, así como de la creación y actuación de las Defensorías de las Audiencias.

6. SIN INSTRUMENTO DE DEFENSA EFECTIVA DE LOS DERECHOS

En caso de que el medio de comunicación no atienda las recomendaciones de la o el titular de la Defensoría de la Audiencia, no existen en la iniciativa mecanismos alternos para la protección efectiva de los derechos de las audiencias. Si bien la Defensoría puede dar a conocer públicamente sus resoluciones, como una manera de poner en evidencia alguna violación al Código de Ética o a un derecho de la audiencia, esto no significa que el medio hará las rectificaciones derivadas de las recomendaciones.

Consideramos que ante situaciones graves, la iniciativa debe considerar la posibilidad para que la defensoría pueda acudir al pleno del IFT para que éste emita una resolución final.

7. NO SE GARANTIZA AUTONOMÍA DEL TITULAR DE LA DEFENSORÍA

La iniciativa establece que “La actuación de la defensoría de audiencia se ajustará a los criterios de imparcialidad e independencia, cuya prioridad será la de hacer valer los derechos de la audiencia, según los códigos de ética que haya firmado o a los que se haya adherido cada concesionario” (artículo 258).

Imparcialidad e independencia son dos características fundamentales que debe tener la o el titular de la Defensoría de Audiencias, pero esto puede convertirse también en letra muerta si los concesionarios no asumen con convicción ética y autorregulatoria la creación en sus medios de esta figura.

Por lo anterior proponemos que en la iniciativa se incorpore un artículo en el que se establezca que la defensora o el defensor tengan autonomía funcional respecto de los órganos de administración y dirección del medio, con el propósito de evitar interferencias indebidas con las actividades que constituyen su función sustantiva, para lo cual el medio deberá brindarle el apoyo material y humano para el desempeño de sus funciones. También coincidimos en que debe contar con autonomía técnica, para atender en los términos más amplios las demandas de las audiencias, de conformidad con los derechos que a éstas les asisten, particularmente respecto del derecho de réplica.

En el caso de los medios públicos, proponemos que la designación del director o del consejo directivo de la emisora sea sometido al visto bueno del IFT, que deberá velar porque el currículum de la persona propuesta sea afín a sus obligaciones y derechos

8. INDEFINICIÓN EN LA DURACIÓN DEL CARGO

La iniciativa establece que “Cada concesionario que preste servicio de radiodifusión fijará el periodo de encargo del defensor de la audiencia, el que podrá ser prorrogable por dos ocasiones.” Esto significa que un Defensor podría estar en el cargo por 2, 5, 10, 15 años o más y ser ratificado discrecionalmente por dos periodos más.

Consideramos que esta ambigüedad y la posibilidad para que un Defensor permanezca en su función por periodos tan extensos, poco contribuye a la transparencia y a la autonomía con respecto de sus resoluciones, por lo que recomendamos se incorpore una periodicidad mínima de dos años y un máximo de tres con la posibilidad de ser ratificado una vez más.

EN CONSECUENCIA

Exhortamos a los legisladores a que se comprometan efectivamente con los derechos de las audiencias, vulnerados durante décadas, y se realicen los cambios necesarios durante su proceso de dictamen.

Finalmente proponemos que los legisladores revisen la experiencia de la Defensoría del Público, establecido por la Ley de Servicios de Comunicación Audiovisual en Argentina, una figura inédita, independiente de los medios de comunicación y del gobierno federal, que le rinde cuentas al Congreso y que trabaja eficientemente en la autorregulación mediática de la mano con los concesionarios, la sociedad civil, profesores y estudiantes, niñas y niños, los anunciantes, a través de cursos, foros, pláticas, para que se conozcan y se fortalezcan los derechos de las audiencias. La creación de una figura similar en México podría ser un aporte muy valioso en el nuevo modelo comunicacional que se construye en México, así como en materia de autorregulación periodística y de contenidos en general.

Francisco Prieto, Defensor del Televidente de Canal 22

Beatríz Solís Leree, Defensora del Radioescucha de Radio Educación

Adriana Solórzano, Mediadora del Instituto Mexicano de la Radio (IMER)

Gabriel Sosa Plata, Ombudsman de Noticias MVS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

La Defensora
La Maestra Beatriz Solís Leree es la nueva Defensora del radioescucha de Radio Educación para el periodo 2012-2014.
\“Radio Educación es el pionero de la radio cultural en México y mi tarea será construir un trabajo colectivo, acorde con la misión de los medios públicos. Creo firmemente que la labor de un defensor es conocer todos los días las necesidades del radioescucha\“

La Mtra. Solís Leree es investigadora y académica universitaria. Actualmente es profesora de la División de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades en el Departamento de Educación y Comunicación y la Carrera de Comunicación Social de la Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Unidad Xocimilco.

Además, ha ocupado diversos cargos dentro de la Universidad como Coordinadora de la Carrera de Comunicación (1978 – 1980), Jefe de la Sección de Difusión Cultural (1982- 1984), Coordinadora de Extensión Universitaria (1984-1986) y de 2000 a 2005, Jefe del Area de Investigación Basica y Documental.

A lo largo de su carrera profesional ha realizado una gran cantidad de actividades relacionadas con la difusión, promoción y valoración de los medios de servicio público. Foros, artículos coordinación de publicaciones se cuentan en su currículum, colocándola como una de las más importantes protagonistas en el proceso y debate en torno a la legislación y la modernización del marco jurídico de los medios y las telecomunicaciones en México y América Latina.

Su actividad como asesora en el H. Congreso de la Unión de México le ha permitido participar en iniciativas diversas y dar a conocer estudios y evaluaciones sobre los medios en México.

En 1996 realizó el estudio titulado Diagnóstico de las Políticas de Comunicación y su normatividad y Propuestas Legislativas para la Comisión Especial de Comunicación Social de la LVI Legislatura.; de 1997 a 2000 fue Asesora en la Comisión de Radio, Televisión y Cinematografía de la LVII Legislatura de la Cámara de Diputados y de la Comisión de Reforma del Estado y de 2002 a 2006 fungió como Asesora de la Comisión de Comunicaciones y Transportes y de la Subcomisión de Dictamen de la Ley Federal de Radio y Televisión.

Su participación en asociaciones profesionales diversas, tanto de México como de América Latina, han impulsado también la participación de la sociedad civil en los procesos de información y comunicación públicas y en el acceso y el derecho a la información.

La Mtra. Solís ha manifestado su interés por colaborar en una emisora de la importancia y la presencia de Radio Educación y el reto que significa aceptar una responsabilidad como Defensora del radioescucha para llevar a cabo un proyecto de trabajo propositivo y de construcción con las audiencias y la comunidad de la emisora.

