Free our media by Publishopia

PROLOGUE Press freedom is as abstract a word as corruption: you mainly know that it is there, or that it isn’t. As the stories of this book illustrate, harassment and intimidation of journalists are still part of their daily work, in some countries more than in others. Luckily some innovations have also changed things for the better. For instance, blogs and social media have helped to find alternative ways of producing media and spread the word about breaches of press freedom.

cidence that this book came to exist in a project called Free Our Media! where “we” ask to free “our” media, the fourth state power that should serve us, the people, to check upon them, those in power. What is it that you and I can do for more press freedom? We suggest that you start by asking critical questions to the right people who hold the key for more press freedom practices. That we start to selfreflect on when we censor ourselves and think about the reasons for doing it.

The fight for freedom of expression is nevertheless far from over. In recent years the press freedom situation has been deteriorating on the Old Continent, and so far we cannot see an easy way out. Hungary’s media law and growing surveillance practices in the United Kingdom are just two examples of worrying developments.

Join an organisation that protects the rights of journalists and advocates for those imprisoned for practising journalism. Elect people to our governments that care about freedom of expression and people’s access to information. Learn to use encryption and to protect our communications online. Most of all: don’t forget, and don’t let yourself be silenced. As a network and as a community we hold the key to change things for the better.

We at European Youth Press represent young media makers and their organisations in Europe, and it is this mandate that brings with it an obligation to speak up. We want to send a message to those trying to oppress journalists and limit their freedom: here is a new generation, and it’s ready to fight for its freedom to think, express and act upon its values. We see the potential in each and every one of us to carry this message, whether a journalist or not, whether young or old. It is no coin-

September 20, 2015 in Berlin, Germany

Anna Saraste Board Member

FREE OUR MEDIA

14 STORIES ABOUT MEDIA & FREEDOM Page

Artist / Subject

Story

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Jo Breese Ádám Ferenc Nagy Alexandra Milaković Andrea Süli Stanislaw Buczkowski Ferdi Skipteri Amalya Vardanyan Bethan Mure Andrea Süli Stanislaw Buczkowski Büşra Kurutay All together Damir Balić Mario Hamborg

ORWELL’S REALITY  WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON EXTRA LIFE BUS  INVESTIGATION SQUARE AND PLUGGED  #ELECTRICYEREVAN   MEDIA MONSTER  ANTI CORRUPTION FIGHT  IN BETWEEN THE PRICE OF FREEDOM  A GREAT MAN  JUST BE FREE  HOME

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ABOUT THIS PROJECT MEDIA FREEDOM AMBASSADORS MAKING OF INTERVIEW TESTIMONIALS COPYRIGHT THE TEAM CONTACT AKNOWLEDGEMENTS 3

1 ORWELL’S REALITY Jo Breese

DENMARK

Denmark is the happiest country in the world with almost no corruption and one of the most comprehensive public transparency laws in the world. But despite the country's enviable rankings in corruption and transparency, something is clearly rotten in the state of Denmark. At least according to documents leaked in 2013 by the former NSA employee Edward Snowden. The internet that we all use everyday is essentially a large number of interconnected computers, storing and sending data to each other, from all over the world. All countries are connected through large intercontinental fibre cables. Data on the Internet rarely transfers linearly from A to B, meaning that it often passes through a lot of different locations before it loads into your browser. If you are located in Denmark and load a German website, it is possible that the data you request will take a detour to the United States or the United Kingdom before you will be able to see it. And because the data in the fibre cables is travelling with the speed of light, you will not notice the longer distance. During the Cold War Denmark was an important surveillance point for the United States 20

2 WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON ร dรกm Ferenc Nagy

UKRAINE

With the ousting of Ukraineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s former president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, the media had a small window in time where it got a chance to develop freely. The level of government hostility and legal pressure faced by journalists decreased, as did political pressure on stateowned outlets. The media benefited from improvements to the law on access to information and the increased independence of the broadcasting regulator. But the 2014 Euromaidan clashes and subsequent warfare in the east quickly turned Ukraine one of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most dangerous and difficult places for journalists to work in. According to the Institute of Mass Information (IMI), a Ukrainian nongovernmental organization, there were at least 995 documented violations of free speech in 2014, double the number in 2013 (496) and triple that of 2012 (324). Six journalists were killed during 2014, among them Vyacheslav Veremiy of the Russianlanguage newspaper Vesti, who was shot and killed in Kyiv in February by masked men. IMI further documented 286 physical assaults on journalists in 2014, as well as 78 journalists having been abducted and illegally detained by a variety of actors, including pro- government as 27

