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Bulletins
Prague
March 3-6, 1994
INTRODUCTION
The rise of ethnonationalism and the eruption of ethnic conflict are the most urgent problems on the agendas of many of the newly emerging states of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Prominent among the forces that shape public opinion, and thus the growth or containment of ethnonationalism, are the media of mass communication. Observers have been struck by the often destructive part the media play in creating or exacerbating interethnic tensions. The nearly total absence of objective and reliable information on government-controlled television in Serbia and Croatia is rightly cited as an example of the catastrophic damage that can be wrought by irresponsible reporting. Indeed, the media in the former Yugoslavia began a war of words and images that set the stage for violent conflict months before open hostilities commenced.
It is also impossible to disassociate the media from the political conflicts in eastern Europe and Eurasia. Elites battling for supremacy view control of the media as a cornerstone of their bid for, or retention of, power. Some leaders in the region have had journalists fired or have pressured, manipulated, and taken over media outlets that criticize nationalistic appeals or that suggest ethnic conflict may be artificially created to divert attention from failed policies. The government and the opposition in many east European countries struggle over control of television and radio, only a small fraction of which has been deregulated. Independent print media in many parts of eastern Europe are severely hampered by rising costs and a blase reading public. Censorship remains an ever-present threat in many countries, including Russia, Croatia, Serbia, Hungary, and Poland.
For democracy to take root successfully in eastern Europe, the media of the region must begin to act as a neutral forum to air opposing political views on ethnicity and nationalism. How can the media be helped to perform that function? How do the media contribute to ethnic tensions? How can journalists become more sensitive to ethnic issues? Are guidelines on reporting ethnic issues necessary? How can the quality and depth of coverage of ethnic issues be improved?
The Project on Ethnic Relations (PER) and the Independent Journalism Foundation, a nonprofit organization that seeks to promote independent journalism in eastern Europe, convened a meeting of prominent journalists in eastern Europe and Russia in Prague from March 3 to March 6, 1994, to examine these and other questions on the role of the media in covering ethnic problems. The countries represented were Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, and Slovakia. Governmental and private observers also attended. At the meeting, the journalists present formed the Media Council on Ethnic Relations as an advisory body to PER that will recommend programs and strategies for improving coverage of ethnic issues in eastern Europe.
This report of the meeting, which was prepared by Elizabeth Tucker, a
consultant to PER, has not been reviewed by the participants and is the sole
responsibility of PER. While every effort was made to reflect accurately all
of the contributions, we ask the understanding of participants whose remarks
may not have been fully captured in this brief document.
THE CONTEXT
The director of PER, Dr. Allen H. Kassof, welcomed and introduced the participants. He observed that, in the afterglow of the east European revolutions of 1989 and 1990, it became clear that ethnic issues in the region would not be solved quickly or smoothly. New institutions were needed to cope with ethnonationalism, and the media would play a critical role in the building of those institutions. Unfortunately, there are many problems with the media's coverage of ethnic issues, including lack of experience and of knowledge, unprofessional behavior, and the use and abuse of the media by governments. One purpose of the Prague meeting, Kassof said, was to create a standing body that would meet from time to time to identify problems, recommend programs, speak out on the media's role in ethnic conflict, and contribute to a new set of professional standards on reporting of ethnic issues.
James L. Greenfield, president of the Independent Journalism Foundation,
presented U.S. press materials on hate speech. American journalists and
editors remain concerned and confused about how to handle hate speech in
light of the U.S. constitution's guarantee of the right of free speech. The
media's coverage of ethnic issues and conflicts is a complicated issue in
western democracies as well as in eastern Europe. Greenfield said that
standards for reporting on interethnic relations must come from within the
journalistic community itself. Politicians who exploit nationalist feelings
will not change their behavior until they see that it is politically
expeditious to do so. The media can play a role in this process.
CAUSES OF BIASED REPORTING ON INTERETHNIC RELATIONS
The participants agreed that the media, especially the government-owned television networks, played a negative role in the fanning of nationalism and ethnic hatred. Whether the media merely reflected the broader society's beliefs and attitudes about ethnicity or were deliberately manipulated by political elites was a matter of debate. The participating journalists, representatives of the liberal and independent media, said they had no formal system of networking or institutions to link them with colleagues in neighboring countries to monitor ethnically biased reporting across the region.