ONO-Konferenz in Hamburg – weltweites Echo von Bayern bis Indien

Die Weltkonferenz der ONO in Hamburg im Mai 2014 hat ein reges Echo in den Medien gefunden – rund um den Erdball, in Deutschland, UK bis Kanada und Indien… Hier einige Kolumnen der Kollegen:

 

 

ONO Annual Conference 2014

May 13 2014
By Kirk LaPointe (on the photo right, with Hamburg´s mayor Olaf Scholz and Stephen Pritchard)
Kirk LaPointe, Executive Director, ONO:
The surveillance leaks by Edward Snowden. The firing of an ombudsman for unfurling media corruption. The lingering scandal of phone-hacking. The controversy about unpublishing. Vulnerable sources and subjects. Do-it-yourself ethics. Transparency in government.
The annual conference of the Organization of News Ombudsmen (ONO) tackled these contemporary issues May 4-7. The Hamburger Abendblatt and Axel Springer publishing group played host to about 60 delegates.
The role of the ombudsman is growing in Europe, South America, Africa and Asia. Even in North America, ONO has gained more than lost members in the last year. But the conference heard many concerns about media standards, the difficulty in enforcing them, and the declining public trust in journalism in many parts of the world.
The themes of the conference were secrecy, standards, corruption and cover-ups. These concepts are at the leading edge of work by media ombudsmen and public editors worldwide as they increasingly blend public complaints with broader issues of journalistic independence. Six ombudsmen from six continents (Sally Begbie of SBS, Michael Getler of PBS, George Claassen of Media24, AS Panneerselvan of The Hindu, Tarmu Tammerk of Estonian Broadcasting, and Cynthia Ottaviano of the Argentine defender’s office) outlined the common challenges and unique situations in their regions.
The conference heard from award-winning actor and comedian Steve Coogan on the invasion of privacy by British media and the need for regulation to curtail the excesses of the tabloids. Pulitzer-winning journalist Ewen McAskill of The Guardian spoke of the bravery of his news organization in publishing the revelations of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
Yavuz Baydar, the European Prize-winning former ombudsman for Sabah in Turkey, chronicled the events that led to his firing for publishing details of media corruption in his country.
The mayor of Hamburg, Olaf Scholz, discussed the need for independent but transparent media, just as he highlighted the importance of open government, to gain public trust. German panelists reinforced the valued role of ombudsmen in their country.
Cynthia Ottaviano, the Argentine public defender, and CBC ombudsman Esther Enkin explored the challenges of protecting vulnerable sources as they deal with and are reported on by media. Tom Naegels of de Standaard in Belgium examined the dilemmas of transparency for ombudsmen in handling sensitive cases.
David Jordan, the standards editor of the BBC, led a discussion on the wide-ranging and controversial perspectives about “unpublishing” online information. Tom Kent, the standards editor of the Associated Press, and Kirk LaPointe, ONO’s executive director and an adjunct professor at University of British Columbia, looked at the value and challenges of providing do-it-yourself ethical codes at fledgling organizations and with individual journalists.
Two ShopTalk sessions led by Sjoerd de Jong of NRC Handelsblad and Jeffrey Dvorkin of American Abroad delved into particular issues for the membership: sponsored content, pressure groups, standards amid speed, among others. There was local and national media coverage of the conference’s agenda.
The conference featured a boat cruise through the waterways of Hamburg and a gala dinner with what has become traditional regaling by some in our Dutch contingent.
At the ONO business meeting, a new board was elected. Tarmu Tammerk (Estonian Broadcasting) is the new ONO president. Esther Enkin (CBC) is the new vice president. The treasurer is Tom Kent (AP). Stephen Pritchard (Observer) is past-president, and he and Yavuz Baydar are ex-officio board members. Board members include: Gerardo Albarrán de Alba (Noticias MVS), Sally Begbie (SBS), George Claassen (Media24), David Jordan (BBC), Kirk LaPointe (ONO executive director), Ralf Nehmzow (Hamburger Abendblatt), Cynthia Ottaviano (Argentine defender’s office), AS Panneerselvan (The Hindu), Ignaz Staub (Tamedia AG), and Sylvia Stead (The Globe and Mail).
13 May 2014

 

 

The readers‘ editor on… Steve Coogan’s defence of Leveson
‚We are all champions of press freedom and public interest journalism,‘ declares Steve Coogan (on the photo with Ralf Nehmzow (r.)

 

Stephen Pritchard
The Observer, Sunday 11 May 2014
Jump to comments (12)

Steve Coogan addresses the ONO conference in Hamburg. Photograph: Michael Rauhe
The great port of Hamburg is a musical city. The birthplace of Brahms and once home to Telemann, CPE Bach, Gustav Mahler and briefly, of course, the Beatles, it seems to live and breathe music. Last week, for example, about 300 amateur brass players turned up in the main square and played their hearts out, all under the direction of a conductor who had to stand on a table to be seen across a glittering sea of trumpets, trombones, horns and tubas.

I was reminded of that sight and sound a couple of days later in a rather different context: a discussion on the British press at the annual conference of the Organization of News Ombudsmen (my last as president) held at the headquarters of Hamburg’s main newspaper, Hamburger Abendblatt.

At the conference, entitled „Secrets, standards, corruption and cover-ups: staying transparent in a murky world“, readers‘ editors and broadcasting standards editors from six continents tackled all manner of ethical issues, including, inevitably, the tortured progress of press regulation in the UK.

Those ranks of blaring brass came to mind when award-winning actor, writer, comedian and producer Steve Coogan described how a major section of the British press had drowned out mature debate on where the UK goes after the Leveson report. He travelled to Hamburg to deliver a counterblast to those newspapers that maintain that a system of regulation underpinned by a royal charter is an attack on press freedom and should be resisted.

Despite finding „the prospect of celebrities taking part in this slightly irksome“, he became involved in Hacked Off, the group that campaigns for victims of press intrusion, after he spent nearly £400,000 taking action against News International once he discovered his phone had been hacked.

„This has been characterised as me having a score to settle but I became involved principally because I saw a debate that wasn’t happening. I saw people who were victims of press intrusion not being given a platform,“ he said. Many people were scared of speaking out against intrusion because they feared the press would then seek to destroy them but he felt able to make a stand because his personal life had been raked over to such an extent that „they had emptied my closet of skeletons“.

He said the incentives to join a Leveson-compliant regulator (immunity to exemplary damages and full cost protection in court actions) were a benefit to journalism, particularly to smaller newspapers that might be financially crippled in the courts. He railed against those who cite false dangers to press freedom („a disingenuous cloak they wrap around themselves“) while ignoring the fact that only a few powerful people own the papers in Britain – a threat to press freedom in itself and a lack of plurality that puts the UK way down European freedom rankings, irrespective of press regulatory systems.

And he exposed what he called the myth of the foreign despot. „Some papers are saying foreign dictators – unnamed – are using the Leveson report as an excuse to impose state control on their press, but if a foreign dictator imposed Leveson he would be imposing voluntary, incentivised, independent self-regulation. In every case this would be a massive rolling back of state control. The Daily Mail and others should be campaigning for Leveson in China, Cuba and Zimbabwe.

