Struggling for press freedom in the Baltic
Stephen Pritchard, readers' editor for The Observer, reveals the fragility of press freedom in Lithuania (and, arguably, all the former Soviet states).
Four bullets had taken his life. The judge's body lay in the street, his head still visible above a hastily produced plastic sheet - an ugly shroud for an ugly death. This was last Monday morning in Lithuania's normally peaceful second city, Kaunas. Hours later a second body was found. Police named a suspect: a father who had accused the dead of being in a paedophile ring, and, if bloggers are to be believed, was frustrated at the legal system's reluctance to investigate one of its own.
It's an extreme case but it is indicative of the crime, corruption and extortion that blights many of the former Soviet states where accountability is viewed with suspicion and hard-won freedoms are trampled over by the business interests of rich, shadowy individuals and powerful corporations.
I discovered a class of subdued journalism students when I visited the university in Kaunas on the day of the shootings. I had been invited to talk about the work of news ombudsmen around the world and how accountability might be fostered in the Baltic media. It's obvious there is still a long way to go. There was an troubling acceptance among the next generation of reporters and editors that their newspapers would never be truly open while in the hands of those with no interest in freedom of expression or the public's right to know.
I got pretty much the same message the next day when talking to a dozen journalists at a meeting in the state capital Vilnius organised by Transparency International Lithuania, an energetic body lobbying for accountability in public life and currently promoting a whistleblower protection law.
It had surveyed five of the state's top newspapers and found that four did not publish any corrections or letters to the editor critical of the paper. None published information about their owners or their property interests. None had their own code of ethics, or rules governing the separation of editorial and business functions, or any editorial policy guidelines. There were no ombudsmen working within the media and none of the papers asked their readers to comment on accuracy or bias.
The report concluded: "At a time when newspapers in many countries employ measures to earn their readers' trust, Lithuanian daily newspapers apparently expect their readers to simply believe. Ironically, Lithuanian newspapers require transparency from state institutions, business and public organisations, but provide only the minimum information or none at all about themselves."
Hope seems to lie in the internet. Increasingly, Lithuanians are looking online for accurate, verifiable reporting, and advertisers are following - with revenue leaping 33% in one year. Journalism students at Vilnius's ancient university told me they saw their future online, print being inextricably linked with corruption.
But we should be careful before rushing to condemn this lack of transparency. Lithuania has had what passes for a free press for barely 20 years. After two centuries the majority of the British media is really not much further ahead.
via The Guardian/The Observer