According to Dragoljub Zarkovich, editor in chief of the independent Belgrade weekly Vreme, journalists working for official and semi-official Serbian and Croatian publications willingly became partisan actors in the political disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. However, the Croatian and Serbian governments did fire and physically threaten some journalists who did not echo nationalistic political views. Zarkovich himself, and his wife and children, are subject to frequent anonymous threats of violence.
A study of the press by Vreme in March 1991 found that a media "war" had already begun well before the outbreak of hostilities between Serbs and Croats. In the Serbian press, the Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic was portrayed as steady, wise, resolute, dignified, and democratic, a modern politician who truly represented the Serbian people. The Croatian press characterized him as hysterical, a Stalinist and even an illegitimate son of Stalin, a bank robber and destroyer, a second Saddam Hussein, a Communist and a dictator. On the other hand, the Serbian press characterized Croatian leader Franjo Tudjman as a fascist, a traitor to the Croats, and a leader of the infamous Ustashe, while he was hailed in the Croatian press as a dignified teacher, a fighter, a modern democrat, a great patriot, and a true representative of the Croatian people. The official Serbian media labeled all Croats "Ustashe" and the official Croatian media labeled all Serbs "Chetniks," evoking memories of atrocities committed during World War II. Jan Urban of the Czech Republic said the same technique of whipping up antipathy by playing on ethnic stereotypes was used by both the Czech and the Slovak press before the breakup of Czechoslovakia.
Participants attributed much of this type of journalism to decades of Communist journalistic training, which taught partisanship, editorialized reporting for purposes of "education" rather than the impartial reporting of facts, and an aversion to anybody "different" from the society at large. According to Kalina Bozeva of Bulgaria, a large percentage of print journalists are still influenced by Communist propaganda. One sign of this, she said, is that many journalists still feel threatened by religious and ethnic differences. Another, related problem is a lack of "moral criteria." For example, in the 1980s, under Communism, many Bulgarian journalists condoned the forced assimilation of ethnic Turks, yet after the fall of Communism, these journalists did not reopen the issue for public discussion.
Ownership of the media in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union is also a major factor in what people see in newspapers and on television screens. Governments in eastern Europe are especially loath to let go of a monopoly over television. Television is the most powerful medium for influencing large segments of the population and the main vehicle for stirring up ethnic hatred, said Jasmina Kuzmanovic of the Zagreb bureau of the Associated Press. The construction of successful democracies in the region requires the development of independent electronic media. Print media are hampered by rising costs and a collapsing market, while three million people view prime-time television every evening in Serbia and Montenegro.
Konstanty Gebert of Poland said that in his reporting from Bosnia he interviewed Croatian refugees about a rumor that a Croatian child had been hacked to death by Serbs; none of his interviewees could say they had seen the incident with their own eyes. A story on television about Croatians having been locked in a barn and burned to death was believed by every person in the group. Zarkovich said that the manipulation of television and print journalism by political elites has tended to create a black and white picture of the world outside Serbia and to sharply increase xenophobia throughout the region in the last two years.
Political elites have a vested interest in promoting ethnic divisions and nationalism through subtle messages and pressure on the media, which they directly or indirectly control, said Radu Nicolau of Romania. The creation of panic among ethnic groups inflames relations between the majority and the minorities and yields political gain by diverting attention from real economic and political problems. At the same time, editors often discourage reporters from doing in-depth reporting on the underlying reasons for ethnic conflicts or tensions, he said.
Another legacy of the Communist system is a reading public that is slow to react, prone to believe the official press, and less critical of government policies than is the Western reading public. A few years ago, said Zarkovich, Slobodan Milosevic used the media to welcome international sanctions as a way to create a new Serbian community. This approach helped him come to power. Then, several months ago, on the eve of new elections, he used the media to lambast the sanctions for "killing our unborn children." Once again, the public rallied behind him, and he won the elections.
A low level of professionalism, inexperience, lack of knowledge about ethnic groups, and a strong inclination toward self-censorship among working journalists also contribute to a poor job of covering interethnic relations, participants agreed. According to Urban, the worst and least educated journalists work in television and are willing to play the government's tune on issues such as nationalism and ethnicity.