„Even the wholly false notion of state control would not have come about if the tabloid press had not behaved so unethically. None of us want state control. We are all champions of press freedom and public interest journalism.“

So where does Hacked Off go, now that most of the industry has joined the Independent Press Standards Organisation, due to start work next month? Describing Ipso as a cosmetic exercise, Coogan remained optimistic that those papers that are currently outside either system would eventually sign up to a self-regulator recognised by the royal charter. „I don’t believe remaining newspapers will sign up to Ipso in its current form,“ he said. And if the impasse isn’t broken he had this warning for politicians: „There is an election on the horizon. Those people who made promises will be held to account on all sides of the political divide and the victims of press intrusion will remind people what this is all about.“

reader@observer.co.uk

 

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The Hindu A.S. Panneerselvan. Photo: S.R. Raghunathan
TOPICS
economy, business and finance
media

interior policy
data protection
Last week, news ombudsmen from across the world met at Hamburg in Germany for our annual deliberations and the topic was of both professional and general interest: “Secrets, standards, corruption and cover-ups: staying transparent in a murky world.” I am going to skip the details of three interesting subjects that were discussed at the conference as I have touched upon them in my earlier columns: the fallout of The Guardian’s decision to take up the Edward Snowden revelations, press intrusion and abuse leading to the Leveson Inquiry, and the state of the media in Turkey today.

The inevitability of digital platforms is that a problem arising in one part of the world becomes a global problem within a short span of time. The request to “unpublish” from the web archive is one of the new issues in front of news ombudsmen across the world. I have been receiving at least a couple of requests a month. There are arguments both for and against the takedown. Technology is not purely a boon but comes with its own attendant problems.

Recognising this complex reality, The Guardian has a dedicated section called “Internet privacy — the right to be forgotten” to discuss the issues involved in a dispassionate manner. The primary argument here is: “The internet has a long memory. But what if the pictures, data and personal information that it can pull up about you appear unfair, one-sided or just plain wrong? More and more people are claiming they have a “right to be forgotten” and are even trying to delete themselves from the web. The issue appears poised to generate legal, technological and moral wranglings for years to come.”

The session on unpublishing led by David Jordan, Director, Editorial Policy and Standards, British Broadcasting Corporation, managed to capture some of the real challenges in dealing with the request for removing content from the web archive. The principles for web archiving of media organisations, according to David Jordan, are: material published online will be part of a permanently accessible archive; the archive of online content is a matter of public record and its existence is in the public interest; material will not normally be removed or we risk erasing the past and altering history, and online content — whether part of a catch-up service or a permanent archive — should only be removed or amended in exceptional circumstances.

Risks after removal
Before removing any online content, Mr. Jordan alerted us that we must consider the potential harm such an action can do to the public interest, and the integrity of the archive or catch-up service. He said: “There is a risk, with removal, that we simply create suspicion about what else is missing and fuel conspiracy theories about its absence. We also need to consider the risk that information we remove may take on a life of its own and become distorted in the retelling. In the absence of the original content, it will be harder to refute inaccurate accounts of our content.”

Some of the participants also raised the question of the Internet cache that keeps some of the content widely in circulation and that in these cases, removal from one site may simply be ineffective. The questions that came up for discussion were: can things be done which fall short of removal? Should the public record always be sacrosanct? Do we have a duty to ensure that the public record is complete — e.g., an accurate report of arrest and charge/trial but no report of acquittal? Can steps short of removal solve the problem without compromising the record?

Two cases
Mr. Jordan, among other things, discussed two specific cases that may interest the readers of this newspaper. The first is a case of a law student charged in connection with a prank about a bomb threat in a public place. All charges against the law student were dropped well before the case went to trial. His lawyer said he was simply “in the wrong place at the wrong time.” A year later, the student requests that reports of the charges be removed from the online archive. He is job hunting and concerned that because searches of his name in Google pull up those articles he will be stigmatised.

The second, is a request from an Iranian political activist about his interview to the BBC. “I gave two interviews to the BBC website and my name is printed there. As you may know, political relations between Iran and the U.K. is tremendously worsening and the Iranian administration has passed a law that makes interviews with foreign media illegal and there could be severe consequences for any violation. Currently, I reside in the U.S. but I plan to visit Iran pretty soon and these interviews may be really troublesome. I would like to know if there is any possibility that my name and photo can be modified to anonymous due to security reasons.”

“The longtail of news: To unpublish or not to unpublish,” a paper by Kathy English, public editor of the Toronto Star, examines how news organisations throughout North America are responding to requests to unpublish news content. I propose to create a template for The Hindu in consultation with the Editor-in-Chief and the Editor over the next few months for unpublishing.

readerseditor@thehindu.co.in

Keywords: unpublishing news, online privacy debate, internet privacy, Snowden revelations, Editorial Policy and Standards, Turkey media, Reccip Tayip Erdogan, Leveson enquiry

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/Readers-Editor/to-unpublish-or-not-to-unpublish/article5998638.ece

—

Auf ein Wort
Am Samstag war der internationale Tag der Pressefreiheit. „Geheimnisse, Standards, Korruption und Vertuschung: Transparent bleiben in einer trüben Welt“, lautet das aktuelle Motto des Weltkongresses der Organisation der Medien-Ombudsleute (ONO).

Von Kerstin Dolde, (auf dem Foto bei der ONO-Präsentation der deutschen Medienombudsleute), Leseranwältin
Seit Montag findet in Hamburg die internationale Tagung statt, zum ersten Mal treffen sich die Teilnehmer in Deutschland. Journalisten aus aller Welt diskutieren über Qualitätsstandards, Lesergewinnung und Themen wie NSA und Snowden-Enthüllungen.

Medien-Ombudsleute, Leseranwälte oder -botschafter, die Bezeichnung ist in den Häusern unterschiedlich. Die Gemeinsamkeit: Sie alle vermitteln bei Anliegen und Beschwerden zwischen Bürgern und Medien, gehen auf Leserkritik ein und üben selbst Kritik. Auch die Frankenpost ist als ONO-Mitglied in Hamburg dabei: Unsere Zeitung wurde gebeten, den Kollegen aus aller Welt ihr Leseranwalts-Konzept und die Erfahrungen aus drei Jahren vorzustellen.

Äußerst prominent besetzt ist dabei die Riege der Redner dieser ONO-Tagung: Ewan MacAskill vom Londoner Guardian, der kürzlich zusammen mit Kollegen den Pulitzer-Preis für seine Enthüllung der NSA-Sammlung von Telefon- und Internetdaten sowie die Gespräche mit Whistleblower Edward Snowden bekam. Mac-Askill hält genauso einen Vortrag wie Yavuz Baydar. Der Kolumnist bekam kürzlich den Europäischen Pressepreis für seinen Kampf für die Pressefreiheit. Dazu ist der Oscar nominierte Schauspieler Steve Coogan („Philomena“) dabei, der über seine schlechten Erfahrungen mit der britischen Boulevardpresse berichtet.

