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Media Matters
July 23, 2003
Practicing Journalism in a Dangerous Time
By Jeffrey A. Dvorkin
Ombudsman
National Public Radio
I was reminded how lucky we are at NPR when a young journalist came to see me the other day. Her name is Natalia Feduschuk and she stopped off to talk to me on her way to a Fulbright scholarship in Kiev, Ukraine. She will work with young journalists for the next year, teaching the essentials of radio and the values of western journalism. She has her work cut out for her.
Feduschuk is a bilingual Ukrainian-American. Teaching in another language is not the problem, but communicating journalistic values is.
Example: Ukraine
Under Soviet rule, Ukraine, like many countries in central and eastern Europe, knew only one form of journalism -- the official kind.
There were other unofficial and often illegal ways of getting the news: VOA, CNN and smuggled newspapers and other reading materials from the West. But depending on the severity of the regime, it was either tolerated -- as in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, or forbidden with severe penalties -- as in pre-Perestroika Russia, Romania or Albania.
With the fall of communism much of that changed. The end of the Berlin Wall allowed for a freer flow of ideas. But there were some exceptions.
Transitioning From State to Public Broadcasters
One of those exceptions was found in the state broadcasters. In the 1990's I was asked to help a number of state broadcasters move toward public broadcasting, specifically in Slovenia (part of the former Yugoslavia), Hungary and Poland.
Those countries were already well on their way to becoming more open societies. The harshness of Stalinism never found a willing soil in those countries compared to others.
The transition from state to public broadcasting was still fraught with dangers in many countries. Years of bureaucratic stagnation were hard to overcome. Suspicion, paranoia and anxiety ruled the newsrooms. Many central and eastern European broadcasters who hoped for a new spirit of journalistic freedom suddenly found themselves out of work if they moved too quickly to a western model of public broadcasting. Managers who were in place in the state broadcaster were not overly tolerant of anti-government ideas and opinions.
Those who tried to air a variety of opinions soon found themselves relegated to non-journalistic tasks (such as janitor duty) within their organizations. Many were fired. A few were imprisoned.
Post-communist societies were still unable to privatize broadcasting completely. Even now, though many of these countries allow free elections, real power remains in the hands of a few powerful people known as oligarchs (Ukraine is one) where a truly free broadcasting environment remains theoretical rather than real.
East-West Learning
In the mid 1990s, a group of western public radio organizations including NPR worked with our central and eastern European colleagues to host a conference in Budapest, Hungary, on how to make this new era of media freedom come to be.
One planning meeting was held at the headquarters of Magyar Radio in central Budapest. The outside walls of the building still have the bullet holes from the failed Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
As we planned our meeting, the head of the radio service burst into the room and, in a wild flurry of Hungarian, screamed at us, accusing his employees (and by implication, the rest of us) of undermining him personally and politically. The translator couldn't keep up. But the ashen color on our Hungarian colleagues' faces was interpretation enough.
We quickly moved the conference to Slovenia, where the issues of press freedom could be discussed without raising the political anxiety levels of the media bosses or jeopardizing our colleagues' futures.
So when Natalia Feduschuk came to talk to me, I asked her about what she had found in Ukraine with regard to press freedoms and the transition to public broadcasting.
Attacked and Beaten
As I feared, Ukraine is still deeply out of step. Last year, Feduschuk was teaching issues of free speech and the role of the public broadcaster at an evening class. As she left, she was attacked and beaten by a gang of thugs who warned her that her "anti-government ideas" were not wanted in Ukraine.
Feduschuk dismissed the event by saying that she wasn't badly hurt and that she feels more confident this year under the protective eye of the Fulbright Fellowship.
I hope she is right.
It makes you think how lucky we are to be doing journalism in the United States and at NPR.
East-West Issues
But many of the same issues that Feduschuk is teaching are applicable here. For example,
• How do we know if our journalism is credible?
• What makes a news organization reliable?
• How does a journalistic organization remain free from government or economic pressure?
• How does your organization report on government or financial interests without incurring their wrath?
• How do you keep your journalists engaged without being ideologically driven and skeptical without becoming cynical?
Those questions are just as valid in Washington, D.C., as in Kiev.
I asked Feduschuk to let me know when she finds the answers. I promised to do the same.
Listeners may contact me at 202-513-3246 or at ombudsman@npr.org.
Jeffrey Dvorkin
NPR Ombudsman
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