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Sustainability of ethical journalism in the digital age

International roundtable discussion Date: Tuesday, 9 April, 2013

Venue: Goethe Institute, Ráday u 58, 1092 Budapest, (1st floor)

Program schedule on 9 April 2013

14:00 – 14:15 – Registration

14:15 – 14:30 – Welcoming remarks

Jutta Gehrig (Goethe Institute), Ilona Móricz (Center for Independent Journalism), Balázs Weyer (Editors’ Forum)

14:30 – 15:45 – Is ethical journalism sustainable in unsustainable economic circumstances or will journalism transform into a media industry managing a surface? If we lose on ethics, can it be brought back in better times? What solutions editors and publishers offer?

Moderator: Márton Galambos, origo.hu

Speakers:

• Aidan White, Ethical Journalism Network
• Alexander Warzilek, Austrian Press Council
• Róbert Kotroczó, RTL-Klub
• Péter Szauer, HVG
• Erik Valter, Berg Media

15:45 – 16:00 – Coffee break

16:00 – 17:30 – Blurred limits between journalism content and advertisement. Branded content and advertorial. Ethical traps or new business models? Can we use these practices without compromising the basic mission of journalism or this is just a pretext to give up basic values amid crisis? Banning or nuanced regulation – what are the solutions?

Moderator: Péter Kövesdi, Hir24.hu

Speakers:

• Stephen Pritchard, The Observer/Organization of News Ombudsmen

• Dr. Ildikó Fazekas, Self-regulatory Advertising Council
• Marcell Murányi, Blikk
• Péter Szigeti, Kreatív
• Lukas Heinser, bildblog.de
• János Suba, Vodafone Magyarország
• Péter Uj, editor-in-chief of a new portal

17:30 – 18:00 – Coffee break

18:00 – 19:30 – Different models of media regulation: ombudsman, co-regulation, self-regulation, “legally underpinned” self-regulation and other forms. Is there an ideal mix?

Moderator: Balázs Weyer, Editors’ Forum

Speakers:

• Aidan White, Ethical Journalism Network

• Stephen Pritchard, ombudsman, The Observer
• Dr. András Koltay, Media Council, National Media and Infocommunications Authority
• Péter Nádori, Association of Content Providers in Hungary

• Alexander Warzilek, Austrian Press Council
• Lukas Heinser, bildblog.de

Simultaneous English-Hungarian translation will be provided. If you wish to attend, please register at ilona.moricz@cij.hu.

She added that her organization filed four complaints related to prejudiced and stereotyped portrayal of the Roma community to the Media Council, but all of them were rejected on various grounds.

More than 50 media professionals, NGO activists, legal experts and researchers attended the discussions in Budapest on the ethical dilemmas of journalists and editors face when reporting on ethnicity and religion.

The event was a part of the project ’Civil Society & the Media Working Together to Fight Ethnic and Religious Discrimination in the EU’, implemented by the Media Diversity Institute (MDI) with partners, including the Center for Independent Journalism, Budapest. The project is co-funded by the Open Society Foundations.

The roundtable discussion in Budapest gathered a group of international media professionals, lawyers and regulators from Hungary, Germany and Austria. This allowed a comparison of journalism practices in these countries.

Speakers included János Horvát (Center for Independent Journalism Budapest), Manfred Protze (German Press Council), Simon INOU (Diversity Mediawatch, Austria), Canan Topçu (journalist, university teacher, Germany), András Koltay (Media Council, Hungary), Bence György (TV2 channel, Hungary) and a number of other journalists, NGO representatives.

Balazs Jó of the National Media and Infocommunications Authority made a presentation on the recent monitoring study of diversity in Hungarian news media. Mária Baranyi discussed her experiences as a reporter of Roma origin at the Hungarian Radio and the way she reports on social issues, Gabor Gyulai   described Hungarian Helsinki Committee’s guide for journalists covering migration; and Gergely Szilvay analyzed the Hungarian media’s portrayal of topics related to the Catholic church. There were discussions about complaints procedures in media.

Ilona Moricz of the Center for Independent Journalism introduced the study “Reporting ethnicity and religion” by Ethical Journalism Initiative and the Hungarian translation of its recommendations at the event. Balazs Weyer, president of the self-regulatory Hungarian Editors’ Forum said: “We (the Forum) thought that general rules of accurate and fair reporting should be a sufficient guide to ethical reporting on these topics”. He added the forum may need to consider issuing specific, detailed recommendations on reporting ethnic topics.

