Day 1
Keynote Speech
Основной доклад
Martin Hadlow, Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Queensland and Deputy Chair of the Australian National Commission for UNESCO
Мартин Хедлоу, Адъюнкт профессор Школы журналистики и коммуникации университета Куинсланд и Заместитель председателя Австралийской Национальной комиссии по делам ЮНЕСКО
The path of the birds: freedom of the press and media pluralism
About the speaker:
Martin Hadlow is a former Director of the Centre for Communication and Social Change in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Queensland. He joined the university following a career with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Previously, he held management, media training and development roles throughout Asia and the Pacific, including several years in Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea.
His media experience in Australia includes the ABC, commercial and community radio and he has also worked in journalism and radio production positions in New Zealand, Hong Kong and the UK.
He has published widely and has an MA (Mass Communications) from Leicester University, UK. He was conferred an Honorary Doctorate by the Senate of the Kazakh State University, Almaty, Kazakhstan and an Honorary Scholar Award by the Kyrgyz State National University in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
His PhD research at UQ relates to a social and political history of radio broadcasting in Solomon Islands, South-West Pacific. Martin's supervisors are Professor Clive Moore, Head of the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics at UQ, and Dr. Levi Obijiofor, Senior Lecturer in UQ's School of Journalism and Communication.
О спикере:
Мартин Хэдлоу работал директором центра коммуникации и социальных перемен в школе журналистики и коммуникации университета Квинсленда (УК). Он начал свою деятельность в университете после работы в Организацииий Объединенных Наций по вопросам образования, науки и культуры (ЮНЕСКО).
Ранее он занимался управлением, обучением и развитием средств массовой информации на территории Азии и Тихоокеанского региона, а также несколько лет он работал на Соломоновых островах и в Папуа Новая Гвинея.
В Австралии он работал в компании ABC, на коммерческих и общественных радио, он также занимался журналистикой и созданием радиопрограмм в Новой Зеландии, Гонконге и Великобритании.
Его работы публикуются многими изданиями. Он получил степень магистра (массовые информации) в университете Лейстера, Великобритания. Ему присвоено звание «Почетный Доктор» ученым советом Казахского национального университета, Алматы и почетная награда Кыргызского Национального университета, Бишкек.
Его докторская диссертация в УК посвящена социальной и политической истории радиовещания на Соломоновых Островах, юго-западной территории Тихоокеанского региона. Руководителями Мартина являются профессор Клайв Мур, директор школы истории, философии, религии и классики в УК и доктор Леви Обижиофор, старший преподаватель школы журналистики и коммуникации, УК.
Presentation:
The first snows of winter falling, as they have, on the hills around Almaty over the weekend, remind us that the northern autumn is upon us and that even colder days will soon follow. This is also the time when the change of seasons brings about changes in nature itself, as animals find shelter and seek warmer climes.
My Kazakh friends have a wonderful and evocative saying. They tell me of the “birds’ way”, or the “path of the birds”. At this time of the year, perhaps since animals first populated the planet and probably even before our human ancestors walked this Earth, countless thousands of migrating birds have followed their instinct, their inbuilt compass and the changing seasons. Flying south in autumn and north in Spring, they have travelled across the vast tracts of the grasslands of the steppe, this spiritual homeland of all the nomadic peoples of Central Asia.
The birds travel this way even today. They recognize no boundaries. They recognize no lines on the map, which we know as national borders. They understand nothing of countries, of divisions, of nation States. All they know is that they are free to fly, free to fly to where they will, and to fly when they want, and when they must. It is in their nature. It is within their soul.
And so it is for humankind. We are all born free and we fly free and we know no boundaries or impediments to our lives, until these restrictions are imposed by other people of our species. Of course, as civilized societies, we develop our own social norms and conventions, our own religions and cultures, and our own rules and laws. These guide us and give our lives a sense of order. And this is why we are the way we are today. But in our souls and in our hearts, we are the same…we are human beings sharing the same planet and we have the same hopes and fears and aspirations and freedoms.
