Czech media getting bad press over extremism
The Czech media is regularly ranked as one of the freest in the world, but
recent events have called into question how well that freedom is utilised
where political extremism is involved. Stemming from a number of heavily
publicised incidents in recent weeks, many people are asking if it’s in
fact media attention that’s actually feeding the occurrence of right-wing
extremism. This week’s Talking Point discusses the events that have brought the journalists
themselves into the spotlight.
It’s election season, with voting for the European Parliament coming up
this weekend, and every political party wants to get its message out and be
heard. Political parties though also include radical organisations whose
messages are often ostensibly racist and violate the country’s
anti-fascism laws. This hasn’t stopped those parties from seeking
attention however, and they have been doing so for the last several weeks,
leaving the media in a quandary over how to react. Should it ignore
radicals and find itself accused of not doing its job, or risk being
accused of promoting extremism when it reports on their activities.
Opposing views are not hard to come by.
Political scientist Jan Charvát has dealt heavily with the issue of
extremism and the media.
“I think the problem is that the extremists know very well how to make
the media talk about them. Because this is exactly what the extremists
want. If you know what to do and what to say if you are the head of an
extremist group you know what you have to say to get into the media. And
then when the media starts to talk about you it seems like you are much
bigger than you are in reality. I think this is the problem. The media –
even if they don’t want to – actually work for the extremists.”
Jaroslav Veis is the former editor-in-chief of the Czech daily Lidové
noviny:
“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.”
Incidents involving right wing extremists have been mounting. Frequent
demonstrations around the country have pitted neo-Nazis against the police
on a number of occasions in the last month and there have been two Molotov
cocktail attacks on Romany families, one of which left a small child in
critical condition. These events were all meticulously - as some would have
it excessively - reported on, culminating in two high-profile controversies
on the part of the media. The first was an interview with a leading
neo-Nazi published in the Czech Republic’s leading broadsheet, Mladá
fronta Dnes.
“In this interview the interviewee said a lot of things but he didn’t
say the truth. And this was an advertisement, not the truth about him or
about the right wing. It was just about what he wanted to say. And the guy
who made the interview was not able to work with the situation. He was not
able to say, ‘well, you say you are against violence but in fact you were
charged with violence many times in the past so how do these two things go
together?' Of course we have to talk about extremism, but we have to talk
about it the way it is, not in the way the extremists want to be seen”
Mladá fronta has not faulted itself for the controversy, arguing their
intent was to give equal ground to everyone and noting that they have also
done interviews with communists. The same ethic however landed Czech
Television in deep water a couple of weeks later. The public broadcaster
aired a pre-election clip for a nationalistic political party calling for
“a final solution to the gypsy question”. While Czech Television did
apologize and pulled the commercial, it was the last drop for many people
who see the media’s ability to deal responsibly with hard issues as being
fundamentally flawed. Martin Kovalčík works on social integration
programmes for the Czech charity foundation People in Need:
“I think we’re at the start, things are developing. Right now the
situation is that neo-Nazi organisations hold their events and the media
only inform about it. They have to write about it because they are
newspapers, but it isn’t good to only inform. They have to do more, they
have to analyse things, they have to think about the roots. They have to
analyse the situation, not only inform about it.”
Klára Kalibová is a lawyer for Tolerance and Civic Society, a watchdog
organisation that monitors extremism. In Ms Kalibová’s view, the problem
very much resides in a corporate media comprised mostly of
thirty-somethings who were thrust into a media elite after the Velvet
Revolution, and lack the experience, education and mentorship to be able to
look critically at their own work.
“The only ethic that most of the Czech media has is the ethic of their
owner, so they write what their owner thinks should be written. And what
the owner thinks will attract people to buy newspapers. Also I think what
we lack – or what the Czech media lacks – are journalists around the
age of 40 and 50, the middle generation from which younger journalists
could learn a lot of things. It’s maybe the explanation for the situation
within the Czech media, not just concerning right-wing extremism but any
kind of political issue.”
Ways to improve the situation are being sought. A symposium on the subject
of extremism and the media was held by Charles University to address the
issue among academics, media experts and members of the media themselves.
This however was a once-off event, and any lasting solution will evidently
have to be methodical and long term. Ms Kalibová and many other experts
suggest the most obvious recourse is to look abroad.
“For example in Sweden, when there was an increase in racially motivated
crimes, the four main media agreed to publish photos of the top neo-Nazis
in the country giving their names and what they are guilty of. So the media
in Sweden were able to uncover the neo-Nazi movement and were able to say
they disagree with the violence and with the anonymity of neo-Nazis. So if
the Czech media would be able to do such a campaign it would be nice. They
should also write about the neo-Nazi movement, but not by saying
‘they’re just silly boys, doing nothing, just shouting.’ They have to
understand that the neo-Nazi movement is a very big problem for certain
groups of people. There are a quarter of a million people who feel unsafe
in their homes and nobody cares about them. For example there was an arson
attack 30 days ago and the police are not able to discover who did it. So
these are ways in which the media could be very active. They can go after
the police investigation and ask the police why they are not investigating
properly.”
2009 marks 20 years since the fall of communism, but even that space of
time seems not enough to fill the many voids left by revolution – in this
case what many feel is a lack of an authoritative and responsible media
corps.
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