Ethical dilemmas of reporting ethnicity and religion – International workshop and roundtable discussion

Date: Thursday, 28 February, 2013

Venue: Goethe Institute, Ráday u 58, 1092 Budapest, (1st floor)

Agenda

15:00 – 15:15 Registration

15:15 – 15:30 Welcoming remarks

Jutta Gehrig (Goethe Institute), Ilona Móricz (Center for Independent Journalism), Balázs Weyer (Editors Forum), Andrej Nosko, (OSF Think Tank Fund)

15:30 – 17:30 Ethical dilemmas regarding reporting ethnicity and religion

Moderator: Balazs Weyer, President, Hungarian Editors’ Forum

Panel 1:

• Bea Bodrogi, lawyer CivilMedia
• János Horvát, President, Independent Journalism Foundation
• Balázs Jó, Program Analysis Department, National Media and Infocommunications Authority
• Manfred Protze, German Press Council

Panel 2:

• Simon Inou, Media Diversity Mediawatch, Austria
• Mária Baranyi, journalist, Hungarian Radio
• Gergely Szilvay, journalist, Magyar Kurír
• Gábor Gyulai, Hungarian Helsinki Committee
• Canan Topçu, journalist, university teacher, Germany

Q & A

17:30 – 18:00 – Coffee break

18:00 – 19:30 – Playing the ethnic card in election media campaigns

Moderator: Márton Galambos

Speakers:

• Manfred Protze, German Press Council
• Simon Inou, Media Diversity Mediawatch, Austria
• Dr. András Koltay, member of the Media Council, National Media and Infocommunications Authority
• György Bence, news director, TV2
• József Makai, origo.hu
• Canan Topçu, journalist, university teacher, Germany

Simultaneous German-Hungarian translation will be provided. If you wish to attend the event, please register at ilona.moricz@cij.hu or call the Center for Independent Journalism at the phone number 317-5448

- During your campaign to become a mayor you promised a lot of things that could not have been taken seriously, such as to build a Disney park in Reykjavík. Have you fulfilled any of these promises?

- We have teamed up with the city university and some private companies and created the largest bird sanctuary of the world. In my opening statement I said that for me this is a genuine Disney park. The wild ducks have arrived to us, with a Donald Duck among them and I’m sure there must be a Mickey Mouse somewhere in the park, too. People believed they would get this park but this time the birds have become the real beneficiaries.

- And what happened to the polar bear you have promised for the zoo?

-  I have tried whatever I could to convince the government to leave alive the polar bears setting foot in Iceland’s  territory, but for some reasons unknown to me they do not listen to anybody and they always kill them.

- You have spent more than two years in the mayor’s chair. How much has this position changed you and what has been your biggest achievement so far?

- I have always been a humorist and I still am. This is just like being gay: this is a part of my personality that will not change with my actual profession.

- Your official decisions have been less humorous though, you have raised taxes and utility fees and also cancelled social subsidies. So what is the difference between you, your party and an ordinary politician?

- My most important achievement is that our team has not broken up and remains as dynamic as it was at the start. Protest parties like our Best Party are inclined to break up after the first big success. In contrast, we take care of each other, we spend a lot of time together and stick to our traditions, whenever we meet we hug and kiss each other, and when somebody happens to be depressed we do not let him or her down. There are lots of artists among us, and most of them stayed active in their professions. The bands play and go on tours and nobody has suffered a nervous breakdown.

- When did you realize that you might have a chance to win the elections?

- I believed in my victory from the very beginning. I prepared for this job like preparing for a television show or a stand-up comedy gig. You feel from the first moment that something is going to work or not. After all, people were buying into this crazy political idea. Initially I sent text-messages and e-mails to my acquaintances informing them about my decision to establish a political party. I also told them that I needed people who would appear on the party list. Most of them were eager to join and asked only afterwards what kind of a party it would be. Anarcho-surrealist, I answered. We did not organize rallies, we did not calculate our chances, but people became ardent supporters nevertheless. Others in the group probably started to believe in our success only a few days before the elections when new results of opinion polls indicating our victory were published. We won even though a lot of people told afterwards that they intended to vote for us but did not dare after all.

- In Hungary we have a similar protest group called ‘Hungarian Two-tailed Dog Party‘. They have practically disappeared from the scene but you won. How can you explain this?

- One explanation can be the size of Reykjavík: this city is small and it was relatively easy to boycott the media. Not too aggressively, but the media both on the left and right were against us. Newspapers were irritated because they could not figure out what we represented, while we used Twitter, YouTube and Facebook to directly reach people. At one point I even made a promise to talk only to the foreign press and shun the local media. After the elections a lot of journalists were angry, because they felt that our victory was their failure and that we deceived them so they constantly attacked us. The other reason could be Iceland’s political system which is less developed than that of Europe. So we took advantage of this situation. I guess in Hungary, just like in other European countries, the system is more prepared to handle political groups like ours.

- How do you envisage your party’s future?

- We will always remain patriots of Reykjavik. Honestly, we are not a real party, we have no membership, we do not lean to the right or to the left. At the same time, among our supporters you can find people from the left, people from the right, even ultra-liberals. The Best Party will never become more than its founders are, this party is based on our achievements, on our character. The decision-making process doesn’t go by party lines either, our aim is to find the common ground.

