The round table European Journalism Standards: Which Lessons for Ukraine? that took place on 10 March in Kyiv was initiated by the Media Reform Centre as a complementary event to the 7th European Ministerial Conference on Mass Media Policy with the aim to offer Ukrainian journalists and NGOs a unique opportunity to meet high level participants and experts and to discuss the most pressing issues of the European media and communications policy. In that context, Ukraine’s recent political transformations were also discussed, in particular, issues of freedom of press and public service broadcasting.

Participants: Miss Kate ADIE, OBE, Former Chief News Correspondent, BBC; Dr Knut Nevermann, Deputy Minister of State for the Media, Germany; Mr Karol Jakubowicz (in the photo), Chairman of the Council of Europe Steering Committee on the Mass Media, NN, member of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly; Mr. Josef Jarab, Vice-Chairperson of the Committee on Culture, Science and Education of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Euro; Mr Taras Shevchenko, Head of the Media Law Institute, representatives of the Ukraininan and foreign press and NGOs.

Moderator: William Horsley, European Affairs Correspondent, BBC World Affair Unit.

William Horsley: A big welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Media Round Table on European Media Standards: What Lessons for Ukraine? I am William Horsley, a BBC radio and TV journalist.

After today’s formal conference this is a chance to open up the debate on issues raised there, especially what they mean for Ukraine. And after the excitement of the Democratic Orange Revolution it might be right on this occasion together just briefly to remember those journalists and media people who have been killed or imprisoned in the course of doing their work. We want to make this session relevant to the situation now in Ukraine, so we decided to try and focus especially on urgent issues including public broadcasting, fairness in commercial TV and radio area, and the role of newspapers especially in European spirit – those in Ukraine which are to be transferred from regional government control to private ownership. We have an excellent panel, I’d like to introduce those who are here. We are hoping very much that Mr. Tomenko, the Vice-Prime-Minister responsible for the media, will join us in due course. Kate Adie, my colleague from the BBC, one of the best-known figures ever in the 80-years history of BBC news. Karol Jakubowicz, key figure in the Council of Europe Steering Committee on the Media for many years. Joseph Jarab, a senior member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe responsible for media, and Taras Shevchenko, head of Ukraine’s Media Law Institute. Mr. Knut Nevermann, Deputy Minister for the Media in Germany.

Time is short, so we are going to move on. The rules here today are that we have up to 30 minutes of panel talk focusing on those key themes: fairness, public broadcasting and newspapers, then an interaction with as many of you as possible, because your expertise is important. No set speeches, everybody, we hope, will keep comments brief and to the point. So, first theme, public service broadcasting, how should it be done and what lessons are there for Ukraine from the setups in older democracies in Europe. Kate Adie, how do you achieve trust and professional service?

Kate Adie: When I first joined broadcasting more decades ago than I care to mention, our little radio station, part of a public service broadcasting organisation – the BBC, was full of people then my age. We were 23-24, we were full of life, we couldn’t wait to get on air and start broadcasting. In a new experiment called local radio for Britain – public service local radio. The first complaint came in after the first day of broadcasting: people rang the station and said “Your music is dreadful. All this wah-wah-wah, pop-music. What about music for us?” We had made a classic mistake: public service broadcasting is for everyone. It’s not for one section of the population, it’s not for people with one view, it’s not for just one age, not just for the young, the excited, for people with the vision – it’s for everyone.

And when it comes to the serious basis of the talk programs, the news bulletins, current affairs, matters of the moment, maybe even documentaries, you have to remember to include everyone. You are making programs about everything, you are including all ideas, so you always got to tell yourself: we’ve got to have on air not just the views we feel comfortable with, the ones we like, the ones we endorse, the ones we support. We have to hear the people who don’t like what has happened, we have to hear from the old reactionaries, we have to hear from those dreadful old people… Everybody has their views – and that’s what it’s about. Fairness is about listening to the people you don’t agree with, as much as putting those you think you agree with should be on air. It’s what I call “grit-your-teeth” broadcasting. You have to grit your teeth and say: “We have to give time to the people we don’t agree with, we have to be fair”. That’s the first answer to it.

William Horsley: Kate, thanks. We’ll come back to these issues, of course. And remember that in Britain BBC is going through its own negotiation again about its public service role, the license fee to provide it with money, with the charter to give it a legal foundation, 10 years at a time. But all these things have to be discussed again and again in changing societies. Karol Jakubowicz, perhaps you could say something about the ground rules for public broadcasting as you see them and the experience learned from the transition countries, the New Democracies in Central and Eastern Europe?

Karol Jakubowicz: Well, first let me react to two things I heard today. First of all, President Yushchenko said that he wanted the government and journalists to be partners. I don’t think so. Journalists can be divided into three groups: lapdogs, watchdogs and attack dogs. And if you want your journalists to be on the right track, you want them to be watchdogs. They are not going to be partners of the government; they are going to be critics of the government. And therefore, partnership is an idea which I’m not very sure about.

