Topic: Communicating between Communities: The Role of the Media in Conflict of Perceptions

Panel 3 and Closing of the Conference

Bronislaw Geremek
It’s my pleasure to begin the third panel of the session. The third panel should discuss questions of communicating between the communities and the role of the media. We know how important the media were in the fight for freedom. We know also how important was the freedom of media for the establishing of the rule of law and democracy and respect of human rights. But also the media sometimes are creating problems for democracy. Media sometimes are creating also problems for the communication between cultural communities. Finally discussing on media, we are discussing the main problems of globalisation and also questions of the cooperation in the era of globalisation. We have also some questions, which are a part of this debate. In this question, the relationship between hard power and soft power and the question of the role of diplomacy is at the very centre of our debate. We now have the privilege to ask Mr Robert Cooper to take the floor as keynote speaker and to present this issue to us. Mr Robert Cooper is a senior British diplomat, active for many years in the European Union, one of the main thinkers in the European Union establishment and also a teacher in different universities and author of important books on Europe and the world. Mr Robert Cooper, the floor is yours.

Robert Cooper
Thank you very much. There’s so much one can say about the media. You’re only going to get one small slice of it from me. When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is I switch on the radio. Before I go to bed at night the last thing I do is listen to the radio. During the day, I look at the newspapers. Maybe I get some of the news agency reports over the Internet. If I am lazy in the evening, I may even look at the television. We live in a kind of sea of information, more and more of it all the time. Maybe we are drowning in it. If you are a politician, then you probably live in a sea of journalists wherever you go. It was not always so. A hundred years ago, hardly any of this existed. A little more than a hundred years ago, in 1896, the Daily Mail, the first mass-market newspaper appeared in Britain. 50 years ago, politicians lived different lives. Mr Atlee, the British Prime Minister was finally persuaded to install a Reuter’s tickertape machine in Downing Street because someone told him he could get the cricket scores that way. Maybe those were happier days. Somewhere there is a link between the word community and the word communication. Communities are groups who communicate with each other – a common language probably expressing common assumptions and common values. And there can sometimes be real difficulty in those who don’t share that language. We call people fanatics, because they are people with whom we don’t communicate, whose language we don’t understand. And they probably call us something similar. Print media played an important part in the creation of nations – I think of Luther and the bible – by creating a common language. Mass media, national media were a part of the creation of national societies, of the mass cultures. But they were not the creators of national societies. The creators of national societies were not the media. The media played a role in this, but the creation of national societies was a political act. It was done by political leadership and, as a matter of fact, by ministries of education. Actually, states have never been quite sure that they like the media. In England, the government tried initially to control the print media and finally gave up in I think 1695. And you find that this is story of most other media. The broadcast media started as a state monopoly and that also has been broken down. In practice, national media have on the whole served national causes. And more than that. They are an essential part of political life, of democratic life. They are a part of the political system. Sometimes, the media can play a more sinister role. We think of Rwanda and Radio-Télévision Libre des Mille Collines more often known as Hate Radio, which played an indispensable part in the Rwandan Genocide. It couldn’t have take place without the organisation and the propaganda through the radio. But it was not organised by the radio. The radio was a medium and that’s what the media are. It was organised and practised by the state. The Canadian general in charge of the tiny UN force at the time did his best to bring in international media and to give international publicity to what was happening. But he had very little success indeed until it was too late. News media need news. They like drama. They like conflict. They like tragedy. They like violence. Not too much violence, actually. Conflict is good for media. Too much violence and the advertisers decide that it’s not such a good thing. So you can get small doses of conflict, but conflict gets attention, violence gets attention. Violence gets reported but not progress. In Iraq for example, the images that we see on the television are mostly of violence, and that’s for good reason, because Iraq has major security problems. But there are other stories in Iraq that you hardly see at all. There are stories about the increase in oil production, there are stories about the improvements in everyday life, wastewater disposal has gone up remarkably, but this doesn’t make very good television, and so one is unlikely ever to see it.
I work for the European Union. The normal media story you get on the European Union is, failure to agree on something. And that’s usually true, because we usually fail to agree, in fact we can fail to agree for several months about something, but then eventually we agree, because that’s how the process works, and you get that story too, but you’ve had six months of failure, and then you get one story of success. Actually, the success cancels out all of the failure, but it doesn’t seem like that, the way it’s reported. But the media have played a vital role in recent years in drawing attention to things happening abroad. To famine in Ethiopia, to conflict in the Balkans, to violence in Somalia, or you can go back further and you can look at the Vietnam War, where some of the media images, actually, the press more than the television, had an important political impact. I came across a quotation from a general who said, “The outcome of wars are not determined by the media. They’re determined by battle.” I’m not sure if that’s true. Clausewitz describes war as a trial of strength and a clash of wills. Well, the battle represents the trial of strength, but the clash of wills may very much be determined by how wars are seen, and how they’re reported. And the media are a factor in that. Until now, the media have been national media. But globalisation has brought us international media. And they’ve brought us international media as an important point. Because, at the end of the Cold War, governments who had been used to an international situation in which there was a division between East and West and everything was very simple, you knew who the good guys were and the bad guys were, at the end of the Cold War, governments didn’t know very much what to do. There was a state of confusion about foreign policy, and how the conflicts of the 1990s were reported was extremely important. We very much needed clear analysis of the new wars in Somalia, in Bosnia, and in Rwanda. Actually, we didn’t get it. What we got instead was talk about centuries-old ethnic conflicts. It was not only the media who talked in this; there were academics who used these terminologies as well. This is actually a ridiculous explanation of conflict. If you like, you could see World War II, you could describe World War II as an ethnic conflict. It was a conflict if you like, between Germany and Russia, principally. But that doesn’t explain World War II. Why, at that time, by those particular people, why that particular conflict? To say this is an ethnic conflict doesn’t tell you anything at all.
So we may live in a sea of information, but the sea is quite a shallow sea. And we get more information than we get analysis or understanding. That may be connected to the commercial nature of much of the news that we get these days. There is pressure on journalists to produce for ever-shorter deadlines. Twenty-four hour news, breaking news, that doesn’t give you time for analysis. And there are less and less foreign correspondents, twenty, thirty years ago, there were twenty British newspapers who had correspondents in Africa. Today, there are four. If you suddenly find there’s a story in Africa, then you fly a team of people out there to tell you what’s going on. There is no chance of understanding what is going on if you have just flown out to a country, particularly to a country in conflict. What you see is, of course, chaos and anarchy, because that’s what conflict looks like. But that’s not what conflict is. To explain a conflict, you need somebody who knows the country and knows the place, and the old foreign correspondents who could be seen in bars around any capital city in Africa are something that we all miss. Once, national media focused on victories; now, we have international media, which focuses on victims. The response to this kind of apolitical news is humanitarian aid. You’ve seen the victims, you see something is terrible, is happening, you must help, but you don’t really know what’s happening, and the humanitarian aid response, although it is a good response, from good motives, and it may sometimes do good, is inadequate, because these conflicts are political, and what is required is a real political analysis of what is going on. And I don’t think that we’re getting it much from the international media. I contrast this with the position in my own country, where national and local media, for years, reported on the conflict in Northern Ireland from a position of deep knowledge and with a great sense of responsibility. And with your national media, of course, you have a reality check. You know if they’re telling the truth or not. The trouble with international media is, that you don’t. You see it in a flash, and then it’s gone. It seems to be extremely important, but you don’t really understand it, because perhaps they don’t, either. The public good requires serious analysis based on knowledge and understanding. I’m not sure if we can rely on the state for this, I’m not sure if we can rely on the purely commercial media either. We need somewhere, something between. My advice is that if you hear people talking about irrational fanatics, you should draw the conclusion that they don’t know very much about them. If they describe them as irrational, it’s because they haven’t taken the trouble to understand them. So I would stop listening at that point. When people tell you about chaos and anarchy or about centuries-old ethnic conflict, then stop listening, because the person who’s talking to you hasn’t really understood the situation. We have international media, but that doesn’t give us an international community. Peace comes from the construction of wider communities. I don’t think we can look, I don’t think we should look to the media to create such communities. Such communities are created by politics, by education, by political leadership. Those are the things that we need. The media is there, but it’s media. It doesn’t govern our work. Thank you.

