Author Archives: Micah Rosen

Anticorruption Protests in Central and Eastern Europe: What They Do and How They Can Do More

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The beginning of 2024 was a period of unrest for several Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. In Slovakia, a series of protests erupted over Prime Minister Robert Fico’s plan to weaken the country’s anticorruption infrastructure. Meanwhile, in Albania, demonstrators took to the streets alleging corruption in the cabinet, demanding investigations, seeking the end of retaliatory investigations against opposition figures, and pushing for the ouster of corrupt officials. And journalists in Croatia turned out in masses to protest a whistleblowing law that would make the investigation of misconduct more difficult.

These aren’t the first anticorruption protests in CEE, and they won’t be the last. Over the past decade, citizens in CEE countries have become much more attuned to the problem of corruption and to their governments’ failure to do much about it. The result has been numerous episodes of citizen-based anticorruption movements. But while such movements have great potential for spurring meaningful change, many have proved ineffective. Why is this? Examining past episodes—for example, in Bulgaria, Slovakia, and the Balkans—may help us better understand the conditions under which anticorruption demonstrations succeed. These past episodes offer a few key lessons:

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No Strings Attached: Learning from the EU’s Approach to Government Advertising in Private Media

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Recently, the European Union moved forward with comprehensive new media freedom law, the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA). The EMFA includes a number of important reforms meant to protect journalistic independence, including prohibitions on interference in editorial decisionmaking and protections for sources. But one of the proposed reforms is especially important for those who care about preserving the media’s role as an anticorruption watchdog: the EMFA’s rules on government advertising in private media. The EMFA requires that governments (1) adopt fair, transparent, and objective standards for the distribution of state advertising revenue to journalists, and (2) make efforts to disclose how those funds are distributed. Because governments often use advertising spending as implicit or explicit leverage to suppress and deter anticorruption reporting, these changes will likely have a significant effect. As countries outside of the EU struggle with similar issues, they should follow the EMFA model.

The EMFA model may be especially valuable in Central and Eastern Europe. After the post-socialist transitions, media organizations in these countries found themselves free of state control—at least in part. But despite privatization, many of those media companies, struggling to stay afloat, have turned to their governments for advertising revenue. This has proven to be a devil’s bargain. The fact that state advertising has become a major source of revenue for media outlets has given governments a tool that they can leverage to influence coverage, stifling anticorruption reporting. When new parties come to power, they often redirect advertising funds to media organizations that bury corruption news, financially sinking the organizations that are willing to call out misconduct. Journalists that do break corruption stories see their funding quickly disappear. Even without direct pressure, media organizations have been afraid to call out the actors that effectively fund them, and they understand that the government will reward friendly media companies with extra money. The result is that media outlets do not invest time and energy into investigating potential government misconduct, and they fail to run, or underemphasize, stories highlighting corruption allegations. (This problem is hardly limited to Europe: States across the world use advertising to influence the media, often to great success. And studies in Argentina, Ghana, and Turkey, for instance, have found that government advertising in media outlets reduces coverage of government corruption.)

The most direct solution to this problem—eliminating or significantly reducing government ad spending—is unrealistic. Given how unreliable private advertising has become, many journalists are dependent on state dollars, and taking that funding away could tank them economically. Although some organizations are starting to develop alternative business models, it is too risky to rely on those models before they have proven successful. Neither are grants or other support from NGOs plentiful enough as of now. But as the EU recognized, there are ways to mitigate the risk that media dependence on state advertising revenue will lead to the suppression of corruption-related news.

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Anti-Defamation Laws: Politicians Abuse Them, But Can Anticorruption Activists Use Them?

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Defamation is a scary word for the anticorruption community. After all, anti-defamation laws are frequently abused to harass, deter, and discredit people who accuse politicians of misconduct. But defamation suits can also be an important tool for anticorruption activists to defend against false and misleading attacks designed to undermine their work. As smear campaigns deter and diminish anticorruption advocacy, we must be cautious in our attempts to weaken or repeal anti-defamation laws, for they may prove to be a necessary line of defense.