Secondly, I heard that in Ukraine they are thinking whether to transform state broadcasting into public service broadcasting or to keep state broadcasting and establish public service broadcasting alongside it. That’s a very bad idea. If you want public service broadcasting, you want to transform your existing state broadcasting, it’s not very easy. You don’t want to keep your state broadcasting, but there’s a tendency in newly democratic countries on the part of the government (this happened in Poland also) not to give up broadcasting, because people believe they have a mission, and that people believe they have a democratic mandate, and, therefore, people believe they should keep control of the broadcast media as a medium through which to speak to the people. However, media are not there to serve as a mouthpiece of government, they are there to serve as an expression of what the people want to say.

In Central and Eastern Europe after 1989, you can distinguish three main media policy orientations. One is idealistic: people want direct democracy, everybody to speak, media controlled by the people – direct communicative democracy, as we say. That’s a very fine idea, very difficult to introduce in practice. The second orientation is what I call imitative. In other words, we take all the solutions of the Western world, and transplant them to our reality. That is more or less ok, but again very difficult to implement, because it took the British 80 years to develop public service broadcasting in the form it is today, and it’s very difficult to take the BBC model and implant it here in Ukraine straight away. And the third orientation, which is also very popular, unfortunately, is what I call the atavistic orientation. In other words, we are democrats; however, media are too serious to be democratic about. They need to be controlled because they can do harm to the new authorities, and we’d better control the media one way or another. And this is a tendency which is very clear in many post-communist countries. And this is a tendency which has produced serious delays in the introduction of public service broadcasting in many countries. It was much easier to propose the idea of introducing private media, than it was to propose the introduction of public service media, for the reasons which I’ve mentioned.

Now, what are public service media? Don’t make the mistake of calling them public media, because public media are publicly controlled, meaning government-controlled. Public service media are media which serve the public. That is the fundamental difference. You could say today that Ukrainian television is public television, because it is publicly controlled. It is not public service television because, I believe, it has 3 per cent market share. When you have a 3 per cent market share, in other words, you are speaking to 3 per cent of the audience, you don’t serve the public, you don’t serve anybody. So, you need to design a system which has to be based on European principles, but must be Ukrainian in form to guarantee political and economic independence. But this is relatively easy. What is really difficult is to guarantee is the personal independence of people in charge of the public service television and radio, and journalists working for those media, because you may write the best law in the world, but if the people inside the organization continue to play the political game, if they want to curry favor with the authorities, then your laws are nothing, and you continue with highly politicized so-called public service broadcasting. So the real difficulty is how to ensure the independence of journalists and managers within your public service organization.

William Horsley: Thank you very much, Mr. Jakubowicz, it’s a pity that your remarks about the need for separation between journalism and the government had to be spoken without the presence of the minister, but perhaps he’ll catch up with it later. Now, Dr Nevermann from Germany. Germany has created its own way of making a level playing field among the political groups in an important country – Germany – in public service broadcasting. Would you like to say something about the German model, created obviously after the disaster of a war 60 years ago, but still successful?

Knut Nevermann: Yes, I think it was one of the lessons we took from the Nazi regime. There are two aspects: one is federalism, we said we don’t want a central state, we want to have federalism, only with Lander (German federal states). And secondly, we said we don’t want anything to do like the state broadcasting, we want broadcasting through the Lander, and within the Lander, not a state-owned broadcasting, but public service broadcasting, controlled by the parties, churches, minorities, all you can think about. I am a member of one of the German Lander broadcasting committees. There are about 70 people in it, we don’t know them, but they all talk and they all have a control function, and they say ( to the media): it was not good what you did, you are too close to the government or you were too creative. We all talk about it. This is a very important point, very good, the public service broadcasting model that we can develop, but you need powerful groups in the civil society. If you don’t have them, it’s very difficult to achieve control. It’s the problem between information and entertainment. We started about 20 years ago with the second part of our system – private television. This private system was very good at entertainment, had very good broadcasts for the public. But whenever we have something happening in the world, with the war, with the crisis, people want to have information. They go to the public service television. I think this is a very good situation, and we must think about it, but we must not forget, that you can’t only give information. If you want the public to watch you, you must have entertainment as well. And you have to look for a good mix.

William Horsley: Before we have a Ukrainian voice… The Czech Republic has struggled with this issue of fairness and balance in its public broadcasting system in the last 10 years. What have you got to say?