Noch bis einschließlich heute, Mittwoch, diskutieren die Teilnehmer über wichtige Fragen wie diese: „Wie kann man die Qualität von Zeitungen steigern? Welche Rolle haben Medien im Spannungsfeld zwischen NSA-Spionage, den Sicherheitsinteressen von Staaten und öffentlichen Informationsinteressen der Bürger? Wie weit dürfen Medien gehen?

Die ONO engagiert sich seit 1980 für Qualitätsjournalismus und Pressefreiheit sowie für den Erhalt von ethischen Standards in den Medien.

 

 

ONO – the annual conference 2014 in Hamburg

 

 

 

Stephen Pritchard (l.) and Ralf Nehmzow, Checking the location in Hamburg, January 2014

 

We are really glad to host –  together with ONO –  ONO ́s 2014 annual conference in Hamburg, May, 4-7. Welcome to Germany and Hamburg!

 

A few issues: How Germany has embraced news ombudsmanship: German ombudsmen, with moderator Ralf Nehmzow After the Snowden-Case: The German press and politicians! 

 

And: Six-continent debrief: ONO members look at issues in Europe, Asia, North America, South America, Australia and Africa:  Tarmu Tammerk, Estonia; A.S. Panneerselvan, India; Michael Getler, U.S.; Cynthia Ottaviano, Argentina; Sally Begbie, Australia; George Claasen, South Africa.

(see the photo: ONO-Conference in L.A. 2013)

Keynote address: Bafta winner and Oscar-nominated comedian, actor, writer and producer Steve Coogan on press intrusion and abuse. Moderator: Stephen Pritchard.

Shoptalk groups, moderated by Jeffrey Dvorkin: Speed, social media, and the shifting newsroom; dealing with extreme political parties and pressure groups; plus other topics suggested by members.

Also: Vulnerability and trauma, the ombudsman’s role: Cynthia Ottaviano, Esther Enkin.

Disclosure in the digital age: How transparent can the ombudsman be? Tom Naegels, De Standaard, Brussels

The portable ombudsman, teaching and acquising standards in the absence of ombudsmen, Tom Kent, AP, Kirk LaPointe, ONO and UBC
Ralf Nehmzow, Ombuds Hamburger Abendblatt

Watch here, ONO-President Stephen Pritchard on the ONO:

 

Sochi Olympics: Media and the restricted news coverage

An deeply interesting issue comes up, also the media ombuds have to monitor this development: The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)  – an American independent nonprofit organization, based in New York City, New York, that promotes press freedom and defends the rights of journalists – brings up this: 

Media suffer winter chill in coverage of Sochi Olympics

In the run-up to the Sochi Winter Games, official repression and self-censorship have restricted news coverage of sensitive issues related to the Olympics, such as the exploitation of migrant workers, environmental destruction, and forced evictions. The information vacuum comes amid a generally poor climate for press freedom across Russia.

A CPJ special report by Elena Milashina and Nina Ognianova

Published January 28, 2014

NEW YORK
On October 17, 2013, Roman Kuznetsov, a construction worker from the Russian city Orenburg who had traveled to Sochi to help build the media center for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games, sewed up his lips using a needle and black thread, staging a one-man protest against his employer’s failure to pay his wages for months. On a blank sheet of paper, Kuznetsov wrote: “Please help get the reporters’ attention! I am not from around here.”

Exploitation of migrant workers is but one abuse that has stained preparations for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi in February, along with corruption, environmental damage, eviction of local residents with little or no compensation, bankruptcy of local businesses, and adoption of laws contrary to the Russian Constitution, local journalists and activists told CPJ. According to these sources and the international organization Human Rights Watch, which has done extensive research and advocacy on human rights in Russia ahead of the Games, these violations are known to local law enforcement, the Russian government, the national justice system, and the International Olympic Committee, or IOC—the Lausanne, Switzerland-based organizer and designated custodian of the Olympic principles of equality and human dignity through sports.

But the abuses have gone largely uncovered by the Russian news media. The majority of news outlets, particularly those controlled directly by the state, prefer to cover Sochi the way they would cover a deceased man: in a positive light or not at all. CPJ research shows that both official repression and self-censorship have restricted coverage of sensitive issues in the run-up to Sochi—the most expensive Games in Olympic history, according to news reports.

The information vacuum comes amid a generally poor climate for press freedom across Russia. Since returning to the presidency in May 2012, Vladimir Putin has signed a number of restrictive laws directly or indirectly curbing media and Internet freedom. In addition, a cycle of impunity has continued to chill coverage of sensitive subjects, with investigative journalism declining due to self-imposed or external censorship.

In compiling this report on local press freedom, CPJ’s Moscow correspondent spent a week in Sochi and the regional capital, Krasnodar, and interviewed dozens of people, including editors-in-chief, reporters for local and national media outlets, bloggers, rights activists, lawyers, and local residents.

Censorship and state financing

Sochi, a resort city on the Black Sea coast of the western Caucasus and adjacent to the Georgian Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia, is the de facto summer capital of Russia. With the presidential Bocharov Ruchei residence on the city’s outskirts and the frequent presence of the president, Sochi, population 370,000 according to the latest census, is known as “Putin’s town.” Tourism is the main economic driver. The food and food-processing industries were signatures of the area in Soviet times, but state farms and manufacturing plants are in decay. In the run-up to the Olympics, Sochi has become a boomtown, with high-rise residential and office complexes dotting a city otherwise filled with Stalinist Gothic architecture.

Development has not extended to the local media sector. Sochi residents rely mostly on national, state-owned news outlets, which have correspondents either in the city or the region. The local print media are all dependent on the municipal budget for survival, so critical information about political, social, and economic issues is scarce. Periodicals consist mainly of entertainment content reprinted from the Internet and local business advertisements.

In theory, the Olympics should be the main topic for Sochi journalists. Yet almost all local media—state- and privately owned—report only those news events that have been officially cleared for coverage, according to local journalists. These include the arrival of IOC delegations and public statements by federal and local officials praising the pace and progress of preparations.

President Vladimir Putin visits a volunteer center for the Olympics in Sochi in January. (Reuters/Alexei Nikolskiy)

“Local media largely ignore issues crucial to Sochi residents directly affected by the arrival of the Olympics on their doorsteps,” Olga Beskova, editor-in-chief of Sochinskie Novosti (Sochi News), Sochi’s only private online newspaper, told CPJ. These issues, she said, include “multiple, long-lasting power and water outages, most inconvenient in wintertime; the colossal traffic jams caused by Olympic construction; the eviction of residents from homes that had the misfortune of standing in the path of planned Games venues; the faulty construction of homes offered by the state to evicted residents; multiple violations of the Labor Law, and, last but not least, corruption committed in the course of Olympic construction, as well as in receiving illegal permissions from the Sochi administration for the construction of large private homes and shopping malls unrelated to the Games.”