3 EXTRA Alexandra MilakoviÄ&#x2021;

MONTENEGRO

Together with artist Aleksandra Milaković we decided to illustrate one, in my opinion, most important media problem in my country: the absence of a united journalists’ (self-regulatory) organisation. In the local public consultation that we held in the capital Podgorica about media freedom we realised together with the part-taking journalists and media workers that as a unity we could easier fight for a better implementation of laws and pressure state institutions to investigate attacks on journalists more thoroughly. So far there is no journalists’ union or united media organisation in my country. A journalists’ union would also make it harder for media owners to influence reporters with layoffs and low salaries if all their colleagues stand behind them. Monte- negro is actually a state of dualities. We have one country, but in every part of society we have two opposing sides. So we have two orthodox churches, two Academies of Science, two trade unions, and so on. They‘re mostly divided according to political, national or interest grounds, and media and journalists also have trouble staying impartial. Somehow, everything boils down to the political orientation of one’s colleagues, and that de36

4 LIFE BUS Andrea Süli

HUNGARY

In the last couple of years, I have seen some unsettling changes in the country that I grew up in and today work in as a journalist. The Hungarian government issued a new constitution in 2010 and introduced a new media law. Besides the new media law there is a new framework for elementary education that deeply undermines free media. Through the local consultation with young media makers for the Free Our Media! project I found the latter to be of larger concern. Elementary school teachers are bound to follow a national education framework that tells them what and how to teach. The teacher only has influence on 10% of the courseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s content. Todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s education framework, which is available for download online, emphasizes theoretical knowledge. Media is only mentioned sporadically, but there is nothing that could help students for instance to develop an ability to analyse the relation between media ownership and advertisements. That ability is much needed in todayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Hungary. Oligarchs own a number of media outlets, and they often have connections to the state and state-run companies. Ads for such companies are common, and they are very lucrative. More and more media outlets are struggling finan41

5 INVESTIGATION Stanislaw Buczkowski

POLAND

The Polish comic is based on the story of the journalist Endy Gęsina-Torres, which sparked a debate on whether journalistic work in the public interest can justify unlawful behaviour. In 2013 Gęsina-Torres, working as a broadcaster for Polish national television, orchestrated a journalistic investigation at the Guarded Centre for Foreigners in Białystok Podlaskie Voivodeship, in North-Eastern Poland. He spent three weeks collecting materials about refugees to reveal the abhorrent conditions and inhuman treatment they faced in the facility. To disguise himself, he posed as a Cuban refugee using a hidden camera in his watch to film. It all started when Endy Gęsina-Torres was arrested for illegally trying to enter the Guarded Centre for Foreigners in Bialystok in January 2013. As he was posing to be an illegal immigrant from Cuba, he did not show his true Polish identity card, and instead testified that his Cuban documents had been stolen. All documents that he had to sign in that process were signed under a false name. Gęsina-Torres recorded his conversations with other inmates, who complained about the 50

6 SQUARE AND PLUGGED Ferdi Skipteri

MACEDONIA

The level of media freedom in Macedonia is low. Reporters Without Borders describes Macedonia as a country that has „partly free“ media. In their Press Freedom Index, Macedonia is ranked 117th out of 180 countries. Only six years ago, Macedonia was ranked 34th. That means that in six years, Macedonia has made a record decline of 84 places. Macedonia is also the only Balkan country designated the colour red, used for the worst performing countries in terms of media freedom. The reason for this huge decline in the freedom of the media is the mechanisms for media control that are being used by the current government. The government is regularly criticized for its liberal use of promotional advertising, which increases the media’s financial dependence and allegedly favours pro-government outlets. The Macedonian government is among the country’s largest advertisers. Although the constitution guarantees basic protection of freedom of the press and of expression, government representatives do not uphold them impartially. Macedonian media often experience state intervention that includes corruption and violation of the laws. All of this has an extremely negative impact on the level of media freedom in Macedonia. 57

