no institutional protection for them in the course of covering dangerous stories, participants said. In coping with these new regional crises, the group insisted that more imagination is needed where the media are concerned. In the group's overall discussion and arguments about media's responsibility, a term seemed to encapsulate journalistic aspirations and to provide a watchword for standards: "professionalism." This seemed to convey the journalist’s right to human error as in all professions. It also underlined the consensus among journalists in the group that there are clear ideals for the media shared by the best practitioners from all the democratic nations. But these ideals sometimes are grasped in abstract terms better than in daily practice. Yet, getting it done right is as important as having the material means to do it. Thus the conclusion of the group pointed to opportunities for much more journalist-to-journalist, media-to-media co-operation. These needs run the gamut from management skills to basic journalistic techniques. The technique of writing a story to ensure that it reflects the full diversity of relevant viewpoints is a professional skill that includes an object-lesson in tolerance. At the more sophisticated end of the scale, there are opportunities for trans-border co-operation on journalistic targets. For example, transparency about arms transfers was central in the CSCE's initial attempts to reduce military tensions in Europe: Today, media in the CSCE nations could work together to illuminate the current state of weaponry in Europe. There were other suggestions that media work together at lobbying CSCE governments for help in preventing persecution of journalists and achieving other joint goals - for example, helping prevent legal prosecution or other forms of harassment of whistle-blowers who leak secrets to defend the public interest. To follow up on suggestions for co-operation, several delegations suggested that the interested parties should seek to organise another meeting under CSCE auspices - perhaps with funding from media organisations and NGOs - to explore the practical modalities of matching recipients' needs with expertise. What is needed is a flexible Western donors clearinghouse among media, an evolving system that reaches beyond the professional grantsmen at both ends of the aid conveyor belt. The CSCE's blessing could encourage private benefactors to pursue this new facet of modernising the media in Europe's new democracies. Participants expressed pleasure at the opportunities for unfettered professional exchanges at the Warsaw seminar - an unbureaucratic occasion that seemed to reflect an open-ended, inventive CSCE approach to international co-operation. What appeared to matter most to the group was for any follow-up launched in pursuit of the practical suggestions that emerged in our discussion to go forward in the hands of media professionals and avoid being captured by ideologues or apparatchiks of any persuasion. The discussion and arguments in Group 2 also explored the media in a wider context: where we stand with regard to the media in our various countries as the Cold War's black-and-white values start fading to gray areas and some governments start putting forward under new guises old attempts to discredit the value of freedom of the press. On this point, our discussion sometimes suggested a three way cleavage of priorities among CSCE regions, specifically North Americans and Western Europeans pressing new democracies to pursue higher standards. North Americans and the new democracies are seen as pressing the wealthier Europeans to provide more help, and the Europeans as seeking acceptance of government pressures for rights to curb the media. The strength of feeling behind these shifting tactical alliances emerged as complaints that some delegations sounded "patronising" or "condescending" and lacked "cultural sensitivity" and "realism." These characterisations seemed to emerge mainly from governmental representatives or quasi-political participants as part of wider institutional rivalries. In contrast, journalists from all the CSCE countries seemed to reflect convergent notions in their views of the media. A frequent note in continuing discussions off the conference floor was mutual admiration among journalists about how well their colleagues in different countries managed to do the job. Striving to get the story and publish it, whatever the circumstances, is the common obsession of the media, the journalists said. CSCE ODIHR BULLETIN Vol. 2, No. 1 30