Bronislaw Geremek
Thank you very much, Robert Cooper, for this introduction. Now, we have a list of panellists, and I hope that we have also some time for a discussion on this fascinating subject. I will give the floor first to Professor Ujjwal Chowdhury, who is a media adviser of the government of India, and also the Nippon Foundation, founder and director of India’s leading media school, Symbiosis, and a journalist in several newspapers, he had an experience in media, and he studied media. Ujjwal Chowdhury, the floor is yours.

Ujjwal Chowdhury
Thank you, Professor. First of all, let me thank Forum 2000 Foundation and the Nippon Foundation for this opportunity. For me, I think, I’m the only Indian speaker in Forum 2000, 2005. Let me also, because it’s a meet on peace and co-existence, and I consider our country as a land of peace, let me also bring the best wishes from our country to the people here. I also thank the audience, from the very morning, in our country - we’re a highly populated country - in our country to maintain such a discipline and silence throughout the day, is not all as common. So thank you very much, the members of the audience here, for your continued interest, even at this hour, the house is full. So as I was telling, our country’s a land of peace, from Buddha, Mahawira, Ashoka, Gandhi, up to recent times of theory of Pancha Sila, the five principles of co-existence, and then the non-alignment movement, which, post-Cold War, nobody talks about, but I still find that there are economic benefits of non-alignment as well. And I also repeat, once again, what I would normally do in such programmes of peace, Gandhi’s very famous statement, “Peace has no way. Peace is the only way” – our father of the nation. Indeed, it’s important to understand that media has a major role in peace building, and in conflictrelationship, or conflict situations among communities, which have been ably began by our keynote speaker a little earlier, let me also add a conceptual dimension at the outset. We are talking of peace building, we’re talking of co-existence, and of conflict management. I consider this is a phase one. Among two communities, whenever there is a conflict situations, the management of conflict is just the phase one, where we at least avoid any clear-cut or any direct war. But the point is, how we move beyond conflict management. We move to the second phase, conflict resolution, through treaties, through ties, bi-lateral and multi-lateral, but still I consider that being limited. So it must be moving qualitatively to a third state, and I will call that as conflict transformation, where the need of the hour becomes, turn the conflict into an advantage, into a situation where communities can actually come, and I’m talking of communities, not merely the governments, not merely the states, so communities can actually come together and transform their relationship to a fuller and complete bond or complete relationship. And here, people-to-people ties become very significant. Its, media’s role is very crucial in this particular third stage of conflict transformation, because editors and journalists can actually bring themselves, or try to make themselves aloof from a situation of conflict, and look at developing people-to-people situations. I was just sharing with some of the panellists here earlier, we had very recently done a very unique thing in India, brought hundred youngsters all below thirty years… let me share with you, India and Pakistan has sixty percent of population below thirty years, six people on the street out of every ten are below thirty years. Now, fifty Pakistanis and fifty Indians were brought together in Delhi for nine-day camp, or a workshop, where they shared lot of their experiences, they demystified many of the ideas they held about one another, as you know, India and Pakistan has been in direct war and low-intensity war for the last four decades. And this has made a great impact, and we had very positive media stories also. So what is significant here that I would like to say here, is that it’s important to understand, in conflict situations, or particularly to transform a conflict into a fuller relationship, there is the need for people-to-people contact, and media has a role to bring about these stories on the pages of the newspapers or through the television. Usually, focus on media has always been on state actors, on governments. But the non-state actors, the voluntary organisations, events like this and several other NGOs and people-to-people initiatives, academic initiatives, have usually been ignored. That’s at least experience in our part of the media, in our country. So there’s a first observation I would like to put forward, in conflict situations, or in situations where conflicts can be transformed, people-to-people initiatives should be highlighted in the media much more than what it is usually. The second thing, the use of the language, the semiotics of media. What we often find, that the same person, organisation, or incident, are referred to by different words or terminologies. Like media very loosely uses words like “terrorist”, “hard-liner”, “militant”, and even “freedom fighter” for someone using arms to bring about certain ends. Now, these terms are highly opinionated and highly prejudiced at times, so can we think of a media on one side of the, for example, media in one country would be using “terrorist” for someone who will be called “freedom fighter” on the other side of the border. So these are issues that we also need to talk about. Should media fall prey to the government language? For example, when after the 9/11, I saw several newspapers in India and abroad as well, with different headlines. “War on USA”. “Terror strikes USA”. “USA attacked”. “Clash of civilisation turns bloody”. I do not understand whether all those titles justify what actually had happened. Yes, “Terror struck USA” would have been correct. But “Clash of civilisations turning bloody”, or “War on USA”, war is among two states, and it was not necessarily two states at war. It was not necessarily, as we have commented earlier, there is no clash of civilisations, actually. So these use of languages are highly opinionated and should be prevented if media has to play a positive role in the context of, in the context of such conflict situations. I will bring forward here one small observation by our honourable president, Dr Kalam, undoubtedly a great statesman, a great scientist, he was in Israel some time, much before he became president once, and on a particular day, when he was there in Jerusalem, there was a lot of street fights and bombings and all, and he expected that the next day, the newspaper would have headlines on that. Incidentally, the next day’s newspapers, which he had seen, both of the local language and of English, he got interpretations done also, and he was referring to in a meeting later on, had headlines on scientific breakthrough in cultivation, in farming, something to do with apples. Now, the information of the conflict was somewhere in the fifth or the seventh page. What I’m trying to say is that there is a common energy in media, even real students of media have been told, “Bad news is good news”, because bad news makes good copy. Bad news makes good stories. But it is important to understand, in conflict situations, bad news is genuinely bad news. Can we really find good news from the human-interest issues of the society and highlight them more, which media has not been often doing? So one is this aspect. The other, for example, often using certain words like “riots” and “genocide”. Even when there were problems among Hindus and Muslims in India, in particular in Punjab two years earlier from now, newspapers wrote about riots. Riot is between two communities at war. But the situation was, one community was at the receiving end, the other was battling them. So it’s genocide, because there were two thousand and four hundred people killed. So, genocide is not riot. Now, these are words used and thereby, they’re used in media in such a manner, pictures are used in such a manner that incites violence further. So, can we look at this as media as opportunity to actually mitigate violence, not excite violence further? So, this is some of the aspects that I wanted to bring – stereotypes. This language issue, media has favourite stereotypes whether it’s violence, whether it’s conflict, there are favourite stereotypes every time. A particular