FALL OF BERLIN WALL 20th ANNIVERSARY
Transforming Media Freedoms since ’89, accession and beyond

Over eighty working journalists and representatives of leading journalists’ unions from Eastern Europe came together in Berlin to debate the achievements and challenges facing journalists 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The journalists agreed to use the growing network as a platform for campaigns to highlight threats to journalists’ rights and standards in the media. Participants focused on corruption including lack of ownership transparency, illegal contracts and production of articles-to-order; on safety and physical threats to investigative journalists; censorship and legal restrictions on scrutiny of government action; poverty working conditions and the dominance of infotainment over hard news. A background report produced by the IFJ and its member unions (please see the attachment) underlined these issues and the gravity of the situation in the region.

The conference was opened by Ulrike Maercks-Franzen, General Secretary of the German Journalists union in Ver.di, which hosted the meeting before a panel of leading working journalists. She spoke of the successes and failures of transition and the challenges confronting media professionals today.

Manfred Protze, Chair of the German Press Council, and Thomas Frank, broadcast journalist, spoke of the crisis facing journalism today, and the struggle for journalists reporting conflicts and human rights abuses. Aiste Zilinskiene, journalist with the DELFI News Portal, one of the leading new media in Lithuania, explained how to make internet journalism a success in today‘s environment, while Marinka Boljkovac, General Secretary of the Trade Union of Croatian Journalists, emphasized the need to protect working rights if standards are to be maintained, corruption defeated and professional dignity saved.

The following day Aidan White, General Secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, called for a new campaign of ethical journalism in Eastern Europe, and to use the platform of the European Neighbourhood Journalism Network to confront the endemic corruption, poverty incomes, violence and censorship that greets new recruits into today’s journalism.

Outside of the conference debate journalists prepared reports on the celebrations and events around the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall. Seeking interviews, new angles and a historical perspective, they visited the headquarters of the GDR’s notorious secret police, the STASI. Former East German activists guided groups around the displays of GDR propaganda, James Bond style surveillance systems and images documenting the last days of the regime.

Official propaganda labeled the wall the ‘anti fascist protect barrier’ and fingered Amnesty International as an enemy of the state. Displays showed how secret cameras were fitted to the sides of the Trabant car or hidden inside watering cans, particularly useful for monitoring funerals. Only a handful of leading Stasi officers were subsequently punished for their crimes, while many were reabsorbed into the modern police force or private security firms. This prompted a debate revealing clear unease over how the victims of the GDR regime and its enforcers have been treated and how it was possible that teachers working today are still denying some of the worst excesses of the former system.

The guides peppered their often chilling accounts with a keen sense of irony, suggesting that humour was essential not only to surviving the system, but to fatally undermining it too.

The same evening journalists fought for the best position in the pouring rain to view former Solidarnosc leader, Lech Walesa and ex-Hungarian Prime Minister Miklos Nemeth, topple the first of 1000 collapsing dominos that marked the highlight of the celebrations.

Attached Files

Berlin meeting - IFJ Unions Report Final.pdf (591.4 KB, 138 views)

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Biba Klomp
Project manager
European Journalism Centre
The Netherlands
Tel. : +31.433.254.030
Email : klomp@ejc.nl