Tax Information?

This is a piece originally written for my Reuters AlertNet blog, where it appeared on 28 August 2008.

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Please read this blog -- but only if you're rich. That’s essentially the message of a recent op-ed in the Washington Post.

In "If Everyone's Talking, Who Will Listen?", Dusty Horwitt first drags out the tired cliché about today’s society having "too much information", that we are all overloaded with too many blogs, too many web sites, fragmented TV and micro-audience radio shows. He says the proliferation of outlets and the shrinking of major TV network news audiences make broad-based political action, like the civil rights movement, increasingly difficult to achieve.

Wrong on all counts.

Georgia and Citizen War Reporting

I wrote this for my Reuters AlertNet blog on 22 August 2008.

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Evgeny Morozov has a great piece over at openDemocracy dealing with citizen journalism in the Georgia-Russia conflict. It confirms my opinion of citizen journalism -- which in short tends to be the same as my opinion of citizen dentistry. Some things should be done by professionals.

Media Power and Responsibility

This originally appeared in my Reuters AlertNet blog on 19 July 2008.

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Gideon Rachman had a great piece in the FT on Monday. In "American journalism, still a model", he contrasts US and UK media, finding that although American newspaper journalism seems "self-reverential, long-winded, over-edited and stuffy", it does have an advantage over its British counterpart in that the Americans "take the idea of journalism as a civic duty much more seriously".

With a foot on each side of the pond, I don't really want to get into the cross-Atlantic contrast exactly. The cited Reuters Foundation report on "The Power of the Commentariat", showing that UK commentators don't regard themselves as powerful is more interesting, as it touches on something that goes beyond commentators to editors and others who decide what becomes a story and what doesn't.

Many media gatekeepers I talk to also seem to ignore the reality of the power they hold, or, if they accept they do indeed have some, will then not make the connection between power and responsibility.

The Ghost of Sanctions (Not Quite) Past

This article originally appeared in the European Voice on 18 July 2008. The EU's policy toward Uzbekistan had once been hailed; it then became an example of unprincipled policy-making at its worst.

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Attempting to ignore its own policy on Uzbekistan is becoming a favourite pastime for the EU. The latest in the sorry saga of EU sanctions against Tashkent is the decision not to include the Central Asian country on the formal agenda for next week’s meeting of EU foreign ministers.

This ‘oversight’ is somewhat surprising given that in April, the ministers’ monthly meeting – known as GAERC, for the General Affairs and External Relations Council – agreed to review the progress made by the Uzbek authorities after three months. Of course, nothing is particularly clear when it comes to the EU’s position on Uzbekistan: ‘after three months’ could mean any time, and sticklers might say ‘review’ doesn’t actually mean ‘discuss’.

This fits a fairly predictable pattern of late. If the EU has a way to avoid Uzbekistan, it will take it.

Medellín: Revival and Risk

This article originally appeared in openDemocracy on 8 July 2008. It looks at the work of civil-society and human-rights groups in helping a Colombian city reach beyond conflict and notoriety.

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"This city used to be the murder capital of the world, but now look around Medellín", Mauricio Mosquera tells me with a smile. The director of the community TV TeleMedellín has a point: there are so many visible improvements here, it is impossible to deny things are looking up for Colombia's second city.

You can see it all around as you travel in the cable car that takes you up the mountain to the neighbourhood of Santo Domingo Savio. The high-wire ride is not a tourist attraction; it is a part of the public-transport system that moves people from the metro train at the river up to what was once one of the most violent parts of the country. The bustling neighbourhood is still poor, but it is safe to wander around, and it exudes an unmistakable pride: there is almost no litter anywhere, and none of the cable-car stations, not even the posts supporting the line up and down the mountain, have the tiniest tag of graffiti.

This system, built in 2004, is just one symbol of Medellín's renaissance.

Colombia: Tocadas pero no hundidas

El Mundo (Spain) ran this piece by my then colleague Juan Munévar and me on 4 July 2008.

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El emotivo comunicado sobre el rescate de Ingrid Betancourt y de otros 14 rehenes secuestrados por las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) ha sido una noticia bien recibida por todas aquellas personas y sus familias que han vivido una terrible experiencia, muchos de ellos durante casi diez años. El frenesí mediático es tan predecible como merecido. Sin embargo, sugerir que dicha noticia supone el fin de las FARC, tal y como dicen algunos comentaristas, es una exageración.

Europe's Soft Powerlessness

This article originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal on 20 May 2008.

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Any dictator concerned about Western condemnation of his actions could learn a lot from Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov. Tashkent's strongman, with some help from Berlin, has just outmaneuvered the European Union to get the sanctions against his regime lifted.