political belief, a particular political process or a party would be used, would be referred to by certain languages. We had reference on a different context, not of violence and conflict, we had a reference of leprosy care and cure here earlier. Worldwide, media about leprosy had pure three stereotypes. One, always leprosy patients are, affected people have been called lepers. Even when they’re cured. I had, in India we often have a common cold, we have several other diseases. After being treated, are we ever called ex-patient? Are we ever called, are we known throughout the life in the name of the disease? But that isn’t the case in leprosy. And media has been using this word, “lepers”, over and over again, it’s a pejorative word. It’s a negative word. And you’re identifying the whole person because of a small deformity in the finger, or because of a disease that he has suffered for a couple of years, sometime in the past. Now, for example, the second stereotype in the media, that leprosy is contagious, which is totally wrong. Leprosy never spreads by touch. The third, leprosy is incurable. Again, that’s wrong. Multi-drug therapy has made it totally curable. So there are certain stereotypes in, whether it’s in leprosy case, whether it’s in violence case, whether it’s in conflict situations, and stereotypes have been increasingly used and overused over the period. The last point that I would like to bring forth is, media has been often called as the fourth estate. Legislature, executive, judiciary, the three estates, or the three arms of the government, arms of the society, and the fourth estate being media. Unfortunately, yes, three, legislature, executive and judiciary will work in tandem or will be part of the government. Understandable. But media, a fourth estate, was supposed to be independent. Supposed to be independent of the interpretation of national interests by the ruling party. But unfortunately, in most countries, and in more cases, it has actually been the repetition, reflection of the national interests as interpreted by the rulers, by the ruling party. Now, for example, we all know that there was no free media under communism, and that might have been true even in Czechoslovakia, communist Czechoslovakia. But let us also look at the media in USA, before, during, and immediately after the Iraq war. The entire media, before and during the war, sang the same song that the rulers in US sang. That is: WMD. Weapons of mass destruction are the justification of the war. Till date, three, almost two and a half, three years, there is no weapons of mass destruction found. And today, media has low credibility, and told from my academic and press friends of USA, a low credibility in USA because of this, that during the war, it actually ceased to have its independent rule. Independent interpretation. Now, that is true in several cases around the world. Even in our countries, even in internal situations, whenever we had internal situations of Hindu-Muslim conflict, we found certain newspapers taking stands, communal stands. Communal, fundamentalist stands, either pro-Muslim or pro-Hindu. Now, this is where the media loses its position as the fourth estate, and it’s important that the people who run media understand that this is crucial to maintain the fourth estate status. Often, it’s told that media has dual market. The primary market is the reader, the viewer, the listener. The reader of the newspaper, the viewer of the television, the listener of the radio. And in the secondary market are the advertisers, sponsors, on whose money, after all, newspapers cannot sell the way they sell at, the price at which they sell. They cannot sell at a lower price, if advertisers’ money, we all know that. And free-to-air channels. The developing world in our part of Asia has many free-to-air channels. They cannot survive without advertisers. Understandable. But advertisers come because of the readers and viewers. Compromising the interest of the readers and viewers and safeguarding the interests of the, the commercial interests of the advertisers, cannot justify the existence and growth of the media. Now, this is one thing that has been missed out by media worldwide. In the situation of dual markets, the secondary market has taken the precedence over the primary market many a time, and that’s true even in most of the developing countries, I know a little more on the developing countries rather than the European media, so my examples will be largely based out of that. So, what is important to hear, to note, that media has to actually blend the interests of the dual market and safeguard that of the primary market more. I would also bring forth the last, one other new aspect is coming up, is the convergence and the concept of media. Increasingly, technologies of media are coming on one platform, and ownership, even the marketing of media, also are coming in one platform or single hand. It’s increasingly people like Rupert Murdoch who are controlling both print, electronic, cyber, and of course, nations. Not just in one or two countries, but across nations. That’s convergence, where there’s a technological convergence in the Internet, through the Internet, or it’s the ownership convergence through certain groups, or it’s marketing convergence by marketing media to a same advertiser across all media, in different forms. Now, convergence is a threat to free expression of will, free expression, or the freedom of media is also an opportunity. It’s a threat, because the commercial interests of advertisers and centralisation of media control in a few hands is a threat. Anywhere in the world, more and more media in fewer and fewer hands will always be a threat. So that’s a problem. That’s a problem, but on the other side, there is also a positive side. Due to convergence, we have the digital media. We have the old, traditional filmmaking being changed, being replaced increasingly by digital cinema or filmmaking. And digital filmmaking is less than ten percent of the cost of the traditional filmmaking of cinematography. We have also independent filmmaking, independent media, small radio stations coming up. We have also independent media consultants providing content across media channels. Same consultant providing content to radio, newspapers, television, and also making documentaries. Now, these are the positive areas, positive sides which were, we can concentrate more in making convergence a positive force in peace building. Making convergence a positive force in mediating social change. I would end up with this observation: yesterday, when, I mean, from this programme, we are making a small documentary as well, and in the continuity of that we had interviewed former president Mr Havel, and at the end of it, I just randomly asked, “How come a writer like you, when he doesn’t happen in India, how come a writer like you, who did not belong necessarily to one political party, became president of a nation?” He just said, “Strange times make strange errors.” And in a passing manner, let us understand, we are in strange times. We are in strange times where rulers expect media to take sides. Either you are with us, or you are with them. If you remember the language of George Bush, just before the Iraq war. How can the media be either with the terrorists or with the ruling party? It has a third position as well. Now, this third position has to be protected. This third position has to be protected. We did not make, we should not make the strange errors. We must understand, media mediates social change, has been the traditional sociological school of media, which have been forgotten in the era of commercialism and consumerism. Can we, once again, bring that identity to the forefront? Media mediates social change. I suggest, the way you are having this peaceful co-existence meet, in the similar way, either in Europe or in Asia somewhere, if you could, if people who were coming here could also think of peace media summit, all media focused on peace building. There are films, there are writers, there are newspaper series of articles, there are television stories, can there be a sort of coming together of peace media or peace media initiatives? Because it’s important to understand, while conflicts in media are represented strongly and known well, that peace initiatives in media are known very less. And it’s important that they come together. With this hope, with this appeal, let me take goodbye. Thank you very much.