Joseph Jarab: That we continue to struggle. And it will not be easy, because of a few mistakes that were made in the early 90-ies. I would say that the major difference between introducing the private broadcasting and the public service broadcasting is that the former is easy and the latter is not easy at all. But this also applies to the life in democracy and other systems that are not democratic – they are easier in a way, not on every individual, but they are easier to run. And one important thing that is different in the situation of post-communist countries is that there was a materialistic poverty affecting the countries, and this is true for Ukraine as well. That is, there is not enough money to really start from the local sources, something that you can gradually work on. It is foreign investment that comes as an offer, for instance, Czech press is virtually all owned by German owners. Does it change the content or does it not? That’s a question. However, I do know one thing. What has disappeared is the courage to be independent on the part of the journalists. In fact, journalists comply with the expectations before orders are being given from owners. This is the major problem of Czech press at the moment, and as for TV, we have a public service which, of course, has been tortured for political reasons by the state-control, by one part of the Parliament – the deputies, reflecting exactly in the composition of regulatory bodies the composition of the Parliament in political terms. We had a crisis in 2002, all of Europe saw that. We did not, however, use this crisis for any improvement, it just continues to be latent, one day I hope it will explode, but maybe we will find a different solution.

William Horsley: Thanks. So, creating a public service broadcasting is like a miracle, a daily miracle, and sometimes the miracle doesn’t work, even in the older countries. Now, Taras Shevchenko, in view of the particular circumstances in Ukraine, from what you’ve heard of the successes and pitfalls in other countries, just give us a brief idea what you think the Ukrainian authorities should now consider by way of a structure, a system for this country. This will be of interest for everybody.

Taras Shevchenko: The formation of public service broadcasting in Ukraine today, to my mind, ia akin to inventing a bicycle. It’s still not a miracle, but like inventing a bike. In Ukraine there’s a very hot and passionate discussion that has been continuing for almost 2 months among government officials, NGOs and the mass media. But, unfortunately, it looks like people have heard the name “bicycle”, but have never seen the thing itself. They know that it’s something that helps you to move around, but don’t know whether it drives, flies or just transplants you from one place to the other. That is why the discussion and the proposals being put forth and defended so hotly, often remind me of questions as to whether a bike need sot have two steering wheels, whether it needs to have wings along with wheels (what if it ever decides to fly?), whether it needs 2 wheels or 5 or whatever.
In reality, it’s much more complex than a bike, because a bike is more or less the same in all countries, even though the models may differ. And public service broadcasting – in every country the model is very different. And it’s good that all the experts you have heard today note that Ukraine should create its own way, based on its own conditions, and with its own result. In this case, it’s hard for me to talk about a general picture, because it’s impossible to generalise, and all the generalisations that can be made are based more on subjective opinion. But there are things which all of us have to recognise and be aware of, because they are based on concrete European grounds and are not subject to discussion. Namely, what Mr. Jakubowicz spoke about – that the public service television must exist in place of the state television. There shouldn’t even be an issue of preserving the old system and build something new alongside; this is not to be discussed.

On the other hand, there’s the issue which many people in Ukraine believe has no alternatives – that the public service television has to be based on private property; in reality, this depends on the situation in the country. In half of the European countries public service TV is based on state property and is financed at least in part by the state. The financing issue as well – practically in all the countries it is financed by separate funds, by a separate tax. But for Ukraine this option is unlikely, because it’s very difficult to justify introducing a new tax if the channel is watched by 2-3 per cent of the population. I am sure that this can easily be taken to court and declared illegitimate. I have also seen the recommendations from the Council of Europe, which state that it is not recommended to introduce a tax if the audience share is very small. It’s one thing when you pay, you have a TV-set and you watch everything. When BBC introduced their payments, it was like this: either you pay and you watch or you don’t pay and you don’t have anything. When there are a lot of private broadcasters, it’s a different and unique situation. I’ll stop here, because a lot can be said, but the time is limited.

William Horsley: Thank you, we’ll come back to it. We are going to move on quickly, so we can cover the ground and in a few minutes we’ll open this to general discussion. Can we talk about commercial and private broadcasting next, an issue in Ukraine as in other former Soviet countries with the media, especially business being set up in many cases by oligarchs and others seen as hasty or unfair privatization. It’s an issue known also in the West: we have business monopolies, for example, in Italy, issues of alleged bias or damage to public interest from big private media empires, also in Britain and in Germany. Kate, let me come to you first and ask you to talk about big business and its potential damage to the public interest in broadcasting.

Kate Adie: It’s happening worldwide. It’s nothing confined to just the behavior of Mr. Murdoch, Mr. Berlusconi and others. It is a pressure to come into a marketplace and to make the media a market place. It has grown slowly in the last 40 years, but now it’s suddenly gathered pace. You have a gallop towards the idea that the bigger the audience – the more the profit. And, of course, the bigger audience is the entertainment audience. So what you have is rich businessmen wanting to get richer and they buy radio stations, they buy in other countries, they put them together and they give you the same meal. They serve up the same food across the borders. It’s cheaper to do so. The important thing, though, is that when they begin to mix politics with their business, you really get a “witch’s brew”, a “devil’s cauldron”. You get the greedy men – the men who are making money, well, that’s known about – suddenly alight with the desire for political power and influence in society. And I genuinely think that is a cause for huge concern.