- Doesn’t it hinder efficient actions?

- We talk over everything and we also quarrel a lot, for instance about taxation issues. None of us had the slightest idea before what kind of taxes would be necessary. Taxation is the basic dividing line between parties on the left and right: right-wing parties always try to cut taxes while the left-wing would raise them. As for liberals, they stand somewhere in the middle. We do not generalize but discuss each taxation issue on a case by case basis instead. When we find that it makes sense to levy a new tax, we approve it.

- If you cannot reach an agreement, then in the end you have the last word, don’t you?

- That is true, but I always try not to exclude anyone from the decision-making process.

- You govern together with the Social Democrats who are more experienced in political affairs. How does this coalition work?

- We have behaved naively and frankly from the very beginning. We told them (i. e. the Social Democrats) that we don’t know the world of political infighting, but we are ready to play ball with them on the basis of honesty and mutual respect, so if they are not able to be sincere, it is better not to enter a coalition. We are lucky, because the cooperation with them has turned out to be good. Judging by our successes, they have shown more and more respect towards us. Reykjavík seems to function normally nowadays.

- There are certain accusations against your neglecting the governance of the city and just letting public servants do their job as they find it the best.

- That is basically true, but we must find the necessary balance between the politicians and the public servants in a way that neither side gains the upper hand of the other. Previously politics played too big a role. I think we need more professionalism. For example, we have serious debates about the Reykjavik energy company. There used to be people on the board who were absolutely not interested in the issues they discussed. I thought we should choose people who enjoy the trust of the parties, but at the same time are experts of the field or at least are interested in solving the problems.

- Will you run for the next elections, too?

- How should I know? I have almost 600 days left from my mandate. I have spent longer time in office than most of my predecessors. All five of them had spent less time in this chair because of political uncertainties. In the meantime, people got used to me and they consider me just as extravagant as my compatriot, Björk in pop music. People may even be a bit proud of me, too. They are proud of having a mayor like me who is doing his job so well. I regularly accompany firefighters, ambulance men and policemen on their night shifts. I also frequently visit city companies. I have never been and I am not interested in power, I always stand for cooperation and dialogue. The optimal situation would be to have public opinion polls strongly in my favor before the next election. In this case I would say “No, thank you, I would have none of it, please look for someone else”.

- You have always been famous for being tolerant, once you showed up wearing women’s clothes at a Reykjavik gay parade. Is the whole society so inclusive in Iceland?

-  Icelandic culture is very individual. Everybody respects gay and lesbian rights and gay parades are regarded to be family events in Reykjavik. We were among the first countries to legalize same-sex marriages. But I tend to be more liberal than the majority who can be tolerant, but occasionally xenophobic, too.  This really upsets me just like the way some people think of the European Union: many of my compatriots regard the EU as an evil power trying to devour us. As real provincial folks we can be very naive.

Jón Gnarr in his office

Photo by András Németh

András Németh is a reporter for HVG. This article was produced for the Next in Line project, co-funded by the European Union, and originally appeared in daily newspaper HVG. Translated by Éva Elekes

What steps have been recently made in the countries aspiring to the European Union, and what can they expect in the upcoming years? These issues were addressed by the guest speakers of the roundtable discussion: Deniz Ergürel journalist, general secretary of Media Association (Medya Dernegi), Turkey; Zoltán Galik PhD, senior research fellow, Hungarian Institute of International Affairs; Attila Horvath, journalist, Zalai Hírlap; András Németh, journalist, HVG; Danka Savic, journalist, Slobodna Bosna, Bosnia-Herzegovina; Csaba Zalai, Head of department, Department for EU JHA Cooperation and Enlargement, Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Journalist József Martin moderated the discussion.

Next in Line is a journalism project bringing candidate and potential candidate countries for EU membership closer to audiences in Central Europe and other member states. The project aims at highlighting the potentials and challenges of current EU enlargement toward the Western Balkans, Turkey, and Iceland by involving some of Central Europe’s leading publications in reporting on a wide range of issues in candidate countries and potential candidates. The roundtable discussion in the House of the European Union in Budapest was a part of this project. The Next in Line project was co-funded by the European Union, with further support from ERSTE Foundation.

You can watch a documentary of the recorded event below:

http://nextinline.eu/cultural-differences-and-minority-rights-in-turkey

http://nextinline.eu/turkey-and-the-eu-between-hope-and-disillusion

http://nextinline.eu/turkey-where-tradition-and-technology-flourish

Several reporters received job offers during or after the programme. This project was initiated by the European Commission, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Hungary and the European Parliament, and financed by the European Union. It aimed to help strengthen a community of Roma journalists who are well equipped to report on the issues of the European Union and Roma integration as well as to contribute to an increased coverage of such topics by the Hungarian news media. The project was implemented by the Center for Independent Journalism, Budapest. In this video documentary participants tell us what they gained from the programme.