Professional Journalistic Standards and Code of Ethics

The principal aim of this report is to provoke discussion, exchange of information and experience about the benefits, viability and practical implementation of media self-regulation in South East Europe.

The transformation in the media in the former communist countries of Eastern Europe in the past 15 years has been dramatic, posing entirely new challenges to individual journalists and their profession. On the one hand, the crude forms of state censorship and monopoly of the printed and broadcast word have been overturned, while on the other, more subtle forms of pressure and influence from political and commercial elites have undermined the development of truly independent media. The report is published in the framework of the project: “Towards Free and Independent Media through Legal Reform and Self-regulation,” commissioned by the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (IFA) and funded by the Federal Republic of Germany within the scope of the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe.