|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
   |
|
|
 |
|
||
|
TOC | Introduction | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven | Twelve | Notes | Contributors Private Peacemaking USIP-Assisted Peacemaking Projects of Nonprofit Organizations Part IV: Media Bosnia: Searching for Common Ground on Radio by Sheldon Himelfarb In August 1996, Common Ground Productions (CGP), the media arm of Search for Common Ground, received support from the United States Institute of Peace to produce an innovative series, Resolutions Radio, for Bosnian radio. Today the show continues to air weekly, broadcasting nationally from Sarajevo on Radio FERN, the Free Elections Radio Network created by OSCE. The program has also spawned a similar weekly series for discussing women’s issues—Jednostavno Zena (Simply Women) which is produced locally in six different venues across Bosnia (Tuzla, Mostar East, Mostar West, Banja Luka, Bihac, and Sarajevo). Resolutions Radio was the idea of producer Kenneth Clark, who saw it as an opportunity to combat the nationalistic hate and vitriol endemic to Bosnia’s media during and after the war. The concept was stunningly simple: take a number of techniques used in conflict resolution and build them into a call-in talk radio format. The result is a program that uses hosts trained in conflict resolution; emphasizes guest line-ups that represent multiple sides of the issue at hand; and pursues the twin goals of generating positive options for action and creating a “safe” place for Bosnians of all ethnic groups, guests and audience alike, to interact honestly and respectfully. It is difficult, under the best circumstances, to evaluate the impact of a media intervention such as this, which is designed for peace-building purposes. Conditions in Bosnia—where the demography is in flux, mistrust is epidemic, and media polling is rudimentary—make accurate impact evaluation extremely costly if not downright impossible. We have, however, had a number of successes and setbacks over the last year from which interesting lessons can be gleaned about the use of media in Bosnia’s conflict, if not in conflict generally. The potential power of this kind of programming, for example, was well-illustrated during a special broadcast of Resolutions Radio from the Hotel Ero in the divided Croat-Muslim city of Mostar. With the support of the OSCE regional office we gathered editors and journalists from ten media outlets to participate in a live conversation about the state of the media in Mostar. They arrived reticent and suspicious; they left the program having agreed to hold weekly joint press conferences, and remained engaged in issues-oriented conversation well after the show was off the air. Such dialogue among these hardened journalists was unprecedented in the post-war period, according to OSCE staff and observers, and the success was such that we were immediately requested to expand our local program, Jednostavno Zena, to Mostar as well. We have also experienced great success in the trainings we’ve held. Our project in Bosnia (as in other countries like Liberia and Burundi where CGP works) relies upon local talent: journalists, hosts, engineers, producers, and others. Every one of them receives some conflict resolution training and virtually every one of them has been grateful, if not fundamentally changed, for it. The training sessions are multi-ethnic events at which participants are taught to recognize and analyze patterns of conflict; to ask probing questions in a non-partisan, productive manner; and to listen with sensitivity. As one journalist participant wrote, “After this workshop I will analyze different things with a whole new attitude. That means I’m going to consider the needs and wishes of each party to the conflict.” Another Bosnian participant commented that she didn’t anticipate the level of camaraderie and personal bonding with members of other ethnic groups. These are the people—most of them young and yet veterans of the war—who are the foundation of a better Bosnia. Today, many of them continue to work with us in the cities where we operate, establishing a network of journalists with a common ground agenda, as opposed to the nationalistic one demanded by most Bosnian media outlets. In both of these highlights from our first year—the widely-applauded Mostar media show and the successful trainings—CGP worked closely with OSCE regional offices to identify key participants. And in both cases our OSCE friends were just as excited and pleased as we were with the results. Although no one can quote statistics or empirical evidence to indicate that new violence was averted or new democracy was nurtured, there was a palpable sense among all concerned that both of these things had, in fact, been achieved. Peace and democracy had been served; the importance of media in any peacebuilding strategy for Bosnia was affirmed. What has also been affirmed, however, is that a media strategy is only as good as the understanding of local media habits which underpins it. It is, we have learned the hard way, easy to get it wrong. Take the simple notion of presenting multi-ethnic