Media Policy in Iran and Greece - Essay Example

Running Header: Media Policy in Iran and Greece Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Code & Name: Date of Submission: Media policy in Iran and Greece Almost all the variants of the political and social theories hold that communication is a very important component of the modern society. Politically, the term communication serves to enhance the democracy or to deny it or in some situations to deny the combinations of the two (Carey 2007, p. 272). Although this is not often commented, the systems of communication have emerged as the centre of the profit making in the modern capital societies. Most of the efforts of the scholars are employed in order to access the kind of relationship that is there between the communications which acts as the private activity (Katharina 2004, p. 647). As a result, this broadens the necessary social and political duties which of which the communication systems are charged with the responsibility. The major role of the communication systems at the time of emerging global economy, at once as a pivot of the emerging global economy and the other as the key foundation of the democracy politically which therefore constitutes a very vital tension of the world stage. Internationally, media policies have been laid down to ensure that they serve the interests of the people (McChesney & Schiller 2003, p345). Similarly there are policies that regulate and control the media in the individual countries. These are more so based on the orders and procedures that govern the countries. This essay seeks to expound on the communication policy in Iran and Greece. Iran is an ancient country that has been experiencing different kind of media policy that is based on the religion, freedom and the social responsibility (Abu & Ghanbari 2009, p.254). Generally, the media in Iran developed considerably during the Islamic revolution. Due to the high attentions to TV and radio, they remain to be the most popular mediums of communication. In terms of online media, Iran is among the few online countries that have the new journalism form known as online journalism. It has the second largest number of blogs in the world after China. Though Iran has displayed a very great vibrancy and diversity there are some basic legal safeguards on the freedom of the media. After 30 years that involved the Islamic revolution its press remains to be a very important component of the country. However, though there has been much improvement in the legislation of media the freedom of the media is still an issue that need to be addressed in this country. There have been several intermixed educational and legal obstacles that are either directly or indirectly related to the damage of the freedom of the media. Some of these obstacles include the complicity of the new media, the decrease in the professional standards, judicially independence and lack of clear definition of the offences of the media ( Abu & Ghanbari 2009, p.266). For the development of the media to be desirable in Iran, then a lot of the decisions have to be made so that they can address these obstacles especially on the legislation and Journalist education. It has been claimed officially by the ministry of telecommunication in Iran that its country is among the freest countries where the information flows (Carey 2007, 273). None of the websites providing information has their information filtered other than the immoral ones. Furthermore, the immoral sites that have their information filtered are less than ten percent. The use of the broadband illegally was burnt and the filtering of information applied to porn proxy servers and sites that provide access to the banned sites. Basically, each country has the way it defines its values in a different way from those in the west. Many countries in the world use filtering since the freedom of the speech should not violate the religious, cultural and social identity of the nations or turn the freedom into unethical issue. For Iran the same case applies. The main reason information is filtered in the websites is to safe guard the religion code of belief and the identity of the nation while at the same time preventing the use of the broadband internet connection illegally. In some situations too, some internet filtering also applies to the sites that have political, humanities and social contents. These comes where many blogs that are politically oriented are filtered and the cyber journalists and bloggers responsible arrested and taken to court from time to time. A general look of media situation in the Iran does show that during the period after revolution there have been considerable development in the area of media freedom. This is evident by the increase in the number of newspapers especially between 1997 and 2005. In addition there have been considerable steps that have been taken in order to strengthen the freedom of the media and its independence. Though there have been very positive changes in terms of media freedom, there is still a long way that need to be taken for the Iranian media to be ideal (Anagnostou, Psychogiopoulou & Kandyla 2010, p. 78). Up to now, the media have not been able to play a real role in the progress and development of the society. Though the Iranian press has displayed a great vibrancy and diversity, the basic legal safeguards for the freedom of expression is lacking which is among the promoted international laws. As a result, the press has still remained vulnerable. Therefore, the media shall remain vulnerable so long as the freedom of expression is unprotected in the Iranian media law. One of the most striking factors in the Greek media sector is that it is dominated by duopolistic structure; the Bilgin group and the Dogan group (Gilboa 2002, p 14). The two groups holds up to 70 % of the total market shares in the national daily newspapers and are also the owner of the two major TV stations. For the two groups, the media business is just but one of the many businesses of their investment that have holding that engage in a number of other businesses. Since the big national dailies and the television are in the hands of a few people, the content of the media is poor. The holding are mostly involved with the public works and therefore depends to the greatest extent depends on the work that is commissioned by the state. The television is a medium that has very great impact on the opinion of the public. History of the private Television is less than a decade old. Even in the late eighties the state still owned in monopoly the radio and the television. It was not until 1993 that the private broadcasting was permitted by the parliament. Today the television is prospering sector with 16 national and 360 regional stations of television. In Greece, radio plays an inferior role of providing the information to the population. Though there are about 2000 private radio stations in Turkey, most