In Slovakia, said Daniel Butora, journalists provide little or no context
for stories about ethnic groups or nationalism, nor do they know what
questions to ask, or how. For example, when Slovakia's former leader,
Vladimir Meciar, said Slovakia should be a "nation-state" and not a civil
state, no journalists asked why. Similarly, Meciar would often make
statements to the effect that ethnic Hungarians were pressuring Slovaks to
move out of southern Hungary; these allegations were printed but never
investigated by journalists. Even those journalists from media considered
moderate by Slovak standards would simply not write about ethnic problems,
arguing that they did not want to damage Slovakia's image abroad or its
chances for acceptance into various international bodies. Participants
agreed that it would take some time for moral and professional standards in
the journalistic community to evolve and improve.
CHECKS AND BALANCES IN THE MEDIA
Kassof cautioned that it would take another generation for the media in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to develop methods and habits of objective reportage on interethnic relations and to evolve as effective government watchdogs. Greenfield made the point that reporting about racial issues in the United States was for a long time highly subjective and often inciting, and it took many decades to change, beginning with the civil-rights movement of the 1960s. Twenty-five years ago, it was common for the U.S. press to report the race of an alleged criminal. The greatest change in reporting on race relations came, surprisingly, not from northern editors but from southern editors, who understood that society was in the midst of a turbulent transformation and that journalism had a vital, positive role to play as a means for resolving rather than exacerbating ethnic tensions.
Over time, specific standards and rules of conduct evolved about how to report ethnic issues, conflicts, and hate speech. Anonymous pejorative quotes are no longer printed in the New York Times, for example. On the other hand, attributed hate speech is not suppressed but is published, so that it can be answered in letters to the editor, editorial columns, and radio and television talk shows. If hate speech is not answered, a newspaper often will criticize those individuals or institutions it believes should have responded, said Greenfield. The print media also serve as a constant critic of television.
At this time, the practice of printing letters to the editor is not as
widespread in eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union as
it is in the West, and there is no clear division between straight, factual
reporting and editorializing in the news columns, Greenfield said. Printing
letters that are critical of the newspaper's own coverage is also still not
as widely practiced as it is in the United States. The sort of
"self-correcting" mechanisms developed in the United States media do not
exist in eastern Europe and Russia, and hate speech thus cannot be
effectively neutralized.
STRATEGIES FOR CHANGE
The Prague meeting considered a number of options for improving the quality of coverage of interethnic relations.
- Some participants said that it would be helpful to have guidelines for reporting on ethnic relations. Others disputed the need for guidelines, saying that common sense and personal moral standards were the only prerequisites for covering interethnic issues in an objective and constructive manner. Rules would not necessarily fix the problem. Instead, a set of journalistic values had to evolve in the region.
- Participants agreed that journalists had to be trained in nonpolitical
professionalism. Ewa Letowska, former ombudsman of the Polish parliament,
said that it was essential that journalists learn how to present straight
facts and how to give minorities access to and use of the major media
without alienating or inflaming the majority population through innocent
mistakes. For example, Polish television allowed a Ukrainian bishop to make
a Christmas address to the Ukrainian minority in their native language. The
station wanted to provide Polish subtitles for its viewers, but the bishop
would not permit that. Instead of televising a Polish summary before or
after the bishop spoke, the station made the statement that the bishop
refused to have the speech broadcast in Polish. This only made the Polish
majority suspicious of the bishop's intentions with respect to the Ukrainian
minority.
Letowska is now director of the Polish Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights Press Center, and she described a weekly bulletin published by the foundation and disseminated to journalists and judges. The bulletin provides information on human rights and freedom of speech; calls attention to errors in the press and on television, as well as in politicians' statements; points out linguistic stigmatization of minorities, HIV patients, etc., in the media; and provides digestible information on the most important higher court decisions concerning human rights and constitutionality. The foundation also holds bimonthly, informal "salons" for journalists and judges and invites experts to lecture, and it keeps a database of press materials on human rights and legal culture.
Minority problems are related to the problem of democracy itself, said Letowska. The task of the journalist is to make the straightforward communication of opinions possible without playing a partisan role in the delivery of factual information. Much of democracy involves abstract ideas that are hard to put into practice. Such ideas can and should be explained to the public in small and digestible pieces. - Participants also discussed strategies for helping minorities and civic
and academic groups "lobby" the media on ethnic issues. Bozeva described her
work for the nonprofit International Center for Minority Studies and
Intercultural Relations. She is one of a small group of journalists at the
center who accompany experts on field trips. Stories on ethnic communities
and issues are then written and sold to the major media through a network of
informal contacts. Their work has brought about a change for the better in
at least one major Bulgarian daily newspaper that had been printing strongly
prejudiced articles and headlines. Journalists at the center are creating a
video library of international films on minorities and are negotiating to
have them shown on domestic television, and they are trying to raise money
to produce television documentaries on minorities.