Three years ago, the EU agreed on an Uzbek arms embargo and visa bans against top regime officials involved in the brutal crackdown on demonstrators in the eastern city of Andijan. No one can be sure how many men, women and children were killed on May 13, 2005, when security forces opened fire on the crowd. The authorities never allowed an independent inquiry. But conservative estimates suggest some 750 people died that day.

In fact, an independent investigation was one of the key conditions the EU had set for lifting the sanctions imposed in response to the mass killings and the torture, forced confessions and show trials that followed. It was an all-too-rare case of the EU taking the international lead on a tough foreign policy issue. The U.S. never even got as far as sanctions.

Sadly, European nerves didn't hold up.

Even Less Foreign News

This originally appeared on my Reuters AlertNet blog on 15 May 2008.

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Last week's announcement that Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty was ending its Newsline service is yet another damaging blow to the diversity of foreign news sources in Western Anglophone media. One more informative voice has been silenced.

Somehow the idea still persists that with the internet, everyone can get as much news as they want from any part of the world. In reality, as soon as you try to test this optimistic notion on anything other than the one or two big stories of the day, it falls apart. You quickly realise you're looking at the same news agency copy repackaged in outlet after outlet.

Oh My Gosh, Pirates!

I wrote this with my then colleague, Daniela Kroslak, for the International Herald Tribune, which ran it on 29 April 2008.

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Strange how an African country can be moving from prolonged chaos to violent collapse and no one in the world notices until a couple of European boats get seized by armed gunmen.

War-ravaged Somalia is in the worst shape it has been in for years - which, for this devastated country that has not had a proper government for nearly a generation, is really saying something.

Afghanistan: The Prince and the Press

This was originally published on my Reuters AlertNet blog on 29 February 2008.

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So, Prince Harry has been fighting in Afghanistan for ten weeks, and all the British media knew about it but agreed with the government to keep silent. Now a debate is raging among journalists. Is it unacceptable collusion with the authorities or a responsible approach to journalism in a war zone?

Georgia: Going off Script

The Guardian ran this on 30 December 2007.

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It is almost certain that the first serious international media story in 2008 will be Georgia's early presidential election on 5 January. Incumbent Mikhail Saakashvili and his western supporters hope the results are equally predictable.

Because Saakashvili seriously tarnished his international image as a pro-western democratic reformer in November when he authorised violence against peaceful protesters and independent journalists, the upcoming vote is more than an exercise in domestic legitimacy. It is a show targeting a world audience, and for those who uncritically support Saakashvili, the script is plain. The world's media will arrive just after New Year's Day. They will report a relatively free and fair election. Then, everyone will get back on the plane amid a buzz of, "Georgia is back on track."

Indeed, election observers may give the poll an overall clean bill of health. The conduct of the vote will not be as ideal as some heavyweight western parliamentary observers will boldly claim in front of the TV cameras in the days immediately afterward. Already the opposition has cried foul, and non-governmental organisations following the process are claiming irregularities in the campaign. But even the less spotlighted and more technocratic Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, which has enormous experience in observing elections within the 56-country zone of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, will probably not find too many grave shortcomings on election day. However, one decent election is not enough to get this country "back on track", because Georgia has been sliding off the rails towards authoritarianism for several years.

The Rose Revolution of 2003 seemed a fairy tale made for western television. As the cameras filmed, demonstrators gathered and stormed the parliament in Tbilisi, toppling a tired post-Soviet state using little but pro-democracy slogans and youthful charismatic leadership. After that, Saakashvili was unquestioningly supported as the plucky easternmost flag-bearer of liberal democracy, under siege by revanchist Moscow. Like all good political myths, this one contains some elements of truth.

Saakashvili came to power with enormous public support, and his declared intention to join Nato and the EU established his international leanings. His sweeping reforms have reshaped the failing state institutions and rejuvenated the dysfunctional economy, attracting foreign direct investment and enhancing state revenues. Small-scale corruption, which used to cripple Georgian society before the Rose Revolution, is down dramatically.

In this context, it may be possible to overlook the occasional excess of decisiveness, especially in a country that feels itself under attack. Resurgent Russia has, after all, applied economic embargoes and supported secessionists in Georgia's conflict regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Trying to stitch together a state torn apart by war and economic collapse in a poor and hostile neighbourhood requires enormous force of will. Unfortunately, however, admirable resolve has too often turned into disturbing heavy-handedness. The November 7 crackdown and the imposition of a state of emergency was a symptom of a much deeper problem.

Over the past four years, Saakashvili and a small circle around him have concentrated power in their own few hands, and they have been unwilling to accept criticism. Cronyism, the bane of pre-Rose Georgia, is again said to be flourishing in the senior level of the administration. The leadership elite has worn down fundamental checks and balances to enhance its own power, and it has curtailed basic human rights such as freedom of expression.

