Media Freedom Under Pressure - Global Trends and Perspectives
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Larsen, Solana
Önderoglu, Erol
Soldatov, Andrei
Broughton Micova, Sally
Today freedom of the press and freedom of expression are under serious threat in numerous countries. This threat is present in authoritarian states as well as in democracies generally considered to be well established and stable. Can new online media and much-touted grassroots journalism offer a way out?
 We are here for a very interesting topic and I think a very important topic which we all witnessed in the media recently. So I would like to introduce Solana Larson. She will guide us through this discussion. We have very interesting guests here. Solana will introduce them as well. This topic or this discussion is presented by Bertelsmann. They are also doing two research projects on this behalf. It is called Sustainable Government Indicators and of course the Bertelsmann Transformation Index. There is nothing much to say. It is obvious what we are talking about. The title says it. It is about media freedom and under pressure. It is not only the classical media that is under pressure in some countries but it is also the digital media or blogs or Twitter that are under pressure. I am very interesting and curious what these speakers have to say about the evolution in this field. I will just hand over to Solana. Welcome to everybody. I won't talk too much in the beginning. Right now I think it must be quite a confusing time to study media freedom because at the same time as you have huge gains on some indexes especially in some countries in the world, you also have new kinds of government interference, surveillance, censorship of kinds that you could never have imagined just 10 years ago. So with us here today we have Erl Indoroglu who is a journalist and a researcher of freedom of the press in Turkey and who also writes for a website called bianet.org. We also have Andrey Soldatov who is from Russia, an investigative journalist and an editor of a website called agintura.ru which is an information hub on intelligence agencies in Russia. And finally we have Dr. Sally Bratton-Mikova who is a research officer at the London School of Economics leading a media policy project. And I think let's start with you Erl. There's been a lot about Turkey in the press lately and we have very helpfully this slide from the SGI project that shows Turkey's media freedom and media pluralism in comparison with some other countries that people in the audience may be familiar with, countries in the European Union. It looks like Turkey's doing very badly in terms of media freedom and media pluralism. What's happening for you? Has the internet not changed everything? I think that it's changed many things but the internet with the time gained an importance which fair the government. I think that we enjoy at the beginning let's say between 2000 and 2010 of a good period but they voted a censorship law on the on internet. They in 2008 they banned YouTube for two years in Turkey and many small creation of a website of independent journalists has been banned at the same time. So in the index I can I'm very familiar to this index because it's representing a country who failed reform for the EU membership first of all because we spend 12 years for accomplishing this reform for in the line of European Court of Human Rights. We failed in this aspect plus we added new dimensions new censorship and self-censorship categories in this in this field. You have many journalists in jail no? Yes they are they were a lot but the the solution that the government found last month was to vote a law for rest for limiting pre-trial detention to five years can you imagine and then within three months 30 journalists was released but the problem is there and there is a clear resistance from the judiciary to to apply in the line of Strasbourg Convention. And I'm sure everybody will remember a more recent example of the Twitter ban that everyone was talking about that's a whole new dimension that isn't even targeting journalists directly. In Turkey you you are never able to understand that the clear reason why social media is banned behind the explanation of the authorities is yes we found some a couple of the video violating the memory of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk the fundator of the Turkish Republic etc you can find dozens every day but and finally these situations contribute to a ban process and it was the case for Twitter and one week later one week later for YouTube but you know when you are in this movement in human rights movement you know very well that there is another reason much more relevant and finally social media is is oppressed because they are releasing many content embarrassing content for the prime minister for his family accused to be a part of corruption affairs and favoritism etc etc so of course we are dealing with official reason and official explanations but in Turkey we should always look further to find the real the real reason. Let's let's jump ahead to to Andrei in Russia there's there's another slide here I know it seems odd to to jump from country to country but is it this one yes this one to jump from country to country but I wanted us to look at these different examples different countries in different contexts and talk a little bit about how we improve things in terms of media freedom because it's so easy to look at the things that are going badly and and shake our heads but but what is what is improving and how can we push push that this is a slide that shows freedom of expression the BTI transformation index prepared this for us. Russia is the red line in there and then there are comparisons to other countries that are considered comparable in economic terms at the top of the list you see Jamaica and it might seem a little strange it seems a little strange to me to compare Jamaica and Russia but when you read the report it makes sense. Andrei the point of this slide is that freedom of expression is under threat in Russia it seems not so long ago that we were celebrating new media freedoms in Russia give us your perspective. Yes to be frank and there could be no more timely debate but we have now because just today Vladimir Putin signed as a law which requires all bloggers with more than 3000 followers to be registered. So actually it's it's it's happening just now and well we we had our good points say during the Moscow protests in 2011 2012 Russian new media which used to be new segregators and to be frank they very restrained in a way as to be able to hire journalists they tried just to copy stories and sometimes to translate critical stories from the western western media into Russian so that's why some of them became very popular but during the protests some of his media decided to hire real reporters that's why maybe we were short of investigations then but we were not short of reporting. Always changed it now mostly because of Ukraine. The most amazing story happened with the biggest new media in Russia called Atlanta Dirt Row and the editor of this media she was fired because she refused to fire a reporter who actually reported from Crimea and Ukraine and it was a very well clear signal for all of us that now it's not only about investigations which are not allowed to be published by new media and it's a long but for for traditional media it was well it was a problem for many years but it's also about reporting now and all that we might be allowed to do is to post some critical comments and even in this area there would be some problems today because we again just today sorry to be so insistent just today we got the decision of the court about the blocking of one of the last independent maybe small but significant new media called Granny Dirt Row and when Granny Dirt Row went to the court asking for explanations why this media was blocked today the explanation which was provided was quite I think illuminating the explanation was there was no particular story which provoked participation in unsunctioned manifestations which was a protest but the whole context of of the site provokes the readers to think but it might be good to go to unsunctioned manifestations and I think it's it's formulated so broadly that you can understand that it was a political decision but but if media if media freedom is challenged how are you able to have a website that reports on the intelligence agencies in Russia well the first reason is that we have a relatively small circulation in Russia it's mostly aimed at journalists and maybe experts community the second thing is that we never publish anything on our website as a first source so we we always try if you want to have something published we try to find western publication to get it published like when we decided to and when we found information about surveillance introduced in the sochi because of the Olympics we broke this story in the Guardian when it was republished by some Russian media and eventually they posted on our website so this is about our strategy of of defense I'd like to bring bring Sally into this because there's one more before you think that the European countries are not mentioned in in these index here's here's a slide that shows that some eastern countries are overtaking what was known as western countries so we have the UK France and Italy that suddenly appeared to have less media freedom and less media pluralism on this scale than the Czech Republic Poland Lithuania Latvia and Estonia Sally you study media across many different countries in the European region is it because the UK France and Italy are doing so badly or is it because the other countries are doing much better well I think it's sometimes a bit of a false comparison to take these directly one to another but there is pretty much an obvious trend that things are