And I don’t think that we have the kind of structures in place, I’m not talking about law so much as structures in place to prevent some of the really rich people doing this. And I do think we need to start working hard at grassroots level. And it starts with grassroots level, and here you have a chance, you know, in Ukraine: keep party politics out of commercial and public service broadcasting. Keep them in parliament, where they belong. Keep them in politics. Get the people who have political views, political allegiance, political activity, to come as contributors, to participate in broadcasting, but they should not be given the power over broadcasting. And I think this goes for both commercial and public service.

William Horsley: Excellent point. So, Joseph Jarab, what are the important lessons from former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe in this regard, and what are your observations about what the Ukrainians ought to be thinking about as they embark on this?

Joseph Jarab: I’ve told you already that the important thing is to get an indirect sort of regulation over not only the public service, but licenses for private TV stations, etc., which, in fact, one in Czech Republic asked for something that they never have fulfilled, which means their mission is very different from the mission that they asked for. And the regulatory body is under political and economic pressure, and therefore, does not stop it and doesn’t take their license away. So, this is one thing. We have here, and this is what our colleagues can read in Recommendation 1147 in 1991, on Parliamentary responsibility for democratic reform of broadcasting. And here it’s very clearly said: purely commercial and public objectives are opposites. I do not think this is exactly expressed, this is a good guiding line, but this is what I do not see in 10 or 15 years.

I come back a little bit to what has been said before, inform and entertain. I think that there’s a competition between public service and private (entertaining) and, as a mater of fact, unfortunately, we could see that public service broadcasting was getting under the influence of the entertaining, and taking over, especially in the press, we see that serious Czech press is tabloid, becoming more and more a mixture of tabloid and serious. However, I also have to say that the private TV stations in competition over the recent two year or so is getting better, especially on the news and reporting then the public service broadcasting. So, there’s a competition here which is one of the few healthy manifestations of the current media that we do have.

William Horsley: Right, thanks very much. Now, Mr. Jakubowicz, your role here is Mr. Rules and Regulations, would you tell us how to cope with this problem of cross-border, money-making in commercial television as opposed to public interest?

Karol Jakubowicz: Well, first the commercial plug, Mr. Chairman, I will be back here on Tuesday, speaking about the successes and failures of public service broadcasting in Poland, I hope to have more time then you’re giving me. When I was here in December, I heard that the National Council for TV and Radio broadcasting had given out in one day 27 new licenses to stations owned by enemies of Mr. Yushchenko in order to boost the political power of the current regime. I think this needs a thorough legislative reform. The current broadcasting legislation gives the regulator to inquire into who really is applying for a license, who controls this person, where’s the money coming from, does this person have any money? The broadcasting legislation … There’s even a law on public service broadcasting in Ukraine, but it’s never been implemented, however, it needs thorough review.

First of all, we need a regulatory framework, which allows the regulator – and we need a decent regulator in Ukraine, which can control the situation, which can ensure transparency, which can know who it is giving licenses to, which can take away licenses if the licenses are abused for purposes which have nothing to do with broadcasting. You need in Ukraine - and you’d better introduce them immediately – laws on concentration of capital, because if you fail to do this now, 2 years from now it will be too late – your broadcasting stations, your media oligarchs will be too powerful and they will stop you. This has happened in Poland – government actually failed, because they tried to introduce restrictions of concentration of capital in the media. So you need a body of law and a regulatory system which works for public interest and not for political interest.

William Horsley: Many thanks. We’re going to ask the Media Reform Centre to transcribe your words and advice to the Minister, since, unfortunately, he’s not here to receive them in person. Taras, you have a big job now. You’re going to tell us of the risks and opportunities in Ukraine in this area, and I’m going to ask you to bundle in with it the issue of newspapers and private ownership as well, because in Ukraine regional governments up to now have had a lot of control directly by officials over regional newspapers and they are due to be privatised, and of course, in many cases they’ve become local fiefdom. So, if you could keep it to a couple of minutes, and then we’ll throw it open.

Taras Shevchenko: As for the independent TV and radio, at least that which is not state-owned, thus called independent. I think, the Ukrainian system, which is characterised by large scale developments in the private sector of TV and radio broadcasting, is closer to the US situation, not to the European one. Europe is characterised by a fairly powerful program production and audience share for public service broadcasters. And as a rule, they carry most of the responsibilities before the public. In the US, where television developed primarily as private, all of the private channels also carry certain public responsibilities. In fact, I believe that Ukraine should take the best from both the European and the US experience. Actually, in Ukraine now it’s a common opinion that TV should give objective news, report information objectively, as by the law it carries certain responsibilities before the public. It has no right to display open political sympathies and so on. Of course, everyone who has at least lived in Ukraine, know very well that during the latest elections, even the last few years, this was only on paper, but it was never there in practice.

On the contrary, the situation in printed press must be legally different. In other words, there should be more freedom in the press – it’s normal for both Europe and Ukraine when newspapers have certain political sympathies. But this should be secured on the level of the law, because at present the election legislation has absolutely equal responsibilities on reporting on parties, on advertising, on equal opportunities for both newspapers and television. And it is not justified for newspapers.

