Norsk Journalistlag at 60
Oslo, April 26th 2006

Intervention by Aidan White
General Secretary
International Federation of Journalists

First of all, can I thank the colleagues of NJ for this invitation to say a few words. It is a diamond day for a diamond organisation and I’m very honoured to be asked to speak at your 60th anniversary.

I came into journalism when the NJ was just 20 and I joined the IFJ when the NJ had just turned 40, so I must say this event does give me a chance to make some very personal comments about achievements and challenges to come.

Birthdays are, of course a time for reflection, for looking back. To the days, perhaps, when journalism was a rough and ready profession, when journalists were rather disreputable, badly-dressed, often the worse for drink and altogether unsuitable for polite company. Looking around the room today I can see at least some things have not changed.

But there are some more profound reflections worth making. At the outset I want to pay tribute to the NJ and your union’s tradition of internationalism. Can I want to put on record my own thanks and that of all IFJ members for the commitment and dedication your union has shown to the cause of international solidarity over the years.

Soon after I joined the IFJ, the NJ was in the vanguard of international solidarity in Latin America. Over a period of ten years an enormous amount was achieved – the IFJ opened a regional office which thrives today, thousands of young journalists were able to benefit from a trade union education, hundreds became a part of an international safety network that today gives help to journalists in places like Colombia, Peru, Mexico and Brazil where the lives of journalists are routinely threatened.

Your union has always been at the centre of the fight for social justice and professional rights in journalism. Whether it was the cause of authors’ rights, or the fight against apartheid, the NJ was there leading the struggle for decency and justice for journalists.

You have also shown a fighting trade union spirit that is unbeatable among IFJ unions. I recall a few years ago coming here in support of a major strike at Norwegian broadcasting. I recall, too, a difficult exchange with the Norwegian trade union movement over the wisdom of the strike.

Yours is a historical record that does great credit to Norwegian journalism. And it continues today. I am pleased to note that NJ is working closely with the IFJ, and is present in its leadership at European and international level.

Having said all that, times are changing and we have new challenges to face.

We have grown up over the years very aware of what we mean we talk about media. The traditional media – broadcasting and print – have been the lifeblood of modern democracy. People have been able to get their information from well understood sources that have prospered or floundered on their reputation for quality. But it has been a top down system of information control. Today that is all changing.

These are difficult times, when the need for aware, independent and ethical journalism is greater than it has ever been.

We all know that when journalists provide accurate and reliable information, in context, people are properly informed. They understand better complex issues. And good journalism helps people to decide for themselves how to achieve peace and intolerance.

But calls to ethical journalism and higher standards are not easy in an age when media are in ferocious competition for readers and viewers and are trying to cope with a revolutionary change in our industry which too few of us really understand.

In this turbulent process, I fear that too many of our employers have forgotten about the mission of journalism; many of them have little or no respect for workers’ rights or professional standards; they are, too often, obsessed with financial and commercial objectives. We need to remind them of their responsibilities and we need to nurture alternative voices.

Everywhere we need more independent journalism to confront the social and political challenges in an age of anxiety when people fear for the future, when terrorism and anti-immigrant sentiment are nurtured and exploited by unscrupulous politicians and others who want to use media to promote populism, intolerance and division within society. We see that countries with a history of tolerance like Belgium, France, Austria and the Netherlands, and here in the Nordic region, there is a toxic cocktail of prejudice and ignorance about Muslim and Arab culture that is leading to a resurgence of extremist politics not seen for 50 years.

We are not helped in our task by governments who are more intrusive in the affairs of media. In recent years there have been a number of serious attacks on media independence, to manipulate and spin the media message, and pressure to reveal sources of information, even in the western world.

It is this difficult professional context that the cartoons controversy emerged earlier this year. I want to congratulate NJ for taking the initiative to organise a special meeting a few weeks ago. It proved to be a model of the sort of dialogue that can and should be encouraged.

That meeting proved that the issues and challenges surrounding the cartoons crisis were not international. They were local. The meeting concluded that even here, in one of the world’s most reputable and worthy democracies, problems arise when media become complacent and don’t pay proper attention to the communities they serve.

This controversy proved to be something of an alarm call for sleepy European journalism. For many it was a basic test of democratic values and free expression. As I said a couple of weeks ago, I think that journalism generally passed the test.

The vast majority of journalists and media who considered publishing the cartoons decided not to publish. Less than two per cent of publications in Europe and many fewer across the world decided to publish. These were judgement calls freely made, in Europe at least. They proved that journalists do take seriously their duty to balance carefully the three cardinal principles of journalism – to respect the truth, to be impartial and to minimise harm.