Urban made the point that it was essential for journalists to identify and contact civic groups that both study minorities and defend their rights. He introduced Stanislav Tenc, a member of the Citizen Solidarity and Tolerance Movement, a civic group based in Prague. Tenc said that his organization monitors interethnic violence, discrimination against minorities, organized extremism, and fascism. The Czech Interior Ministry has asked the group for more information on fascist organizations. The group will continue to gather information on cases of violence and discrimination and will continue to make efforts to keep these issues in the public eye. Urban said that groups like this are springing up all across eastern Europe. It is essential, he added, to identify these groups and to help them understand how to reach the media with their information. - Several participants argued that it was imperative to produce more
in-depth analyses and comparative coverage of the issues in the region.
Kassof urged that interethnic relations be portrayed in the context of a
European civilization undergoing rapid social change. Participants agreed
that problems of interethnic relations were not only country-specific.
Nicolau said that it would advance the situation considerably if television
networks were to broadcast segments on how different countries are dealing
with interethnic problems, in order to identify the common causes of some of
these problems and to relate them to the former Communist regimes.
Julia Vasarhelyi of Hungary argued that such comparisons would have to be highly sophisticated. It would be misleading, for example, to compare poor Roma minorities with the Hungarian minority in Slovakia, which is viewed by the majority as representative of former Hungarian "oppressors." The issue is further complicated by the presence of many minorities that were once "majorities" but are now living on territory that has changed hands many times in the last few centuries. Nevertheless, said Urban, it would be possible to compare the policies of different countries toward the same ethnic minorities--for example, the Hungarian minority in Slovakia, Transylvania, and Ukraine. Collaborative reporting would be useful toward that end.
At the same time, it would be important for journalists to show not just how one minority is treated in different countries, but how one country treats different minorities (for example, how Hungary treats Roma and Jews), said Vasarhelyi. While Hungary may demand fair treatment of Hungarians outside its borders, its treatment of minorities inside its own borders may not meet the same criteria of fairness.
The end goal, said Daniel Kumermann, editor of a Czech newspaper, should be to show majority populations where underlying prejudices come from, where nationalism and fascist movements can lead, and what options exist for solving problems constructively. Keeping track of news stories on ethnic issues and incidents that were not reported would also be useful to journalists, in order to allow for the identification of trends and developments that might warn of impending trouble, said Gebert. - Journalists cannot cover interethnic relations more thoroughly without
better information, participants said. However, the type of information
required, and how to distribute it, was a matter of intense debate. Urban
suggested using the Independent Journalism Foundation's centers in Prague
and Bratislava (which train Czech and Slovak journalists) as sources for
distributing to the media, via electronic means, facts on ethnic groups in
eastern Europe; articles on ethnic relations and violence from around the
region; and a list of existing institutions dealing with minority and
interethnic issues. He proposed that, initially, a comparative six-month
study be undertaken of:
- minorities in the countries of eastern Europe and their numbers, organizations, employment situation, language preference, geographical distribution, prejudices against them, interethnic conflicts involving them, human-rights abuses, and instances of racially motivated violence;
- existing institutions, governmental and nongovernmental, dealing with or studying interethnic problems; the legal and judicial situation pertaining to minority groups; the level of awareness of minority issues on the part of legislators; government mechanisms to ensure fair treatment of minorities in all legislation; and minority representation in the institutions dealing with their problems;
- journalists' awareness of interethnic relations and problems, what is published and what is omitted in stories about ethnic groups and ethnically based violence, the percentage of news dealing with interethnic relations, linguistic usages in stories about ethnic groups, and minority access to the media.