A few more words about the newspaper market. For Ukraine it really is a serious trial – what to do with this mass of papers and journalists who work in state press. Just as all the local authorities have their own newspapers, so do the central governing bodies. And no one wants to get rid of any of this. Ministries have newspapers, Parliament has a big newspaper on which millions of budget money is spent, and I don’t understand why there should be a newspaper paid by the Parliament for social and political articles, for entertainment information, etc. The latest plans announced by the government are to develop a concept of how to transform these mass media. But it should also be noted that there is serious opposition, open opposition in these issues, namely on the part of the present head of the State Committee on TV and radio Mr. Chizh, as well as for instance, on the part of the Journalists Trade Union of Ukraine – the management of this organisation publicly defends state media and holds the position that they must survive. So this is really a test for Ukraine, a test for our democracy – will Ukraine keep the democratic standards? Do we really want to build our own democracy or not?

William Horsley: Thanks. We have questions, hands being raised, but I just want to give Mr. Nevermann a chance, because Germany has hundreds of regional and city newspapers. Now some of them are going bankrupt, because they are not all affordable. A quick word of advice or experience from Germany?

Knut Nevermann: We need special concentration regulation for the TV market, otherwise you will get monopolization and leave all your freedom behind. But I’d like to debate with Kate and say that I can’t agree with her. She says the citizens must keep broadcasting away from political parties – I think that’s’ too much. In my view, you can’t organize a democratic process without parties.

Kate Adie: We do.

Knut Nevermann: No, you can’t do it.

Kate Adie: We are undemocratic? We have had the BBC for nearly 80 years and we have managed to keep away from organization of the BBC by party politics.

Knut Nevermann: But you get money from the political parties and the parliament, I’m very sorry.

Kate Adie: We have it indirectly.

Knut Nevermann: But if you want to have a civil society controlled institution, you need the parties; you can’t organize a civil society without them.

William Horsley: I’m going to jump in, because this is a real debate, but not necessarily the one we are having here about Ukraine. A gentleman is already on his feet and another person has raised his hand. Please state your name, your organization, and make your point briefly, if you’re addressing your question to a certain panel member, we’ll get through that more quickly.

Igor Lubchenko, Head head of National Journalist Trade Union of Ukraine: I don’t know how you can say that The Journalists Trade Union is against privatization of the press. Journalists Trade Union in April 2002, at it’s 10th session said there are no alternatives to privatization. We need to privatise the state press. And all these years have been used to work with the journalists, and now many of them are ready to reject their founders, but the authorities have never agreed to that. Moreover, now the inclination is opposite – privatize immediately, take pity on Ukrainian people, don’t give money to state and municipal media. But 12 million tax payers – are they not Ukrainian people? That is why I went to the President with a proposal, to ask him to order the Cabinet of Ministers to develop a program which would last two years – because this is feasible, because today you cannot privatize immediately, the subscription has been paid for, and until the end of the year you have to fulfil your responsibilities before those who subscribed.

William Horsley: Thank you, sir. We have agreed to make our points briefly; otherwise, others won’t have a chance to speak. Taras, perhaps you’ll come back later on that, unless you want to jump in now. Sir!

Serhiy Gooz, Head of the Ukrainian Independent Media Trade Union: A question to Mr. Karol Jakubowicz: Today there were reports in the press that there is a document being prepared by the Council of Europe and the Ukrainian government about the further CoE and our government’s policy towards Ukrainian media. The journalists from our Trade Union and the National Journalists Trade Union have adopted a manifesto – the translation is available here, at the door, - a manifesto of the demands of Ukrainian journalists to the reforms in Ukraine. I would like to know, how our demands will be taken into account in the document that is prepared by the Council of Europe and the Ukrainian government.

Karol Jakubowicz: The Council of Europe is preparing an action plan for Ukraine, which, I hope, will be a resolution about it, should be adopted tomorrow. That action plan primarily concerns assistance with media regulation and broadcasting regulation. In the second place, it concerns training for journalists and media people. I have been coming here for 10 years now, trying to assist the development of broadcasting regulation in Ukraine, nobody wanted to listen to me much. I hope that now, people will start listening and there will be political will to finally do something with your broadcasting regulation. And this is what the plan concerns.

William Horsley: Taras, in what way do you think the outside world can best help Ukraine in these formulations of new rules and structures in the media?

Taras Shevchenko: I think that the best thing would be experience, experience of European countries. Both the positive, and the negative experience, in order for Ukraine not to repeat the mistakes already made by another country. And it’s very important to be able to check things. We have the possibility to read something, take the model of France or Germany, but it’s very important to see and hear experts who can say at once: yes, we have this, ,but we’re not satisfied with it, don’t build what we have built, take into account our mistakes. First of all, we have lots of desire and inspiration to make reforms here, and experience is the most important thing Europe can give us.