We should take comfort from the debates that raged around our newsrooms they illustrate why it is essential for all of us to defend editorial independence and the right of journalists to resolve our ethical dilemmas without interference.

It is with this background that the IFJ and the EFJ in the coming months will be launching a new campaign in defence of ethical journalism. In a fast-changing world this is one area where we don’t need reform.

Scarcely a day goes by without some claim that new technologies are fast writing the obituary of traditional journalism. Yet, as an industry, even today, many are remarkably and unaccountably complacent.

I suspect many of you in this room have, like me, followed the so-called digital revolution with a mixture of awe and concern.

It’s a fast developing reality that we should grasp as a huge opportunity to improve our journalism and expand the reach of our unions.

The IFJ is like NJ born out of a different age. We are all digital pioneers, trying to make our way in a new and dazzling world. We have grown up in a highly centralized environment where news and information were tightly controlled by a few editors and publishers. My children, on the other hand, are digital natives. They’ll never know a world without broadband, without internet access, or without a range of communication possibilities.

The challenge for the IFJ and the NJ as it sets out on the next stage of its historic development is to apply this new digital mindset to our future.

Never has the flow of information and ideas, of hard news and reasoned comment, been more important. The force of our democratic beliefs is a key weapon in the war against religious fanaticism and the terrorism it breeds. In this context believe me – good journalism has a great future.

Indeed, I quote from someone who knows about these things: “Great journalism will always attract readers. The words, pictures and graphics that are the stuff of journalism have to be brilliantly packaged; they must feed the mind and move the heart.” So said Rupert Murdoch earlier this year, so it must be true!

The next generation of people will be accessing news and information from many different sources – computer, telephone, hand-held devices as well as from newspapers, radio and television; although these last carriers will have a very different form from that which we see today.

We don’t know what the new landscape will be like but we do know people will have a different set of expectations about the kind of news they will get, including when and how they will get it, where they will get it from, and who they will get it from.

We know, too, that people’s habits are changing. A report last year from the Carnegie Corporation in the US focused on young people and showed that they were behind a dramatic revolution in the news business. Apparently, people between the ages of 18-34 increasingly use the web as their medium of choice for news consumption. For them the Internet, and Internet portals, such as Google and Yahoo! are the preferred destination for news.

This study showed that 44 percent of the respondents said they use a portal at least once a day for news. The same study showed that there is falling confidence in the newspaper business with only 9 percent of young people who would describe them as trustworthy and only 8 percent find them useful.

There is a new reality at work. People today don’t want to rely on the god-like figures of publishers and remote editors and television moguls operating from above to tell them what’s important. They want their news on demand, when it works for them. Increasingly, they want control over their media.

In the face of this revolution, however, many of our unions have been slow to react. There are a number of reasons for our inertia. Unions are often slow and bureaucratic. And being democratic, we give time for consideration before shifting our positions. We are also busy with the contemporary battles to defend jobs and rights. But we do have to face up to the tasks ahead of us, and quickly.

Through the first decades of the life of NJ newspapers and a select band of broadcasters, often under state jurisdiction, enjoyed a virtual information monopoly. But the days of prime time television and big-circulation newspapers dominating the media scene are over.

Fast search engines, blogging, podcasting, Internet news web-sites, new devices for delivery thanks to converging technologies are changing everything. We have to wake up to these changes. We should not see them as a threat, but as an opportunity to improve our journalism and expand the reach of our unions.

I’m still confident of our future, both in print and via electronic delivery platforms. The data may show that young people aren’t keen on traditional media, but it doesn’t show they don’t want news or good journalism. In fact, they want good quality information. They want faster news, lots of it, of a different kind and delivered in a different way.

And we in this room are uniquely positioned to deliver that news. We have the experience, the skills, and the commitment to ethical values to give people what they want. In a world where news is becoming increasingly commercialised we have the opportunity to apply values going beyond economic imperatives, and to reinstate the primacy of quality, ethics and standards. And we can use the Internet to help us.

As the blogging movement illustrates, people are no longer just going to receive information. They want to engage in the process. They want to comment. They want to use the information in a larger community – to talk about, to debate, to question, and even to meet the people who think about the world in similar or different ways.

Internet journalism can provide virtual communities for people to be linked to other sources of information, other opinions, and other like-minded people. To do that we must challenge the editorial conventions that traditional media have imposed on journalism.

Why, for instance, cannot we recognise good journalism and stories, even when published by competing media? Would it be a sacrilege to give a link to a good follow-up story elsewhere? Can’t we help spread the network of links that people use to navigate around the virtual information pool?

