Combatting 'Press Censorship' in Post-Conflict Kosovo: Can NGOs Impact the Policy Agenda of International Organisations?

During the post-conflict reconstruction in Kosovo after 1999, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the United Nations (UN) implemented strict media regulations. These regulations prohibited the incitement of ethnic hatred, imposed mandatory press codes and created mechanisms to sanction local media. Their representatives argued that a strong media regulatory framework was necessary to manage an incendiary media environment that risked undermining reconstruction efforts. These policies sparked heated debates within NGO circles. Some media and journalists’ rights organizations vigorously criticized the measures, including the World Press Freedom Committee, the International Press Institute and the International Federation of Journalists. Their representatives argued that such media regulatory policies amounted to press censorship, and they embarked on a public communication campaign to pressure UN and OSCE officials to stop their implementation. How successful were these actors in influencing the policy agenda of the OSCE and the UN? With a notable exception (Darbishire 2002), the study of how non-governmental actors shape the media reform agenda in post-conflict countries has been overlooked in the literature. In this paper, I will analyse the communication campaign of NGOs that denounced the UN and OSCE media regulatory initiatives during the reconstruction of Kosovo (1999-2001). Through an analysis of the data collected from interviews with key stakeholders (such as the heads and members of the UN and OSCE missions in Kosovo), I will then assess the perceived effects of the NGOs’ campaign and argue that it contributed to a delay in the implementation of key media regulations. This analysis will be informed by the work of media theorists (Nerone 1995; Christians, Glasser, McQuail, Nordenstreng and White, 2009), whose concepts can shed light on the communication strategies of international actors involved in Kosovo’s media reform process.