The BAJ history and mission

The Belarusian Association of Journalists was founded in 1995. It was one year after A. Lukashenka came to power.

Creation of BAJ was led by a necessity to defend the journalists' professional rights and the public constitutional right to receive objective and truthful information.

The initiative of founding a non-state, non-partisan, non-profit association of journalists was presented by a famous Belarusian journalist Ms. Zhanna Litvina. (She used to worked as the Editor-in-chief of "Belarusskaya Maladziozhnaya" radio station until 1994, when the media outlet got closed by the authorities under a pretext of structural reorganization. Zh. Litvina was the Chief of Minsk Bureau of Radio "Liberty" – Belarusian Service for several years.

She was a concept creator and the head of the only existing independent Belarusian-language "101.2" FM radio station that was permitted to broadcast its programs for one year only. Zh. Litvina was a founder and the head of "Radio Racyja" that transmitted its programs to Belarus from abroad for several years.) Zh. Litvina is still the head of BAJ. She is unanimously re-elected to hold the position by her colleagues at the BAJ Congresses that take place once in three years. The first edition of BAJ Statutory Notes stated that the organization's activities were firstly directed at the defence of legal, political, social, and economic rights, freedoms and interests of journalists and editorial teams. The mainstream directions of BAJ activities remain the same:

• BAJ stands for the freedom of getting and distributing information;
• BAJ defends journalists' rights;
• BAJ furthers consolidation of its members, aimed at the defence of professional rights;
• BAJ fights for equal economic, legal and social conditions for state and non-state media outlets;
• BAJ arranges and holds educational programs for journalists;
• BAJ arranges and holds conferences, round table discussions, seminars and study-visits.

BAJ has been an associate member of International Federation of Journalists since 1997.

BAJ signed a similar agreement with "Reporters without Borders" in 2003.

The World Association of Newspapers presented the Golden Pen of Freedom prize to BAJ in 2003.

The European Parliament honored BAJ with A. Sakharov Prize "For Freedom of Thought" in December 2004.

BAJ has more than 1,000 members, who work for diverse periodical editions, TV and radio companies, and publishing companies.

It should be mentioned that the state media workers make a significant part of the organization members. BAJ has 6 regional branches and the central office in Minsk.

The Law Center for Media Protection works on the constant basis at the Belarusian Association of Journalists. The Center's lawyers are highly qualified specialists in the media field. They've taken part in numerous litigations, related to journalists and media outlets. The Center provides legal advice to journalists. Also, the Center's specialists arrange regional and Minsk-located seminars for media workers on various legal issues.

More than a half of all legal cases, considered with the participation of the Center's lawyers, ended in favour of independent media workers or allowed to diminish the punishments to a large extent.

The BAJ lawyers are actively elaborating alternative draft bills in the media field, in order to bring the Belarusian media legislature in compliance with international standards in the future.

The Center's lawyers draw especial attention to a currently prepared draft of the Media Law (see more information in Chapter "Campaigns in support of journalists"). The Center's specialists have worked out an alternative draft bill as well as a range of notes and proposals to the official one. But for that, they took active part in working out a draft law "On TV and Radio Broadcasting" with the assistance of experts from the Council of Europe and the "Article 19" Global Campaign for the Freedom of Speech.

BAJ has been constantly monitoring violations of freedom of expression and media since 1998.

The organization has a network of correspondents across Belarus, who collect and present information about the local situation in the media field. The BAJ Monitoring Service was collecting and widely distributing this information at the time of election campaigns in the years of 2004 and 2006. The BAJ lawyers helped to make analytical conclusions on the most urgent problems. These materials were posted to the Belarusian media, NGOs and other partners inside the country. Also, they were sent out to partners and the interested media abroad in the form of a PDF bulletin. All these findings were regularly presented at the BAJ Web-site under "The Choice" heading in Belarusian, Russian and English.

Apart from that, BAJ was monitoring the coverage of election campaigns 2004, 2006 and 2007 by the Belarusian media. Journalists in Minsk and in the regions implemented qualitative and quantitative analyses of publications and programs in the state and non-state media. They were fixing the time, dedicated by media to different subjects within the election process and noted the manner of presenting them. Analytical conclusions with the processed monitoring data were presented at special press-conferences once in two weeks. Also, they were posted in the electronic form and presented at the BAJ Web-site (www.baj.by) in Belarusian, Russian and English.

The Belarusian Association of Journalists is a unique source of information about situation in the Belarusian media field.

This information is stored at the organization's Web-site (www.baj.by). Also, it is posted in the electronic form to more than two hundred addresses of BAJ colleagues and partners in Belarus and abroad.

The efficiency of informing about situation in the media field is proved by the increase of the citing index, connected with the materials, distributed by BAJ in the media.

Thus, the Google search engine (www.google.com) fixed more than 3000 references to BAJ in 2004 to be compared with 24,000 references (8 times more) in the year of 2005. The Google presented around 334,000 documents, related to the Belarusian Association of Journalists in 2006.

A number of references to BAJ, found by the Rambler search engine (www.rambler.ru) increased as follows: almost 6,000 documents, mentioning BAJ at 868 Web-sites in 2004; around 27000 documents, mentioning BAJ at more than 2,000 Web-sites in 2005 and around 37,037 documents at 2,622 Web-sites at present. Information, prepared by the Belarusian Association of Journalists is widely used by the Belarusian nation-wide and regional media outlets.

BAJ has been publishing a professional magazine "Abajour" since 2000. Despite the lack of funding, BAJ has managed to save the periodical edition. "Abajour" is delivered to non-state media outlets as well as to 118 state-owned newspapers and 6 regional TV and Radio companies.

The magazine publishes materials about the purpose and the role of mass media in the society, the professional duties and responsibilities, the journalist ethics, the problems with collecting and distributing information etc.

The Belarusian Association of Journalists in cooperation with the Center for Extreme Journalism (Russia) published the Belarusian-Russian "Media-expert" magazine for several years. (The periodical publishing got suspended for financial reasons). The publication promoted international standards of journalist activity and proposed an unbiased view on the situation that took place in Belarus and Russia in the field.

BAJ gives special attention to the programs of professional training for journalists. Such organizations as the International Federation of Journalists, the International Media Support (Denmark), the European Journalism Center, the Lithuanian Union of Journalists, the FOJO Institute (Sweden), F. Ebert Foundation etc. act as partners in the field. (See more detailed information in Chapter "International Contacts of BAJ").