Media Helping Media

The Caucasus Times says media freedom in the North Caucasus region is deteriorating. The online newspaper says regional authorities in Russia are now fully equipped with a powerful set of legal tools designed for the effective suppression of independent opinion. The article concludes that the normal existence and development of independent media in the North Caucasus region is crucial for its development.

Most of the major donors have left Serbia, now. As one of the last was about to depart, a Serbian analyst tried to dissuade him, on the grounds that so many other things can be done, and so many things are left unfinished.

In a small room in Belgrade's "Centre for Cultural Decontamination," 20 journalists from across the Balkans gathered for a seminar on how to build sustainable independent media in a region that has been starved of free speech for so long.

During the Milosevic era, the center, which was set up to "transform the social atmosphere that has been contaminated by orchestrated nationalism, hatred, and destruction," had served as an oasis for freedom of speech and thought, where brave artists and writers gathered to plan for a post-conflict future.