These are some of the questions raised during the first in a series of debates organized within the British Council project Politics&Media. Fulfilling the main objectives of this project - to address growing mistrust between politicians, media and citizens, to examine the influence of political spin vs political reporting on citizens’ perception of politics -more than forty participants from nine countries also covered a wide range of other important issues.
During the first session, participants responded to contributions from Rt Hon Charles Clarke, MP and Bozidar Djelic, the candidate for Serbian Prime Minister. The result was a general recognition that in all the participating countries both politicians and journalists are facing similar dilemmas: the speakers, as well as the participants, pointed out the growing influence of media, the importance of dealing with the recent past as well as the need for media statutory and self regulation.
The second session, focusing on public distrust in politicians, brought up some problems specific to media and politics in the Balkans. Dr Mirza Kusljugic, MP from Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), described the post-conflict situation in BiH and pointed out that in this country peace building and state building are still not finished. As a result, he claimed, people in BIH react only to politics and media reports that cover “big, strategic, conflict related issues”. As the second speaker, Ms Ljubica Gojgic, TV B92 journalist from Serbia, raised the question of distrust in politicians in Serbia and the main reasons for that. Responding to these remarks, the participants agreed that both politicians and media tend to forget the public interest and have their own agendas, based mainly on financial interest or the media owners’ ambition to influence politics.
The speaker at the third session, Ms Elinor Goodman, freelance journalist from the United Kingdom, pointed out that a journalist had to find a balanced way of reporting, which sometimes doesn’t happen. She also claimed that sometimes journalists just couldn’t accept that a certain politician may be telling the truth. Being an ex journalist, Mr Simos Kedigoglou, MP from Greece, compared the two professions and said that it was easier to be a journalist, because “no one remembers what you say”. He also pointed out that there was a growing distrust in politics in Greece and asked how it was possible that the church or the army were the institutions with the greater trust than the people who had been elected. As a response to that, participants criticized both politicians and media from their countries, pointing out that sometimes neither is doing their job properly.
To find out about debate conclusion download the whole report
(Acrobat Reader document 520KB)
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