going down in these indicators in UK France and Italy and things are probably doing better than they were in Estonia Latvia Lithuania Poland in the Czech Republic and I think that the decline that people perceive in the UK France and Italy has a lot to do with media pluralism and the issues around ownership and construction ownership and convergence and access to platforms and also I think we can underestimate the surveillance revelations and there's already been some research about how much journalists are now concerned about revealing their sources inadvertently because they're being surveilled Alan Rusperger the editor of the Guardian has said that they encrypt everything they have completely changed how they communicate on email they have completely changed how they communicate on the phone and so this is a pressure that has hit even the biggest ones in Western Europe that maybe some of the country the smaller countries that aren't really on the forefront of those battles aren't necessarily feeling or even necessarily perceiving yet although they should know that they're also perhaps being surveilled how does it make Andre how does it make somebody like you feel to hear that Western journalists are experiencing some of the things that were you know have typically been challenged in unfree moments in Russia's history or the Soviet Union or how does it look from the outside well first of all we should keep in mind that the Russian say in this case Russian government like to use this like to refer to particularly the British example for example when we got our system of internet filtering in 2012 the excuse provided by the excuse provided by the Russian government was to say something like well we just try to repeat the British example the British has the the own system of internet internet filtering and we try to protect the children why we the Russians do not want to protect our children and we have the same reaction after Snowden's revelations we got lots of statements something about which should be should sound very familiar to you but we need to protect personal data of our Russian citizens so I think these are strategy when counties and governments try to refer to each other justifying new repressive measures is a very common thing today Sally Errol mentioned earlier today that he thinks that people are also following the the lead of Erdogan when it comes to banning Twitter or is this something previously when you look at just media freedom like old-style media not internet is was this a common tactic where governments would copy each other and and learn learn tactics from each other in this regard it isn't just that they learn tactics but especially with EU integration there were there's policy that has to be transferred into law and so you need to actually act at an international level on these things and it's it's easy to see for instance in the UK with the Leveson inquiry and the reform of press regulation where the UK was one that had really the absolute minimum complete self-regulation very hands-off in terms of press because of the the things that happened now they're looking at revising that and immediately other countries are jumping on it saying okay well now we can do and using it as an excuse but also there are issues like net neutrality for instance that are going to be decided in Brussels that then everyone else will have to comply to and for instance Slovenia and the Netherlands have much more protected net neutrality than is currently in a European directive and their media freedom in that sense is going to be undermined if that comes in from Brussels which is why people need to be very active not just in their own country but also at the European level whether they're candidate countries or member states and of course as as more of journalism you know mainstream or or not moves online the legislation that affects the internet and the bloggers and the social activists will eventually also directly affect journalists I think. Errol in Turkey I mean especially with the current wave of protests that you've had over the past year there has been so much information published online that never made it into newspapers. Is I mean when we have the internet do we really still need media freedom are we moving into a phase in time where it's becoming less important that we have media freedom when people can just go on the internet and do whatever they want? I think that first of all we should not expect the same impact from the internet comparing the mainstream media for some country like Turkey for example. I think that what we can expect for the moment is to have some good references of journalist practices and I think that the work is there. In Turkey we have a couple of good news websites which we came with the time a refuge for the journalists fired from their working place. In Turkey in 2013 last year more than 150 well-known journalists or reduction members were fired or pushed to resign because of the pressure of the media magnate who wants to have good relations with the with the government who wants to because this media magnate finally they invested in the media sector but they have huge investment in other sectors like I don't know hydroelectric, central construction, banking sector, automobile sector and so on. So they want to have a good relation with Erdogan and his government and when it's the case for firing a chronicle it's not a problem. The explanation is ready he is not able to adapt himself to our new editorial line that's all. So I think that internet online is very important to receive brave courageous good journalists who have still their word to say and I think in Turkey with this vibrant civil society with this new alternative media examples I think that it's a good it's a good preparation for the future because I think that Erdogan is now in the face to kill investigative journalists. The investigative journalist is not anymore present in financial level. Media is not capable to check what really happened in financial level corruption affairs, mobbing or any other bad practices but it's important to say we know you as a good journalist you come and you go on your work so just for having a brief I think that this internet is always hope for the future. Andrei where do journalists go after they're fired in Russia? Well I think we have the same situation what was described about Turkey maybe in the early 2000s and because in the 1990s we used to have very actually free and liberal media and then we got this flow of journalists expelled from traditional media we ended up in new media. The problem was that to be frank I'm quite skeptical because these journalists of course were very critical of the government but they were not given enough money to conduct investigations to do reporting so it was then it was mostly about critical columns it was not about real journalism as I said we got some good journalism only during the protests and because it was immediately almost immediately destroyed now so to be frank what we are left with is again we have this space on social networks which we can use to discuss something that we actually we watch on TV so it's to me seems to be very close to what we used to have during the Soviet times when you can watch TV and to be very critical about what you see but it's of course it's very far from real journalism extremely far and given the the latest example about Ukraine for Russian audience it's extremely difficult or might be impossible to understand what is going on there because they cannot read these things in traditional media they cannot watch these things on TV and also in social networks they have so many unchecked stories so the only source of information for them is to try to read these things in English. Sally I think we've always been told that with democracy comes free press and a lot of the countries in eastern europe or southeastern europe have essentially become democracies but their press freedom is still under threat can you explain some of the the tension in the the situation I'm thinking for instance of Hungary or or some of the other countries that are known right now to have quite serious situations for journalists. Well I think that free press and democracy kind of go hand in hand and I think in those places where we are seeing serious threats to media freedom we also need to question the extent to which there's real democracy because without those voices and you you don't really have the public debate and and I think this is where one of the challenges with seeing internet as a fix for the problems with mainstream media because you still need to have this sort of either national level or global level public discourse about things which requires some kind of filter some sort of some media that's going to process select and translate out to a bigger audience that can have that conversation and the one hand the internet does allow a kind of a global public for the big guys and I find it quite interesting that André sends his things to the Guardian the WikiLeaks learned the same thing they can put everything out but until they send it to the Guardian or to some big media that will get it out there process it for the audiences and get it to people who are influential it doesn't really have that impact so you still need that megaphone effect and it's great to some extent that you can have that on a global level because as we saw with the Snowden you crossed jurisdictions nobody can shut you down if you don't publish in London you publish in New York you publish somewhere else and you can create that but for bloggers in Turkey in in Hungary especially in small countries where they're communicating in a unique language for a very small population that megaphone effect isn't happening and so the fact that there are threats to the mainstream medias in these countries is I think a seriously damaging