BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS
DATE:
15/02/2008
Rough Waves
by TOL
Belarusians eager for independent news and entertainment are chafing as foreign media donors bicker.
Over the years, many media assistance projects in Central and Eastern Europe have been blighted by lack of coordination and cooperation among donors. Governments and private foundations have often picked their own pet projects and run with them, even to the detriment of more effective media outlets whose only fault was that another donor had already embraced them.
Nowhere has this been more evident than in Belarus, especially in radio and television broadcasting beamed from abroad to provide an alternative to state propaganda. And no government has been a case study of how a single-minded approach to media assistance can scuttle the best of intentions more than Poland's.
Now, however, Warsaw has a chance to set things right and help make a real difference in the availability of alternative information in Belarus.
The current situation finds Poland as the major funder of two stations broadcasting into Belarus. But Poland faces the ire of other donors and governments after its failure to assist in broadening the reach of an international project also based within its borders: European Radio for Belarus (ERB).
ERB's origins date back to 2004. As Belarusians felt the sting of yet another crackdown on the opposition and dissident figures, donor organizations started to speak again of a concerted effort to fund independent radio news broadcasts. Initially, the ERB team consisted of Belarusians and ethnic Belarusian Poles who had been a part of the short-lived Radio Racja, a station that broadcast to Belarus and to the Belarusian minority in Poland from 1998 to 2002 before running out of money.
Intending to set up shop quickly in time for the presidential elections in the spring of 2006, the Belarusian part of the team hoped to restore the existing name, license, and frequency of Racja in Poland. But the majority shareholder of Racja, the ethnic Belarusians in the Polish city of Bialystok, wanted to wait for the results of the Polish parliamentary elections of October 2005.
Tired of the inactivity, the team of journalists from Belarus registered its own non-profit organization, ERB, in Warsaw and has since attracted multiple donors (the European Union and a gaggle of embassies and government-linked donor agencies from the United States, the Czech Republic, Canada, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden).
This has meant that Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka cannot single out the station as the work of any one country.
In the meantime, the Law and Justice Party of Jaroslaw Kaczynski triumphed in the Polish elections and soon decided to fund its own project, the revival of Radio Racja. The station resumed broadcasting in 2006 on a small FM transmitter covering Bialystok and on medium wave into Belarus, again with a team of local ethnic Belarusians and Belarusian journalists.
Many saw the decision as a way for the party to ingratiate itself among the politically active Belarusian minority in Poland. Just as the Kaczynski government irked many in the international community (especially in Brussels) with its heavy-handed and often parochial approach, so did donors and those working in media development soon tire of hearing the Poles talk about their pet project and their "special expertise" on Belarus.
DISPARATE EFFORTS
The lack of interest in cooperating on Belarus-targeted media projects has had real repercussions. In the summer of 2007, Polish authorities awarded Radio Racja 24-hour use of an FM frequency with the potential to reach the Grodno region in Belarus. The transmitter, however, is relatively weak, and Racja apparently doesn't have the cash to invest in an upgrade, thus underutilizing the potential of the frequency.
ERB and several of the countries backing it have suggested sharing the frequency and contributing toward building a new transmission tower to cover more Belarusian territory. But under the Kaczynski government, those proposals consistently hit a wall of intransigence.
This was particularly a shame because the government agencies and private organizations working on media development in Belarus have come a long way toward coordinating their assistance, precisely to avoid overlapping projects and to work together toward their shared goal of diversifying the media landscape.
The offer to share the frequency may also have been misinterpreted as a competitive threat to Racja's very existence. However, few have argued that one station should be funded to the detriment of others. After all, the target groups of all these foreign-funded stations differ considerably.
The widely respected Belarusian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Svoboda, traditionally has appealed to an older clientele, feeding a strong diet of news and commentary to those already democratically inclined. While Racja does have some ambitions to serve a Belarusian audience in Belarus proper, its main audience has always been their ethnic kin in Poland. ERB's intentions are elsewhere: to use music and entertainment as a "hook" to attract the under-35 generation in Belarus to more serious content.
Though donor-funded entertainment programming has drawn ire elsewhere in the world (see, for example, criticism of some U.S.-government funded stations in the Middle East), the strategy seems sound for Belarus, especially with its Internet-savvy young people who are probably more likely to get their radio via the Internet than normal stations anyway. This focus also seems the best bet for making such a station commercially viable in the future, whether abroad or one day (hopefully) in Minsk.
ERB does, however, need to do a better job of getting the word out about its existence in the areas where it can be picked up. Too many people in the border regions have been left in the dark. The team in Warsaw has had its hands full with 24 hours of broadcasting, but it needs to spend more time on promotion and marketing.
Even after several years, the station doesn't have a Belarusian-language brochure promoting its activities. And hard negotiations and technical challenges remain to secure the rights to broadcast from additional spots in other countries that neighbor Belarus.
DIVIDED, THEY'LL FALL
Just as important to the talks on radio is a less overt quid pro quo: if the Poles compromise on ERB, then the United States will be much more likely to become a major donor of BelSat, another Polish initiative.
Only a few months old, the satellite television channel will need all the help it can get. Sure, as in most countries of the former Soviet Union, television continues to hold a powerful influence, and the idea of a truly independent Belarusian channel is tempting. But only around 7 percent of citizens have satellite dishes, and even then, most dishes need to be adjusted to receive the correct signal from a less popular satellite.
Plus, in big cities, cable TV is more popular and a cheaper solution than purchasing a dish. Some critics have also called the programming dull and rather old-school, with traditional talking-head shows unlikely to attract a young audience. Those realities have led some to joke that more people view BelSat on YouTube than on their television sets.
Yet any judgment would be premature at this early stage. ERB, like any new station, has improved greatly from its modest beginnings, and recent additions of more experienced journalists have improved the content even more.
Luckily, the current Polish government seems ready to make a deal and is apparently unwilling to be saddled with supporting two media projects largely on its own (there is already talk of cutting the budgets of Racja and BelSat by half). Top officials - more cosmopolitan and more conciliatory than their predecessors - appear to see the value of compromise and the need to share the bulk of their initiatives' funding with others.
Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope new Prime Minister Donald Tusk's government will see the wisdom of compromise. The logic seems plain enough: work together and see two quality radio stations with an increased reach into Belarus, as well as a television station with enough time and money to work out the kinks and develop a clear concept.
Or work apart and see the plugs probably pulled on two out of the three - the two being the Polish pet projects.
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