SEEMO LJUBLJANA DECLARATION 2003

(SEEMO SEE Declaration) 

Ljubljana, 9 May 2002                                          

1.      Truth: Journalists shall always strive to avoid publishing falsehood. Reporting shall be based on thoroughly researched material. 

2.      Accuracy: Journalists shall always strive to avoid suppressing relevant facts and avoid publishing misleading statements and hints.

3.      Fairness: Journalists shall always strive to report events from all the relevant perspectives. 

4.      Protection of Privacy: Journalists shall not intrude into private spheres unless there is strong cause to believe that the findings could be in the public interest. Nonetheless, public figures, in particular those holding political office, should also be prepared to accept more media scrutiny than private personalities. 

5.      Libel and Defamation: Journalists shall respect every person’s honour and reputation. No one shall be considered guilty of an offence by media reports unless a court of law has ruled that person guilty of that same offence. However, libel and defamation, if not proven malicious in intent, should not be a criminal offence, and truth should be a defence. 

6.      Human Rights and Dignity: Journalists shall publish the truth whenever human rights are violated, regardless of the consequences. These issues override any other limitations on freedom of expression.

7.      Editorial Independence: Editors and journalists should serve the public first. Information must be based on the interest of the public instead of on the interest of the disseminators. 

8.      News, Opinion and Advertisement: Editors should always strive to separate reporting news and facts from opinion pieces and both of these from advertisement.

9.      Right of Reply: Anyone who feels damaged by reporting or published opinion shall have the right to respond and the possibility of having his/her response published in the forum where the allegations surfaced, as long as he or she can prove that the statement is false.

10.    Confidentiality of Sources: The journalist shall observe professional secrecy regarding any source of information obtained in confidence. The journalist shall resist by all means giving up the names or identities of sources who wish to remain anonymous. The right of confidentiality of sources must be guaranteed by law.

11.    Incitement to Violence and Hatred: Journalists shall avoid inflaming violence and hatred. Racism, hate speech, xenophobia, prejudice and religious, ethnic, cultural, sexist and political intolerance shall not be part of journalistic practice. The media shall not be part of discrimination on any of the aforementioned grounds.

12.    In consequence of the above, the journalists of the region must discuss the creation of a much more detailed regional code of good journalistic practice in cooperation with international media organisations. SEEMO will co-ordinate this project.

  Commentary on Internationally Acknowledged Standards of Journalism 

Mass media incitement to violence and hatred on grounds of race, ethnicity, nationality, sex, culture, language, religion, sexual orientation or political opinion usually precedes or accompanies illegal violent acts targeting exactly the victims of the incitement. Due to the basic human right to freedom of expression as well as the dangers of arbitrary and politicised enforcement of hate speech laws: 

Legislation limiting incitement to violence and hatred in the mass media should be minimised, as long as self-regulatory vigilance against incitement is being maximised. 

The double benefit of such a two-pronged editorial strategy would be a more open society accompanied by less restrictive media laws. There is a multitude of self-regulatory mechanisms in the media. Claude-Jean Bertrand names around forty different kinds, which include in-house media ombudsmen, staff review groups, independent press councils, print media correction boxes, codes of ethics, letters to the editor, journalism reviews, etc. (Bertrand, Claude-Jean: M.A.S., Media Accountability Systems, unpublished manuscript, presented at the IPI Conference, “Media Credibility and Self-Regulation”, Vienna, 27 October, 1999) A wide approach taking several of these mechanisms into account appears to be able to deliver the best results. In Sweden, for instance, there are in-house ombudsmen and a public press ombudsman as well as a national press council, journalism reviews and many other major forms of media self-regulation. Partly as a result of this, the country’s media are able to operate successfully with very high degree of press freedom, almost completely unhindered by criminal law enforcement or by civil law suits. However, there is an additional problem: It is not enough that the media are balanced. The media must be credible, i.e. they must represent factual and politically neutral perspectives on public affairs. If the general public perceives the media as partisan, then their most important role, to inform the public, is lost. IPI and SEEMO therefore suggest a preliminary list of journalistic standards, the Declaration, to be endorsed, adhered to and upheld by the community of Editors, publishers, broadcasting directors and senior journalists in South East Europe.