Bronislaw Geremek
Professor, thank you very much for this outstanding presentation of your problem. I will not defend the media. But as a historian of the Middle Ages, I have to say that the hatred with which European societies formed against the lepers had a quite different source, the same kind of stereotype was present in the mediaeval societies. Lepers were considered in the same time as the enemies of the human beings, a plot in the fourteenth century was prepared, mediaeval chronicles told that against the humanity, as also the representatives of the God, so that’s a question of stereotypes in different civilisations, different cultures, one could see the creation of such stereotypes even without mass media. Ladies and gentlemen, now I will ask Mr Ghassan Salame to take the floor; once more, I will present him in very short words, we know very well Minister Salame, formerly Lebanese Minister of Culture, now Professor of International Relations at the Institut d´études politiques in Paris and Senior Adviser to the UN Secretary General. Minister Salame, the floor is yours.

Ghassan Salamé
Thank you, Mr Geremek. I think that blaming the media is such a facile sport that I will not indulge into it, for many reasons. One is instrumental; we all need the media. How do we operate in the modern world without the media? But also for a political reason. Whenever I hear somebody blaming the media, more often than not, it has a huge populist undertone. Anti-democratic undertone. Blaming the media is normally done by undemocratic actors. But there is a third reason, and this reason is absolutely positive. Through the media, thanks to the media, democratisation is progressing all over the world. Democracy is made of three things, in my view. One aspect is freedoms. The second aspect is institution. And the third aspect is culture. When it comes to the first, the freedom, the revolution in the new media, Internet, satellite TV and other forms of media, have done to freedom much more than any freedom fighter has ever made. I mean, thanks to this revolution, basically one profession has disappeared. Has become absolutely, has gone into obsolescence. That is the profession of censor. When I was young, I used to have my books censored or forbidden. Now, whoever wants to read my books can go into the Internet and find them, or order them through Amazon and get them in less than twenty-four hours. And whatever kind of info or opinion, you cannot keep now in the closet for more than a few hours. In fact, there is no excuse for anybody anymore to say that, “I was not aware.” If you want to know about anything, you can, wherever you live, get to the Internet or satellite TV or whatever, so let us thank this revolution. Let us be proud to live in a world where this revolution took place, especially that this is leading to a new market place of media that is every day more competitive. That is every day better financed. That is every day more and more professional. And where more and more journalists are clearly aware or more and more aware on the fact that they also, like Stock Exchange, need some regulation to their profession. So, let us not somehow easily take the facile position of blaming the media, it is playing a very positive role. However, the dangers are also before our eyes, and I would like to very rapidly mention a few of them, especially in situation of conflict. First, if info is available as [name incomprehensible] wrote about it already many years ago, the whole power is not in having the info, it is in framing it. And therefore, info is available, but how you frame it is the essence. And the examples given by our Indian colleague are there to tell us that the way you frame, the way you put the info is becoming of the essence, especially for vulnerable populations. So, who is framing? According to what criteria one is framing? How do you choose the title, the next day, on the twelfth of September, for example? The whole thing is not to know about what happened on the eleventh of September. Everybody knows about it. How do you frame it the next day, is the essence. So, we need regulation of the framing. Not of the diffusion of info, but of its framing. Second, and this is another danger we should keep in mind, is the concentration of media in the same hands. This is happening very much in the West. This is happening in the United States, in a way that is absolutely, extremely rapid. It’s happening in Europe. It’s happening in France. And it’s also happening elsewhere. In the Arab world, for example, this concentration is being done right now to the benefit of oil countries, and the disadvantage of the non-oil producing countries. Because oil countries have much more means to invest than non-oil countries. And this is also a new danger. Three, media can be instruments of conflict. The radio The Mille Collines has already been mentioned. Other cases could be mentioned all over the world. In fact, the most dangerous media in this case are proximity media. Media that are clearly in the hands of armed groups and used in order to mobilise. And unfortunately, although as Mr Glucksmann this morning said, Rwanda was passed like nothing, although it is a real genocide. Well, one lesson that has been learned is that one should be very careful with this proximity media. Now, the fourth danger has to do with embedded media. In war situations. And this has been the case in the Iraq war, with no precedent. What does this lead to, is the following: Basically, American media are better aligned on their government, and they have more audience in America, but to a large extent, audiences in the Middle East have refused to see the American media during the conflict. Basically, you win in your country and you lose in other countries, because of embedding your media people in your war machine. That is why we are in a situation that is somehow worrying, and this is the situation: Technique is becoming more and more universal. Access to war zones is becoming more and more universal. But the content of the info you are giving is more and more national, in my view. And the contrast is becoming more worrying by the day, as we can see right now. Two other dangers I see. One is too much discrimination between war zone and war conflict. In fact, you have sometimes very small conflicts where you have easy access that are well covered by the media, and sometimes areas with difficult access and you have silence. The London case is a textbook example of that. But even in a country like Iraq in 1991, in the same time the regime was killing Kurds in the north and also killing Shia in the south. But the access was easy to the Kurds in the north. And the access was extremely difficult to the Shia in the south. So he kept killing in the south, and he had to stop killing in the north, because the media played their role. I think that there is here a real moral issue that you cannot discriminate just only based on access to the war zone, because this would be extremely dangerous. Nobody would go to Rwanda, then, if something happens there. Finally, I would say that we have so much info that each of us has to discriminate. And when we discriminate, I think we are more and more in the tendency to give more priority to things that are closer to us. That is why the world is much more accessible, but the interest is more and more domestic, and I would believe that one of the main jobs of media in the years to come is not only to cover, but it is facing this huge amount, this orgy of information which is available to any one of us, is to really incite curiosity. Because what I am afraid of is not the death of the media. They are thriving more than ever. It is the death of curiosity. Thank you.