Local residents, civil activists, and human rights defenders who try to bring public attention to these and other issues say they are largely ignored by state media in Sochi even though these outlets receive budget financing, or in other words, are funded by taxpayers to cover matters of public interest. According to the local Internet portal Blogsochi, which cites the government website Zakupki (Purchases), in just the four months from December 2012 to March 2013, the Sochi administration distributed 32,628,600 rubles (US$988,778) from its budget to 17 media recipients, including four television channels, six newspapers, one magazine, three radio stations, and one informational agency. It is not clear what form the funds took—for example, to pay for advertising or simply as government handouts.

Local reporters and former reporters told CPJ it is common for Sochi media that receive government financing to be directly censored by the information department of the Sochi city administration. This includes review of programming before it airs; the banning of articles or the airbrushing of broadcasts to rid them of details embarrassing to the authorities; and the granting of access to city government activities only to the local crew of the government-run All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK), which then shares its coverage with other media. The prism of VGTRK is pro-government, and its broadcasts resemble paid advertising rather than independent reporting. Local journalists told CPJ that VGTRK often stages interviews with people speaking scripted lines but passing as ordinary Sochi residents.

Anna Gritsevich, a former correspondent for the Sochi branch of VGTRK, told CPJ that the channel produces a total of 15 minutes of original news programming a day. “This is either commissioned and paid content, or advertisement passed for news,” Gritsevich said. She recalled an example. “Once I was assigned to report on the building of a parking lot next to a kindergarten. Parents were indignant and against the parking lot. However, I was forced to interview only specially prepared people, who all said it was ‘so great that there will be a parking lot here,’ ” said Gritsevich, who now works at Sochinskie Novosti. VGTRK’s Sochi branch did not respond to CPJ’s faxed request for comment.

Said blogger Aleksandr Valov, the founder of Blogsochi: “One begins to understand why Sochi media only talk about the government’s achievements and keep silent about the problems. The popular saying, ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune’ comes to mind.”

In addition to ignoring sensitive issues stemming from preparation for the Games, some state media issue propaganda to play down or discredit the grievances of people adversely affected by the Games. This relationship has damaged Sochi residents’ trust in the Russian media, CPJ found. Sochi civil activists and human rights defenders shun a number of state media outlets, including the national television channel NTV, which is known for producing damaging “documentaries” about rights defenders, for fear that they would fail to accurately report on the issues of their concern.

In 2010, NTV produced a film marketed as a journalistic investigation, in which the station depicted Sochi residents protesting eviction from their homes in connection with Olympic construction as greedy, unscrupulous people trying to blackmail the state for major financial compensation for their dilapidated property. The program was shown nationwide. Human Rights Watch, the Russian service of the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and a handful of Russian independent news outlets, including the regional news website Kavkazsky Uzel and the Moscow-based newspaper Novaya Gazeta, have reported that many evicted residents received inadequate or no compensation for their homes and were offered poor quality, hastily built alternatives, but the NTV film did not cover this angle. NTV’s management did not reply to CPJ’s faxed request for comment.

A screenshot of the NTV film. (YouTube)

One thing that did feature in the NTV program was a statement by the press secretary of Russia’s Olympic Committee, Gennady Shvets, who said he believes Russia must emulate the Chinese example when it comes to upholding human rights in the Olympic context. “In Beijing,” Shvets said in the NTV film, “they don’t care much about protest moods. They call their armed guys, who quickly collect the protesters, load them quickly into vans, and drive them out. And the space for building the Olympic venues is cleared spotless.”

Programming like this damages the credibility of all journalists, not just those employed by state media. Gritsevich told CPJ she had to work hard to earn the locals’ trust when she was assigned to cover protests by residents in Kudepsta, a Sochi neighborhood, in April 2013. The residents were demonstrating against the construction of a power plant that environmental experts said would threaten the local ecology; the government said it would be the largest natural gas-powered station in the world. Although the protesters needed publicity to amplify their message, they were reluctant to talk to her at first. (The project was eventually abandoned after the activists’ campaign.)

“Local residents whose rights have been abused in the course of Olympic venues’ construction do not trust Russian journalists. In the beginning, people rejected my interview requests,” but they warmed up after a year, said Gritsevich, who has gained greater editorial freedom since switching news outlets. “They stopped being afraid of talking to me. They stopped fearing that our newspaper will publish something false about them. Now, on the contrary, they call me when something happens and ask me to go to the scene and cover it.”

Activists take on journalistic roles

In the local information vacuum, a community of environmental activists and human rights defenders has taken on some journalistic functions. The activists use social media and blogs to raise social, political, and economic issues.

Vladimir Kimaev is an activist with Ekologicheskaya Vakhta po Severnomu Kavkazu (Environmental Watch on North Caucasus, or Ekovakhta for short), the most prominent environmental organization in the Krasnodarsky region. He was drawn to the line of work when Olympic construction led to the wholesale destruction of Sochi’s forested areas in 2009. He would video record authorities’ steps to destroy the forests, and the protests that followed. He would publish his recordings on YouTube and blog about what he had witnessed on the Internet platform Privet Sochi.

Kimaev founded his own site, Word-Sochi where he regularly published information about environmental damage related to Olympic preparations, including water pollution, deforestation, and mudslides, all documented by Ekovakhta and other environmental activists. Local residents told CPJ that they preferred to call Kimaev and activists like him than to take their complaints to the police or prosecutors. “It’s useless to call the authorities because they don’t react,” a Sochi taxi driver told CPJ, “but environmental activists are always there for us.”

Construction for the Olympic Games has led to the destruction of forests in Sochi. (Reuters/Gennady Fyodorov)

Activists have drawn official pressure and harassment for their work. Not a single one of Ekovakhta’s news conferences regarding the environmental impact of Olympic construction has taken place “in peaceful conditions,” Kimaev told CPJ. The police have sealed Ekovakhta’s rented conference venues right in front of international reporters, he said, forcing the activists to talk to the journalists in the street or at local coffee shops. Even withholding the details of a conference until the last minute has not prevented security services from showing up, he said, leading him to suspect that his and other activists’ telephones are tapped.

The local branches of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Interior Ministry’s Center for Combating Extremism, a police division, have pressured individual Ekovakhta members to stop their activities as environmental defenders and to cease publishing critical reports about the impact of Olympic preparations. During a March 2013 joint inspection of Ekovakhta, the FSB and the Interior Ministry warned the organization that its activities were consistent with those of a “foreign agent” and that it must register as such. Under a July 2012 law, nongovernmental organizations that receive international financing and are involved in “political activity”—the law does not clearly define the term—are to register as foreign agents with Russia’s Justice Ministry. The designation bears a negative connotation and in effect vilifies the NGOs as traitors or enemies of the state.