Twenty years ago today, it was my honour to have been in Alma-Ata, as it was then known, this city with the enigmatic name the ‘king of Apples’, for the UNESCO sponsored Seminar on Promoting Independent and Pluralistic Media in Asia, a momentous international event which we commemorate today. At the time, I was UNESCO’s Regional Communication Adviser for Asia based in Malaysia, and as soon as I came to this place, I knew that part of my heart would always remain in this land.
The Seminar in 1992 brought into this post-Soviet space a new flock of birds. I was one of those who flew the new ‘path of the birds’. We came from all over the world to join with you in welcoming you back from your totalitarian past to a new democratic future and to the emerging information and knowledge world and society. While I don’t wish to dwell on the past, I think that a few words about the world, as it was in 1992, will give context to this Alma-Ata+20 conference.
Twenty years ago, in 1992, the Internet was a very small and relatively unknown system. Many of us, myself included, were just learning what ‘e-mail’ was all about. Why should we send a message to someone on a computer when we could send a fax or even a letter in the post? Anyway, who had a personal computer? Very few people had a computer in their office, let alone at home.
Lap-tops had not been invented. Google, Yahoo, they did not exist. Even Facebook. In fact, in 1992 when we were here in Alma-Ata for the international seminar, Mark Zuckerberg, the inventor of Facebook, was still at primary school. He was wearing short trousers and he was 8 years of age….and now he is a billionaire. Why didn’t I think of the idea for Facebook?!
‘To twitter’ was something that birds did in the trees. Twitter, as a communications concept, had not been invented. In 1992, mobile phones were just getting out of the realm of science-fiction and spy novels. No-one I knew had a mobile phone.
And if you had told me, in 1992, that I would one day be able to go to something called Google Earth on a computer and not only see a photograph of my house in a street anywhere on the planet, but that I could also see where hotels or other businesses were in that same street, I would have laughed. Impossible!
In 1992, even the use of satellites to broadcast television programs directly to homes was a very new idea. In fact, BBC World Service Television only started in 1991, that’s one year before the Alma-Ata conference. And now we take it for granted and as if it has always existed. Ted Turner’s CNN International had been operational, but in only a limited fashion in the global sense for about five years, and did not really take-off as a separate entity until 1990.
This was our world in 1992. New electronic and computer technologies were entering our lives and, like the migrating birds of Central Asia, the signals from these high-flying birds, these satellites in the sky, were travelling across borders with impunity and bringing new information, new ideas, new freedoms. If this is what has happened in the last 20 years, we can only imagine the changes the next two decades will bring.
The Alma-Ata seminar in 1992 was not just about media development and media freedom in the new Central Asian countries…it was a UNESCO Seminar for all of Asia and beyond. At its core, the Seminar sought to highlight freedom of expression, freedom of the press and, most importantly, the protection of journalists as they go about their important work in a democratic society. After all, a free press is the cornerstone of democracy.
So, what were the outcomes of the Seminar? Is it possible to quantify, in practical terms, the results of the 1992 Alma-Ata Seminar? The answer to that is yes and no.
The Declaration which came about from the Seminar called on UNESCO and its partners to do a number of things and many of those practical recommendations were achieved. For example:
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assistance for the development of professional associations of media personnel…we can point to ANESMICA and the Women in Media Network of Central Asia; -
the establishment of Media Resource Centres…we can point to the MRCs in Bishkek and Tashkent; -
the provision of equipment to independent media…and we recall studio equipment for Radio Maximum in Almaty and for the first private FM station developed by Asia-Plus in Dushanbe, Tajikistan; -
the training of current journalists and future journalists…and we recall projects with journalism and communication Departments and Faculties at the Kazakh State National University, the Kyrgyz State University, Baku State University and the Tajik State University; -
in Bishkek, a major UNDP funded project implemented by UNESCO supported the re-development of the Kabar News Agency, to promote independence and financial sustainability; -
English language training for media people in many parts of the region; -
computer technology for newspapers; -
a major communications strategy with UNAIDS to bring information on HIV to many parts of Central Asia.
These are just some examples of many positive outcomes.
