PRISTINA, Kosovo -- One of the international community's first moves in Kosovo has been to draw up a plan for wide-ranging media reform in the province, including the formation of a Kosovo Media Board, responsible for overseeing and, where necessary, imposing penalties on local media.
The plan, which envisages strict media licensing and standards with powerful enforcement mechanisms, has largely been inspired by the international community's experience in Bosnia.
However, it has also raised fears of censorship among local journalists, in part provoked by a recent article in The New York Times, which first revealed details of the plan, which has yet to be formally published.
The plan's drafters were commissioned by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the international organization tasked with building democratic institutions and establishing an environment for free and fair elections. This panel, made up of senior western journalists with several years' experience reforming media in other parts of the Balkans, believes that Kosovo should not be viewed as a normal, functioning, democratic state.
Instead, they believe that the province should be considered as an occupied territory, emerging from many years of repression and armed conflict, in which the occupying peace-keeping force and its civilian counterpart work to plant the seeds for a free media, independent judiciary and thus create conditions for free elections.
They draw parallels with Germany in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, where an initially strict regime was gradually relaxed as German society recovered from its Nazi legacy.
The Media Board is to be comprised of five public figures from Kosovo, described by Daan Everts, head of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo, as "well respected intellectuals".
But since those nominated to serve on the board have little media experience, Everts and two of his staff - Douglas Davidson and Mirjana Robin from the OSCE's media affairs department - will oversee the work of the Board. This has led some local journalists to fear that the Board will serve as a ceremonial prop for OSCE decisions.
Everts disagrees. "We don't want to bring foreign dictators or rules here. We would like these things to originate from here and that's why we gave so much importance to the creation and the functioning of a Kosovar Board," he said.
The plan also envisages the formation of a Media Regulatory Commission and a Media Monitoring Division, along similar lines to that which currently exists in Bosnia. The proposed bodies, according to OSCE officials, do not aim to "censor the local news media, but to support and monitor them with the ways that the Western press functions."
According to the Times, the Media Regulatory Commission would write and administer a "broadcasting code of practice" and "a temporary press code" for print journalism, and then "monitor compliance and establish enforcement mechanisms." OSCE officials say that the Commission will work closely with the Media Board to come up with appropriate codes.
"The concept of codes of practice, based on minimal journalistic standards, exists in all European countries," said Everts. "Given that journalism was never good in this region or elsewhere in the Balkans, these codes are important."
"We don't want to make comparisons between Bosnia and Kosovo, because both are very different cases," said Davidson. "The international community entered Bosnia in 1995 and has learned lessons there on how to promote free and independent media and we are now using this experience to avoid repeating mistakes."
Garentina Kraja is a journalist with the Pristina daily Koha Ditore and writes for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, an independent non-profit organization supporting regional media.