blow to democracy at some point we would like to take some questions from the audience so if you do have any you can think of them. Erdogan have you have have you been watching the the situation in in Russia in the of course I'm the one who said five years ago Erdogan should not have some friends like Putin and Berlusconi and finally I was added Sarkozy of course so I believe that this generation of prime minister are not so friendly with democratic standards and they are very much more friendly with the financial groups and keep this relation fresh fresher than but I think what comparing what you said I think that democracy is is a system where everybody every political party groups are agree to respect this common rule I'm not sure that in Hungary in Turkey maybe we can multiply the examples that in this country of course we have ruling parties who is applying for reform on the paper but it's very hard to from Brussels to say whether these reforms are degenerated on the ground and whether there are consensus between the political party I cannot say we have for the first time in 2002 we had a one-party government in Turkey I kept it was wonderful and they started by by amending the shame article of criminal code we said it's okay we are in the good road after that 12 years later we asked him talking about the reform you and we still have two chapter to open with with Brussels and then everything seems to be solved but no in the in the in the in the society everything is very everything in the society is very discussed and the social tension is is is rise I think that we need to count the game and I have for Turkey I should say that with this poly a populist approach with this manipulative approach of Erdogan I think that we won't never get with this social harmony and finally to be ready to to negotiate this membership membership of EU can you imagine that when we are reacting on the the case of journalist in jail in Turkey he is able to say that oh we know in Britain we know that dozen journalists are in jail as well or we know that many EU countries have the same problems but nobody can say are you able to give us an example and for his political mass it's it's an explanation they are he's brave he's he's able to attack Brussels he's able to to defend our teasers etc etc so I think that for for being able to it means that we are not ready in in social level but of course negotiation are still continuing and I hope that this situation with will change any questions in the audience Sally um what's that hi my name is Nick de pensier I'm a filmmaker from Canada who's researching a documentary film sort of in the space and my observation is there's a lot of downward pressure on a good uh robust press dialogue that's well funded that can do um well researched investigative journalism all over the world right now I think because of the changing media landscape because of the internet and not just in some countries where the government might opportunistically use that dynamic uh to advantage any observations from you about solutions or ways out of this or bright lights obviously there's survivors there you know who who have a voice but uh what's the positive a part of this equation would be my question yeah when I was um asked to do this panel I made some notes about what are the pressures and one of the big pressures that I put was the the business model of mainstream media um and even not so mainstream media at the moment and um for all of the nice thing that I just said about the Guardian and its global public and speaking to a global public um it hasn't managed to monetize that yet that's still in the investment phase as as Ellen Rocheford just said and it's um it's going to be a challenge and I think that's where we need to see the opportunity um because we have to find other ways of financing journalism and financing content and um you can talk about public service broadcasting in the UK and in Germany um you can look at ways of funding the press across Europe um we have people who've done some research and safeguards and stuff but then when you get to countries where there is a political will to control the media any kind of public interventions into the media will be politicized will have strings attached so I think we need to be really um creative about how to capitalize on the idea that that media are not just nastorily based and how to change business models um and also we need to really think about um what are the ways that policy is going to impact the potential for new business models and um yeah once again I will say net neutrality think about think about that and think about what concentration in in the telecommunications and the use of spectrum is going to mean for the ways that people can can develop new and creative business models for for media I don't know if you guys have uh well I think that uh you made a very good point about international investigative projects we have plenty of them and some of them are extremely good and um I think they might be very good in um investigating stories which which might be have some well some traces in not one but uh well many countries and also I think that what what might be a very good thing is sometimes you might unite not only the efforts of journalists but journalists and activists and sometimes of people who might be very far from journalism uh for example uh we started two two years ago we started the project trying to understand what's going on with uh surveillance in Russia and because I'm a journalist so I needed technical advice technical expertise about some technical solutions I used by the Russian government and we have now as a result as a joint project with privacy international based in London and citizen lab which is based in Toronto and I think it's extremely good thing because you can actually share experience you can share information data and um well it's it's extremely well good thing because uh at the same time you might publish your story internationally uh it's also might be a good thing for your protection but also there are some issues like two years ago in Russia it was impossible to to accuse journalism of state treason because you should according to to Russian legislation legislation you have to have access to secret information and then you might be accused of disclosing these secrets now it's completely changed now we have the special law the special amendment uh proved two years ago and now a journalist might be accused of being a spy just because he passed something some some information and this information should not be necessarily secret to uh so-called foreign organization so in this case uh the authorities even didn't need to prove that this foreign organization is a spying organization it might be I know human rights organization that would be enough so uh of course it put all of us in a very difficult situation because nobody knows who might be accused and for what actually um yeah what uh I lost my train of thought but um what do um what would the Russian government have done if Snowden were Russian? uh well from the beginning we tried to play uh with Snowden uh and his revelations were used by Russian officials to promote ideas cherished by Russian governments the ideas of national sovereignty in Russia it means that global platforms should uh have backdoors for Russian secret services uh ostensibly to protect personal data of Russian citizens uh and the idea is to force somehow global platforms like Facebook to relocate their servers to Russia uh the latest idea I heard of was to relocate them to Siberia to help to develop this region and the problem is that we actually the law I mentioned in the beginning which was signed by Putin today actually established this rule now all internet services and it's actually formulated in very broad broad way I don't know actually what they mean all internet services should store data on Russian soil so it might mean one day that we would try to press global platforms to relocate their service and we try to justify all these measures co-efficient and referring to Snowden's revelations wow and what do you think when you mentioned um this law that was passed today that any blogger with more than 3000 readers or followers um as it is in the in the Russian blogosphere um what does it mean that they have to register uh no actually as far as I understand the idea is to to have an automatic system but it means that special Russian government bodies would have special monitoring programs which would monitor social networks and would identify those with more than 3000 followers of course there are some tricky things for example live journals live journal already decided not to provide information about the exact number of followers uh so it's a good thing but given the fact that Russian authorities were very skillful in pressure and global platforms and they actually even convinced them to use dpi de-packet inspection in Russia just to avoid to be completely blocked so I'm quite pessimistic are there any more questions in the audience Sally I would have one if you don't mind um what I think sometimes like the big platforms like Twitter or YouTube they sometimes get also much more under pressure under these uh regimes or in these countries do you think they should be more active or more bold also in kind of um opposing these measures because sometimes we see they're kind of working together there's censoring content or deleting content do you think they're also it's also a big Errol do you think they've been has Twitter been working behind the scenes um to do advocacy in Turkey I think that in Turkey we consider that Twitter is more courageous to resist against the the government than YouTube which uh apparently collaborate a bit with with the with the government I think that uh no I I think that in international platform there is an idea that uh they