7 #ELECTRICYEREVAN Amalya Vardanyan

ARMENIA

“An informed citizenry is vital to democracy”, said Thomas Jefferson. To have meaning and value, information must be accurate, objective and reasonably complete. Hence, a cornerstone of democracy is freedom as well as objectivity of the press. In Armenia most of the media serve the interests of the state and ruling authorities, and most media outlets don’t rely on journalists who have specialised themselves in particular fields of expertise. According to Freedom House, Armenia’s media is heavily influenced by politics. The institute rated Armenian media as ‘not free’ in 2014. Many of the existing opposition media outlets don’t have much authority on the public or a remarkable outreach as to actually influence public opinion. Unfortunately international media outlets, which could balance out the situation, serve often the interests of their own country‘s policies and position. Foreign media often report on events without having a journalist on the spot, and this in turn affects the portraits made of each situation. The June 2015 protests that went under the name #ElectricYerevan started as protests 62

8 MEDIA MONSTER Bethan Mure

UNITED KINGDOM

While the UK experiences relatively good media freedom, it recently slipped down the global rankings for freedom of the press (from 31st place to 36th in 2014, alongside Malta and Slovakia). This is in part due to the UK government’s use of counterterrorism and surveillance legislation, which had a negative effect on freedom of the press. The most important case was the government’s extreme response to reporting by The Guardian newspaper regarding the leaked files by former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013. Authorities threatened The Guardian with legal action and destroyed two hard drives containing the leaked files. Included in this series of threats and harassment was the detention of David Miranda, the partner of investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, who broke the Snowden story, under the Terrorism Act. Certain parts of it criminalize speech that is considered to encourage terrorism, even in the absence of a direct, proven link to a specific terrorist act. As pointed out by David Anderson for the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, this brings “journalism and blogging within the ambit of ‘terrorism’.” In 2014 the UK has been included on Reporters 69

9 ANTI CORRUPTION FIGHT Andrea S端li

ROMANIA

Romania ranked 52nd out of 180 countries surveyed in the 2015 World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders. With a new score of 24.9, the country fell seven places from the previous yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s report. Despite this decline it is remarkable that it still holds a better score than any other Southeast European country. When it comes to legal protection, freedom of the press is well-anchored in the Romanian constitution, and the media environment remains pluralistic. But there is a gap between these laws and their implementation, as noted by Ioana Avadani of the Center for Independent Journalism in the IREX Media Sustainability Report 2014. Another concern is of economic nature. As Freedom House underlined in their latest report about Romania, poor economic conditions have led some foreign media companies to sell their Romanian media outlets to wealthy Romanian businesspeople. In most of the cases, those national media owners use their newspapers and TV stations to advance their political and economic interests, Freedom House states. Since news could only be published with the ownerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s approval, investigations into their businesses practices are impossible for these pri74

10 IN BETWEEN Stanislaw Buczkowski

BELARUS

The Belarusian state holds a monopoly on national broadcast media, so only state media broadcasts nationwide. State media is further advantaged with subsidies. The content of smaller television and radio stations is very commercialised. Opposition media also exists, but is not distributed by the state-owned postal and kiosk systems, so it can be found only on the Internet or sold directly from newsrooms with volunteers sometimes delivering copies. The country has a special way of functioning and regulating media, which differs a lot from most countries in Europe. As in 2015, the country is ranked 157th out of 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index. The ranking is connected to the blocking of some websites, and journalists filing complaints to journalistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; organizations. At the same time there are a lot of stereotypes about the Belarusian media system that have also lead to a very coloured picture of the situation, which doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t reflect fully the real state of affairs. The media system in Belarus is heavily influenced by the former Soviet traditions of media work and the existence of strong political power in the country, which lacks variety between the active political par83

11 THE PRICE OF FREEDOM Büşra Kurutay

TURKEY

“These are the worst times for press freedom in Turkey”. This is what veteran journalist and president of the human rights group P.E.N., Zeynep Oral, said in an interview with Al Jazeera English in May 2015. “Any given story can be dangerous for one journalist and safe for another. There‘s no standard. It‘s a labyrinth.” His comment sums up the disastrous decline of press freedom in Turkey over the last few years. The country ranked 149 out of 180 in the Reporters Without Borders (RWB) Press Freedom Index in 2015. Already in 2013 RWB had described Turkey as “the world’s biggest prison for journalists”, with 42 journalists and media workers jailed at the time. Even though 40 of them were released in 2014, they continue to face prosecution and may be detained again at any time. The most recent example of this crackdown on independent and especially foreign journalists working in the country was the arrest of two VICE News journalists, Jake Hanrahan and Philip Pendlebury, as well as their Iraqi colleague and stringer who, while the former two got released, remains imprisoned. Their case illustrates how the Turkish government uses the penal code, criminal defamation 90