Kimaev told CPJ that he receives regular calls from the local police and the FSB. “Agents would call and ask if we were planning any protests and whether we were sure we needed to do that.” The implication, he said, is that there could be consequences if the plans went ahead. Sochi police did not respond to CPJ’s faxed request for comment.

One Ekovakhta activist, Suren Gazarian, has already been subject to politically motivated prosecution, according to Human Rights Watch. Gazarian was forced to flee Russia in December 2012 because of a threat of imprisonment on trumped-up attempted murder charges, the rights organization reported. Gazarian, who recounted his ordeal for a variety of publications from his exile in Tallinn, Estonia, said the case stemmed from his visit to a construction site on the Black Sea where a private marina was reportedly being built, allegedly for Putin. He and other activists, traveled to the site to estimate its environmental impact. There, an armed guard approached and seized Gazarian, twisting his arm behind his back. Two other security guards appeared. Gazarian said he was able to free himself from the guard’s grip and, to defend himself, picked up a small rock and told the guards to back off. One guard claimed Gazarian’s actions constituted a death threat against him. Authorities opened an attempted murder criminal case against the activist in August 2012.

Suren Gazarian examines a black substance in the mud near Sochi. (AFP/Mikhail Mordasov)

Kimaev has also faced official retaliation. On May 28, 2013, investigators from the Sochi police simultaneously ransacked his apartment and his summer home, allegedly in connection with a criminal case in which they said Kimaev was a witness, Kimaev’s lawyer, Aleksandr Popkov, told CPJ. Kimaev said neither search was carried out with preliminary court approval as required by law. The investigators’ goal, Kimaev told CPJ, appeared to be to search his properties in his absence and, as is common practice for local law enforcement, “find” compromising items such as drugs or weapons. He said authorities were forced to cut their searches short when they discovered he was not out of town as scheduled. Sochi police did not respond to CPJ’s request for comment on Kimaev’s allegations.

Other local rights defenders told CPJ that instead of investigating reports of corruption, labor law violations, and other abuses related to the Games, authorities have pursued the organizations and individuals who publicize such issues. Semyon Simonov, coordinator of the Migration and Law Network at the Sochi branch of the prominent human rights organization Memorial, which monitors conditions for migrant workers, said his center has been receiving complaints by uncompensated workers since 2009. “When the situation took on a public dimension, Russian Deputy Prime Minister and Olympic supervisor Dmitry Kozak admitted to only two such cases while there were hundreds more,” Simonov told CPJ. “The prosecutors did not react in any way. The Russian Investigative Committee to this day has not opened a single criminal case against unconscionable employers.”

Popkov, the lawyer, also works with Memorial on migrant workers’ claims. He told CPJ he was “not aware of a single criminal case” opened by authorities related to unpaid workers’ wages. “Nothing has changed in this aspect since the beginning of the Olympic construction,” Popkov said, “and now practically all venues are completed.”

Laborers stand in line to enter the Olympic Park in Sochi. (Reuters/Maxim Shemetov)

Simonov said local prosecutors have summoned him several times for “conversations,” in which they have threatened to start criminal investigations against him in retaliation for his outspokenness, in media like Facebook posts, on the seeming inaction by authorities to address migrant workers’ grievances.

Instead, the Sochi prosecutor’s office, along with the local branch of the Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor, since the beginning of 2012 has started 45 administrative cases against Sochi media outlets on the pretext that these outlets have failed to leave copies of each new issue of their periodicals at local public libraries, reported popular local blogger Roman Shikarev, founder of the rights monitoring center For Law and Order, citing the Central District Court of Sochi’s website. Shikarev reported that the officials filed claims with the court to have the outlets’ licenses withdrawn. Under Russia’s Law on Mass Media, all media are obligated to register with and receive a license from the Justice Ministry. The same law obligates outlets to submit copies of their issues to public libraries.

CPJ interviewed the chief editors of several of those publications, who conceded that they have sometimes not carried out this requirement, which is cumbersome and costly. They said the requirement is routinely ignored by the majority of Sochi media.

Meanwhile, none of the outlets were officially informed of the prosecutors’ actions; library workers informed them of the inspection. The cases have not proceeded further, but the editors told CPJ that the intention was intimidation.

Svetlana Sagradova, the editor-in-chief of the local business magazine Na Stol Rukovoditelyu (On the Manager’s Desk), told CPJ: “I know that, any time they want, authorities could use this ridiculous pretext to close down my publication. I don’t want any problems, and this is why I don’t publish much” about the Games. Sagradova added: “Nobody calls me; nobody says to me what I should or should not write about. But I know what the topics that would anger the authorities are, and I have imposed self-censorship when it comes to those. Because—one move by the prosecutors—and my publication could lose its license.”

In an emailed response to CPJ’s faxed request for comment, Aleksei Rakhvalov, deputy head of Roskomnadzor’s South Federal District, which includes Sochi, said a news outlet that does not file the mandatory library copy cannot be punished by closing down the publication. He said that any obstruction of the free flow of information is punishable by law.

The Sochi Prosecutor’s Office did not respond to a separate request for comment.

International coverage can boost local coverage

Gazarian, the exiled environmental activist, told CPJ that his organization relies on a few independent Russian media and especially on international reporters to raise the issues of concern, while Shikarev said there is an inverse correlation between the audience size of Russian outlets and the amount of coverage they devote to problems related to the Games. The majority of the Russian media, local and national, cover Sochi in a critical manner only when an issue has already taken on global proportions and the publicity has crossed Russia’s borders.

Even large, privately owned media come under some degree of state pressure. One example is the decision by the management of the prominent business daily Kommersant to take the seasoned journalist Olga Allenova off the Sochi story after Allenova illuminated embarrassing facts related to the Olympics’ preparation.

Allenova told reporters at an investigative journalism forum in April 2012 in St. Petersburg that her removal from the Sochi beat and the dismissal of her boss, Maksim Kovalsky, as editor of the sister Kommersant-Vlast magazine, was due to their refusal to bow to official pressure to stop investigating the eviction, without compensation, of Sochi residents whose homes were destroyed to make room for Olympics venues.

In an interview for the online portal Lenizdat, Allenova said she spent six months in 2011 investigating social issues and human rights abuses in Sochi, all related to the Olympics, on assignment for Kommersant-Vlast. During the course of the investigation, which resulted in a series of articles, Allenova said, the newsroom received a number of threatening letters from various tiers of Russia’s government. The government agencies “made sure we understood that if we did not shut up and stop ‘spoiling the country’s image,’ we would have serious problems,” Allenova said. The pressure caused a rift in Kommersant-Vlast’s editorial board between those who wanted to comply with the government demands and those who did not, Allenova told Lenizdat. Kovalsky decided to ignore the threats and continue publishing Allenova’s series.