they are not confident about Turkish court so Twitter resisted against uh this this ban but they had a lake of communication between the TIB the the higher the higher communication authority board in Ankara who is applying court decision so uh Twitter said I received nothing from Turkish court and from the TIB so I'm not I cannot react and then Erdogan took this measure to to to ban all Twitter so negotiations have started and I know that Twitter finally said we won't we don't want to open an office in in Turkey to to to to be in line with the Turkish court because we cannot we cannot apply all court decision because in many content there is public interest uh referring to to this record on Erdogan or the ministers for YouTube I think that YouTube is very controversial I know many cases of of some pictures of PKK militants on the mountain that YouTube found as as a as a reason to to ban some pages and I know that some very legal political parties website are banned by by or some videos are banned by by Facebook and YouTube and I think that it is it is totally arbitrary because even in Turkey this is not anymore uh how to say a motivation for for the court to to ban content well I think some of those companies have felt um pressure um and they have started coming out with transparency reports about how they've reacted to notice and takedowns and everything they're trying to sort of improve their image in terms of their cooperation with various governments but it's important to remember that these are internet service companies providing social networks trying to make a business out of it and even though yes private media are also trying to make a business they do come from some kind of a history of press press ethics and what it means to be journalists and they are actually trying to do journalism YouTube and Twitter and Facebook do not do journalism they just provide a platform and so they are missing that editorial responsibility moment and they are not a substitute for investigative journalism that needs to be happening but in yeah just very quickly I think you're absolutely right because in our country we got this internet filtering system in November of 2012 and already by April Russian authorities were happy to report that all three global platforms Facebook Twitter and Google uh now remove content dimmed harmful by the authorities um in few hours so now it takes just a few hours to remove this content because they were constantly under threat that the whole services would be completely blocked and I think that the best way to withstand with such a pressure is to make these stories public to make as much transparent as you could it's the same thing that we face as journalists if you face pressure it's better to go public and to just to say that you are under pressure it's to me I think it's always helpful um yeah it's hard to see um it's also interesting that you know in in response to the NSA surveillance uh revelations that the the main argument from a lot of the technology companies in in Silicon Valley was this is this is something that harms our business um you know that we can't expect them to be um you know crusaders on behalf of a free press or or media freedom um what what do you think um what happens next I mean there's this kind of hope that that media freedom is an evolutionary thing that it goes that it goes forward you know that we get more and more media freedom over time and I think even though individual countries you know they're always setbacks in individual countries but they I mean the landscape at least is changing very rapidly there's a lot of things happening all the time so there's a lot to be positive about um what what do you think are the most important steps now for for instance press freedom organizations or ordinary citizens who are concerned about this do you have an opinion on on this what's kind of the nexus for for press freedom organizations right now I think um the place to be concentrating your efforts is to be seeing where where there are possible blockages um so where there is concentration and not just I'm not just talking about Rupert Murdoch's empire and everything but but thinking about these filters Google Facebook the size of them the extent to which they are gatekeepers and then they are private companies negotiating with governments in their business interests and telecom operators um this country is mostly on cable right um how many of these means that there are gatekeepers between you and your media um and it means that media have to go through these gatekeepers to get access to their publics and you know we went through digitalization whoo whoo hey we're all digitalized now we've cut off the analog system we have more spectrum to give to mobile operators but mobile operators are not our television um broadcasters and now our broadcasters have to go through telecommunications companies in order to get to their publics and we really need to be looking at this moment of access and concentration and and um and think about how our media are going to get to talk to us in the future I think an important gatekeeper that's often forgotten in the mix is something like Google I mean that is responsible for enormous amounts of traffic to media organizations but can just cut them cut them off for different reasons via algorithm or via you know whatever um but that they become very powerful um and we tend to see I think those of us who are um fans of technology or fans of the internet tend to see these companies as sort of um the good guys um but depending on you know they can just as quickly flip you know that we need to acknowledge the the power and and you know as you call them the the gatekeeper effect a very mundane example came from Macedonia where I was for many years and the country is basically divided between two major cable operators and this was before the the IPTV platform really launched and in the lead up to an election one of the major broadcasters was not very popular with the government and some of the cable the cable operators cut cut them off there was a dispute and you had television stations that were not being carried by cable operators and this is a country at that time it was only about 50 60 percent penetration now it's about 80 percent penetration of cable and IPTV so it's um it is a serious thing to think about. Erl you've you've also been involved with some press freedom organizations um reporters without borders um what are some of the things that you see as being um very important for people concerned with press freedom right now organizations concerned with press freedom what needs to be done for attiring the interests of people um uh for improving the situation of of the press I mean will it just continue to get worse in Turkey? I think that in Turkey beside this political interference to media and this media ownership collaboration with this government is is is crucial is is is one essential part of the problem but I think that the other party is a regulation the lake of regulation and I can tell you that we are talking about a media landscape very very uh how to say very rich so the problem is not financial crisis the problem is not the the the lake of fun etc etc but we still in these circumstances we are able to to kill investigative journalism reporting in in in in a proper way I think that regulation is is important and of course with the people I pay attention to to the to the contact that we have with people media literacy is very important uh sometimes I'm I'm invited in in in uh many school in in Istanbul and and I'm able to say how it's an it's a need for people to have for having a a rich perception of of the media pluralism so I think that it's good to for people to think half an hour about what is media or about the the product and how why it's so important to have so so diverse media so I think that in Turkey we we need to complete uh legal uh part of the of the story education part of the story but uh at the same time regulating the the the media atmosphere andre what what do you think well I think that to be honest I think the biggest threat we are facing with now is uh localization of services uh now if I am in Russia I'm in I type google I go to google.true not because of the government pressure but because it's the policy of the company which tried to provide me a localized version of of services and in this case we see that the the ideas of governments and the ideas of corporations might be dangerously close they all try to present us very localized versions of our things just one example now we have a Russian national cell changing which provides to Russians one map of Ukraine and for Ukrainians completely different map of Ukraine it should be absolutely crazy and I think that that that might be the biggest threat because in this case it would be not only about government it would be about advertisement it would be about habits of people and in in the end we might be well we might find ourselves in the situation where we we just forget about the global nature of the internet we would have this nationalized internet instead of internet and I think it's a it's very probable unfortunately on on that note I think we can wrap up the panel I guess the the the conclusion of this is that we need to keep watching media freedom everywhere and that it's never a finished project neither democracy nor media freedom will will ever be should never be left to its own devices to watch itself thank you to all the panelists thank you for the audience and goodbye thanks a lot also for your work for your investigation and in journalism and also for Sally for this interesting contribution from the science part and thank you Solana for hosting this and for asking very intelligent important questions and we have another break for now for 15 minutes and then we return with other interesting topics thank you thank you