12 A GREAT MAN All together

CZECH REPUBLIC

Over the last 25 years, the Czech media landscape has changed dramatically. The establishment of the free market in the early 90â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s led to an inevitable downfall of the major part of the communist press, which was quickly replaced by a variety of independent newspapers and magazines. German publishing companies who sought investment opportunities in the newly democratic country owned most of them. Similarly to the press, the public television and radio soon followed suit, and transitioned to independent ownership. In the following years, the Czech media system flourished. This changed rapidly after the outbreak of the global economic crisis in the late 2000â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;s. Cumulative circulation of the daily press started to dwindle and was accompanied by a continuous decrease in readership of prominent daily newspapers. The circulation decreases prompted a tabloidization of the daily press that was characterised by an increased use of strong visual images and more celebrity and gossip-oriented news. In this new struggle for survival, most of the foreign investors decided to sell their shares and leave the Czech market completely. This presented an opportunity for various players from the Czech Republic, who did not neces95

13 JUST BE FREE Damir Balić

BOSNIA and HERZEGOVINA

There are many issues concerning media freedom in Bosnia and Herzegovina, even though the country has a legal framework to protect the media. The constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina guarantees freedom of the press, but politicians still exert considerable pressure on journalists, and media outlets tend to be aligned with political parties. Since the signing of the Dayton Accords in 1995, the country has been split into two semi- independent constituent entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, populated mostly by Bosnian Muslims and Croats, and the Republika Srpska, where the population consists mostly of Serbs. Each entity has its own public broadcaster, private media, and political parties. According to Freedom House, Bosnia and Herzegovina ranked 108th in media freedom, using data from 199 countries. It states that Bosnia and Herzegovina has a partly free media. The Free Media Helpline, a program run by the Bosnia and Herzegovina Journalistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Association, recorded over 60 violations of journalistsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; rights (death threats, physical attacks, and direct censorship) between 2006 and July 2015, and noted an increase since 2011 in threats and pressure by politicians against journalists. 100

14 HOME Mario Hamborg

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GERMANY

This story arouse from an interview with a journalist who had repeatedly endured threats from the right-wing scene. The scenes depicted in this comic have all happened but to several different people. In this story, the main character finds herself in a situation where she wants to be isolated from the rest of the world because she fears for losing her life, giving up her security and being deprived of her private space. Throughout the autumn of 2014 and spring of 2015 a series of right-wing protests were organised by the “Pegida” (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the Eveningland), spreading from Dresden also to other German cities. In the protests it was common to hear critique of mainstream media reporting, and sometimes members of the press who tried to interview protesters were insulted with the word “Lügenpresse” (“lying press”). The word was also smeared or sprayed on media buildings. As regards freedom of the press and speech, in international terms Germany comes off very well. There is pluralism with regard to opinion and information. The press is not in the hands of the government or political parties, but rather in that of private media com107

ABOUT THIS PROJECT This ebook is the result of a workshop organized by European Youth Press in collaboration with illustrators Yorgos Konstantinou and Marcus Mazzoni in Berlin, Germany in July 2015. The workshop was part of the broader project “Free Our Media!“ that created stories about press freedom, to illustrate what the concept means to young journalists in today's Europe. It is a collective graphic-storytelling-experiment meant to reach out to a wider audience and to visualise the topic in an innovative way. Young artists and journalists (Media Freedom Ambassadors) from all over Europe worked on this publication, which is a collection of stories with very different aesthetics and ways to implement the visual narrative, but there are some common elements that create a relationship throughout the stories: The color, the page layout, the article following each story explaining some backgrounds or illustrating the problems of independent journalism and/or media freedom in each country. And there is the “not so imaginary” figure of Melani appearing in each story and impersonating a young and idealistic journalist with a positive attitude to empower people to stand up for media freedom. 108

MEDIA FREEDOM AMBASSADORS Young people (journalists and journalism students) from 15 countries took up the role of Media Freedom Ambassador. They each teamed with comic artists to create a media freedom story for their country: Vruir Tadevosian

Armenia

Aliaksandra Radkevich

Belarus

Azem Kurtić

Bosnia-Herzegovina

Adam Englund

Czech Republic

Bethan Mure

United Kingdom

Oana Vasiliu

Romania

Fruzsina Katona

Hungary

Aleksandar Ilioski

Macedonia

Ivan Čađenović

Montenegro

Marcin Grzebielucha

Poland

Diana Kosolapova

Russian

Johannes Skov Andersen

Denmark

Anna Romandash

Ukraine

Also texts included from: Anna Saraste

for Germany

Pascale Müller

for Turkey 109

MAKING OF Young people (journalists and journalism students) from 15 countries took up the role of Media Freedom Ambassador. Gallery 17.1 Training in Berlin (journalists+cartoonists)