Ultimately, the media of all the countries of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union must help to combat the psychological isolationism and disinterest that majority populations display in the region as a whole, participants agreed. Vitaly Portnikov, a correspondent for the Moscow newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, said that the journalistic elite in Moscow and St. Petersburg, for example, had no interest in the situation of the approximately twenty-five million Russians living in other republics, nor were minority issues inside Russia well covered in the domestic press. Gebert added that the media should cover conflicts that might have happened but did not, and they should explore the factors that lead to stability. - Participants differed as to the benefits of bringing international pressure to bear on the quality of reportage on ethnic issues. Butora said that it might be helpful if a team of Western experts evaluated the Slovak media's coverage of interethnic relations and then publicly presented and discussed their findings. According to Gebert, the Polish press began to tone down anti-Semitic reports because of international condemnation. However, Urban argued that international pressure might not work in every case and that each country required its own approach to the problem. For example, the more the international community criticizes Slobodan Milosevic for his nationalistic policies, the more adroitly the official press uses this criticism to Milosevic's advantage.
CONCLUSION
One of the most important forces in interethnic relations in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union is the media, which have the power to exacerbate or ease ethnic tensions. The major issue confronting the media is how to change the behavior of the people who own and work for this vital means of communication so that fair, comprehensive, and accurate information on minorities and interethnic relations is brought before the public.
Kassof asked, how is this change to be facilitated. Is it enough to provide editors and reporters with information? Should they be lobbied, invited to special seminars on interethnic relations, shamed or embarrassed about their coverage? Are they acting out of ignorance or with malevolent intent? Issues having to do with group identity, nationalism, and politics intersect with those concerning the use and abuse of information in a world undergoing rapid change--and a more complex intersection is hard to imagine. The Prague meeting was a first step in internationalizing the discussion of these issues.
Participants agreed to form a Media Council on Ethnic Relations, which would
work to improve the coverage of ethnic issues in the region. Its first step
would be to gain access to electronic mail systems, so that members could
readily communicate with one another. The next priorities would be to
identify key individuals and media institutions whose behavior needs
changing and to collect pertinent and already existing information on
ethnicity and nationalism that could be disseminated among journalists in
the region. Subsections of the council could make site visits to neighboring
countries and publish critical evaluations of the media's coverage of ethnic
issues. Lastly, certain council members, such as Bozeva, could be asked to
share their methods of covering ethnic issues and lobbying the media with
other journalists in the region. Participants agreed to study these
proposals and to meet again within a year.
PARTICIPANTS
Kalina Bozeva, writer, International Center for Minority Studies and Intercultural Relations, Sofia, Bulgaria
Daniel Butora, c orrespondent, Radio Free Europe, Bratislava, Slovakia
Konstanty Gebert, columnist and foreign correspondent, Gazeta Wyborca, Warsaw, Poland
Helena Klimova, psychotherapist, director of the civic group "Tolerance," Prague, Czech Republic
Daniel Kumermann, Editor, Lidove Noviny, Prague, Czech Republic
Jasmina Kuzmanovic, correspondent, Associated Press, Zagreb, Croatia
Ewa Letowska, Director, Polish Helsinki Foundation Human Rights Press Center, Warsaw, Poland
Radu Nicolau, producer, Romanian Television, Bucharest, Romania
Stanislav Tenc, member of the civic group "Citizen Solidarity and Tolerance Movement," Prague, Czech Republic
Vitaly Portnikov, correspondent, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Moscow, Russia
Jan Urban, writer, Prague, Czech Republic
Julia Vasarhelyi, journalist, Heti Vilaggazdasag, Budapest, Hungary
Dragoljub Zarkovich, Editor-in-Chief, Vreme, Belgrade, Serbia
FOR THE PROJECT ON ETHNIC RELATIONS
Allen H. Kassof, Director
Livia B. Plaks, Associate Director
Elizabeth Tucker, Consultant
FOR THE INDEPENDENT JOURNALISM FOUNDATION
James L. Greenfield, President; member of The New York Times editorial board
Edward J. Baumeister, Vice President; Managing Editor of The Times, Trenton, N. J.
Josephine Schmidt, Deputy Director, Center for Independent Journalism, Prague, Czech Republic
Katarina Vajdova, Director, Center for Independent Journalism, Bratislava, Slovakia
FOR THE CARNEGIE CORPORATION OF NEW YORK
David Speedie, Program Officer
FOR THE AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL GROUP, INC.
Mujib Khan, Manager, general insurance, First American Czech Insurance Company, Prague
FOR THE OFFICE OF THE CZECH PRESIDENT
Helena Dluhosova, Department of Domestic Policy
Pavel Novak, Department of Domestic Policy