To understand why anti-defamation laws can be so important to activists, take the case of Peruvian journalist Gustavo Gorriti. Gorriti has spent much of his life trying to investigate and expose corruption. When the Lava Jato scandal rocked Latin America, his publication, IDL-Reporteros, helped uncover millions in bribe payments to public officials. Gorriti played an important role in what shaped up to be one of the most consequential anticorruption investigations in the continent’s history.

Unsurprisingly, Gorriti came under fire for his investigative work. Among other lines of attack, stories started to pop up in some media outlets falsely accusing Gorriti of having ties to directors of the bribe-paying construction company that he had investigated; these stories were clearly part of a campaign to undermine his credibility by spreading false or misleading information. This is no isolated case. Corrupt politicians and their supporters routinely make use of disinformation campaigns to discredit accusers. The problem is only getting worse, and the consequences are serious. Such campaigns often spark violence and harassment against anticorruption activists, and they can even lead to the opening of criminal investigations purporting to act on the (fabricated) allegations. Other times, disinformation undermines public support for important reforms. These consequences make life harder for the people who, like Gorriti, want to expose corruption.

What did Gorriti do about this problem? Trying to persuade the public through counterspeech wasn’t very helpful. But Gorriti had another idea: sue for defamation. If persuasion couldn’t overcome the lies thrown at him, then perhaps he could use the legal system to hit his attackers where it hurts—their pocketbooks. Claiming to have borrowed the idea from a Finnish journalist who tried the same, he did his research on who was spreading lies and brought them to court. His strategy was successful, and Gorriti scored some important victories, including getting his opponents to retract their false statements and apologize.

Although anticorruption activists and journalists rarely file suits against their attackers, more might (and for that matter, should) start to follow Gorriti’s example. Recent defamation suits against media companies and politicians show that they have a real impact. They correct the record and deter people from initiating smear campaigns in the first place. Continue reading →

The FTX Collapse and the Risks of Crypto Corruption

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Last month, the cryptocurrency industry experienced a seismic shakeup as FTX—a Bahamas-based crypto exchange led by the young ex-billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried—collapsed. It turns out that FTX was riddled with fraud, and many of the company’s assets are still hidden or missing. Quite understandably, most of the reporting on FTX’s wrongdoing has focused on how FTX defrauded investors, customers, and the U.S. government. But there is another aspect of the case that deserves further scrutiny: the possibility that FTX corrupted Bahamanian regulators, and that this corruption facilitated the company’s other types of malfeasance.

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Anticorruption Parties in Central and Eastern Europe: Why Do They Fail, and How Can They Succeed?

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Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has seen both highly unstable party systems and high rates of corruption. As a result, lots of new parties keep popping up, and an anticorruption focus has proven to be a great way for them to get noticed. In fact, studies have found that new parties are more successful when they center their message on fighting political misconduct.

Among those that actually win, some of these anticorruption parties have been modestly successful in passing reforms. But many other anticorruption parties have floundered when in office. Part of the problem is that these parties often make lofty promises but fail to put forward actual, workable plans. Enough voters will still vote for the “anticorruption” party as a way of expressing disapproval for the incumbent government, without necessarily paying close attention to whether the anticorruption party and its leaders are willing or able to follow through on their promises. As a result, numerous CEE countries have had bad experiences with anticorruption parties that, when in office, appear to have little idea how to govern differently from their predecessors—and sometimes little apparent interest in doing so. Consider a few examples:

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Can Argentina Prosecute its Leaders Without Dragging Down its Democracy?

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Prosecuting a former leader for corruption is no easy task, but it is one that a lot of countries have had to undertake. In fact, since 1980, roughly half of the world’s nations have seen their former leaders jailed or prosecuted. The vast majority of those cases involved corruption charges.

Argentina has been in this situation quite a few times. Most recently, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner—the country’s ex-president and current vice-president—has been standing trial for having allegedly diverted state funds to a friend through fraudulent public works contracts. This seems like a victory for rule of law. But with the divisiveness and instability that the process has caused, it’s not clear whether the prosecution of Kirchner has done more good than harm. Because this is probably not the last corruption case that Argentinian authorities will bring against a former leader, enforcers should learn from the problems that have arisen from the Kirchner investigation.

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