 We are here for a very interesting topic and I think a very important topic which we all  witnessed in the media recently. So I would like to introduce Solana Larson. She will  guide us through this discussion. We have very interesting guests here. Solana will introduce  them as well. This topic or this discussion is presented by Bertelsmann. They are also  doing two research projects on this behalf. It is called Sustainable Government Indicators and  of course the Bertelsmann Transformation Index. There is nothing much to say. It is obvious what  we are talking about. The title says it. It is about media freedom and under pressure. It is not  only the classical media that is under pressure in some countries but it is also the digital media  or blogs or Twitter that are under pressure. I am very interesting and curious what these  speakers have to say about the evolution in this field. I will just hand over to Solana.  Welcome to everybody. I won't talk too much in the beginning. Right now I think it must be  quite a confusing time to study media freedom because at the same time as you have huge gains  on some indexes especially in some countries in the world, you also have new kinds of government  interference, surveillance, censorship of kinds that you could never have imagined just 10 years  ago. So with us here today we have Erl Indoroglu who is a journalist and a researcher of freedom of  the press in Turkey and who also writes for a website called bianet.org. We also have Andrey  Soldatov who is from Russia, an investigative journalist and an editor of a website called  agintura.ru which is an information hub on intelligence agencies in Russia. And finally  we have Dr. Sally Bratton-Mikova who is a research officer at the London School of Economics  leading a media policy project. And I think let's start with you Erl. There's been a lot  about Turkey in the press lately and we have very helpfully this slide from the SGI project that  shows Turkey's media freedom and media pluralism in comparison with some other countries that people  in the audience may be familiar with, countries in the European Union. It looks like Turkey's doing  very badly in terms of media freedom and media pluralism. What's happening for you? Has the  internet not changed everything? I think that it's changed many things but the internet with the time  gained an importance which fair the government. I think that we enjoy at the beginning let's say  between 2000 and 2010 of a good period but they voted a censorship law on the on internet. They  in 2008 they banned YouTube for two years in Turkey and many small creation of a website of  independent journalists has been banned at the same time. So in the index I can I'm very familiar  to this index because it's representing a country who failed reform for the EU membership first of  all because we spend 12 years for accomplishing this reform for in the line of European Court of  Human Rights. We failed in this aspect plus we added new dimensions new censorship and self-censorship  categories in this in this field. You have many journalists in jail no? Yes they are they were  a lot but the the solution that the government found last month was to vote a law for rest  for limiting pre-trial detention to five years can you imagine and then within three months  30 journalists was released but the problem is there and there is a clear resistance from the  judiciary to to apply in the line of Strasbourg Convention. And I'm sure everybody will remember  a more recent example of the Twitter ban that everyone was talking about that's a whole new  dimension that isn't even targeting journalists directly. In Turkey you you are never able to  understand that the clear reason why social media is banned behind the explanation of the  authorities is yes we found some a couple of the video violating the memory of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk  the fundator of the Turkish Republic etc you can find dozens every day but and finally these  situations contribute to a ban process and it was the case for Twitter and one week later  one week later for YouTube but you know when you are in this movement in human rights movement  you know very well that there is another reason much more relevant and finally  social media is is oppressed because they are releasing many content  embarrassing content for the prime minister for his family accused to be a part of corruption  affairs and favoritism etc etc so of course we are dealing with official reason and official  explanations but in Turkey we should always look further to find the real the real reason.  Let's let's jump ahead to to Andrei in Russia there's there's another slide here I know it  seems odd to to jump from country to country but is it this one yes this one to jump from  country to country but I wanted us to look at these different examples different countries  in different contexts and talk a little bit about how we improve things in terms of media  freedom because it's so easy to look at the things that are going badly and and shake our heads but  but what is what is improving and how can we push push that this is a slide that shows freedom of  expression the BTI transformation index prepared this for us. Russia is the red line in there and  then there are comparisons to other countries that are considered comparable in economic terms  at the top of the list you see Jamaica and it might seem a little strange it seems a little strange  to me to compare Jamaica and Russia but when you read the report it makes sense. Andrei the point  of this slide is that freedom of expression is under threat in Russia it seems not so long ago  that we were celebrating new media freedoms in Russia give us your perspective. Yes to be frank  and there could be no more timely debate but we have now because just today Vladimir Putin signed  as a law which requires all bloggers with more than 3000 followers to be registered. So actually  it's it's it's happening just now and well we we had our good points say during the Moscow protests  in 2011 2012 Russian new media which used to be new segregators and to be frank they very restrained  in a way as to be able to hire journalists they tried just to copy stories and sometimes to  translate critical stories from the western western media into Russian so that's why some of them  became very popular but during the protests some of his media decided to hire real reporters  that's why maybe we were short of investigations then but we were not short of reporting.  Always changed it now mostly because of Ukraine. The most amazing story happened with the biggest  new media in Russia called Atlanta Dirt Row and the editor of this media she was fired because  she refused to fire a reporter who actually reported from Crimea and Ukraine and it was a very  well clear signal for all of us that now it's not only about investigations which are not allowed  to be published by new media and it's a long but for for traditional media it was well it was a  problem for many years but it's also about reporting now and all that we might be allowed to do is to  post some critical comments and even in this area there would be some problems today because we  again just today sorry to be so insistent just today we got the decision of the court  about the blocking of one of the last independent maybe small but significant new media called  Granny Dirt Row and when Granny Dirt Row went to the court asking for explanations why this media  was blocked today the explanation which was provided was quite I think illuminating the explanation  was there was no particular story which provoked participation in unsunctioned manifestations  which was a protest but the whole context of of the site provokes the readers to think but it might  be good to go to unsunctioned manifestations and I think it's it's formulated so broadly  that you can understand that it was a political decision but but if media if media freedom is  challenged how are you able to have a website that reports on the intelligence agencies in Russia  well the first reason is that we have a relatively small circulation in Russia  it's mostly aimed at journalists and maybe experts community the second thing is that we never  publish anything on our website as a first source so we we always try if you want to have something  published we try to find western publication to get it published like when we decided to and when  we found information about surveillance introduced in the sochi because of the Olympics we broke  this story in the Guardian when it was republished by some Russian media and eventually they posted  on our website so this is about our strategy of of defense I'd like to bring bring Sally into this  because there's one more before you think that the European countries are not mentioned in  in these index here's here's a slide that shows that some eastern countries are overtaking what  was known as western countries so we have the UK France and Italy that suddenly appeared to have  less media freedom and less media pluralism on this scale than the Czech Republic Poland Lithuania  Latvia and Estonia Sally you study media across many different countries in the European region  is it because the UK France and Italy are doing so badly or is it because the other countries are  doing much better well I think it's sometimes a bit of a false comparison to take these directly  one to another but there is pretty much an obvious trend that things are going down in these indicators  in UK France and Italy and things are probably doing better than they were in Estonia Latvia  Lithuania Poland in the Czech Republic and I think that the decline that people perceive in the UK  France and Italy has a lot to do with media pluralism and the issues around ownership and  construction ownership and convergence and access to platforms and