How governments bully newspapers

Some commentators have argued that the root of the problem is government advertising itself. Surely the kind of self-congratulatory propaganda that Likmeta cites in Albania is a waste. But there is a place in the pages of a newspaper for public health and education campaigns, as well as for public notices of bids and calls for proposals. Without such advertising, government is less open and less responsive to its citizens.

Many outlets in countries where the private sector and its attendant commercial advertising are underdeveloped will remain dependent on government advertising.

The CIMA report offers a few possible solutions, such as promoting transparency in the awarding of government advertising contracts, requiring governments to place advertising in outlets that reach the intended audience, running independent media as nonprofit organizations, or, in places where press freedom laws exist but are not enforced, taking the matter to court.

The good news is that countries wanting to join NATO have to have democratic governments, and the European Union requires adoption – and enforcement – of a host of laws that ensure basic freedoms. However, the European Commission also should recognize the problem of soft censorship.

As for the rest? In poorer countries, little foreign aid is tied to reform of such practices. Even in countries that have the trappings of democracy – throughout the former communist bloc in Europe, for instance – citizens have little history of a free press and tend to react with a shrug to issues of media manipulation or intimidation.

And then there's Russia. In its most recent Media Sustainability Index report, the nonprofit International Research and Exchanges Board, which works to develop independent media and civil society, cited an October 2007 survey that found only 2 percent of Russians regard the freedom to receive and disseminate information by any lawful means as one of their most important constitutional rights.

Some Russians have looked the other way as long as their standard of living and Russia's prestige were on the upswing. Perhaps that will change as more independent voices go silent or as people's financial situations sour during this downturn.

Russia, of all places, provides a model for how independent newspapers can survive. Novaya Gazeta, where frequent Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya worked until she was gunned down in 2006, publishes thanks to the largess of its deep-pocketed owners, Mikhail Gorbachev and oligarch Alexander Lebedev.

Further, throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia, small, grant-funded, largely online publications that, like mine, double as journalism training centers, are reaching young reporters fed up with the twisted journalism they see at home. Helping to support independent media around the globe is going to have to become an exercise in philanthropy.

A change in laws or attitude must come along to rescue some of these media, otherwise the economic crisis will likely just finish the job that their governments started.

Barbara Frye is a journalist in Prague.

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