These are just a few of the questions that the Mapping Digital Media project of the Open Society Media Program will try to address over the coming year.

Through country reports and a reference series, the project will hone in on three key developments in the media world, namely:

• the switchover from analog broadcasting to digital broadcasting;
• growth of new media platforms as sources of news;
• convergence of traditional broadcasting with telecommunications.

The reports will cover up to 60 countries and examine how these developments affect the core democratic duty that any free and open media system should provide: news about political, economic, and social affairs. The reports are produced by local researchers and partner organizations in each country. Cumulatively, these reports will provide a much-needed resource on the democratic role of digital media.

Our reference series, authored by an expert, academic, or experienced activist, aims to provide a jargon-free look at issues, policies, and technologies that are important for understanding changes in the media.

By taking an in-depth look at the changing media landscape around the world, our core aim is to connect this research with policy-makers, activists, academics, and standard-setters across the world. At the same time, this body of work constitutes a knowledge base that we hope will both inform debate and lay the foundations for better, more informed media policies.

We are launching this collection with a report on Romania—the first comprehensive attempt to analyze the digital media market and its impact in that society. The first paper in the reference series, Online Media and Defamation addresses a present threat to media in the  digital environment, highlighting solutions that protect freedom of expression.

As a multilateral organization of 47 states dedicated to establishing human rights standards, sometimes called "the conscience of Europe," the Council’s modus operandi is bound to be discreet. Yet skilled officials have achieved progress even in adverse circumstances. They know the CoE is most effective when it links with civil society organizations, in pursuit of concrete reforms. Local activists can act as megaphones for soft-speaking Council staff. No other organization has done more to build triangular contacts between NGOs, member-state governments, and European institutions.

But the CoE needs something else as well: clear support from influential third-party states. Working with the OSCE in Croatia in the late 1990s, I saw European Union and US ambassadors reinforce the CoE’s excellent critique of local media laws, shrinking the government’s wiggle room almost to zero. On delicate questions of public policy, endorsement by strong bilateral players is indispensable.

It follows that the Council of Europe isn’t, and cannot be, hawkish. Even so, the complete risk-aversion of its officers at the Tbilisi conference was new to me, and dismaying. Fortunately, some of the journalists and activists present refused to trade in the sort of generalities that could cause no offense to the attending spokesmen, particularly those from Azerbaijan: a regime that throws bloggers in jail, and last year refused medical care to an elderly journalist who then died in prison.

In the event, no offense was actually taken; it rarely is; even authoritarian regimes know that talking-shops hardly pose a threat.

When the closing session brought questions about international monitoring of media standards, Council staff denied that their organization does any such thing. They even denied the Council puts pressure on member states; all it does, they said, is encourage cooperation.

It was a chilly message for journalists surviving on the thinnest of financial margins, amid widespread and inventive abuses of government power. Nor was it quite candid, for the Council’s Parliamentary Assembly has asked the CoE to develop “a specific monitoring mechanism for identifying and analyzing attacks on the lives and freedom of expression of journalists in Europe.”

As for pressure, the European Court of Human Rights issues judgments which are bitter medicine for some states, including in the field of media standards. (Such as the important September 2009 ruling on Moldovan public television, which may even be a landmark in Court case-law.) The Court does not close a case until the judgment has been implemented. It may not bark, but the Council does know – at its best – how to hang on by its teeth.

Georgians know how vulnerable Europe’s intergovernmental organizations are to subversion from within. For the OSCE’s civilian mission to Georgia was cancelled last year at Russian insistence, along with the United Nations observer mission.

The OSCE’s future as a regional security organization that promotes human rights is looking shaky. Coming at this moment, Kazakhstan’s chairmanship was heralded with  concern in many quarters, but one good thing at least has happened under Kazakh watch: the organization appointed Dunja Mijatović as its new Representative on Freedom of the Media. Given her achievements at the telecoms and broadcast regulator in Bosnia and Herzegovina, there is every reason to expect Mijatović will be outstanding at the OSCE.

There is a growing literature (For example: Peter Burnell, "Is there a new autocracy promotion?," FRIDE, 23 March 2010; Michael Emerson & Richard Youngs, eds., "Democracy’s Plight in the European Neighbourhood," CEPS, 2009; T. Ambrosio, "Authoritarian Backlash: Russian Resistance to Democratization in the Former Soviet Union," Ashgate, 2009) on the current stagnation or, worse, rollback of democratic reforms in the post-communist world. I hope these analysts trace the backsliding to, among other causes, a superficial, box-ticking approach to reform that was sometimes taken by the international community, for short-term reasons. That’s a theme for another day.

