By Anthony O. Miller
A PHILOSOPHICAL turf war is stirring in Cyprus, whose outcome will shape freedom for the island’s electronic media.
On one side is Alecos Evangelou, bluff former Justice Minister, powerhouse lawyer and current chairman of the seven-member Broadcasting Authority.
Two men guard the other: Andreas Mavrommatis, twice UN ambassador and an internationally famed human rights jurist; and Andreas Kanaouros, chairman of the Union of Cyprus Journalists.
Somewhere in between are the House of Representatives and a law it passed in January 1998, setting up the Broadcasting Authority.
Besides setting criteria for getting television or radio licenses, that law provides for the Broadcasting Authority to get a set of regulations for governing TV and radio activities.
A draft of those regulations is now before the House. If approved, they would arm the Authority with rules of conduct, and sanctions – including jail – for TV and radio reporters or owners the Authority deems in breach of them. And they will also determine what can be seen or heard over the island’s air waves.
Perhaps it’s his ministerial past, his personality, or these and a seashore of sand-grains more, but Evangelou sees no free-speech problems in linking the Broadcast Authority to these proposed regulations and sanctions.
“The Authority will act as a quasi-judicial organ… to investigate for disciplinary procedure private radio and television (stations)… either on its own, or on the basis of a complaint” by a third person, he said. It will apply a code of conduct in the regulations before the House that are “99 per cent the same” as the Ethics Code of the Journalists Union, he said.
“But that (Journalists Union) code is only self-regulatory,” he sniffed, whereas the Authority would be backed by the State. “If somebody is in breach of the regulations, he has to face the consequences of the law,” he intoned.
Sanctions for licensing violations include warnings, fines, suspension or revocation of a license. “Infringements of the law may also constitute a criminal offence. And these carry severe penalties, including imprisonment up to a maximum of three years,” he added.
If the House approves the draft regulations and their code, TV and radio reporters, anchors and station owners will all be liable to this full range of penalties.
In Evangelou’s view, “If you are a journalist with a camera, you have to follow rules, because otherwise you cannot be a journalist holding a camera. The rules have been included in these (draft) regulations… pursuant to the law.”
The proposed “rules” would bar airing close-up shots of dead bodies or seriously injured persons on TV. They would also bar “aggressive, pressing, misleading or insulting” TV or radio questioning at a news event.
The ambiguity of “close-up” could cause problems (how close is close?). Likewise, “aggressive and pressing.” What is responsible probing to some, could be “pushy” conduct to others – especially if they have something to hide. (No professional journalist asks “misleading or insulting” questions.)
The rules would also – and properly – require “sensitive” reporting of violence against children, women or the elderly. But their bans against hidden cameras or recorders, and recording phone conversations could curtail broadcast journalism’s freedom.
By its very nature, a radio call-in talk show, for instance, records phone conversations. And crimes or other misdeeds worthy of exposure in the public interest might, by definition, require the use of hidden cameras.
Additionally, the House-tabled regulations seek to restrict even the very language allowable on the air, proscribing words or phrases that might in any way “offend the sensitivities of religious, racial, political or other social groups.”
While stories alleging massive fraud by the ex-Bishop of Limassol might have offended the sensitivities of some ranking Church prelates or some the faithful, sanitising that reportage – for fear of Broadcasting Authority sanctions – would hardly have been responsible journalism or in the public interest.
Regardless, insisted Evangelou: “They are journalists working in this area, and since there is a law regulating this, they have to comply with the law.”
Asked if such rules were tantamount to prior censorship of the electronic media, Evangelou replied: “No,” then added: “I know all these tendencies… the self-regulation and all this,” in the newspaper industry. “We are not talking about journalists of newspapers. We are talking about TV,” he said.
“We are not following self-regulation,” he continued. “There are two divergences of opinion, but in Cyprus we don’t follow self-regulation insofar as radio and television are concerned.
“Insofar as newspapers are concerned, that’s another thing. I am not involved in that,” he said. “But regarding the radio and television Authority, in our constitution there is a distinction between newspapers, radio and television and the cinematograph.”
Such thinking is anathema to both Mavrommatis and Kanaouros. They prefer the self-regulation of the Journalists Union that is heresy to Evangelou, to the official governmental oversight and sanctions he appears champing at the bit to enforce.
“We strongly support a code of conduct with self-regulation, self-control” for TV and radio, Kanaouros said. “We insist on self-regulation” in newspapers, “and we are trying to persuade Parliament not to “grant the Broadcasting Authority the power to police the electronic media with the force of law, he said.
“If they (the House) connect a code of conduct and sanctions with the law, it is a dangerous step for sure,” Kanaouros said. “In principle, we say: ‘Don’t do it.’ … This is our opinion, our position. We are clear on this, and I hope they will still respond to this.”
“I helped them to draft the Journalist’s Code,” Mavrommatis said. “It’s enforced by all interested parties – namely the Journalists’ Union, the association of publishers, and all owners of electronic media – at least the bigger ones.”
“It was signed by all of them, and it’s based on the modern approach of self-regulation, to which the whole of the democratic world that respects human rights has subscribed to,” he said. “It’s a step backwards… (to allow) sanctions, penalisation” of the electronic media by the Broadcasting Authority, Mavrommatis said.
“You have a clash of competences,” he said, with the Journalism Union using self-regulation to police the print media, while a government-created Broadcasting Authority seeks the force of law to police and punish the electronic media.
“Let’s say the same matter was reported in the print media, with pictures, but also in the electronic media. The matter comes before the one committee, and it says there are no violations. While the other says there is a violation of the code – and the codes are similar,” Mavrommatis illustrated.
“It’s not fair to have two separate sets of rules… one based on self- regulation and informal – not based on legislation; and the other one more formal and based on legislation,” he said.
“The least we should do is to have some sort of provision which will enable this clash of competences to be dissolved,” he said. “We’re going to try to resolve this and… see the people of the radio and television authority, and talk about it,” he said, adding he hoped to meet with Evangelou sometime in March.
Mavrommatis said he thought the Broadcasting Authority should “either restrict itself to matters such as licensing and leave out the code of conduct, or, if they did have a code of conduct, they should not have subscribed to… any sanctions.”
“They put the clock back by imposing sanctions. It should be self-regulated without any sanctions. This is the only way, I believe, to comply fully with the modern approaches to the freedom of expression,” he said. “Self regulation is the modern way.”
This, he said, means “it is not the government who should appoint people to the committees; only those immediately interested should appoint the people who apply the code” – as with the Journalists Union, he said.
While it is “the government’s right” to license electronic media and penalise violations of licence laws, “the journalistic code of ethics is a different matter,” Mavrommatis said.
“This should be based exclusively on self-regulation. And self-regulation means these people are entirely independent. There should be no penal sanctions in respect of violations.
“In certain countries – in France, for instance – they think that any form of regulation – even self-regulation – is an effort to gag the press.”
So, while the Broadcasting Authority’s power grab “does not violate any provision of the (European Union’s) aquis communautaire,” he said, “it would look much better if everything was based on self-regulation without penalisation.”
“And remember, if something is extremely serious, then there is criminal libel, or civil libel. So this is why I do not think it is necessary” to empower the Broadcasting Authority. “It’s putting the clock backwards.”