Bronislaw Geremek
Thank you very much, Mr Salame. Now I will give the floor to Jacques Rupnik. He was presented in this room many times, I can say, an outstanding political scientist from Paris, also different books and studies, citizen of the world, but in Prague or in Warsaw and Budapest, he is considered as first of all a citizen of Central Europe. Jacques, the floor is yours.
Jacques Rupnik
Thank you very much, Professor Geremek, for this kind introduction. I really feel, as a Prague-born Frenchman, to be Central European above all. A couple of words, I’m not a mediologist, unlike our Indian colleague, and therefore I will not inflict on you any theory on the role of the media. Perhaps a few observations from a period when I actually worked with Professor Geremek on the international commission on the Balkans and later on the commission on the Kosovo, and that is a reflection on the role of the media in a conflict situation such as we have witnessed in the Balkans, that is, the way local media become protagonists in a conflict, and of course, how the international media helped to shape the response to those events. There was a saying, fairly widespread among journalists in former Yugoslavia: “Every person shot by a bullet in the battle has been first shot by words in the media”. Now, this morning, someone quoted Aldous Huxley’s definition of nationalism as a common misunderstanding of history and a common hatred of your neighbours. Well, it can be argued that in the early 1990s, in former Yugoslavia, the media have made a significant contribution to both, particularly the electronic media have played a central role in establishing the dominance of ethnicity, as a key organising principle of society. That idea has developed, supported by number of nationalist myth legitimising the use of force by the key political and military protagonists. An example, Belgrade television 1991, you would have, the same evening, a documentary about 1941, the genocide, the massacre of the Serbs under the Ustashi regime in Croatia, and then it would be followed by the news, where you would see leading politicians, journalists, using loosely the word “genocide” as the imminent threat looming upon the Serbian minority in Croatia. Or the Serbian minority in Bosnia. And you have there, first of all the historical connection, 1941 – 1991, you have the slip from the documentary to the news, and the use of words. You introduce the word “genocide”, and I remember Simone Weil, who was with Bronislaw Geremek and myself on this international commission in the Balkans, discussing precisely this issue, the use of words, and of the word “genocide”, in Sarajevo, and it has raised a very important discussion, and she observed something, that in all our discussions in the Balkans, whether we were in Belgrade, in Kosovo, in Sarajevo, in Zagreb, everybody was using the word “genocide”. The media were using the word “genocide”, the politicians, everybody was a victim of genocide or a potential victim of genocide. And she observed, she didn’t want to say in what case the use of the word was correct or not, she simply said, “Well, what this means, you use the word ‘genocide’ when you don’t want to talk to somebody.” You don’t talk to people who commit genocide. You fight them. And if you don’t fight them, you at least sometimes do a preventive attack in order to prevent genocide. So, the media have been crucially important, they were perhaps the first victims of the war in the Balkans, remember that the first target of the bombing in Sarajevo was the Yugoslav Television, so they were the first target, but also the first accomplice of the preparation and the carrying out of the war. The second dimension I want to briefly mention is the way the international media is shaping the perception and sometimes the response to conflict. This has been known loosely as the “CNN effect”, and the way it has, in a major way, shaped the international public opinion, perception and response to the events, and eventually, contributed in a not insignificant manner to the intervention in Bosnia or in Kosovo, and you could say in this case, the media had played a contribution in actually helping to put an end to conflict, the opposite of what I was discussing in the first case, in the Balkans. Of course, the contrast is very striking, with what has already been referred to by some, the silence of the media on Rwanda, or Chechnya, André Glucksmann has mentioned it this morning. You can see the double standards applying. Gareth Evans this morning quoted the Human Security Report which is to be published: there were more conflicts and more casualties from conflicts in the 1950s and in the 1960s than now, yet our perception is that conflict has been growing in an exponential manner since the end of the Cold War. So we have there this phenomenon of the media shaping the international perception of conflicts, and the CNN effect is one way it has played. The other, of course, is what has just been referred to by Hassan Salamé, that is the way, international media have appeared in Iraq or in Afghanistan, embedded with the military. Journalist accompanying, in a way, the military. So the media have greater access in times of conflict, but there is also a greater risk of being co-opted or used. John Simpson, one of my favourite BBC journalists, entered in Kabul and saying, “We have liberated Kabul.” Well, who exactly is the “we”? That is the key question, that sometimes the blurring, the media not just reflecting, but the media becoming an actor, sometimes the blurring of the distinction between reporting and commentary, shaping the perception in that way, and that obviously, I see, has been seen in the recent conflicts, particularly through the paradox between private and public broadcasting. On the whole, you could argue that the public broadcasting in Britain, BBC, has been much more independent from the government policy than private broadcasting, such as Fox News has been from the American government in the United States. So this role of public broadcasting as keeping an independence or some sort of distance vis-à-vis certain types of conflict in crucial situations is very important. The second case for the importance of public broadcasting concerns not just war situation in faraway countries of which we know little, but concerns our own societies and the tensions and conflicts there. What we see now, the recent trend has been the fragmentation, segmentation of the media space. There is a proliferation of channels…each community in our society now has its own channel. You can have a Muslim channel, Jewish channel, Catholic channel, you can, each community, gay channel, women’s channel, everybody has their own channel. Each community. And this fragmentation of the media space corresponds to the fragmentation, dissolution of the public space. The role of public broadcasting in those situations is crucially important for keeping the sense of a community, so these are at least two reasons to reflect about the important roles of public media broadcasting. I’m stressing this in this country in particular, because this is a debate somewhat topical, but it concerns the region as a whole. In fact, it concerns Europe as a whole, the crucial importance of public broadcasting in the shaping of the perceptions we have of the conflicts dividing internally our societies or shaping the response of our societies to external conflicts. Thank you for your attention.

Bronislaw Geremek
I have on my list now Mr Boris Nemtsov, but I don’t see him at the table, so I will give the floor now to Mr Pál Csáky, Deputy Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic, is in charge in the Slovak Cabinet of the European Affairs, Human Rights and Minorities. He’s also Deputy Chairperson of the Hungarian Coalition in Slovakia. From 1990, he served as a member of the National Council of the Slovak Republic, he has a long and outstanding political career behind him. Prime Minister Pál Csáky, the floor is yours.

Pál Csáky
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I would like to add that I’m really representative of the Hungarian community in Slovakia, that’s ten per cent of all inhabitants of Slovakia, it’s the reason why I’m a very specific member of the Slovakian government, and Slovak Hungarian relations are extremely important for me. So ladies and gentlemen, from all people who are present here, my situation seems to be the most difficult one. I’m an active politician and I have written quite a lot of newspaper articles. That’s why I’ve made the effort to look at the communication issue from both points of view. In his book, Profiles of Courage, John F. Kennedy divides politicians into opinion leaders and those who just forego the attitude of the public and profess populist opinions. I would add to both, as far as dividing journalists into the same two categories. However, it’s clear to all of us that a group of general leaders includes the smaller part of politicians and journalists too. The co-existence of these two groups is very peculiar. Journalists are co-creators of their public opinion, while at the same time, they monitor and control the activities of the representatives of public powers. Without the media, however, even the most tolerant and most important voice is very limited. In principle, it’s only natural that people expect politicians to come up with the initiative to solve problems, and to a certain extent, this is a true role that politicians ought to play in society. Nonetheless, it’s also true that journalists can be not only helpful, but can also do a lot of damage, in part. Our world is very complicated, too far from black and white. I’ve been Deputy Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic since 1998. My own personal experience has taught me how one incorrectly written, inappropriately placed article has the power to obliterate the results of several months or even years of hard work done by my team. Three or four overly strong statements, for example, about the Roma community in Slovakia, can cast doubt over the results of honest activities aimed at superseding various forms of intolerance in our society. I could show you at least one hundred cases when newspapers, radio or TV stations have released evidently untrue, semi-true or degrading information which they took back or had to take back, that’s in a week, a month, a year or two, this time in a less striking and less visible spot. I could give you many examples of how the media clearly attempted to influence political decisions. And only time showed that the influence was not always for the good. In Slovakia, media pressure forces a government member to resign at least once every year. Do the majority step down due to legitimate reasons? It is not always so. Journalists know not only how to clean up the personal side of public life, but also how to manipulate people and the public opinion. Václav Havel and Adam Michnik are believed to have discussed this issue once. My counsellor, Professor Busý claims that Havel was of the opinion that journalists are not responsible to the same extent as ex-politicians, because they are not elected. Michnik presented an opposing argument: while politicians are elected once in every four years, journalists are elected by their readers every day, when they make the decision to buy a particular newspaper. Although I have great respect for Mr Adam Michnik, I would like to give two points for Mr Havel and one for Mr Michnik, for the following reasons. I know only very few cases when a serious mistake made by a journalist had serious consequences for the society, and maybe also for himself. But serious mistakes made by the politicians almost always affect the lives of the people. At the same time, I do think that it’s good to view politicians and journalists as natural opposites. It’s, at any rate, a peculiar symbiosis which includes elements of mutual monitoring and control on the one hand, and elements of partnership on the other. Journalists, as well as politicians, are co-responsible for creating of our future. Good journalists leaders, and good political leaders, should not take the line of least resistance. Those who are granted this special privilege must choose to make a way to the unknown. It cannot be always done, and not everyone feels like doing it. However, it’s becoming increasingly clear that both journalists and politicians have a common responsibility for the future of others. As a challenge, it’s far from small. Thank you very much.