Above all, we need to ensure that our journalism provides compelling and relevant content no matter the form of dissemination. We need to think about using bloggers to supplement our coverage of news – it’s already happening in many traditional news media. But when we do so, we shouldn’t endanger existing jobs and we must never sacrifice our commitment to standards for accuracy and reliability.

Trained, professional journalists with a reputation for quality are still trusted. People using the Internet still turn to recognised sources for reliable information. This is why I’ve never accepted the pessimistic view that traditional journalism has no future. Far from it, well informed, committed and confident media professionals are more needed than ever. Bloggers can only add to the work done by reporters, not replace them.

As we grapple with the impact of change on the work of journalists we must have dialogue with publishers and media to encourage the search for new market models that will allow traditional media adapt to the new circumstances.

We must insist that it is not acceptable to cut newsroom budgets at a time when money should be invested in editorial products to enhance quality.

But that message is not getting through. Editorial departments around the world are suffering under waves of cutbacks as media impose harsh cost controls: quality of journalism is suffering, as are trade union and social rights of journalists. It is a form of self-cannibalism, in which media are eliminating precisely the life-force they need to stay alive in the digital future – quality journalism.

Securing quality is about creating the legal and social conditions that allow journalists to work freely and effectively, both inside and outside the newsroom. That means a sound legal framework for media, genuine editorial independence and the right to protect sources, transparency in government and freedom of information, safety at work and economic and social security for all who work in journalism.

Regrettably, globalisation has diminished the capacity for action by trade unions and the state that has meant less effective collective bargaining and social dialogue. These trends are visible among unions within the global media industry where we strive to protect journalists in the harsh climate caused by the rapid growth of freelance and insecure employment patterns.

The issue of quality in media is now at the centre of our work. The struggle for democracy has not gone away, but the concern over levels of professionalism are recognised in all IFJ regions, but particularly in countries in political transition where there is an urgent need for better legal, professional and social conditions. In many of these countries local media are vulnerable to exploitation by transnational media owners.

I must commend the work of NJ in its actions with our Polish colleagues in promoting co-operation as Norwegian media companies like Orkla have taken their business across borders. It is recognition of the global realities with which we live. But we need to go further.

We need to

• insist that transnational enterprises are obliged to respect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the conventions and labour standards of the ILO;

• create transnational structures for social dialogue which give union people rights to information, consultation and negotiation; and

• establish a recognised charter of social and cultural rights which must feature in all cross-border trade agreements.

Governments have a legitimate role in regulating media structures to guarantee diversity and for local culture to flourish. But journalists' ethics are a content issue, and governments have no proper role in media content. Experience tells us that if we give them one, or they take it, they will try to limit freedom of expression.

If sovereign governments cannot and in principle should not regulate the news and information content of transnational media, how should such organisations self regulate?

It is time to find out the depth of commitment to freedom of expression of the largest global players. Will Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, News Corporation, Time Warner and CNN International, for example, commit themselves institutionally to the central international conventions relating to freedom of expression?

Should we not require of these global information brokers, as we have required of governments, a formal pledge that they will adhere to, say, Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Article 19 provides that:

Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.

Here we find the core of a workable code of ethics for transnational media corporations. If they were to adopt it in word and deed, people in many countries in which they operate or plan to operate would feel more comfortable about media claims that they wish to promote liberty and democracy through what are called the 'technologies of freedom'.

Finally, I want to say that we in journalism and the trade union movement are dreamers; dreamers in the power of collective action; and we dream of more widespread recognition of the need to protect and nourish good journalism as vital to democracy.

As journalists and trades unionists we have many practical tasks ahead of us in pursuit of our dreams:

- to strengthen and maintain solidarity actions for colleagues in need whether they are caught up in the wars of Iraq, Afghanistan, or the Congo or face daily threats to their lives as in the Phillippines,

- to create a platform for action against the censors of governments, political spin doctors or corporations who put a return on investment and commercial interests before decency and honest truth-telling

- to build the confidence of our members that they can fight and win in the campaigns for decent work and professional conditions and, above all,

- to develop our own vision of the future in which unions are able to adapt to meet the organising and recruitment challenges of a new media world.

We can do all of this, but only as long as we have strong and confident trade unions. The NJ is in many ways a model of the kind of union we need – the perfect mix of humanity and flint-hard resolution in the face of injustice.

Norwegian journalism is, I believe, in good hands as along as the NJ continues to thrive and to develop. Good luck and Happy Birthday!

Thank you.