Last Thursday, if you called the MM News Agency at /97611/ 300771, without your of the news agency knowing it your conversation would it your conversation would have been heard by somebody in a room of the financial collection department of the Public Radio and Television. This blatantly illegal act of wiretapping was done under the order of N.Altanzul, chief of the department.

The department was listening in to the number to gather information that might help it impose some control over the agency, according to Altanzul, who argued that the agency- which broadcasts prime time daily news that is paid for and subscribed by business houses ��does� not correctly submit any of these subscription incomes to the department. The line set up in the PRT office was finally disconnected on Saturday.

This is violating human rights and press freedom acts, said the acting director of the agency Ts.Sukhbaatar. Incidentally, the agency dismissed its earlier director. O.Otgonbaatar, in early April on charges of financial misconduct. The control over radio and television, so long firmly in the hands of the government, was passed to Public Service Broadcasters in July 2005 under a law on Public Radio and Television passed by Parliament now nominates seven of the 15 members of the PSB presiding four and the government the other four. The council has a tenure of six years.

So what is the general status of press freedom in Mongolia the news dispensation? On the occation of Mongolia marking World Press Freedom Day on May 3, the Prime Minister, M.Enkhbold, said in his address to media journalists that freedom of the press is one of the country's greatest achievements since the collapse of the socialist system.
I would like to proudly emphasize that our journalists stood firm against social injustice and faced much hardship to develop a free system of the press, the fourth governance I personally feel that press freedom should also mean democracy in the press system. Press freedom and the development of its internal democracy is one of the key policies of the government. Thus, our Government of National Unity supports and will continue to support freedom of the press, he said.

While Mongolia has much to be proud of in the area of press freedom, disturbing issues remain, according to a release by the US Embassy in Ulaanbaatar on May 3. The current criminal libel law encourages self-censorship and makes journalists and editors susceptible to threats from powerful individuals and companies. Mongolia should change the libel law to a reasonable civil libel law based on those used in other democracies,� US Ambassador Pamela J.Slutz said.

Mongolia can improve overall transparency and citizens access to government information by repealing or significantly amending its State Secrets Law-a law among the most restrictive and punitive in any post-communist country-and by passing a Freedom of Information Act. This Law, for example, extends the definition of �state secret to not only national security interests /such as sensitive national defense information which Mongolia, like other nations, has a right to protect/ but also to maps finer than a 1:200,000 scale, to statistics on the number of prisoners, to basic economic and census data, to the identity of shareholders in private companies, to audits of state-owned companies, to access by citizens to state archives, and even to draft laws, amendments, and regulations. On one level, I enables �petty� corruption by handling bureaucrats the power to levy or solicit �fines� /extra-legal fees/ on citizens and businesses without having to share with the victims the text of the law or regulation which they allegedly violated. On another level, however, it has been used to harass and convict people whose views or activities were considered by the government to be contrary to their own authority of interests. Narrowing the State Secrets Law would enable Mongolians to find and know the truth while empowering Mongolia's press to shine a bright light on corruption, �she said.

Mongolia�s strict defamation and secrecy laws make it risky for journalists to make even simple references to anything concerning state corruption, says Globe International, a non-governmental organization of Mongolia. �Under current legislation, anyone accused of libel and defamation can be jailed for two to five years, in addition fines and damages� the NGO reports.

According to Freedom House, a US non-governmental organization, Mongolia was numbered among the partly-free countries in 2005. �Censorship of public information in Mongolia is banned the 1998 Law on the Media, which also prohibits the government from owning or financing media outlets. Government holdings privatized, although the government and ruling party still control four of the seven television stations and many radio stations. Complaints persist about state use of the media to promote official policies. On May3. 2004, World Press Freedom Day was marked by protest and debate in Mongolia over libel laws seen as inhibiting freedom and �scare tactics� practiced by government officials. In April, 2004, a tabloid journalist was sentenced to three months in prison for libeling a parliamentarian. In addition, authorities regularly question journalists about information sources and conduct investigations about media ownership, broadcast reach and circulation figures, editorial perspective, and sources of financing.�

Sources: UB Post, Thursday, May 4, 2006