Bronislaw Geremek
Thank you very much, Prime Minister. I would like to defend my friend Adam Michnik, and to ask, to add him one point more. But I think that Michnik showed in terms of a definition given once to the very concept of nation. Reynaud said once that the nation, c´est les plebiscits de tous les jours. It’s a plebiscit of every day. In a sense, the journalist is facing such a situation every day. So, maybe Michnik has chances to become the second point. Ladies and gentlemen, I will ask now Mr Martin Walker to take the floor, Mr Walker is an outstanding journalist with an extremely rich experience. He is editor of United Press International. He is also a senior fellow of the very well-known Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington, D.C. He’s a senior fellow of the Global Business Policy Council and of the World Policy Institute of the New School. In twenty-five years, he was journalist with Britain’s The Guardian, he served as bureau chief in Moscow and the US, as European editor and assistant editor and was awarded Britain’s Reporter of the Year. His books include Waking Giant: Gorbachev and Perestroika; The Cold War; Clinton: the President they Deserve; and America Reborn. Mr Martin Walker, the floor is yours.

Martin Walker
Thank you, Professor Geremek, and thank you also to Forum 2000 and the Sasakawa Foundation for organising and presenting these excellent meetings. Well, as you’ve heard, I’ve got a confession to make. I’m a journalist. I’m part of the media. I’m one of the bad guys. I’m the messenger that you’re meant to shoot. Worse than that, I’ve been the embedded reporter wars. I’ve been embedded and not embedded, and I can tell you, it’s better being embedded. I was embedded in the Iraq war for a while, I was actually embedded on the Soviet side of the Afghan war, and I was not embedded on the Afghan side of the Afghan war, and it’s much, much safer to have somebody else’s armour in front of you. And I’m sorry that that’s a fairly human, cowardly point to make, but that is part of the reality. We in the media, we’re not different. We’re not saints, although some of the remarks today seemed to suggest, seemed to expect that we should be saints. No. We are pretty much flawed flesh and blood like the rest of you. We’re pretty much average people. We sometimes have our wives and children in train and have to look after them, we’re sometimes terrified for our lives, we sometimes haven’t eaten for two or three days, we sometimes have very bad cases of diarrhoea or dysentery, and we’ve still got to try and get the story back. And all too often, I’m afraid, we have to follow the old Fleet Street rule, “Don’t necessarily get it right, get it written. There’s a hole in the paper tomorrow you’ve got to fill.” We are part of what Fleet Street’s always called “the daily miracle”. We never get it entirely right. We sometimes get it as much as eighty, eighty-five per cent right, and that’s not bad. But often, and to a great extent, it’s not our fault. We are the prisoners of our sources. When I hear politicians or diplomats criticising the media for not being analytical enough, well, that normally means we’re not presenting their particular point of view. When they tell us that we’ve got the story wrong, it’s probably because we’ve been listening to another diplomat, or another politician, and following their point of view. Now, I was going to use my five minutes to try and wax lyrical about what I think of as the extraordinary miracle we’re going through in the media today. Certainly, in my lifetime, in the last twenty years, I was based in Moscow at the time of the Gorbachev perestroika, I witnessed, I indeed was part of, the glasnost revolution. I was writing for some of the Soviet glasnost publications, it was a hugely exciting time. And since then, I’ve seen the same kind of glasnost starting to come to the Middle East, to the Arab world, with Al-Arabia, with Middle East television, with Al-Jazeera, and I wanted to take part in programmes in them. And I think it’s absolutely wonderful that the old dead hand of censorship is being lifted from newspapers all around the world. And this is all terrific, and it’s wonderful also that we’ve got the internet, not just because it makes it easier to do research and to monitor what other newspapers are saying, but also because I think my profession is starting to learn, as the generals did when Clemenceau said, “War is too important to be left to the generals”, and as diplomats realised when the NGOs began to prove to them that diplomacy was too important to be left to just the diplomats, so we in journalism, with the coming of the internet, with the coming of bloggers, with the coming of the levelling of access to the global media, we journalists are learning that for you, the public, journalism is too important to be left to us professional journalists. And I, for one, welcome that. And I’m trying to use more and more bloggers, trying to use more and more independent voices on the UPI wire at the moment. But at the same time, there is another kind of revolution underway, which I want briefly to mention, and that is the horrendous financial revolution that’s hitting all journalism. You probably heard last month that the New York Times is laying off five hundred people. The Los Angeles Times is laying off a hundred and eighty people. The BBC, two months ago, announced it was laying off thousands of people. Agence France Press in France continues to exist thanks to a bail-out from the French government. The Washington Post is losing five per cent of its circulation per year, because of the competition of free sheets. The old national news networks of the USA, of ABC, of NBC, of CBS, no longer command an audience of ninety per cent of the American public; they’re getting less than fifty per cent these days. Something is fundamentally transforming in the nature of the media, and in the way we’re financing the media, and all of us in this business are living through a highly exciting phase, but also a very challenging phase, in which we’re trying to re-invent this business from the ground up, and having said that, because time is so short, it’s a??? that’s being driven, not just, as some speaker said here, by the concentration of the media, it’s also being driven by an extraordinary diffusion of the media, an extraordinary explosion of new, different, often unreliable, but often un-ignorable sources. However, given all that change, given that revolution, for good, for ill, that we’re trying to live with and trying to cope with, I want to make a point about something that deeply worries me. When I hear people talk about the need to regulate media, whether it’s our analysis or our news reporting, I get very alarmed. When I hear people saying that the media are so important, they have to come under some kind of public control, I get even more worried. I want to go back to some of the earlier sessions that we had earlier today, about co-existence, about living together, about working together, and I want to find out, I want to put on the table in front of all of you, a really fundamental question. Whether we’re talking as citizens, whether we’re talking as members of a religion, members of a country, whether we’re talking simply as human beings, or as members of our profession. What is it that are our red lines? What is it that we will not compromise on? Now, I would imagine that for some of my colleagues, like Mr Zogby or like Mai Yamani, or like Nasr Hamid Abu-Zayd, they’re scholars, they will not compromise upon the commitment to scholarship, the commitment to seek objective truth, the scientific process. I know that from our inspirer here today, Vaclav Havel, indeed from Elie Wiesel, his old colleague, that there were last ditches in which they would prepare to die. There were issues that they would not compromise on. There were certain fundamentals of freedom on which they would not compromise. Now, I’ve got my last ditch in which I’m prepared to die. I’ve got my no-compromise position, and that is freedom of the press. Freedom of inquiry. Freedom of speech. Without those, none of the other freedoms are going to matter. Benjamin Franklin once said, if you have to choose between a government of elected politicians and a government of newspapers, it would have to be one without the other, he would choose a government of newspapers, and frankly, folks, so would I. And I’d like all of you to consider, after all we’ve heard today, about what we do as members of religion, of nations, of civilisations, professions, what are you not prepared to compromise on? For me, it’s the freedom to do my job in as flawed a way as I have to, but in as good a way as I can. Thank you.