Suffice to say here how interesting it will be to watch the European Union develop its Eastern Partnership initiative, which offers “deeper engagement” with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. As ever, the EU will focus on hard issues like border controls and energy supply. Yet there is also a “good governance” component, and a Civil Society Forum to channel input from NGOs. Boris Navasardian of the Yerevan Press Club, who sits on the Forum steering committee, is canvassing support for a Media Panel to raise awareness (and maybe funds) on a region-wide basis. While this is a very timely proposal, journalists and activists from the region still seem vague about the EaP. It’s time for an information campaign by EU offices throughout the region.

Recently the EU office in Georgia helped the Council of Europe to clinch local support for a charter of journalistic ethics. This was no simple step in such a fissile and politicized society. Council officials sometimes mutter that the EU takes credit for breakthroughs that rest on foundations laid quietly by the CoE. There may be truth in this, but why doesn’t the Council stand up straight for itself and its noble values? Otherwise it lets itself become marginal – then ignorable – and then resources will be cut.

It would be ominous as well as ironic if the EU were to become a more robust defender of human rights outside its own borders than the Council of Europe and OSCE. Or has this already happened on some issues? Do please share any experiences or thoughts.

Paolo Mancini, a world expert on this topic, mounted an unexpected defence of Italy’s much-reviled public service broadcaster, RAI. The BBC paradigm of 'impartiality' should not, he warned, be seen as universal or exclusive. Surveys show the British public wanting television news to be impartial, which is a statutory requirement in the UK anyway; but the Italian public expresses no such preference. On the contrary, Mancini said, the Italian public is intensely partial. Accordingly, RAI is right to offer 'a plurality of partialities' on its three terrestrial TV channels.

The trouble with this, as other participants pointed out, is that it leaves no room for impartial information; revealingly, Mancini had no reply to these objections. If a public service broadcaster cannot deliver honest reporting, how can it be justified at all? Tim Gardam conceded that the BBC model of impartiality may lead to grey, consensus-seeking journalism at worst, but it also encourages "a curiosity about the other", where the approach blessed by Mancini fosters the expression of a-priori opinions.

A lecture by RAI president Paolo Garimberti was just as disheartening. While he admitted that RAI had grown dangerously close to power, he also claimed that different news output on three channels amounts to pluralism. The quality of the news is, apparently, irrelevant. When a student asked about the image of women on RAI, clearly referring to the endless beaming ‘hostesses’ with hourglass figures and bleached teeth, Garimberti said simply that those women want to work for RAI.

Auksė Balčytienė, who sits on Lithuania’s national broadcasting council, said that "public service ethos" in her country means national values, purity of language, and the wealth of cultural inheritance. This definition sounds strange and even vaguely threatening beside the usual emphasis on cultural diversity and pluralism. Compare the BBC charter: the first purpose of the BBC is to sustain citizenship and civil society.

But there is no real contradiction. Public service media have always been strongly national. Recently, my namesake at the BBC, director general Mark Thompson, said "People want guaranteed access to a reliable source of trustworthy news; quality … programming in the area of culture and knowledge … which [tells us] what it is to live in this country, to be British. ... The challenge is, what do you have to do now, given the way media is changing, to meet that public expectation?" (See Andy Beckett, “What do we want from the BBC?”, The Guardian, 2 March 2010.)

The Open Society Institute 2008 report Television Across Europe: More Channels, Less Independence found that public service media across Central and Eastern Europe are locked into a crisis that could prove to be terminal. Suffocating under political control, lacking funds, public trust, professional credibility and a vision for the future, it is hard to see how these institutions can be made ‘fit for purpose’ when even well-resourced public media in western Europe struggle to justify their privileged revenue streams, and audiences have access to so many other media platforms.

Over the years, OSI has done as much as any media donor – and, surely, more than any other US-based donor – for the cause of public service media. Yet the costly attempts to convert the old state broadcasters have not succeeded. It is high time for radical thinking on how quality public interest content, which commercial operators won’t provide, can be delivered to European audiences with little if any faith in established public service outlets.