On the broader scale, did the Seminar have any impact on the international stage in Asia? Perhaps it encouraged many State authorities to change their ways and open up their media space…for example, Indonesia now has one of the most independent media laws in the world and a strong and pluralistic press with a huge number of private radio and TV stations and newspapers. Nepal now has a great number of community FM radio stations. South Africa has a distinguished free press environment.
The so-called Arab Spring has shown us how the people of Tunisia and Libya and Egypt have come onto the streets for their freedom. Of course, social media, such as Facebook and Twitter and YouTube, has accelerated this entire process and has given power and freedom of expression to anyone with a mobile phone and Internet access. WikiLeaks has gone one step further and has demonstrated that almost nothing can be hidden from citizens.
But, of course, there are problems and issues which arise along the way and which put the whole notion of freedom of expression under the microscope of public attention. Hate media, the use of media to promote ethnic violence, such as Radio Milles Collines in Rwanda, is one example. More recently, the huge global outcry, rioting, violence and deaths brought about over the so-called anti-Islamic film which was placed on YouTube. But, to paraphrase the words of the US President himself about that particular case, while in no way did he or his Administration agree with the sentiments expressed in that video, it was the US Constitutional Right of the maker of the video to produce and present his work…in the name of free speech.
Recently, in the aftermath of the Arab Spring uprisings, the Tunisian Constituent Assembly and UNESCO held a meeting in Tunis to discuss various models of constitutions guaranteeing freedom of expression, freedom of the press and the right of access to information. One of the key speakers was Joseph Thloloe, Ombudsman of the Press Council of South Africa…a journalist and defender of freedom of the press for more than 50 years. And many of those years were spent in prison. Joseph told the meeting that “The measure of freedom in a country is the level of opinions with which you disagree that you accept. If you decide to control these opinions, then you return to the starting point.”
Another speaker in Tunis was Bambang Harymurti, Vice President of the Press Council of Indonesia. He also spent a good deal of time in prison under the Suharto regime for promoting press freedom. In Tunis he told the audience “Freedom of expression and press freedom are democracy’s first line of defence”. He went on: “Once these freedoms have fallen, others fade. This is why people in Indonesia are so committed to freedom of expression and freedom of the press, and we prefer to be killed rather than give up these freedoms”.
Strong words.
On the 3rd of May in 2010, it was my pleasure to be Convenor of the UN’s World Press Freedom Day event held in Brisbane, Australia. We welcomed the world to our city under the conference theme Freedom of Information: the Right to Know. Perhaps it was not surprising to hear so many conference delegates explain the difficulties and problems they have with their Governments which wish to suppress details to which citizens are entitled to have access. Even in the seemingly idyllic small tropical island nations of the Pacific Ocean, many problems still exist and need to be addressed through more democratic and open Freedom of Information laws. Journalists need information so they can report the news fearlessly and in the interests of democracy.
But it is not only in smaller nations or those which have restrictions on freedom of expression that vigilance must be maintained. You are probably aware of the current inquiry into the press in the United Kingdom and the concerns of many that responsibility for regulation might pass out of the self-regulatory hands of media professionals themselves to some sort of Government or quasi-Government entity.
In my own country, Australia, a major debate is currently underway about press laws and regulations. The shrill voices of those who wish to restrict the work of journalists and put some sort of control on them are, disappointingly, being heard too clearly. So, put simply, the right to freedom of the press is a global issue and a matter which must be closely monitored every day.
In conclusion, let me return closer to home. Thousands of years ago, the legendary Silk Roads, which passed through Central Asia and which linked Europe and Asia, were, in effect, the first ‘information superhighway’. Along these roads travelled goods and languages and religions and, most importantly, ideas. Traders and travelers would pass on information and news to each other and would meet at caravanserai at night to talk about their experiences, where they had been and where they were going. This was Twitter and Facebook and Google Earth long before those electronic tools were ever conceived or invented!
And so to conclude as I began. The Silk Roads travelers of old would have looked to the sky and would have wondered about the birds which were freely migrating north and south. Where were they going and when would they return? Of course, the freedom of those birds and the ‘path of the birds’ is an analogy for the freedoms we all cherish.
These freedoms are given voice in Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, a document to which all nations have added their signature. It reads: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Thank you for your attention.