also I think we can  underestimate the surveillance revelations and there's already been some research about how much  journalists are now concerned about revealing their sources inadvertently because they're being  surveilled Alan Rusperger the editor of the Guardian has said that they encrypt everything  they have completely changed how they communicate on email they have completely changed how they  communicate on the phone and so this is a pressure that has hit even the biggest ones in Western  Europe that maybe some of the country the smaller countries that aren't really on the forefront of  those battles aren't necessarily feeling or even necessarily perceiving yet although they should  know that they're also perhaps being surveilled how does it make Andre how does it make somebody  like you feel to hear that Western journalists are experiencing some of the things that were  you know have typically been challenged in unfree moments in Russia's history or the Soviet Union or  how does it look from the outside well first of all we should keep in mind that the Russian say in  this case Russian government like to use this like to refer to particularly the British example  for example when we got our system of internet filtering in 2012 the excuse provided by the  excuse provided by the Russian government was to say something like well we just try to repeat the  British example the British has the the own system of internet internet filtering and we try to protect  the children why we the Russians do not want to protect our children and we have the same reaction  after Snowden's revelations we got lots of statements something about which should be should  sound very familiar to you but we need to protect personal data of our Russian citizens so I think  these are strategy when counties and governments try to refer to each other justifying new repressive  measures is a very common thing today Sally Errol mentioned earlier today that he thinks that people  are also following the the lead of Erdogan when it comes to banning Twitter or is this something  previously when you look at just media freedom like old-style media not internet is was this a  common tactic where governments would copy each other and and learn learn tactics from each other  in this regard it isn't just that they learn tactics but especially with EU integration  there were there's policy that has to be transferred into law and so you need to actually  act at an international level on these things and it's it's easy to see for instance in the UK  with the Leveson inquiry and the reform of press regulation where the UK was one that had really  the absolute minimum complete self-regulation very hands-off in terms of press because of the  the things that happened now they're looking at revising that and immediately other countries  are jumping on it saying okay well now we can do and using it as an excuse but also there are issues  like net neutrality for instance that are going to be decided in Brussels that then everyone else  will have to comply to and for instance Slovenia and the Netherlands have much more protected  net neutrality than is currently in a European directive and their media freedom in that sense  is going to be undermined if that comes in from Brussels which is why people need to be very active  not just in their own country but also at the European level whether they're candidate countries  or member states and of course as as more of journalism you know mainstream or or not  moves online the legislation that affects the internet and the bloggers and the social activists  will eventually also directly affect journalists I think. Errol in Turkey I mean especially with the  current wave of protests that you've had over the past year there has been so much information  published online that never made it into newspapers. Is I mean when we have the internet do we really  still need media freedom are we moving into a phase in time where it's becoming less important  that we have media freedom when people can just go on the internet and do whatever they want?  I think that first of all we should not expect the same impact from the internet comparing the  mainstream media for some country like Turkey for example. I think that what we can expect for the  moment is to have some good references of journalist practices and I think that the work is there.  In Turkey we have a couple of good news websites which we came with the time a refuge for the  journalists fired from their working place. In Turkey in 2013 last year more than 150  well-known journalists or reduction members were fired or pushed to resign because of the pressure  of the media magnate who wants to have good relations with the with the government who wants  to because this media magnate finally they invested in the media sector but they have huge investment  in other sectors like I don't know hydroelectric, central construction, banking sector, automobile  sector and so on. So they want to have a good relation with Erdogan and his government and  when it's the case for firing a chronicle it's not a problem. The explanation is ready he is not able  to adapt himself to our new editorial line that's all. So I think that internet online is very important  to receive brave courageous good journalists who have still their word to say and I think in Turkey  with this vibrant civil society with this new alternative media examples I think that it's a  good it's a good preparation for the future because I think that Erdogan is now in the face to kill  investigative journalists. The investigative journalist is not anymore present in financial  level. Media is not capable to check what really happened in financial level corruption affairs,  mobbing or any other bad practices but it's important to say we know you as a good journalist  you come and you go on your work so just for having a brief I think that this internet is  always hope for the future. Andrei where do journalists go after they're fired in Russia?  Well I think we have the same situation what was described about Turkey maybe in the early 2000s  and because in the 1990s we used to have very actually free and liberal media and then we got  this flow of journalists expelled from traditional media we ended up in new media. The problem was  that to be frank I'm quite skeptical because these journalists of course were very critical of the  government but they were not given enough money to conduct investigations to do reporting so it was  then it was mostly about critical columns it was not about real journalism as I said we got some  good journalism only during the protests and because it was immediately almost immediately  destroyed now so to be frank what we are left with is again we have this space on social networks  which we can use to discuss something that we actually we watch on TV so it's to me seems to  be very close to what we used to have during the Soviet times when you can watch TV and to be very  critical about what you see but it's of course it's very far from real journalism extremely far  and given the the latest example about Ukraine for Russian audience it's extremely difficult or  might be impossible to understand what is going on there because they cannot read these things in  traditional media they cannot watch these things on TV and also in social networks they have so  many unchecked stories so the only source of information for them is to try to read these  things in English. Sally I think we've always been told that with democracy comes free press  and a lot of the countries in eastern europe or southeastern europe have essentially become  democracies but their press freedom is still under threat can you explain some of the the  tension in the the situation I'm thinking for instance of Hungary or or some of the other  countries that are known right now to have quite serious situations for journalists.  Well I think that free press and democracy kind of go hand in hand and I think in those places  where we are seeing serious threats to media freedom we also need to question the extent to  which there's real democracy because without those voices and you you don't really have the public  debate and and I think this is where one of the challenges with seeing internet as a fix for  the problems with mainstream media because you still need to have this sort of either national  level or global level public discourse about things which requires some kind of filter some sort of  some media that's going to process select and translate out to a bigger audience that can  have that conversation and the one hand the internet does allow a kind of a global public  for the big guys and I find it quite interesting that André sends his things to the Guardian  the WikiLeaks learned the same thing they can put everything out but until they send it to the  Guardian or to some big media that will get it out there process it for the audiences and get it to  people who are influential it doesn't really have that impact so you still need that megaphone effect  and it's great to some extent that you can have that on a global level because as we saw with the  Snowden you crossed jurisdictions nobody can shut you down if you don't publish in London you  publish in New York you publish somewhere else and you can create that but for bloggers in Turkey  in in Hungary especially in small countries where they're communicating in a unique language  for a very small population that megaphone effect isn't happening and so the fact that there are  threats to the mainstream medias in these countries is I think a seriously damaging blow to democracy  at some point we would like to take some questions from the audience so if you do have any you can  think of them. Erdogan have you have have you been watching the the situation in in Russia  in the of course I'm the one who said five years ago Erdogan should