By Clement Charles, CEO & Founder, AllTheContent News Agency
Although a noble intention, is transparency still relevant today? Should it become one of the media’s hobbyhorses? With what aims and limits? At the end of May, The University of Neuchâtel’s Academy of Journalism and Media convened an international panel to answer these questions before an audience of journalism students and Swiss media professionals. Here is an overview.
The world has changed. The forced transparency of Wikileaks and Offshore leaks and the scandals caused by MediaPart in France have shaken the powers that be. It worries the elite with things to hide as much as it does the defenders of civil liberties. Robert Picard, a world-renowned researcher in the media domain, frames the debate: “transparency is a philosophy: the idea that revealing everything is better for the public good than hiding everything. But it isn’t a public good in itself, unlike peace or happiness, because transparency can be harmful.”
The new WWW: Wikileaks, Whistleblowers, Witch Hunting.
“No one investigates anymore, the fashion is for witch hunts”, explains Reiner Mittelbach from the Geopolitical Information Service. Going further, the CEO of this consulting firm clarifies his thinking thus: “publishing stolen or hacked information cannot be considered serious journalism”. Conversely, Kristinn Hrafsson, the spokesperson for Wikileaks, affirms that the site is “the only real threat to the growing trend for secrecy. It’s also the best thing that has happened to journalism for decades, while at the same time threatening traditional journalism”. According to Hrafsson, this threat explains the “unequal” treatment of news coverage surrounding Julian Assange , in which the media “talk for pages and pages about his health problems or about justice without writing a single article about the EU’s recent decision to lift the financial block on the site”.
The media coverage of Assange hides others who we have forgotten: it isn’t easy to be a fighter for transparency, a whistleblower or the media. Traitor, hero, or both at once, the prime motivation of the person at the source of a secret is the “wish to change behaviour that isn’t ethical”. “Whistleblowers become the subjects of witch hunts”, explains Birgitta Jónsdóttir, president of the Icelandic Pirate Party. “After Wikileaks, the mass media are now suffering this type of pressure”. For Jónsdóttir, as for many of the media professionals present, “total access to information is a necessity”; she further feels that “more transparency could have limited the effects of the financial crisis”.
Hrafnsson hammers her point home, reminding us that “the cables from Tunisia stoked public outrage by revealing the true extent of corruption in the Ben Ali government, and in this way they became the catalysts in a chain of events”. This viewpoint is confirmed by historians: “the Pentagon Papers contributed to an earlier end to the Vietnam war”, says parliamentarian Dick Marty. Well known for his various battles in favour of increased transparency, the impartial Ticino politician is also concerned about “the weakening of legislative and judicial power” in a context where “States are manipulating half-truths more and more, which is the worst type of lying”.
In the name of the law (on transparency)
In Switzerland, the law on transparency has set out the obligations of the authorities and the rights of citizens since 2006. Despite this law, “press freedom is declining in Switzerland”, says Jean-Philippe Ceppi, the producer of Temps Présent television programme. “It is very difficult to protect sources and whistleblowers. We would like to have the same laws as South Africa and India”, he explains, before reminding us of “the difficulty in producing hidden camera footage or undercover reporting in a country which has secrecy written into its DNA”. The journalist concludes “embarrassment isn’t a good reason for keeping government information secret. In fact, it’s rather an excellent reason to make it public”.
Fittingly, the law on transparency is clear: everything that is not secret is public. All non-filtered content (reports, statistics, mail) in print or digital format should be made available by federal government and public entities such as the Post Office or Swiss Federal Railways. Titus Plattner, a journalist with the joint investigative team for Matin Dimanche and SonntagsZeitung, emphasises that scoops such as the price paid by Rolex for its brand to be used for the EPFL Learning Center (33 million Swiss francs) or the cost of protecting the Swiss embassy with a private army “would never have been possible without the freedom of information law”.
Protection of the private sphere, trade secrets or an overriding public interest in maintaining secrecy can infringe the law. In addition to a wide margin of interpretation and the difficulty in launching an appeal, Titus Plattner confirms that ill will can take on other forms. And he cites, in no particular order, “the 245,000 Swiss francs requested by the Federal Office for Agriculture to provide information to BeoBachter or the 30,000 Swiss francs in legal costs requested upon an application to find out the severence benefits for a department manager. And this is happening even though this case law is now facilitating similar requests for information”.
Allowing access to data
In order to lower the cost of accessing data, the website LoiTransparence.ch offers, in addition to practical and legal advice, a tool which is both brilliant and powerful: an automatic generator of freedom of information requests. This is a good way to lower the cost of filing a request and “forcing the administration to abide by the law”.
The right of access to information automatically raises the question about the ownership of the data. Asserting that “the private companies of the world impose transparency for their exclusive profits”, Robert Picard reminds us of reality: “in democracies, a government acts as a public official. But the public official always has more information”; even though this delegation clarifies the logic, the owner of the information is in theory the citizen. More generally, Picard maintains that citizens “should know how governments are acting in our name and that the only reason for a secret to exist is public interest”.
To conclude, this gathering didn’t address a key point: best practice. In fact, another option to be explored is the question regarding the transparency of media companies. In terms of best practice, it would be interesting to have the media 100% transparent in providing complete financial and organisational records to the public. By setting an example, the profession could demand this transparency with far greater legitimacy.
The debate is just beginning. The battle for transparency, meanwhile, is already underway.