In fact, it was the government's repeated lack of responsiveness to the demands of the opposition, civil society and ordinary citizens for transparency, accountability and credible investigations into high-profile cases of official abuse that led to mass public protests in autumn. The leadership's violent crackdown was a depressingly magnified continuation of this overall trend.

International journalists covering the elections at the beginning of this year would be well advised to avoid the scripted show. Election observers will report what they see on the day of the vote and in the weeks leading up to it. Visiting western parliamentarians will likely clutch at any straw to give a boost to Saakashvili, who retains enough revolutionary charm to keep them smiling for the cameras.

The press can look deeper, however, and bring out what has been going on in the country over the past four years. If they ask the right questions, perhaps western policy-makers will too. Saakashvili should not expect to remain in the west's good books if his administration continues along its increasingly illiberal path.

US: No Satire, No News

This originally appeared on my Reuters AlerNet blog on 15 December 2007.

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Everyone who thought American television news couldn't get any worse has been proven wrong in recent weeks, as the writers' strike has shut down the satirical news shows where so many people get their news these days. Yes, it's not just drama and sit-coms that have been hit by industrial action by the Writers Guild of America, Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" and Stephen Colbert's "Colbert Report" have also been in reruns since early November.

We're not talking about the loss of a couple comedy shows here. With the cliff-dive dumbing-down of US TV news over the last decade or so, these satirical news programs have become primary sources of information for millions of Americans in recent years -- particularly younger and more educated ones. The loss is felt, and there is a growing public debate about its impact on politics.

Belgium Is Not Rwanda

From my Reuters AlertNet blog, 10 December 2007.

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Blaming the media is an easy game every politician plays, but here in Belgium, it has just taken a step -- more like an enormous leap -- too far. After spending ages trying to form a government with no success, Yves Leterme, the Flemish Christian Democrat leader, lashed out at French-language state broadcaster RTBF, comparing it to Radio Mille Collines in Rwanda.

While Leterme's general state of frustration may be somewhat understandable -- today marks six months to the day since the general election in June, and still Belgium has no new government -- that can be no excuse for throwing perspective out the window as he did in an interview with Flemish newspaper Het Belang van Limburg on Saturday. It is an insult to the intelligence of the Belgian public and to the victims of Rwanda.

During the Rwandan genocide in 1994, the private radio station Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines was the "Hate Radio" inspiring Hutus to kill Tutsis en masse, using terms like "final war" and calling on listeners to "exterminate the cockroaches". The broadcaster was not just an appendage of the genocide; it was its nervous system, relaying commands and directly inciting murders.

Comparing the textbook example of media driving violent conflict to RTBF and the political discord in Belgium today is lunacy. Leterme may be angry with the Belgian broadcaster and may even blame it and its "political agenda" for complicating his attempts to form a government over the past half year. But please, let's not get crazy. This is Belgium 2007, not Rwanda 1994.

In fact, you'd hardly notice this country is going through much of a crisis at all. The schools still work well, the trash continues to be collected twice a week, the taxes are still too high, and the beer is as good as it ever was. The public debate in the media seems very calm and reasoned -- RTBF has even invited Leterme to discuss his comments on air. People are concerned about the future of their country, and indeed it may even split some day (I hope not though), but there is zero possibility of violence. And no one is encouraging it, least of all the media here.

The Association of Professional Journalists of Belgium has strongly condemned Leterme's comparison, and Belgian Radio and Television Minister Fadila Laanan has called it "abominable". Indeed.

EU-Africa Summit: Get Beyond Bob

From my Reuters AlertNet blog on 4 December 2007.

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Here's a challenge to all European journalists intending to write about this weekend's EU-Africa Summit: deal with real issues that may have an effect on people's lives, not invented ones that politicians use to aggrandise themselves. In short, skip the flap about Robert Mugabe's attendance, and go directly to substance.

Some may say this is hard to do. No doubt editors back home are baying for Bob, so they can cover what they assume people are interested in -- mostly because the competition is working under the same assumptions. Of course, in doing so the media gatekeepers have to consciously ignore their duty to inform the public as well as the opportunity they possess to set the agenda.

There are at least a dozen much more critical issues this EU-Africa Summit raises.

Teddy Bear Arrested in Sudan

This piece was my reaction to the "Sudanese teddy bear blasphemy case". When I published it on my Reuters AlertNet blog on 28 November 2007, I didn't expect some of the reactions I received from the anti-satire lobby.

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Governments around the world have expressed outrage at yesterday's arrest and imprisonment of a teddy bear in Khartoum, Sudan.

The stuffed animal, a UK citizen of Chinese origin, was taken into police custody after it emerged he had the same name as a child who had entered the toyshop where he was working. If found guilty of the offence, the teddy bear could face 40 lashes or possibly even be thrown into a room with an overly playful puppy.

Reaction from around the world has been swift.