perspectives which is so central to the Resolutions Radio format, yet so difficult to achieve in Bosnia. Our presence on a network reaching the entire country, Radio FERN, demanded that our guests represent the three major ethnic groups. But we were broadcasting from a city dominated by one ethnic group—Sarajevo, which is predominantly Muslim. Guests from other ethnic areas were concerned about their safety and, at the last minute, often did not come. We would arrange escorts for them, but that wasn’t sufficient. In the end, we were left with too many programs where the lineup lacked balance, and our credibility as a neutral party was at risk. Elsewhere, one might have dealt with this problem by simply connecting guests by phone from the safety of their respective territories. But until recently it was impossible to have reliable phone communication between the Federation and the Republic of Srbska. So, as an alternative, we sought funding to establish the previously mentioned network of journalists around the country, who could feed interviews and “man on the street” reports into the programs. Our failure to fully comprehend the complexities of a multi-ethnic radio format mirrors our failure—and the failure of the international community—to appreciate the complexities of Bosnian national listening habits. For all the millions of dollars poured into Radio FERN and all its effort to use Bosnian talent and programming, FERN has never shed the label of “that foreigner’s network”—a moniker that probably hampered our efforts and limited our impact. Call-in for Resolutions Radio is usually less dynamic than what we attract with our locally produced programs, despite FERN’s national reach and our efforts to use some very popular on-air personalities. Yet for a long time we concentrated our efforts upon FERN, attributing the lack of audience response to transmitter and other politico-technical problems. (FERN’s signal was jammed, for example, in the Banja Luka area by Radio Svjeti Jovan, a station operated by the daughter of Serb leader Momolo Krajicnik. And in Bihac and Mostar we were told by some that FERN’s troubled transmitters had been vandalized, and by others that it was a maintenance problem.) The experience of CGP, working with our local Bosnian partner, InterMedia Productions, to produce Resolutions Radio and Jednostavno Zena is an interesting study in the contrast and complement of NGO and large intergovernmental approaches to media and conflict. At the time we were launching this modest effort with $36,000 in seed money from the U.S. Institute of Peace, the international community was pouring unprecedented millions into other, grander efforts to transform the media in Bosnia. Radio FERN was following on the heels of Radio Brod, the EU’s one year, $5 million effort to create an independent radio station on a ship in the Adriatic, which folded in 1994. FERN was launched with a budget of about $1.5 million, while that same year independent television in Bosnia got an infusion of $10.5 million from the international community through the creation of TV-IN. Yet by the spring of 1996, there was widespread concern with the poor results of this massive expenditure. A widely respected nonpartisan, London-based organization, the International Crisis Group (ICG), issued a report criticizing the intergovernmental efforts and called for a revamping of the media strategy in Bosnia. They described the international community’s media approach as “unimaginative at best” due to “a lack of overall strategy and absence of expertise.”7 The report continues, “Instead of analyzing the Bosnian media in detail, then working out a long-term approach to help improve it and combining forces to implement such a policy, donors have for the most part done their own thing.” ICG recommended, among other things, that media efforts focus on quality and not quantity, effective and informed journalism training, and investment in programming that is locally produced. Our own experience in Bosnia certainly bears this out. Our nationally oriented, FERN-based programming seems to have paid fewer dividends, for the most part, than our locally based programming and we have shifted our focus. Unfortunately this kind of locally based effort is more expensive to administer, at a time when finding financial support for using media in the Bosnian conflict is more difficult than ever due to donor fatigue over the first few years of excessive expenditure with so little to show for it. The lesson seems clear and important: Whether spending millions or thousands, it is absolutely vital to have a solid understanding of the target audience and, in particular, its listening habits. Radio can be an extremely cost-effective way to reach millions of people in conflict or post-conflict situations. But using radio successfully can be less a matter of dollars than of sense. TOC | Introduction | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven | Twelve | Notes | Contributors
Home | Jobs | FAQs | Contact Us | Directions | Privacy Policy | Site Map United States Institute of Peace -- 1200 17th Street NW -- Washington, DC 20036
|