Gallery 17.2 Training in Montenegro (journalists)

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INTERVIEW “In international communication words can become a burden; drawings can reach a much broader public” (July 17, 2015) Gallery 18.1

Yorgos Konstantinou in Berlin

Just a few days before we get together in Berlin, we have spoken to Yorgos Konstantinou, one of the two artists who will be helping our young cartoonists to create our first graphic novel about media freedom in Europe. Yorgos Konstantinou started using drawings to express his feelings and thoughts at a very early age. He felt comfortable with visual communication, and it gave him an opportunity to develop his skills into a way of making a living. However, Yorgos Konstatinou is not just another illustrator. Yorgos works as a visual artist, cartoonist, muralist, graphic facilitator and ilustrator at Imagistan and is an educator and founding member of Irenia, an initiative that promotes a culture of peace by using games as educational tools. His work is particularly linked to human rights and intercultural communications, 111

TESTIMONIALS Young people (journalists and journalism students) from 15 countries took up the role of Media Freedom Ambassador. Movie 19.1 Adam Englund Media Freedom Ambassador Czech Republic

Movie 19.2 Anna Romandash Media Freedom Ambassador Ukraine

Movie 19.3 Ivan Chadjenovic Chadjo Media Freedom Ambassador Montenegro

MELANI AYA is a not so fictional journalist, she stands for those principles that embody professional journalism- truth, objectivity, courage. You will meet her in many of the stories- a Heroine of our times... 112

COPYRIGHT Images, Comics, Text: European Youth Press Layout Illustrations: Marcus Mazzoni Illustrations: Yorgos Konstantinou  (Pages 2, 115)

Digital Layout and ePublishing: Stefanos Papachristopoulos Publishopia, www.publishopia.com Disclaimer: Stefanos Papachristopoulos makes no warranty, express or implied, nor assumes any legal liability or responsibility about the content of this eBook

Videos: The videos feature the song “Ocean” by Görkem Han Jr., available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license.

THE TEAM

European Youth Press - Network of young media makers e. V. is registered in Germany at Amtsgericht Charlottenburg VR Nr. 24584. V.i.S.d.P. Anna Saraste â&#x20AC;¨ Board Member

Stefanos Papachristopoulosâ&#x20AC;¨ www.publishopia.com

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CONTACT Berlin office European Youth Press Alt-Moabit 89 10559 Berlin Germany skype: email: web: phone:

youthpress office@youthpress.org www.youthpress.org +32 492 556 508

Stefanos Papachristopoulos web: www.publishopia.com email: info@publishopia.com

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AKNOWLEDGEMENTS This eBook is published next to a print version of the Free Our Media! comic book, which was published in autumn 2015 and can be purchased at www.youthpress.org . This book would not have been made possible without all the people who took part in the Free Our Media! project of the European Youth Press.

The eBook

A special shout-out goes to Yorgos Konstantinou, Marcus Mazzoni, Jakob Nordfeldt and Pascale Müller who helped to finalise this book.

The book

A warm thank you to everyone who helped in the organisation of the project, especially Milica Zugic, Saara Toukolehto, Mihaela Georgescu, Isabel Benitez and Tim Lüddemann and all the people at Mladinfo Montenegro and Jugendpresse Deutschland.

Also, a very warm thank you goes to UP - Ungdomsproduktion and Ruben Loodts for supporting the printing of this book. We are honoured to count Index on Censorship as a project partner and want to thank them and especially Senior Advocacy Officer Melody Patry for their contribution to the project. The Free Our Media! project was made possible by the Council of Europe‘s European Youth Foundation - thank you for your trust and kind support.

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Ádám Ferenc Nagy, Hungary

Adam was born and raised in Hungary. Throughout his life he only considered drawing as a freetime activity. It was only in the last few years that he began to think of illustration/animation as an attainable career goal. At this time he was studying Computer Science, but he decided to apply for animation at MOME, Budapest. Unfortunately he wasn’t accepted, but the intensive training consolidated his wish to work in this field - which hopefully will be achieved in the near future. To see more check out www.nagadi.newgrounds.com