WORK|OUT European Students’ Review

Peter Preston (the Guardian), Tino Brömme (WORK|OUT) & Harald Neuber (junge Welt)

   | Here is the tale of two continents. One thinks of itself as increasingly free and democratic, with a press that invigilates and defends its freedom. Let’s call this continent, Europe. And the other continent by contrast, is weak and divided, a morass of different laws and different history that make press freedom itself a frail, often feeble concept. And the trouble is that this continent is called Europe, too.
   Do not, I think, lose touch with either of this Europes. In particular, keep the brighter, more bustling union of our burgeoning liberties firmly in mind. The pell-mell expansion of the EU over the last 15 years has spread democracy far beyond the old European Community core. Look at Slovakia today, or Poland — or East Germany. Look at Romania and Bulgaria, waiting on the doorstep and reforming as they go. Look, most dramatically this year, at the Ukraine. Freedom is still on the march. Press and broadcasting freedoms walk with it side by side. There is no reason for too much confected pessimism here.
   More, this new Europe has significant advantages denied to other continents, like North America. Does the USA see the challanges of terrorism clearly in true, balanced proportion? Did America’s media report the build-up to war in Iraq fairly and probingly? If you conclude that, on both counts, it failed, then many, many American editors would agree with you now. They think they failed to keep their freedoms properly vibrant in a country wherepolitical manipulation from the centre is hugely strong, and where the newspapers and TV stations that defend independent journalism are increasingly owned by just a few, giant corporations who cross over to the other side of the street when they see political controversy that could damage their commercial interests approaching.
   A fully developed media continent like North America can be too rich, too copiously resourced, too afraid to challange the status quo because it is, itself, a major part of the status quo. On this count, many of the things European journalists lament as our current weakness may also be accounted strengths.
   Do we have a central body of press law which defends our freedoms equally? No. There is one law in France and one law in Britain. There is one law in Germany and quite another, the law according to Berlusconi, in Italy.
   Do we have great chains of newspapers, owned by proprietors far away, with agandas we find hard to understand? That is beginning to be a problem, especially in Eastern Europe as German publishers start to annex the newspaper industries in smaller countries. But sat against, say, the American model, such difficulties are still relatively tiny. Much of the British press is owned overseas — by Rupert Murdoch and others — but such reach is far weaker in mainland Europe. The Frech industry lies still in the hands of Frenchmen. The German industry is dominated by Germans. Even small newcomers like Slovenia or Malta see their newspapers owned, written and published by groups with real local roots.
   Sometimes, to be sure, that produces equally real local difficulties. A dominating local government, tucked far away from the main European spotlight, can bully its newspapers by withholding state advertising. It can keep journalism it doesn’t like weak. It can stifle the possibility of properly resourced investigative journalism at birth. It can seek to bly the bully as it did in its Communist past and hope that nobody will notice — or that, if they do (as they have in Croatie today), any will to take international action will be weak and easily batted away.
   In short, this Europe is a jigsaw puzzle with some of the pieces missing. It has freedom as an aspiration, and growing patchily growing reality. That is the big picture. But it is also filled with gaps and omissions and evasions Its strength is that it cannot be dragooned in docile obedience, as America’s press was dragooned over Iraq. Its weakness is that, often, it is simply incoherent, a sum of too many missing pieces from that jigsaw.
   And the greatest current weakness — the one we should all see and lament and try to repair — is the lack of focus. On the one hand, the continent we live in grows vaster and, via the new European constitutional treaty, more powerful. On the oher hand, our journalism simply lacks the ability to call it to account. One the one hand, this Europe has a core where its basic political directions are set. On the other hand, our journalism lacks any such core. If accountability is the watchword of freedom, then that accountability is a dreary, dysfunctional word.
   Is those all the fault of the press? By no means. There are other problems here — the problems, for instance, of a newspaper in Lithuania which cannot afford to base on correspondent in Brussels, let alone pay to keep reporters in all the other 24 nations of Europe. The mis-match between the task and the means needed for tackling it, time and again, is simply enormous. Our Europe is an agglomeration moving in roughly the same direction without any strong information links to make it whole. Just occasionaly — forcibly over the candidacy of signor Buttiglione, more uncertainly over the war on Iraq — one can discern a wave of European pubic opinion flowing in a single direction. But, most of the time, such waves break on distant and disparate shores.
   The challange of Iraq is answered very differently in Poland, where American links are strong, and in France, where the best Americans have emigrated to Paris. Blair’s went one way, Schröder’s Germany quite another. Spain changed tracks as Madrid’s bombs exploded. And this failure of unity, often exacerbated by a lack of shared information, impacts hugely on our lives and our futures — including, of course, the future of press freedom.
   If there is no shared purpose, there can be no shared goal. If involving the people is crucial to good governance, then our Europe is sadly deficient in involvement. If freedom stands at the heart of the union, then Brussels has pitifully few means of making its commitment live and eloquent.
   We lack a proper trans-national press. We lack, with minor exeptons, an international pattern of broadcasting. We lack web sites which carry political pulses from Athens to Helsinki. We lack developed means to inform ourselves as citizens of Europe — so much so that, as the debate over the constitutional treaty grows, fact and fiction mingle inescapably.
   And this, I believe, must be the crux for Europe’s journalists over the next decade. Either we shall complete the building of the union, or it will begin to crumble. Either we shall recognise Brussels and Strasbourg as vital to all our lives, or we shall see the return of apathy and insularity. Either freedom will burn more brightly — illumining the dark streets of Kiev and Istanbul — or its flames will flicker and die. The Europe we have is a half-completed project of democracy. The Europe we need now must be the finished article, demanding a press that knows its place in the scheme of things and senses its mission.
   Come to Britain this month and see the twisted wreckage of decent government that this ‘war on terror’ has left behind. Come to Paris and feel the tension between races and religions. Come to Italy and hear the cries for openness and reform. This is our continent, the one that matters: and nobody else will be able to shape it in freedom if we journalists stand aside. There aren’t two tales we must tell: there is only one single story, embracing us all.

Peter Preston is former editor-in-chief of “The Guardian” and chairman of the International Press Insitute.