Kosovo / Europe & Central Asia

By Chrystyna Lapychak Wars in Yugoslavia and Chechnya dominated regional and international headlines in 1999. The conflicts raised the journalists’ death toll in the region and prompted crackdowns, as governments blocked access to war zones and engaged in propaganda campaigns.

[Click here for full list of documented cases] At its most fundamental level, the job of a journalist is to bear witness. In 1999, journalists in Sierra Leone witnessed rebels’ atrocities against civilians in the streets of Freetown. In the Balkans, journalists watched ethnic Albanians fleeing the deadly menace of Serbian police and paramilitaries. In…

Kosovar journalists interviewed in Pristina this month, however, were almost unanimously in favor of press regulation. “We need rules for what is news and what is a lie,” says Baton Haxhiu, the editor of Pristina’s most respected daily, Koha Ditore. Haxhiu is voting with his feet, having recently agreed to serve on the Media Policy…

Hate speech can have dangerous consequences in any society dominated by the politics of identity. During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, for example, the state-controlled Radio Television des Milles Collines (RTLM) urged its Hutu listeners to exterminate all perceived ethnic Tutsis. RTLMÕs broadcasts were considered instrumental in instigating the slaughter of between 500,000 and one…

When is official control of the press necessary? Never, say U.S press freedom advocates. But in Kosovo, many local journalists support a new regulatory board designed to censor hate speech.

The OSCE initiative has drawn howls of protest from Western press freedom watchdogs. “The best way to combat hate speech is not to ban it,” read a New York Times editorial last month, “but to ensure that Kosovo’s citizens have access to alternative views.” Marilyn Greene of the Reston, Virginia-based World Press Freedom Committee agrees:…

When is official control of the press necessary? Never, say U.S. press freedom advocates. But in Kosovo, many local journalists support a new regulatory board designed to censor hate speech.

Shkelzen Maliqi is a chain-smoking Albanian intellectual with a salt-and-pepper beard who writes occasionally for local newspapers, works for the George Soros-funded Open Society Institute in Pristina, and has agreed to serve on the Media Policy Board. “We need a code of conduct for the press,” says Maliqi, arguing that Kosovo should adopt “a European…

The international presence in Kosovo has other important repercussions for local journalism. Many of the best local journalists are taking lucrative jobs as translators and media professionals for the many multilateral and non-governmental organizations that have set up shop in Pristina since the Yugoslav military withdrawal. “I can’t compete with their salaries,” says Margarita Kadriu,…

When is official control of the press necessary? Never, say U.S. press freedom advocates. But in Kosovo, many local journalists support a new regulatory board designed to censor hate speech.