Kovalsky was fired in late 2011, a few months after the series was published. The stated reason was that he had recently allowed the publication of a controversial photo of an electoral ballot on which a voter had scribbled an expletive addressed to then-Prime Minister Putin. According to Allenova, the expletive was used as a pretext by Kommersant’s owner, Alisher Usmanov, who is a friend of Putin and, according to Forbes magazine, Russia’s richest man.

After Kovalsky’s dismissal, the new magazine management took Allenova off the Sochi story; Kommersant continued to cover the Games’ preparations, but as part of the so-called Olympic pool, consisting mainly of state and mainstream media reporters, whose newsrooms comply with the unwritten directive to cover the Olympic story in a positive light. Kommersant’s coverage now differs drastically from Allenova’s. Neither Usmanov nor Kommersant-Vlast’s interim editor-in-chief, Azer Mursaliyev, responded to CPJ’s emailed request for comment.

CPJ’s Moscow correspondent had the opportunity to witness how censorship of the Olympic subject works. A Sochi correspondent for a major Russian news agency sent three news stories to the Moscow headquarters during an interview with CPJ. The first story dealt with the arrest of Sochi journalist Nikolai Yarst, in which the evidence points to foul play by law enforcement. (Yarst, a reporter with the public television channel OTR, was investigating the case of a local girl who was taken out of Russia by her stepfather against the will of her blood relatives and the possibility that authorities had taken bribes to allow the girl to be taken abroad, according to news reports. At the time of his arrest, Yarst was headed to the Investigative Committee agency to see the girl’s case files. His report for OTR was never finished. The police claimed to have found narcotics in Yarst’s car, and he was placed under house arrest. Yarst’s lawyer, Aleksandr Popkov, told CPJ that his client’s detention and the evidence of drug possession against him were marred by procedural violations.)

A woman gets her weekly water ration in Sochi. Wells have gone dry since construction began for the Sochi Olympics. (Reuters/Thomas Peter)

The second story the Sochi correspondent filed with her Moscow headquarters was about the malfunction of the waterworks at a new, hastily built residential complex where evicted residents had been housed. The third was about worsening weather in Sochi and the possibility of a major storm. (The week before, torrential rains had flooded newly built roads and downtown Sochi streets had been submerged.)

None of the three stories made it to the news wires. The Sochi correspondent told CPJ that her Moscow editor explained, “You may have a storm, a twister, and even a 9-Richter-scale earthquake; still, we have to write that all skies are clear over Sochi.”

Kimaev, the environmental activist and blogger, told CPJ: “I have no hope that the Russian media would cover what goes on here. We have figured out that the most effective way of applying pressure to the government is through telling our stories to the Western media and to international organizations.” He continued, “We send our press releases to all leading international news agencies and media outlets, from Reuters to Al-Jazeera.” Ekovakhta invests in translating its press releases into English. “The list of our international subscribers is 10 times bigger than that of domestic journalists. Western journalists react quickly and professionally, and their coverage has an impact,” Kimaev said.

When the resonance of international coverage is such that an issue can no longer be ignored by Russian media, Kimaev said, the domestic media will pick up the story, too. More important, Kimaev said, Russian authorities may then have to address the problem.

International attention is what helped local residents protect their environment from the planned building of the Kudepsta power plant, Kimaev said. The building of the plant was canceled in May 2013. “It is the solidarity of international media and human rights groups that gives us a sense of being protected,” Kimaev told CPJ.

Simonov, the Sochi coordinator of Memorial, told CPJ that the group works mostly with Russian independent, Internet-based portals and international media as there is little interest from traditional, established Russian media. In 2012, Simonov said, he gave 20 interviews, but only three of them to domestic media. “It would be good if Russian media were half as active as international media,” Simonov said, “but they are either uninterested in the Sochi theme or I am drawing the conclusion that they are simply forbidden to cover it.”

Yet some international journalists have also been obstructed or harassed when reporting on events in Sochi. In a striking example, the police from the southern Russian Republic of Adygea neighboring Sochi repeatedly stopped, detained, bullied, and threatened with imprisonment a two-person crew with the Norwegian TV2 television station—the country’s official broadcaster of the Olympic Games. From October 31 to November 2, 2013, officers stopped reporter Øystein Bogen and cameraman Aage Aunes six times and detained them three times while the crew was reporting on the impact of the Games’ preparations on local residents, the journalists told Human Rights Watch.

Police conduct a traffic stop in Sochi and check a driver’s documents. (Reuters/Maxim Shemetov)

The officers repeatedly questioned the journalists about their intended work in Sochi and the region, and tried to elicit information about their sources as well as their personal lives, education, and even religious beliefs, the rights organization reported. On several occasions, the police refused to allow the crew to contact the Norwegian Embassy in Moscow. In one particularly aggressive episode, the police tried to coerce Bogen into taking a drug test, and, when he refused to do so, threatened to jail him. Eventually, police told the journalists there had been “a misunderstanding,” and released them, Human Rights Watch said.

In an email interview with CPJ, Bogen said the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs apologized for the harassment, blaming it on low-ranking officials and human error. But Bogen expressed concern that the detentions were a pretext to extract information—including access to TV2’s sources in the region—from the reporters’ equipment, which the police at one point confiscated and kept for three hours. “When I received my iPhone back,” Bogen told CPJ, “there was clear indication that the SIM card had been removed and probably copied. I have reasons to believe my contacts have been compromised.” Bogen said some of TV2’s local contacts reported being harassed by authorities after the crew left the region. “Some of my contacts have reported that they have been interrogated and have had their houses searched after we left,” Bogen told CPJ.

In a separate case, also in October 2013, Dutch photojournalist Rob Hornstra, cofounder of the multimedia Sochi Project dedicated to shedding light on the region beyond the Olympic glow, was denied a Russian visa in an apparent attempt to stop him from doing further work in the turbulent North Caucasus. Hornstra had interviewed local residents and uncovered human rights abuses stemming from the Games’ preparation for the Sochi Project, press reports said. Russian authorities did not explain the reasons for denying the visa, the English-language newspaper The Moscow Times reported. In the past, authorities have used a law against critical journalists, which allows them to bar “internationals” from Russia “for the purpose of protecting the defense capability and security of the state or the social order, or for the protection of the public health,” CPJ research shows.

An international journalist working for a major news agency told CPJ that the agency regularly reports on sensitive issues around the Olympics. But the journalist, who declined to be named because of a lack of authorization to comment on behalf of the news organization, said officials have often been unhelpful, ignoring requests for comment, or outright hostile. “We also have had indications that our phone calls and email have been monitored during reporting trips in Sochi,” the journalist told CPJ. “Security officials have seemed to know in advance about meetings arranged by phone or email.”