not have some friends like  Putin and Berlusconi and finally I was added Sarkozy of course so I believe that this generation  of prime minister are not so friendly with democratic standards and they are very much  more friendly with the financial groups and keep this relation fresh fresher than but I think what  comparing what you said I think that democracy is is a system where everybody every political party  groups are agree to respect this common rule I'm not sure that in Hungary in Turkey maybe we can  multiply the examples that in this country of course we have ruling parties who is applying for  reform on the paper but it's very hard to from Brussels to say whether these reforms are  degenerated on the ground and whether there are consensus between the political party I cannot say  we have for the first time in 2002 we had a one-party government in Turkey I kept it was  wonderful and they started by by amending the shame article of criminal code we said it's okay  we are in the good road after that 12 years later we asked him talking about the reform  you and we still have two chapter to open with with Brussels and then everything seems to be solved  but no in the in the in the in the society everything is very everything in the society is very  discussed and the social tension is is is rise I think that we need to count the game and I  have for Turkey I should say that with this poly a populist approach with this manipulative approach  of Erdogan I think that we won't never get with this social harmony and finally to be ready to  to negotiate this membership membership of EU can you imagine that when we are reacting on the  the case of journalist in jail in Turkey he is able to say that oh we know in Britain we know  that dozen journalists are in jail as well or we know that many EU countries have the same problems  but nobody can say are you able to give us an example and for his political mass it's it's an  explanation they are he's brave he's he's able to attack Brussels he's able to to defend our  teasers etc etc so I think that for for being able to it means that we are not ready in in  social level but of course negotiation are still continuing and I hope that this situation with  will change any questions in the audience Sally um what's that  hi my name is Nick de pensier I'm a filmmaker from Canada who's researching a documentary film  sort of in the space and my observation is there's a lot of downward pressure on a good  uh robust press dialogue that's well funded that can do um well researched investigative journalism  all over the world right now I think because of the changing media landscape because of the internet  and not just in some countries where the government might opportunistically use that dynamic  uh to advantage any observations from you about solutions or ways out of this or bright lights  obviously there's survivors there you know who who have a voice but uh what's the positive  a part of this equation would be my question yeah when I was um asked to do this panel I made  some notes about what are the pressures and one of the big pressures that I put was the the business  model of mainstream media um and even not so mainstream media at the moment and um for all  of the nice thing that I just said about the Guardian and its global public and speaking to a  global public um it hasn't managed to monetize that yet that's still in the investment phase as as  Ellen Rocheford just said and it's um it's going to be a challenge and I think that's where we need  to see the opportunity um because we have to find other ways of financing journalism and  financing content and um you can talk about public service broadcasting in the UK and in Germany um  you can look at ways of funding the press across Europe um we have people who've done some research  and safeguards and stuff but then when you get to countries where there is a political will to  control the media any kind of public interventions into the media will be politicized will have  strings attached so I think we need to be really um creative about how to capitalize on the idea that  that media are not just nastorily based and how to change business models um and also we need to  really think about um what are the ways that policy is going to impact the potential for new  business models and um yeah once again I will say net neutrality think about think about that and  think about what concentration in in the telecommunications and the use of spectrum is going to mean  for the ways that people can can develop new and creative business models for for media I don't know  if you guys have uh well I think that uh you made a very good point about international  investigative projects we have plenty of them and some of them are extremely good and um I think  they might be very good in um investigating stories which which might be have some well some traces  in not one but uh well many countries and also I think that what what might be a very good thing  is sometimes you might unite not only the efforts of journalists but journalists and activists  and sometimes of people who might be very far from journalism uh for example uh we started  two two years ago we started the project trying to understand what's going on with uh surveillance  in Russia and because I'm a journalist so I needed technical advice technical expertise  about some technical solutions I used by the Russian government and we have now as a result  as a joint project with privacy international based in London and citizen lab which is based  in Toronto and I think it's extremely good thing because you can actually share experience you can  share information data and um well it's it's extremely well good thing because uh at the same  time you might publish your story internationally uh it's also might be a good thing for your  protection but also there are some issues like two years ago in Russia it was impossible to  to accuse journalism of state treason because you should according to to Russian legislation  legislation you have to have access to secret information and then you might be accused of  disclosing these secrets now it's completely changed now we have the special law the special  amendment uh proved two years ago and now a journalist might be accused of being a spy  just because he passed something some some information and this information should not  be necessarily secret to uh so-called foreign organization so in this case uh the authorities  even didn't need to prove that this foreign organization is a spying organization it might  be I know human rights organization that would be enough so uh of course it put all of us in a very  difficult situation because nobody knows who might be accused and for what actually  um yeah what uh I lost my train of thought but um what do um what would the Russian government  have done if Snowden were Russian?  uh well from the beginning we tried to play uh with Snowden uh and his revelations were used  by Russian officials to promote ideas cherished by Russian governments the ideas of national sovereignty  in Russia it means that global platforms should uh have backdoors for Russian secret services  uh ostensibly to protect personal data of Russian citizens uh and the idea is to force  somehow global platforms like Facebook to relocate their servers to Russia uh the latest idea I heard  of was to relocate them to Siberia to help to develop this region and the problem is that  we actually the law I mentioned in the beginning which was signed by Putin today actually established  this rule now all internet services and it's actually formulated in very broad broad way I don't  know actually what they mean all internet services should store data on Russian soil so it might mean  one day that we would try to press global platforms to relocate their service and we try to justify  all these measures co-efficient and referring to Snowden's revelations  wow and what do you think when you mentioned um this law that was passed today that any blogger  with more than 3000 readers or followers um as it is in the in the Russian blogosphere um  what does it mean that they have to register uh no actually as far as I understand the idea is to  to have an automatic system but it means that special Russian government bodies would have  special monitoring programs which would monitor social networks and would identify those with  more than 3000 followers of course there are some tricky things for example live journals  live journal already decided not to provide information about the exact number of followers  uh so it's a good thing but given the fact that Russian authorities were very skillful in pressure  and global platforms and they actually even convinced them to use dpi de-packet inspection  in Russia just to avoid to be completely blocked so I'm quite pessimistic are there any more  questions in the audience Sally I would have one if you don't mind um what I think sometimes like  the big platforms like Twitter or YouTube they sometimes get also much more under pressure  under these uh regimes or in these countries do you think they should be more active or more  bold also in kind of um opposing these measures because sometimes we see they're kind of working  together there's censoring content or deleting content do you think they're also it's also a big  Errol do you think they've been has Twitter been working behind the scenes um to do advocacy in  Turkey I think that in Turkey we consider that Twitter is more courageous to resist against  the the government than YouTube which uh apparently collaborate a bit with with the  with the government I think that uh no I I think that in international platform there is an idea that  uh they they are not confident about Turkish court so Twitter resisted against uh this this ban  but they had a lake of communication between the TIB the the higher the higher