William Horsley: Andrew Taussig, I know, is very knowledgeable on the transition in the countries in this whole region of Eastern Europe in the area of broadcasting and media. Andrew, your point?

Andrew Taussig: Very briefly. We’ll see whether I’m knowledgeable or not from what I have to say. I represent The Voice of Listener and Viewer, a citizen group, and also BBC. I’d like to suggest a middle way between what our German friend and what Kate were saying: I think, political parties need a guarantee that their particular interests will be protected in a society where change is happening very fast. Equally – and I’d like to ask the panel if they agree or disagree – I would say that leadership is absolutely critical. Because you can actually divide an executive council in proportion to the members of the parliament sitting on a particular committee, but you can’t divide the Director General of the BBC or any other organization into legs, stomach, eyes…

Karol Jakubowicz: Yes, you can.

Andrew Taussig: And then, actually, someone’s got to make a decision. To be brave and courageous and risk failing. So, without risking failure, you’ll never succeed. I just wondered whether that’s a worthwhile thought.

Karol Jakubowicz: I’m sorry to disappoint you, you can divide the Director General into five parts, create a five-member board of management. And then the game is to make sure that people, representatives supported by major parties find themselves on this board of management, and this board does nothing else but negotiates among the members what decisions to make. Decisions take months, and the public service broadcaster – because that’s where this is happening – is going bankrupt in the meantime.

William Horsley: Kate, leadership?

Kate Adie: Leadership is necessary… Where you find your leaders from? Well, if you find one, could we please have one? We had a problem in the BBC. But, can I just throw one idea in? I know regulation is important. The structure, when you start off – for a house you need a firm base. But! No house is worth living in unless it looks great, it’s comfortable, you want to go there, you want to go back there every night. No broadcasting is worth having unless it’s full of ideas, created energy, things you want to hear and see. I do feel if we’re not careful, we’ll be talking about rules and regulations all the time. But what should come first is ideas. Why do we want to talk to each other? Why do we want to put pictures on screen? What do you want to see? What should you see? The creative people, not just the ideas about political argument. All of life. And that’s what brings people to good public service broadcasting.

I’m not being idealistic. Even commercial people – the really hard-nosed people – know that you have to have the ideas first. Of course, you have to have a firm base, that’s obviously absolutely necessary. But don’t start writing all the rules out before you start making the programs. You’re going to have to experiment, try things. Adventure – that’s what it’s all about when you’re starting. You may get things wrong, you may have to turn round, you may stop things, but you can’t do it all by rules and regulations. Go out there and make programs, get people talking, get people watching. I’m not idealistic. I come from a broadcasting organization.

Karol Jakubowicz: You’re just being naïve, that’s all.

Kate Adie: Well, I come from the least naïve broadcasting organization in the world. And the most successful.

Karol Jakubowicz: Well done, well done.

William Horsley: Match that. I guess it does raise the question of whether it’s possible to have independence and fairness in a broadcasting system of the kind which we enjoy nearly all the time in Britain, Germany and many other countries. If the society as a whole does not have fair rules, or the tax system, if the government is using its instruments to sideline its opponents or to harass journalists who are opposed to it.

Karol Jakubowicz: Well, that’s precisely the point. You cannot create an island of happiness in a sea of misery. You cannot create an island of apolitical journalism in a society that is highly politicised. You cannot create an island of honesty in a sea of corruption. That is the difficulty. It’s very easy to write a good law, but to expect journalists to be apolitical, when they see political games played by everybody, including the politicians who are then telling them to be apolitical. That is the difficulty. And that is why it is taking such a long time. And that is why also you need very good rules, which of course will do nothing immediately, but they will create a pattern, a goal to which to aspire. You need to understand that in a country like Ukraine, like Poland – in Ukraine it’s been 80 years, in Poland it’s been 50 years of Communist rule – human minds are so completely confused, that unless you create really clear rules of the game, people are going to be wandering around in circles, not knowing what to do. You need to create a system which will be understood, which will be clear, and only then can you start putting flesh on the bones of that system.

William Horsley: I mean you need your own Walter Cronkite, your own David Dimbleby or whatever, but once that figure has the respect of the viewer, then a lot can flow from it, isn’t that true?

Karol Jakubowicz: Yes, that’s true, but that Walter Cronkite will be maybe in the service – of the President, the Prime-Minister or of some political party, and then there will be neither respect, nor legitimacy, nor credibility. That is the problem. That people cannot resist staying away from centres of power because those are the only structures that exist. That is the difference between the situation in Britain and in Ukraine and in Poland. And there’s no alternative to political parties, there’s no alternative to political institutions. There’s no base in society on which to find a powerbase which will support you and which will ensure that you have the protection you need to be independent. That is the problem.

William Horsley: Can we hear from people in the audience who are from Ukraine or know Ukraine, about this question of the relationship between audiences and journalists, whether they are newspaper or TV or whatever. What is it that you want, what is it that you see? I’d very much like to hear from some people. Perhaps, the people from the Media Reform Centre themselves who know the subject well. Can we please hear some Ukrainian voices!