of them are tiny and amateur stations that only concentrates on the music programs. The print media in Turkey has very low impact having an average newspaper circulation of 4 million which serves a population of about 60 million inhabitants, partly due to the high price of the newspapers that are not affordable. Also the readership of the newspaper has been continuously declining since 1980 when many publications and newspapers were seized by the army. It was that the newspaper that someone read revealed his or her political views which would be dangerous for the country. Many opinions prevail over the facts that are based on the reports in journalism. In Greece, all the newspaper these columns normally referred to as corner. Though these columns are majorly designed for the opinions, the journalists and the academic publishers use them to gain reputation and salary. In Greece, self censorship is a common feature to journalism (Psychogios & Priporas 2007, p 43). There are specific factors that encourage this practice on the part of the journalist. One of these factors is the Anti-Terror law that concerns the crimes committed against Ataturk which restrict the right of the freedom of expression. Also, there is a television and radio law that allows the closure of the radio or television station for days. It is this practice that forces the small stations to give up on these activities since they would lose advertisement revenues and the market shares. Confiscation of the magazines and newspaper can also be practiced through the order of the court. The Greeks also seems to have embraced the services that have been offered by the social media. Among the notable examples of social media use is the use of it by young adults and the teenagers to organize protests and riots. One notable example is the one that occurred in December 2008. The international Greek media then was able to use this information for their own reporting (Gilboa 2002, p 12). A study that was commissioned by the institute of communication showed that in Greek facebook was the most popular social site in the year 2008. About blogging, more than half of the internet users visits the blogs frequently that are mainly for information and news, however only about 10% have ownership to their own blogs. Although the online content that is produced in the form of blogs has been gaining ground, being an administrator of a blog still is an activity that is confined largely to only certain demographic profile. The news agencies do act as the source of information and from their perspective they are very important for the pluralism of the output. However in Greece, only one leading national news provider called Athens News Agency-Macedonian Press Agency is available and it is owned by the state. Almost all the newspapers and the subscribers of this news agency do this so that they can be regarded as the primary source of information and news by the Greeks (Alabau & Guijrro 2004, p. 654). The agency does represent the international voice of the Greece and it works well with many international agencies of news. Its major source of income is through the subscriptions from the Medias, state subsidies and advertising. The working condition of a journalist in Greece does merit the attention to the degree that they can have any impact on the professional of journalists (Anagnostou, Psychogiopoulou & Kandyla 2010, p. 73). Journalists are not regulated and are not required to have any formal license. Moreover, their training is not required to follow any formal format. As a result for journalist in Greece the working conditions are poor and they experience financial insecurity because of lack of proper definition of their occupation status alongside having low wages. Greece has among the lowest literacy development in terms of the media according to a study that was commissioned by the European commission (Anagnostou, Psychogiopoulou & Kandyla 2010, p. 68). The study further showed that the concept that appertains to the education of the media had not been explored sufficiently since there are no institutions of state that are devoted to media education. Moreover, the country lacks a concrete integration of the media education in the school curriculums. The media literacy initiatives mainly come from independent actors like Safenet which is an independent self regulatory body for the internet content. Though the Greek constitution explicitly recognizes the freedom of the press, the television and the radio are under the direct control of the state. In late 1980s, Greek audiovisual market was liberalized through a serried of legislative acts that had been adopted being part of the states media policy of regulating the media market domestically (Alabau & Guijrro 2004, p. 646). The successive governments had sorted to dictate the conditions of the electronic media performance. This is more so because each successful government had its own way of looking at the media. The legal acts followed one another which led to an extremely detailed, legal framework that is heavily regulated (Gilboa 2002, p. 6). It has only to be subjected to the general applicable laws that relates to matters like defamation, privacy and protection of the public order and security and the limited regulation that regarded the ownership structure of the self regulation. In conclusion, good policies of communication are important as far as the growth of a nation is concerned. The communication and media policies in both Greece and Iran have taken changes in the recent years more so because of rise of new communication tools like internet. In Iran, the media enjoys freedom and is therefore is able to grow. The regulations of information in Iran are majorly for protecting the rights of the people especially through the internet (Gilboa 2002, p 12). However, in Greece, the media freedom is having a very long way to go. The policies that come as a result of long term monopoly of the media houses by few makes it impossible for this industry to grow. It also lacks clear policies that would promote journalism and the regulation of the media. This poses a great challenge especially in the new information age where regulation of information is required to safe guard the interest of the people. This indicates the progress of the media industry in Greece is moving at a slow pace compared to the other parts of the word. Efforts should be taken to ensure professionalism is employed in journalism so that the countries can be able to handle changes in technologies that might challenge the nations. Both countries need to work on continuous and controlled freedom of the press through engaging the professionals and all the stake holders. References Abu, M, & Ghanbari, A 2009, ‘Iran’s Media Landscape: Law, policy and media freedom’, Human communication, Vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 239-273. 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