Bronislaw Geremek
Thank you very much for this magnificent defence of this profession of journalist. I think that all of us, we were impressed by that. Now I will ask Dominique Moisi. Professor Moisi is Deputy Director of the French Institute of International Affairs, and chief editor of Politique étrangere, its quarterly publication, and Professor of the Institute d´Etudes Politiques de Paris. He’s a columnist for the Financial Times, Ouest France and other European newspapers, and also member of the Board of the Aspen Institute Berlin, and different other academic and political bodies. Mr Moisi, the floor is yours.

Dominique Moïsi
Thank you, thank you very much, Professor Geremek. I think there is a great advantage in being nearly the last speaker in the last session, and that is that you can say more or less what you want and try to make your own summary, and I will do so, all the more so, that I was supposed to speak in the first session, but since I was the obstacle between you and lunch, I gave up at that moment. And what I want to say could be summarised in two formulas. The first one is that self-confidence is a pre-condition to accept the otherness of others. And the second is that over-confidence is a recipe for disaster when dealing with others. The first one, self-confidence, cannot exist when you do not know who you are and when you are deeply afraid of the future. And I think this is where Europe is today. Europe is in the midst of an identity and legitimacy crisis. It has no longer an answer to the “Who are we?” question. It does not know where it ends in the geographic sense, and I would say that since the last enlargement, there is a sense of alienation, particularly in the old members of the European Union. We have lost a sense of familiarity with the Union. I think, vis-à-vis Turkey, there are deep divisions which are ultimately of an emotional nature, and that are coming down to the question, “Who are we?” If you are used to become a commonwealth in the British sense of the term, Turkey should be in. But if it is to remain a closed-in political project, the question remains deeply open. You have to accept the emotion of European citizens, and for many Europeans, by the end of the day, Europe may be summarised as the combination between democracy and, and this is a Jewish person who expresses it, also the sound of churches´ bell. Churches´ bell not in a religious sense, but in a cultural sense of the terms. And I think you have to understand that if you go beyond the sensitivity of your citizens, if you neglect them completely, you will create a legitimacy problem between citizens and their governments. All the more so, that Europe today is not only in the midst of an identity crisis, but also in the midst of a crisis of confidence in the future. Europeans are torn between three types of fears which, like archaeological layers, tend to pile on each other. There is the fear to be invaded by the poorest, and what a symbol for Europeans, to witness the images that we’ve seen coming from the enclave of Spain, in Morocco, and to simply compare them with the images of the East German trying to escape in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Today, we are witnessing people who are trying to penetrate Europe because they have no other alternative, and they are shot at because they want to enter. Yesterday, the people were shoot at by the people who didn’t want them to leave for the cause of freedom. The second fear which Europe is experience is the fear of being left behind by more dynamic, younger, more energetic continents. Countries that work harder, countries that are hungry to regain their stance in the political arena, and of course, they do come from Asia, mostly. The third fear is to be blown away by fanatics, who may happen to be European citizens, for since London, we do know that Europe is not only a target of terrorist, but it is also, possibly, a base for terrorist, which give us a great sense of modesty. To the American question, “Why do they hate us?” we have to give another question: “How do we fail so badly to integrate our European citizens?” Let me come quickly to my second point, which is that over-confidence is a recipe for disaster when dealing with others. I believe that what is taking place in Iraq is, unfortunately, a very good illustration of that point. Former traditional colonial powers have learned the lesson the hard way, and what they have learned, and in particular, in my own country, France, is that you cannot do good to others without involving them in that process. Over-confidence leads you to make the wrong historical analogies. Iraq could not, and will not, become the equivalent of Germany or Japan after World War II. It may, by contrast, become the equivalent for America of what the Boer War was for the British Empire in 1905: a dangerous distraction. To conclude, I will simply say two things on the panel I’ve just taking part. First is that the media are essential, because thanks to them, and thanks to the revolution of communication that has taken place, we have lost globally the privilege of ignorance. We may choose to act or choose to abstain, but we cannot say any longer, we did not know. But I think there is also a danger in media over-representation, twenty-four hours a day, and that is that ignorance, which is sometimes the case when you send journalists underground, can lead to emotional intolerance. Journalists have to be prudent, because they are a true power pointing on the emotions on people. Thank you very much. This has been my summary.
Bronislaw Geremek
Thank you very much, Mr Dominique Moisi. The last panellist will be Sergey Kovalyov. Sergey Kovalyov, who is a biologist, fighter for human rights in Russia, Soviet Union. In Russia he spent some ten years in jail, Sergey Kovalyov was a member of the Russian Duma, former head of the Human Rights Committee of Russian Parliament, and was the first Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation. He was, and still is, the voice of truth on the Chechen war, and it’s important that it is a Russian voice. Sergey Adamovic, pozyalsta.