Poles of Ukraine: I represent the newspaper Poles of Ukraine of the Polish ethnic minority. Ladies and gentlemen! There are a lot of discussions around public service television, around our media in general. Unfortunately, no one realises that 30% of the Ukrainian population are ethnic minorities. And during the round tables, of which there have been so many, I’ve never heard from a representative of our multi-ethnic community. Unfortunately. So I would like to remind Mr. Taras Shevchenko, who represents independent media, about us – invite us, include us into the media system of Ukraine – European Ukraine, independent Ukraine. Thank you.

Taras Shevchenko: Whenever discussions happen, the issue of who the public service broadcasting should be aimed at ia always raised. There are different opinions: some say it has to be an almost commercial product, attractive and aimed at the wide audience, at the most popularity, some believe in narrow topicality, sometimes calling it “marginal”. In reality, I agree with the opinion that supports what you’ve said – that the public service television has to be aimed at the wide audience, not in the sense that it includes the most popular programmes, but in the sense that the interests of both majority and minority have to be represented. In any dimension: political, linguistic, national, social, etc. All of this has to be taken into account, and I am sure that it will be duly noted and written directly into the legislation.

Serhiy Kvit, Head of Kyiv-Mohyla School of Journalism: Using the opportunity of having a mike in my hands and the fact that no one wants to speak at the moment, I would like to point out that standards are common for everyone. It’s obvious that we shouldn’t repeat the mistakes made by others, as Taras said. But I would like to argue with Taras and say that as I understand he meant Golos Ukrainy (Voice of Ukraine) – a newspaper financed by the Parliament. It’s an interesting thing, but in our situation the newspaper Golos Ukrainy, financed by state money, was one of the most pluralistic during the latest events. Any MP with any political or other sympathies could be printed in it. And no other newspaper could allow itself this much inner pluralism. We had oppositional papers like Ukraina Moloda (Young Ukraine), but they did not show the debate on their pages. And Golos Ukrainy could always afford to do that. Obviously, we have our particularities.

Taras Shevchenko: One sentence – but what if I don’t want to pay from my taxes even for a pluralistic paper? I want to buy it at the kiosk, not pay for it to the budget.

William Horsley: Can I ask anybody from this side of the table or anybody with experience in transition countries to say something about how to give an independent authority, to acquire respect on the part of journalists, whose job is to see fair play in public life, so they have to stand up to the politicians, they have to be respected, to win public respect in order to do the job. Is there anything from your experience which you think might help in Ukraine?

Joseph Jarab: Well, just one short comment on what we heard. It’s really a description of what I do in the attic to make it beautiful when there is no basement. There is no base here, and that is what we have to remember. This does not mean that we did not study or did not look at the British model as something very-very interesting. I think that yes, there are in my country, for instance, individual newspaper men, but very few, who would win the respect and trust of the audience. And strangely enough, they move from paper to paper, they move from one media to another, for two reasons: because they get fired, but also they are interesting journalists to be hired again. So these are mavericks really. This is not part of the system.

William Horsley: That sounds a little pessimistic. The lady here?

Natalya Dniprenko, Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, PR Service of Vice-Prime-Minister Mykola Tomenko: I would like to – and I hope the Chairman will excuse me – take upon myself the role of the Chairman and propose a new approach. Let me introduce myself: I represent here the administration of the Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers, which is responsible for development in the mass media sphere. In other words, I have now the preliminary documents which are actually our attempts to regulate the problem we are talking about. And I want to say, that no matter how many philosophical discussions like this one we have, , it will all end up on paper, at least in a specific document which will then have to be implemented.

So, first of all I want to thank on behalf of, well, I can’t say all of the government, but at least of that block which is responsible for these issues, to the Council of Europe and all the NGOs which jointed today’s discussion. I’d like to propose that our discussion today would try to be aimed at some very specific things – maybe, to propose the members of the working group, together with the international experts. That we wouldn’t just end with a philosophical conversation and interesting theses, which I hardly manage to write down, but specific things about cooperation. I mean, create a plan and then we can work according to it. Then I will be able to say that we started a mechanism of cooperation. I would like to place this issue at the top, that we continue to work in such a format and that we would create this working group now.

William Horsley: Yeah, actually, Karol, I’m going to ask you to wrap up in the end, we’ve only got another 5 minutes or so. Let’s hear from the lady here.

Lily Molodetska, Director General of Ukrainian Association of Periodical Press Publishers: I would like to disagree with Mr. Serhiy Kvit, that the Golos Ukrainy newspaper was the most pluralistic during the recent elections in Ukraine. In Ukraine there are a lot of regional papers which are privately owned, are commercial and can actually be pluralistic today, which are ready to represent the interests of their readers and to serve them. What do these regional publishers lack? They don’t have the ability, don’t have the financing to conduct full-scale research of their readers’ audience. Some things are done, but the newspapers don’t feel the connection with their audience, therefore, they cannot satisfy the existing needs.

