powerful temptation; no matter how many times this error is gravely chastised by historians, it continues to be strongly appealing to groups in all our societies who want to vent their wider frustrations on alleged excesses by "the press". Spirited discussion of the interplay between media and society reminded us that educating our systems about the media's role in democracy's functioning is vital, too - alongside the constant re-examination to ensure that media continue serving our democracies' evolving needs. Amid our group's consensus that history has shown that media are an indispensable part of the solution, not part of the problem, the different tonalities in our talk showed that this lesson needs to be studied constantly in new contexts. Striking testimony constantly emerged during discussions about the vast discrepancy between the working environments of media in the emerging democracies and those in better-off CSCE countries. Ultimately, this disparity is less important than the shared desire and need of people in all these countries for a free, pluralistic media. But the material difficulties of news media are drastic: acute shortages of newsprint and no advertising revenues, barriers to distribution and to prime time transmission, lack of professional journalists and professional spokespeople, intimidation and corruption. Citing these daunting obstacles, several participants referred to the efforts by governments in the new democracies to promulgate more liberal attitudes toward the media and blamed major international media for compounding local difficulties by reporting on negative developments in their countries. Journalists from the developing democracies, however, stressed the need for reporting that lays bare problems instead of soft-pedalling or covering them up. "There are minorities in our country whose existence we never knew of officially," one journalist said to underscore the point that discussion of ethnic minorities, not official control, was the way forward. It is precisely the controls and the denial of such discussion in the past decades that injected such virulence into the ethnic tensions finally surfacing now. There appeared to be unanimity, among the journalists and NGOs from all CSCE countries in Group 2, that the emerging democracies do not see themselves as developing countries in the sense of that word in the 1950s. Instead of seeking some way of their own, they aspire to a Western political model, and, however great their economic problems, they aspire to press freedom along the lines that the West has defined as part of our core values. But just because the Cold War is over, the fundamental rules must not be allowed to blur - not at least if we want to succeed in expanding press freedom in Europe as part of a greater transparency that could protect peace against a return to old demons. As is widely acknowledged now in the wake of Communism's demise, ignorance and prejudice, not media reporting or even propaganda, have been the source of racism and conflict in our century. And the vigour of the media in neighbouring nations as well as our own is a basic guarantee of our ability to live in more open societies. Our participants made plain their feeling that there is no room for complacency or facile assumptions that democracy produces press freedom instead of the other way around. Censorship is manifest in several CSCE countries - indeed, openly practised in several major member states, albeit with promises that it will be only temporary. Every session of the seminar in Group 2 discussed the need for CSCE missions to investigate and report on conditions interfering with the free press and free expression in CSCE countries as a priority in accomplishing the organisation’s mission. This reminder about the need for vigilance was typical of a major theme in our discussions: that first principles apply always, even in the early days of fragile democracies whether in As is widely acknowl18-century post-colonial America or in 20th-century post-communist Russia. No country has a perfect record, but neither should any country be extended as permanent waiver from respecting the rights of expression. Constantly, too, participants stressed the need and opportunities for continued, more and better cooperation. A particular illustration of this general point emerged in the complaints by journalists from developing democracies about the lack of trained spokespeople at every level of authority in their countries. This point triggered some debate among participants from these countries, with governmental representatives pointing steps taken to expand media access to officials. That discussion seemed to convey the texture of real frustrations about getting real information - even on quite ordinary subjects CSCE ODIHR BULLETIN Vol. 2, No. 1 28