Mark Thompson: Reykjavik, 28 May 2009

Mark Thompson: The Council should promote the self-regulation of new media content. (Photo: Marius Dragomir)

Sometimes, the attitudes taken by the European organisations in Brussels and Strasbourg towards the new media – the internet above all – reminds us of Tolstoy’s great story, “How much land does a man need?”, about a Russian farmer who is told that he may keep as much land as he can walk around in one day. Overcome with greed, he kills himself by avidly trying to encompass a vast swathe of territory – far more land than he needs.

In the eyes of some Council of Europe ministers, and even more of Commissioner Reding in Brussels, what looks so tempting and challenging today is the vast unfenced common ground of the internet itself.

The first point that we want to make about the draft document before us[1] is that we and other civil society groups are very concerned about the intention to “consider the extent to which requirements of media or journalistic professionalism, editorial independence and editorial responsibility apply or should apply to new services or to media-like service providers.”

We think that here, and in other places in this document, the ministers are inviting the Council to dissipate its attention. There is, quite simply, no way for the Council of Europe to apply these existing standards to the “new services” or “media-like service providers”. Nor is it at all clear why it should try to do this. For there is, we hope, no way to start regulating the internet by applying professional standards, by extending traditional standards in this way. The unlawful abuse or misuse of the new media can and should, needless to add, we tackled with the same tools that have been developed for and with old media.

Reverting for a moment to Tolstoy’s fable, there is no risk in this situation of the Council of Europe dying from its misplaced exertions, like that deluded Russian farmer! In this case, the price of this anxious regulatory or over-regulatory ambition will be paid in terms of a loss of focus upon values, principles and standards – those definitions which form the foundation of the CoE’s achievement in the field of media.

You and we can look with some justified pride on the corpus of Council statements and instruments in media standards and values, over decades. There really is nothing else like it in the world. The role of media has been consistently assessed and supported by the Council, and sometimes also by the European Union, not only in the light of human rights, but more broadly and roundly in the light of democratic society, defined in a way which puts central importance on the public realm or sphere. Someone who wants to know how much media should figure in the so-called European social model, needs look no further than these texts, adopted in Strasbourg and Brussels.

It is of course right and proper that ministers should broaden their concept of media. That the Council’s tradition of interventions and commitments should continue to grow, and to take account of the media revolution which affects us all, and of which the end can no more be foreseen than can the sum of effects which this revolution is having, and will continue to have, throughout our lives.

There are many commendable things in the draft declaration and resolutions; intentions and ideas that are in the best spirit of the Council of Europe. To mention just one of these: the insistence on the public value of the internet, and on internet access and public service delivery.

Taking this draft as a starting point, I want to suggest some avenues or directions in which the Council’s concern with media can continue to develop – avenues which, we think, are fully consistent with the Council’s noble history of endeavours in this area, and in tune with real needs today. Some of these avenues are already present or signalled in the draft document; others are not yet. But there is still time.

Firstly, the Council should promote the self-regulation of new media content. This is the best way to avoid imposing the burden of over-regulation on a sector which is still very much in the process of discovering its own potential, it s own resources and its own impact.

Secondly, we follow the Swedish representative and urge the ministers to place even greater priority on media literacy. As you suggested earlier today, Madame Chairperson, this activity is always important, and is becoming increasingly so as the media landscape becomes more complex and confusing. Media literacy is needed on a lifelong basis, if citizens are to learn how to use the new media to their own benefit and betterment, and also learn what they should expect of the media in their society, in terms of responsibility. Media literacy, in all its forms, is the bridge that leads from passive consumption to active and critical citizenship.

Thirdly, we urge the ministers to be more robust and energetic in urging member states to make good on their numerous commitments, especially regarding public service media and regulatory independence.

Let me explain why this is a matter of real urgency. At the Open Society Foundation, we have just completed a monitoring study of broadcasting in 22 European countries, all but one of them members of the Council of Europe, with a total population of around 450 million people. I will mention just two findings from this unprecedented project. The first finding is that public service media in much of Europe are locked in a crisis that has no clear solution, and may turn out to have no solution at all – in public service terms. This crisis involves, and is caused by, many factors including poor funding, lack of political will, token reforms, public alienation and professional indifference.

Preparing these reports, we were struck that the debate on public service media which is conducted in Western Europe – and is reflected in the documents of the Council, as also of the European Commission – often hardly overlaps with the grim reality of public service media in the rest of the continent.

The public service broadcasters in Europe’s transition countries that really and honestly deserve to be called PSBs can be counted on the fingers of one hand. We estimate that established public service outlets in at least half the countries we monitored may have no future without massive government bailout, a form of course which can of course be worse than the disease.

The real problem here is not the threat to particularly institutions, but the risk that quality national production, in public interest strands, may dwindle to vanishing point across large portions of Europe. This would have direct and grave implications for the values of pluralism and diversity that the Council of Europe has cherished and championed.

Our second finding is that there is a trend – not universal, but certainly widespread – of reducing the independence, such as it has been, of the national broadcasters and regulators. The highwater mark of reform in line with international standards occurred some years ago. The ‘Counter-Reformation’ is now with us, and retreat from those standards is the pattern. Indeed, in a number of countries, the regulators have been deliberately deskilled, as a result of curbing their independence, or rather, in order to curb it.

Civil society groups know this is happening. This is one reason why we are convinced that – in most countries today – more regulation is almost certain to mean more political or politicised regulation, and hence – from the point of view of citizens, including journalists – worse regulation.

This is why we urge the ministers to take note of, and to address, these realities, however difficult this task may be. It is less attractive task than wrestling with concepts of new media, but it is – from the point of view, again, of citizens including journalists – it is just as necessary, or even more so. It would also represent a coherent and timely extension of the Council’s excellent work, over the years, in defending public service principles in the media.

My fourth suggestion is about ownership, and it brings me back to the new media. The Council has a fine record of understanding and warning against the dangers of concentration of ownership in the traditional media. It is time now to reassess the concept of ownership in the new media. The blending of broadcasting and telecoms in a context of platform multiplication and economic deregulation, creates new scope for the abuse of new dominant positions. The Council might start by analysing these changes in ownership, and evolving a set of preventive best practices as a basis for a future recommendation.

Linked with this, as a fifth and final suggestion, we urge ministers to make a very firm commitment in favour of obligatory transparency of media ownership. If the information about ownership is not accessible, then objective investigation becomes difficult, if not impossible, and reformist action is obstructed. Once this information is out there, in the public realism, then civil society groups can and will run with it. If the council takes a lead, it will create another of the NGO-CoE partnerships which have made a real difference to media reform in many countries. Let us have more of these partnerships, and may they be even stronger in future than in the past.

[1] 1st Council of Europe Conference of Ministers responsible for Media and New Communications Services. A new notion of media? (28-29 May 2009, Reykjavik, Iceland). Political declaration and resolutions. Draft. Strasbourg, 27 May 2009. MCM(2009)011prov6.