Promoting plural and independent broadcasting Steve Buckley It is an honour to be invited here to Cairo at this momentous time.

I am humbled by the courage of the Egyptian people in standing up for freedom, rights and social justice. On Monday I visited Radio Horytna, Egypts first internet radio station, broadcasting since 2007, and relaying reports directly from Tahrir Square since the revolution of 25 January. Radio Horytna founder Ahmed Samih told me of his hopes for a more plural broadcasting environment in Egypt, not only on the Internet but on FM radio and television too. There is no blueprint to get there, but there is some degree of international consensus of what a plural and independent broadcasting landscape looks like. It includes legal and constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression and freedom of the media. It includes an independent regulatory body responsible for the award and regulation of broadcast licensees. And it includes a three tier system of broadcasting. Government controlled state broadcasting is reformed to become a public service with editorial independence. Private commercial broadcasting is able to operate in conditions of fair competition without excessive concentration of ownership. And civil society organisations are able to establish and operate community broadcasting services on a not-for-profit basis. This three tier model of broadcasting is the norm in the majority of the countries of western Europe, of the Americas, much of sub-Saharan Africa and a growing number of nations in the Asia-Pacific including India, Indonesia and Australia. It is also specifically recommended by various UN statements and guidelines as well the Declaration on Freedom of Expression of the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights, the cluster of media policy recommendations of the Council of Europe and by the Sana'a Declaration of 1996, which is the only document on freedom for the Arab media that has been endorsed by a UN intergovernmental body, the UNESCO General Council. Now let us turn to media reform in real world conditions. There are lessons certainly to be learned from both the successes and the failures of other countries in democratic transition. For many of us who work in media development the obvious starting point for comparison with the situation in this region might seem to be the countries of central and eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of Soviet Union. Yet that experience is by no means wholly positive. Economic reform and incorporation into the markets of global capitalism were the overriding goals of the dominant powers, with human rights and the building of a strong civil society taking second place. The media swung from state to market with many of the new private commercial radio and television stations tied to other business interests, some of them undoubtedly corrupt, whilst the old state broadcasters proved stubbornly difficult to reform. There are a few bright spots the regulatory system in Lithuania, public service broadcasting in Montenegro, the vibrancy of private radio and TV in Romania, the emergence of community broadcasting in Hungary but in the main the media revolution in central and eastern Europe has not lived up to its democratic promise.

The Americas might seem a more promising starting point with an extraordinarily diverse media landscape across the continent as a whole and a number of countries that have experienced the transition from dictatorship to democracy. Commercial broadcasters sit alongside citizens and community radio stations - and a few television stations too - run by educational organizations, peasants organizations, indigenous tribes, womens groups, churches and trades unions. But in the Americas, state broadcasting, with a few notable exceptions such as Cuba, has never been a strong force. Commercial radio and television emerged first in most parts of the region, and despite the removal of dictators and the introduction of democracy, the media landscape in countries such as Brazil and Argentina remains dominated by powerful commercial groups such as Globo and Clarin. Both are companies whose dominant position developed during long periods of military rule. Chile is one of very few examples where, after the end of dictatorship, a military controlled television channel was reorganized into a public service institution, Televisin Nacional. Closer by and bearing some other similarities, I believe there are important lessons to be learned from democratic reforms in sub-Saharan Africa. Fifty years ago independence swept across much of region. Yet it is only over the last two decades that state broadcasting monopolies, inherited from the colonial era, have been challenged by the emergence of independent broadcasting. In 1990 there was almost no independent radio or television to be found on the African continent. Broadcasting operated as a monopoly of government in the service of nation building, development and sometimes repression. Over the last twenty years Africas media landscape has changed enormously. New policies, laws and regulations have been adopted that have led to an opening up of the airwaves for private and community broadcasting services. Today there remains only a handful of countries in sub-Saharan Africa where state broadcasting monopolies prevail. Of course the transition to democracy in South Africa is well known and its broadcasting regulatory and media landscape is widely considered an example of good practice. But the smaller West African nations of Mali and Benin have also inspired and influenced change in Africas media environment. With the transition to multiparty democracy in Benin, in 1990, an independent regulatory body, the Higher Authority for Audiovisual and Communications (HAAC), was established as part of a new constitutional settlement and having the purpose of guaranteeing and assuring the freedom and protection of the press and all other means of mass communication. The HAAC has enabled emergence and substantial growth of private commercial and community broadcasting services. In Mali, protests against a brutal dictatorship by opposition groups and democracy activists turned violent almost exactly 20 years ago, when security forces opened fire killing hundreds of demonstrators. In response, a group of army officers, led by Amadou Tour, staged a military coup. A Transitional Council, predominantly composed of civilians, was subsequently established to oversee a constitutional convention and parliamentary and presidential elections. A military decree allowing for the creation of private broadcasting services was passed in January 1992 before democratic elections

took place. It provided for radio and television licences to be issued on demand and has led since to over 200 local private and community radio stations being established. Now let me return to the three tier model of broadcasting public service, private commercial and community. This model is particularly well articulated in the African Charter on Broadcasting, a text that was adopted ten years ago at the Windhoek +10 conference that brought together government, civil society and media stakeholders to mark ten years since the landmark Windhoek Declaration on Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press. Last year I led a comparative research project to examine the impact of the Charter in five countries of West Africa Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal. What we found is that none of the countries had an independent regulatory body. Ghana was the only country with some form of public service broadcasting, but the public broadcaster is poorly funded with politicians reluctant to increase the licence fee in line with inflation and the staff remain employees on the state payroll. The real success story has been the growth of private and community broadcasting. Private commercial broadcasting is present in all five of the countries studied and community broadcasting is present in all of them except Nigeria. Nigeria, which returned to democracy in 1999, has retained a mass media policy and regulatory framework first adopted in the military era. Under the 1999 Constitution the President retains direct power to issue broadcast licences. But even Nigeria has begun to license private commercial broadcasting services and last year the President finally announced a go ahead for community radio. From the experience in other parts of the world we can reach some general conclusions about the transition from dictatorship to a democratic environment for the media: First, no transition process is alike. Each is dependent on specific country conditions. Strategies for reform need to be developed according to local circumstances and goals. Second, policies, laws and regulations are important but they are not always the determining factor. Entry strategies that dont require legal reform can be crucial in opening the door. Third, the sequencing of reform is a crucial part of any analysis but this does not consist only in the formal stages of constitutional reform, law making, and the establishment of the regulatory framework leading to the licensing of new services. There may also be short term opportunities arising from a legal vacuum, tacit acceptance or explicit interim measures. Political circumstances may present rather narrow windows of opportunity at key stages of development and it is important to be ready and capable to exploit them. Finally, media reform is unlikely to succeed without broad support. Proposals for media reform need to carry the main stakeholders and to link in to wider pro-democracy campaigns. Further information: Steve Buckley e. sbuckley@gn.apc.org