The New York Times

Monday, August 30, 1999

Kosovo's Incipient Media Ministry

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is supposed to be developing democratic institutions in Kosovo, is proposing new rules for the news media that could hurt the cause of democracy and a free press. The O.S.C.E. is directing a radio station and will do the same with television. It will also set up a media monitoring group and regulations on print and especially broadcast media. Respected Albanian-language newspapers and radio stations survived in Kosovo before the war despite Belgrade's censorship. Today, independent reporters there can certainly use European support, including training and financing. But they do not need more official media, nor another group of outsiders to tell them what they can and cannot say.

The O.S.C.E. proposal is in part a response to the danger that hate groups will take over broadcasting stations.

Groups of armed men have muscled their way into at least one small radio station and broadcast appeals to Albanians to attack their Serb neighbors.

Kosovo needs proper regulation of its airwaves to reserve licenses for legitimate applicants instead of those with the bigger guns, with some licenses reserved for multi-ethnic, Serbian and Roma-language stations. But this can be done without the large bureaucracy the O.S.C.E. contemplates.

Its staff would train local journalists, monitor newspapers and broadcasts, and have ultimate control over a TV station and a radio station with local staff. The bureaucracy would also impose as yet unspecified regulations on what journalists can say, especially broadcasters.

This approach is overkill. The project to train journalists and support promising local news media is worthwhile. It will be undercut, however, if high-paying, O.S.C.E.-run stations grab the best reporters.

At least two worthy news organizations -- the newspaper Koha Ditore and Radio 21 -- want to start television stations.

The O.S.C.E. should help them and other qualified applicants, by granting licenses, training staff and providing financial support to new stations.

The monitors and regulators are also a bad idea. The best way to combat hate speech is not to ban it, but to insure that Kosovo's citizens have access to alternate views. There is added danger if the regulations are broad enough to bar other ideas the international community does not like. It is risky to establish even well-intentioned government-controlled broadcast stations and to attempt to regulate ideas and expression in a region where these powers have been so tragically misused.