At least one major foreign publication plans to devote resources to covering Sochi beyond the Games. Oliver Fritsch, sports writer for Die Zeit, said the German weekly will split its coverage in two, with one half devoted to the sporting competition and the other to politics, economy, ecology, and the plight of homosexual athletes. “The latter half will be printed in black and white to show readers, at a first glance, that there are ‘two games,’” he told CPJ. “It’s always important for us to consider sports as a sociopolitical matter, not only in Sochi.”

A record repressive climate

Russian media’s silence about the plight of those affected by Olympic abuses comes as the climate for human rights and press freedom in the country is at a historic low point.

“After returning to the Kremlin in 2012, Putin rolled back the modest progress in the realm of rights and freedoms gained under [former President Dmitry] Medvedev’s one term in office,” Rachel Denber, deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia Division of Human Rights Watch, told CPJ. “The present is the worst time for civil activists, rights defenders, and independent journalists since the break-up of the Soviet Union.”

An exterior shot of the press center for the Olympic Games in Sochi. (Reuters/Pawel Kopczynski)

During his third term in office, Putin signed a breathtaking number of restrictive laws, all approved by Russia’s parliament, the State Duma, quickly and with little if any debate. Some of the most significant pieces of legislation are the “foreign agents law,” which came into force on July 21, 2012; a bill signed nine days later, which returned defamation to the criminal books; and another law, signed days after the defamation bill, which blacklisted websites carrying “unlawful content”—a term open to broad interpretation. A few months later, on November 12, 2012, Putin signed a law that expanded the definition of treason in a manner so vague that it could chill regular contacts and information-sharing between Russian and international journalists, human rights defenders, and civil activists as an act of espionage.

And on June 30, 2013, Putin signed legislation commonly known as the homosexual propaganda law—an act that legitimizes discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons, and which, in effect, encourages homophobia and chills news coverage of the LGBT community. Konstantin Iablotckii, a Moscow-based LGBT rights defender and a member of the Russian LGBT Sport Federation, said recent waves of violence against LGBT persons have not received media coverage partly because of direct censorship, “but part of it is fear of the application of this law.” At a news briefing in New York in December 2013, Iablotckii said: “If the media cover the LGBT rights in anything that resembles a sympathetic way, they could be blamed with producing gay propaganda and punished for it. Better to play it safe.” He also said that LGBT athletes who have been supportive of the Russian LGBT Sport Federation have been approached by Russian authorities and “advised” to “stop talking to the media” and “stop promoting their sexual orientation.”

This atmosphere of restriction, vilification of “otherness,” and hostility to all things “foreign” is in sharp contrast to the Olympic Charter, which Russia, as host of the Games, is obligated to uphold. “The Olympics are part of the Kremlin’s vision of a great Russia, fully revived from the chaos that followed the break-up of the Soviet Union, and resurgent on the world stage,” Denber said. “This has clearly eclipsed the other part of the Olympic equation—adherence to values enshrined in the Olympic Charter.”

The proximity of the Games to the volatile North Caucasus region also casts a shadow over the event. According to CPJ research, the region is Russia’s most dangerous place for journalists. Of the 16 murders of journalists in Russia over the past decade, eight were committed in the North Caucasus republics—all of the victims were local journalists, and all of the crimes were committed with impunity. The staple violence against the press has chilled coverage of the region as reporters censor their own coverage to protect their safety.

Jane Buchanan, associate director for Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia Division and the organization’s lead researcher on the Sochi Winter Olympics, told CPJ that international journalists traveling to the Games could have significant impact on the landscape. Reporters, Buchanan said, “should look to highlight issues of concern for all of Russia including, but not only related to, press freedom, free expression, LGBT rights, as well as issues related to Russia’s preparations for the Games in Sochi: including evictions, exploitation of workers, and environmental damage.” Foreign journalists could also investigate the continued violence against Russian colleagues who try to cover the North Caucasus.

Buchanan noted that the IOC, which has the responsibility to engage with Russian authorities in cases of clear violations of the Olympic Charter, “has largely acted as a courier rather than an active participant” in resolving issues of concern.

Furthermore, the international community should not shift its gaze once the Games are over; a consistent spotlight on Russia would help protect the journalists, activists, and rights defenders, who have taken personal and professional risks to report on Sochi in detail. CPJ research has found that after the Beijing Summer Olympics in 2008, local authorities who had loosened some restrictions on the media backtracked once international attention had moved on.

“After the experience of Sochi and Beijing, the need to establish human rights benchmarks as a criterion for receiving the privilege of hosting the Olympics is clear,” Buchanan said.

“The candidate countries must commit to meeting clear and specific human rights benchmarks in order to be declared ready to host the Games,” she said. “Those benchmarks must be monitored and evaluated as thoroughly and with the same vigor that the IOC applies to monitoring a country’s readiness with Olympic venues and material resources.”

Elena Milashina is an award-winning investigative journalist with the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta and CPJ’s Moscow correspondent. Nina Ognianova is CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator.

CPJ’s Recommendations

To the International Olympic Committee:

• Clearly and unequivocally condemn press freedom violations, including harassment, obstruction, and censorship of journalists, and demand assurances for their redress from Russian authorities.
• Ensure that host countries that fail to reach international standards for press freedom and freedom of expression suffer repercussions.

To the Russian government:

• Repeal laws that chill freedom of the press and freedom of expression. These include a law vilifying non-governmental organizations as “foreign agents”; a law censoring the Internet; a law expanding the definition of treason; a law re-criminalizing defamation; and a law restricting news coverage of LGBT minorities.
• Abstain from passing any new laws that chill freedom of the press and freedom of expression.
• Cease all censorship of the media, whether direct or through government-friendly media owners.
• Allow free, independent, and unobstructed coverage—by both international and domestic journalists and news outlets—of all issues surrounding the Sochi Olympics. Do not harass, prosecute, threaten to prosecute, or place under surveillance journalists or others who have criticized the negative impact of the Games on the local population.
• Investigate all press freedom violations, including the harassment of reporters and their sources, in a thorough and transparent manner. Hold to account those responsible for the obstruction of journalists and the harassment of their sources.
• Cease the practice of using state media to produce propaganda smearing the victims of human rights abuses perpetuated by authorities and the activists who defend such victims.
• Allow all international journalists, including those who have criticized your policies, entry into Russia.
• Halt the collection and storage of telephone and Internet data on journalists’ communications.

To corporate sponsors of the Games:

• Use your influence with the IOC and Russian authorities to ensure that Russia fulfills its pledges on media freedom. Insist that the IOC speak out on media freedom violations.

To international journalists covering the Games:

• Insist that Russian authorities honor their press freedom commitments to the IOC, both for visiting and Russian journalists.
• Report violations of press freedom, including harassment and intimidation of journalistic sources. After the Games, follow up with your Russian colleagues and journalistic sources and report any instances of harassment stemming from their previous communication with you or other foreign media representatives.