The Globalization of the Media and Judicial Independence
| Author | Michael Kirby |
| Pages | 19-39 |
THE
GLOBALIZATION
BY
MICHAEL
KIRBY
y
proposition
is
simple. Communications media, their ownership,
and
professional ethics have changed radically
in
recent years.
These
changes have
an
impact
on the
media's actions
and on the
messages
they present. They also
affect
the
legal system
and the
judiciary.
The
media's messages
are no
longer confined
to a
particular village,
town, city,
or
even
to a
particular country. Technology
now
takes them,
instantaneously,
across
jurisdictional
borders. Powerful, opinionated
media
can
thereby play
an
important role
in the
assertion
of
freedom
and
in
undermining autocratic government.
It
was,
to
some extent,
the
global
media that pushed
the
concerns
of a
privileged
few
(expressing themselves
in
tentative language)
from
the
docks
of
Gdansk, Poland, through
to
Hun-
gary
and
Czechoslovakia. From there
the
message, dangerous
to
autocracy,
swept
through
Bulgaria, Mongolia,
and
Romania.
It
consumed
the
Baltic
States
and
eventually destroyed
the old
Yugoslavia.
In the
space
of a
couple
of
years,
the
message brought
the
Berlin Wall crashing down. Ultimately,
Adapted
and
updated
from a
paper
delivered
in
Madrid,
Spain, 1994,
to a
conference
on
Media
and the
Judiciary organized
by the
International
Commission
of
Jurists.
19
OF
THE
MEDIA
AND
JUDICIAL
INDEPENDENCE"
A.
FROM SMOKE SIGNALS
TO
CYBERSPACE
M
ESSAYS
ON THE
MEANING
OF
FREEDOM
OF
EXPRESSION
the
idea
of
freedom
demolished
one of the two
global megapowers:
the
Soviet
Union.
An
essential element
of the
movement
for
glasnost
in
Russia, which
stimulated these changes,
was the
demand
for
open media
and an
accessi-
ble
telecommunications system.
A
(largely) uncontrolled media
and
direct
access
to
telecommunications were by-products
of the
West's compara-
tively
freer
societies, where ideas could more readily
flourish.
Such societ-
ies
stood
in
stark contrast
to
those shaped
by the
economic backwardness
and
social dislocation
of the
former
Soviet Union
and its
satellites with
their command economies. Broadcasts,
by
radio
and
television, crossed
the
Berlin Wall. Telephone communications
and
direct dialling overcame
even
the
energetic intrusions
of the
censors. Satellites beamed down mes-
sages
of the
extraordinary developments
in
other economies.
The
data
spoke uniformly
of the
multiplier
effect
that
a
high measure
of
free
expres-
sion
had on
human happiness
and
economic progress. Links with
the
reform
movements
were
established
through interactive computers
and by
telefacsimile,
all
before
the
Internet took
hold
with
its
worldwide
web and
e-mail. Growing awareness
of
technological backwardness
stimulated
movements
for
change, which were
to
grow into
a
deluge that stopped only
at
the
Chinese borders.
It is
important
to
keep these technological developments
in
mind
as we
approach
a
discussion
of
their impact
on the
other important values
of
free
societies:
basic human rights,
the
rule
of
law,
and the
independence
of
judges
and of
lawyers.
The
progress made
in the
last
few
decades
has
been remarkable:
Telecommunications
are a
fundamental component
of
political, eco-
nomic
and
personal
life
today. Yet, until recently, human encounter
was
place-dependent. Communication across distance
was
only possible
by
such technologies
as
talking drums
or
smoke signals, relatively immedi-
ate
but
limited
to
messages that were terse
and
susceptible
to
error. More
detail
and
accuracy could
be
conveyed
by
messengers travelling
by
foot,
boat, horse
or
other beast
of
burden. Messages
from
distant locations
could
take weeks
or
years
to
arrive
and
were used
to
communicate
affairs
of
state, nobility, Church
and
commerce. These communication
forms
were
not
interactive
and not
available
to
common
people.
The
voyages
of
Marco Polo, conveying letters
from
the
Church
of
Rome
to the
Emperor
of
China, took decades. Transmission
of
messages
was
very slow
and
expensive
even
up to one
hundred
and
fifty
years
ago.
As
Arthur
C.
Clarke
noted: "When Queen Victoria came
to the
throne
in
1837,
she had
20
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