Serguey Kovalyov
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is me who is going to conclude today's debate. It seems that I am already starting with a twenty-minute delay, and this is why I am going to limit myself to very short comments. In my country, very often you can hear that the power of the Kremlin has no potential, that they are good for nothing, that they don't know how to work, they are not able to succeed in whatever they start to work with. And this is not precise. Please believe me that I am the last one who would be in favour of today's establishment, and I have to confess with bitterness that they are more than efficient in what they are doing. And because the efficiency of exercising power, at least in my opinion, needs to be appreciated, and it has to be evaluated based on what extent is it able to reach its goals -- independently of what the goals may be. In other words, this success depends on what kind of priorities you have, so it is possible that in this table of priorities of Kremlin there might be a point of agenda of a national welfare and economic success, or something of this nature. And if there are such priorities, they may be on the twentieth rank of this table because there is first priority and this is very different from the rest. And the first priority is power itself. It's keeping the power. It is the limitlessness of absolute potential of power. And to stress this even more, you can demonstrate this issue of maintaining power on the example of media. Today here we were talking about our era, that is can be proud at least with one democratic achievement: there is no censorship anymore. You cannot exercise censorship in the era of Internet, and in the era of personal computers available in any part of the world. Unfortunately, this is not the case. There is a country where censorship dominates everything, and the name of this country is Russia. The censorship is constructed in a very wise way. It is used in a very opportunistic way. Our governors in Kremlin are smart enough to know that there are things that you cannot re-make. For example, it is not possible to return back to the gulags. You cannot re-establish national institutes of censorship. Unfortunately enough, they are smart enough to know that they don't even need to do it. They know that there is an internal censorship in the very heart of every author, no matter if he writes or speaks independently on what he or she is writing about. You cannot fool the internal censor, and even our journalists remember the days when they had to think what, when, and what way can they spell out things. I'm not going to tell these stories again, I will just remind you how with the help of our jurisdiction, all independent TV and other channels were disassembled, and how all these channels have become the property of the state. But this campaign was not aimed originally at NTV or the six channel or any other small independent channels. This campaign was aimed against all journalism, against journalism by its own right. Censorship was renewed; the censorship of Stalinist nature and even of older nature, and this was a lesson for the independent media to learn from. The current state is not unlike the Stalinist or even older days. I was staying in a Rustel and I was invited into the TV, and we were talking in front of the camera with the journalists from the Rustel TV, and this discussion ended up with a very typical picture. My neighbour told me, "Sergey, you are a very interesting partner for discussion. Unfortunately enough, our discussion will never be broadcasted." And truly the discussion was not broadcasted, so that nobody would be blaming the Rustel TV for not paying debts and nobody could raise any other questions. Simply they understood very well what happened and what was a lesson to be learned from with what happened with NTV. I would now like to mention an example of a technical predecessor of today's censorship, and in what way today's censorship overcomes the achievements of Stalinist censorship. When Stalin was still alive, a well-known playwright Yevgeny Schwartz issued a small book containing his works. He was using fairytale topics, and he was a playwright just like Vaclav Havel. Everybody who was reading these fairy tales written by Schwartz understood very well what they were all about. Everybody understood that this was a satire aimed at the Soviet Union and they also understood that the greatest monster, the dragon in the story, was Stalin. Stalin was still alive in those days, and of course a certain censor – and I can't envy him – signed the paper that allowed this book to be published. Now how should we understand this? There is a very simple explanation: Schwartz sort of laid a trap for the censor. There is a certain joke which says that Stalin is told that one of his colleagues was supposed to have said, "Oh, I'm fed up with that guy with the moustache" and Stalin asked, "whom do you have in mind?" and of course "Hitler!" was the answer. So Stalin turned around and said, "Well, Mr. Pospelov, who did you have in mind?" and of course the censor I spoke about didn't want to be put in a similar kind of situation like Pospelov. And so it was sort of understood or interpreted that the dragon was in fact Hitler. Stalin, of course, was Sir Lancelot. Of course with an internal censor, a personal censor, this wouldn't pass, and that is proof that it's understood that in today's Kremlin government the press and the media are very important. The press is the only tool of the civic society through which it can pose questions, questions like "who is master in the country? Is it state power, or the source of power, that is, the people?" And the last thing I want to say is a plea. When you take the Novaya Gazieta [New Newspaper], the Moscow Newspaper, or Novaya Vremya [New Times] into your hand, do not let yourself be beguiled. Very often we hear that in the West you say that there is freedom of the press in Russia. But have a look what they are writing. You shouldn't exaggerate. Ladies and gentlemen, these periodicals are surviving thanks to you. They are published in this way for you in the West, the Western intellectuals, to say "yes, there is freedom of the press in Moscow." These periodicals are not read by more than 100,000 people, not more than that. And this is an important guideline for the Kremlin, a very cynical principle. If it's 100,000, then the Kremlin doesn't care, because on the other hand millions of TV viewers are watching TV every day and they receive enormous doses of lies and this of course plays into the hands of people in power.

Bronislaw Geremek
Ladies and gentlemen, we are at the end of the Forum 2000 conference. This forum conference tried to approach our global co-existence, challenges and hopes of the twenty-first century. We had valuable debates and we tried to identify fundamental problems of the present time. We had the feeling that the notion of the international community should not belong only to political rhetoric, but that it is something important. If we don’t have it, we want it. A community of human beings. Such a community should have its principles as a reference, certainly the respect of national sovereignty, as it was in the UN charter, but also the respect of human rights, the rule of law, and the open-society principle. Root causes of current threats were discussed as well as counter-terrorism strategy. The accountability of government was also approached. Horizons of our future co-existence were being debated. Concepts of society, community, were discussed. The question of immigrants was also discussed, models of co-existence were criticised, some new ones suggested. Religion was approached, and we had the feeling that it is an important factor in the international community, and that freedom of religion and freedom from religion, as it was told, is one of principles of political institutions. But we need a presence of religion in our debates on the future. I think that they can say that the idea of the clash of civilisations have very few defenders among us. We do believe that civilisation can and should co-exist in a peaceful way, and having the feeling to enrich each other. And media were considered in this debate as important tools of action in this cultural co-operation and also in the democracy, having the feeling that without media, we couldn’t have the participation of the citizen in politics. A new kind of globalisation was suggested. It was said, I believe we can return and create a new kind of globalisation based on humanity, that words of Mr Yohei Sasakawa, presenting the very topic of this conference. I think that our conclusion was that we need to base our co-existence on the dialogue, on the communication, on the partnership. This morning, Václav Havel said that what is important, it is to find and to look for, to find this spiritual principle which is organising civilisations, communities, and which should be present also in politics. I think that I can say on behalf of all of us, that we came to Prague, to Czech Republic, invited by, one could say, a king philosopher, Václav Havel is a king of sorts, Václav Havel is a philosopher of human condition, but first of all, Václav Havel is a human being, warm, sensitive to human suffering, thinking on human hopes, and I think that we came to Prague because we know that Václav Havel is asking good questions, and we are grateful to Václav Havel for it. The floor is yours.

Václav Havel
Ladies and gentlemen,
If I seem to be at a loss for words, it is due to the emotion caused by Mr. Geremek´s words just now.
A short while ago I had a telephone conversation with Oswaldo Paya in Cuba, and I told him that all of us here are thinking of the political prisoners in Cuba, that we sympathize with their fight for freedom in Cuba and that we will support those who strive for freedom.
The ninth Forum turned out very well. Information that I have received confirms that. If it had a drawback, it was the fact that all the wise people who gathered here could not speak to such an extent as they deserved to. The panel debates on Belarus, water in the Middle East, Africa, and the last one on media, were very important and interesting.
All speeches and discussions will be published as a conference report and will not be forgotten. In closing I would like to emphasize two points. Being here among you, I again and again realize that one of the most important things for a good future for the world is to stand up with quiet, humble and modest determination against all kinds of obsessions, against nationalistic, ideological obsessions and against obsessions with wealth. Globalization needs to acquire its spiritual, cultural, moral and human dimensions, respectively, and it needs to deepen these dimensions; otherwise we will end in a bad way.
Thank you for attending the ninth conference. I firmly believe that we will live and meet next year at the tenth anniversary conference.
Thank you.