communication  authority board in Ankara who is applying court decision so uh Twitter said I received nothing  from Turkish court and from the TIB so I'm not I cannot react and then Erdogan took this measure to  to to ban all Twitter so negotiations have started and I know that Twitter finally said  we won't we don't want to open an office in in Turkey to to to to be in line with the Turkish  court because we cannot we cannot apply all court decision because in many content there is public  interest uh referring to to this record on Erdogan or the ministers for YouTube I think that YouTube  is very controversial I know many cases of of some pictures of PKK militants on the mountain  that YouTube found as as a as a reason to to ban some pages and I know that some very  legal political parties website are banned by by or some videos are banned by by Facebook and  YouTube and I think that it is it is totally arbitrary because even in Turkey this is not anymore uh  how to say a motivation for for the court to to ban content  well I think some of those companies have felt um pressure um and they have started coming out  with transparency reports about how they've reacted to notice and takedowns and everything  they're trying to sort of improve their image in terms of their cooperation with various governments  but it's important to remember that these are internet service companies providing social  networks trying to make a business out of it and even though yes private media are also trying to  make a business they do come from some kind of a history of press press ethics and what it means  to be journalists and they are actually trying to do journalism YouTube and Twitter and Facebook  do not do journalism they just provide a platform and so they are missing that editorial responsibility  moment and they are not a substitute for investigative journalism that needs to be happening  but in yeah just very quickly I think you're absolutely right because in our country we got  this internet filtering system in November of 2012 and already by April Russian authorities were  happy to report that all three global platforms Facebook Twitter and Google uh now remove content  dimmed harmful by the authorities um in few hours so now it takes just a few hours to remove  this content because they were constantly under threat that the whole services would be completely  blocked and I think that the best way to withstand with such a pressure is to make these stories public  to make as much transparent as you could it's the same thing that we face as journalists  if you face pressure it's better to go public and to just to say that you are under pressure  it's to me I think it's always helpful  um  yeah it's hard to see um  it's also interesting that you know in in response to the NSA surveillance uh revelations that the  the main argument from a lot of the technology companies in in Silicon Valley was this is this  is something that harms our business um you know that we can't expect them to be  um you know crusaders on behalf of a free press or or media freedom um what what do you think  um what happens next I mean there's this kind of hope that that media freedom is an evolutionary  thing that it goes that it goes forward you know that we get more and more media freedom over time  and I think even though individual countries you know they're always setbacks in individual  countries but they I mean the landscape at least is changing very rapidly there's a lot of things  happening all the time so there's a lot to be positive about um what what do you think are  the most important steps now for for instance press freedom organizations or ordinary citizens who  are concerned about this do you have an opinion on on this what's kind of the nexus for for press  freedom organizations right now I think um the place to be concentrating your efforts is to be  seeing where where there are possible blockages um so where there is concentration and not just  I'm not just talking about Rupert Murdoch's empire and everything but but thinking about  these filters Google Facebook the size of them the extent to which they are gatekeepers and then  they are private companies negotiating with governments in their business interests and  telecom operators um this country is mostly on cable right um how many of these means that there  are gatekeepers between you and your media um and it means that media have to go through these  gatekeepers to get access to their publics and you know we went through digitalization whoo  whoo hey we're all digitalized now we've cut off the analog system we have more spectrum to give to  mobile operators but mobile operators are not our television um broadcasters and now our broadcasters  have to go through telecommunications companies in order to get to their publics and we really need  to be looking at this moment of access and concentration and and um and think about how  our media are going to get to talk to us in the future I think an important gatekeeper that's  often forgotten in the mix is something like Google I mean that is responsible for enormous  amounts of traffic to media organizations but can just cut them cut them off for different reasons  via algorithm or via you know whatever um but that they become very powerful um and we tend to see  I think those of us who are um fans of technology or fans of the internet tend to see these companies  as sort of um the good guys um but depending on you know they can just as quickly flip you know  that we need to acknowledge the the power and and you know as you call them the the gatekeeper  effect a very mundane example came from Macedonia where I was for many years and the country is  basically divided between two major cable operators and this was before the the IPTV platform really  launched and in the lead up to an election one of the major broadcasters was not very popular with  the government and some of the cable the cable operators cut cut them off there was a dispute  and you had television stations that were not being carried by cable operators and this is a  country at that time it was only about 50 60 percent penetration now it's about 80 percent  penetration of cable and IPTV so it's um it is a serious thing to think about.  Erl you've you've also been involved with some press freedom organizations um reporters without  borders um what are some of the things that you see as being um very important for people concerned  with press freedom right now organizations concerned with press freedom what needs to be done  for attiring the interests of people um uh for improving the situation of of the press I mean  will it just continue to get worse in Turkey? I think that in Turkey beside this political  interference to media and this media ownership collaboration with this government is is is  crucial is is is one essential part of the problem but I think that the other party is a regulation  the lake of regulation and I can tell you that we are talking about a media landscape very very  uh how to say very rich so the problem is not financial crisis the problem is not  the the the lake of fun etc etc but we still in these circumstances we are able to to kill  investigative journalism reporting in in in in a proper way I think that regulation is is important  and of course with the people I pay attention to to the to the contact that we have with people  media literacy is very important uh sometimes I'm I'm invited in in in uh many school in  in Istanbul and and I'm able to say how it's an it's a need for people to have for having  a a rich perception of of the media pluralism so I think that it's good to for people to think  half an hour about what is media or about the the product and how why it's so important to have so  so diverse media so I think that in Turkey we we need to complete  uh legal uh part of the of the story education part of the story but uh at the same time  regulating the the the media atmosphere andre what what do you think well I think that  to be honest I think the biggest threat we are facing with now is uh localization of services  uh now if I am in Russia I'm in I type google I go to google.true not because of the government  pressure but because it's the policy of the company which tried to provide me a localized  version of of services and in this case we see that the the ideas of governments and the ideas of  corporations might be dangerously close they all try to present us very localized versions of  our things just one example now we have a Russian national cell changing which provides to Russians  one map of Ukraine and for Ukrainians completely different map of Ukraine  it should be absolutely crazy and I think that that that might be the biggest threat because in  this case it would be not only about government it would be about advertisement it would be about  habits of people and in in the end we might be well we might find ourselves in the situation  where we we just forget about the global nature of the internet we would have this nationalized  internet instead of internet and I think it's a it's very probable unfortunately  on on that note I think we can wrap up the panel I guess the the the conclusion of this is that we  need to keep watching media freedom everywhere and that it's never a finished project neither  democracy nor media freedom will will ever be should never be left to its own devices to watch  itself thank you to all the panelists thank you for the audience and goodbye  thanks a lot also for your work for your investigation and in journalism and also for  Sally for this interesting contribution from the science part and thank you Solana for hosting this  and for asking very intelligent important questions and we have another break for now for 15 minutes  and then we return with other interesting topics thank you thank you
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