Experts believe extremism is being fed by media attention
With the elections to the European Parliament coming up, political parties
in the Czech Republic are trying to get their issues to the fore. Out of
the sidelines of that effort however another issue has commanded attention
over the last month and that is the problem of extremist political
organisations and their presence in the media.
Fire-bomb attacks against Romany families, police clashing with neo-Nazis
and ultra-right gatherings in Czech towns and cities – those are images
that have appeared with increasing frequency in the Czech media, and they
have brought political extremism in the Czech Republic to the forefront of
public attention. Some however are asking if it’s not the attention
itself that may be provoking the incidents. Political scientist Jan
Charvát, an expert on issues involving extremism, believes the media is
feeding the fire by providing the attention the radicals are seeking.
“I think the problem is that the extremists know very well how to make
the media talk about them. Because this is exactly what they want. A
classic example is the National Party, they have probably less than 30
members but even with this small number of people they are very often in
the media. They know how to medialise themselves very well. This is the
problem: the media – even if they don’t want to – actually work for
the extremists.”
Jaroslav Veis, former editor-in-chief of the daily Lidové noviny, says
the media are doing the best they can with an onerous issue.
“Of course extremism in the country is a problem, it’s a fact, and we
have to face it. And the second thing is we have to inform about it. So I
think it’s quite important to inform about the problem. Another question
is how it’s done. If it were just stressing conflict situations while
trying to get some kind of sensationalism out of it, that would be bad. But
my feeling is that the Czech media is not just trying to get better
readership.”
Sensationalism however is a charge that the country’s top broadsheet,
Mladá fronta Dnes, has been battling this month since it published a
prominent interview with a leading figure in the neo-Nazi movement. The
interview, conducted by the paper’s deputy editor-in-chief, was sharply
criticised for essentially providing unchecked advertising space for the
promotion of racism. The newspaper has argued their intent was to give
equal ground to everyone. Nonetheless, for Klara Kalibová of Tolerance and
Civic Society, a watchdog organisation that monitors extremism, the report
said a lot about the problems the Czech media have with this kind of
coverage.
“It lacks information, it lacks critique and also it is an example of
the superficiality of some newspapermen. There are no journalists who are
able to go deep into the situation, to provide readers with important
information. Reports and documentaries are very shallow. There’s no
analysis of right-wing groups, most articles are about far-right groups
meeting here and there, doing this and that, and nothing about the
background, about the violent attacks etc.”
The most recent error in judgement came from Czech Television – which
broadcast blatantly racist pre-election commercials for two far-right
parties before pulling them amid an angry backlash. With these issues
casting serious doubt on Czech media standards in general, the coming weeks
and months are likely to see a concerted effort by Czech newsmakers to take
a deeper look in the mirror if they want to avoid being news themselves.
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