There are other problems as well. There is a problem of absence of access to information about the government’s activities, this is a huge problem in Ukraine. These problems should be solved by the government and by those in power. There is another colossal problem in Ukraine, which cannot be decided from within. We need help from without. The problem of the quality of journalists, the quality of journalistic training. We talk a lot about journalists getting the freedom of speech. But today the press publishers cannot work with journalists because the journalists are not qualified enough. And this often leads to very low quality of media, especially in the regions.

Karol Jakubowicz: When I was here first in 1994, a newspaper publisher from Crimea came to me and said: “We want to be independent, we want to be honest. We are not taking money from the party, we are not taking money from business, we are not taking money from the mafia, we are not taking money from anybody. Tell me how to make my newspaper profitable”. And I looked at his newspaper, it said on the cover “price negotiable”. I said to him: “I have no answer to your question”. The problem is that there’s not enough of a media market, there’s not enough money in advertising, for newspapers and media to be independent financially. So, therefore, they have to keep running to various sources for money, they have to sell their soul in order to survive. One of the structural problems is that there are probably too many media outlets in Ukraine to be supported by the market, therefore, obviously, they cannot be independent financially, and they cannot be independent at all.

What I would like to say in conclusion is that nothing that we have said here matters. What matters really is whether you will be able and willing – primarily willing – to continue the fight that you started on the Independence Square, whether you will be willing to watch your government like a horde, whether you will be willing to react whenever you see rules being broken, people abusing their power, and whenever you see media legislation coming in which is not up to standard. I have an answer to your question. Whenever you write a media law, send it to the Council of Europe. Council of Europe is duty-bound to come to your assistance. You have to start the process. We cannot write your drafts for you, but when you have written them, send them to the Council of Europe and the Council of Europe will respond.

And you need to be prepared for a long period of change, but in that long period of change the only thing that’s really important is whether the government will feel that it is constantly under control of citizens. If you think the battle is won, you are very much mistaken. It has only begun. And if you give up, if you say “We’ve done our job, now it’s the part of the government to put things right” – not so. You need to watch them like a hawk, be organised. The problem with Central and Eastern European countries is that there is no organized civil society. Therefore, power flows automatically to the parliament, to the government, the President, nobody has the legitimacy to stand up and say “I represent the people, I represent a social group”. Therefore, the British ideal that you can arrange broadcasting without the participation of political parties, unfortunately, will not work. But parties need a countervailing force, parties need civil society, which needs to organize and needs to represent a real force. And if you do this, then you will be successful in a much shorter time, than, for example, Poland, where things are still very far from perfect.

William Horsley: We have a lot of enthusiasm and time for just one other hand there. I don’t know whether we will be allowed to continue. Serhiy, you’re going to have to decide whether we close down. Please, go ahead, lady.

Tertyana Lebedeva, Head of the Board of Directors of Independent Association of TV&Radio Broadcasters (Ukraine): We have long been cooperating with Mr. Jakubowicz, and I’d like to thank all the international experts who have joined the work with the independent media in Ukraine. It is really a big help. But I want to say that the laws we had were not that bad, we created new laws with the help of the international experts, but as Homer said: “it’s useless to write laws if there is no morals”. There was a very big difference between those laws and the way they were implemented. You know how dangerous it was when there were temniks, when at the call of Mr. Medvedchuk decisions were made on whom to give a license, even though the laws and norms were in place… But now, we have a new power, and if you look at the news monitoring for the last month, you will see that two points of view are not present, two positions are not there, in other words, the standards of journalism are violated again. And the representatives of the power are present in the news in the same quantity as old ones were. These are very dangerous tendencies.

But, thank God, it seems to me that last fall Ukraine proved that it has a civil society. Now there are four main factors that will help change the situation in the Ukrainian media. First, there is the political will, it is being declared, and I think it is really there now. This is a unique moment. Secondly, it’s the constant control on the part of the civil society, representatives of professional and non-government organizations. Thirdly, very hard work on the part of the media experts to create new laws, a new system, a civilised European system, a dual broadcasting system. And fourth, very important, is the constant attention of our colleagues from the European structures and their constant expert opinion on our every step, and also, constant attention to ensure that the direction taken up during the Orange revolution does not change. Thank you very much.

William Horsley: Thank you very much indeed. That was very relevant. We’ve almost kept to our time of 1 hour, thank you all very much for being here.

Broadcasting is a miracle; cross-border broadcasting is a miracle impossible. I’ll mention just one. The BBC this week, in fact, today, is conducting an open television debate in Shanghai with Chinese politicians, Chinese participants, broadcast in Britain. Now, if that isn’t a miracle… I think perhaps you should take courage from that. Thank you all, thanks to the panel in particular for being here and wish you all a very good evening, good business and good professional life. Thank you.

Round Table Photo Gallery. Part 1
Round Table Photo Gallery. Part 2

Ukrainian translation of the discussion