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The Role of the Press during both the Liberation and the Post-Communist Reconstruction of the Czech Republic

English Pages, 1. 10. 2001

It is for me a rather unusual topic and I do not pretend to be an expert in this very special field. You are supposed to be the experts. But I accepted the title suggested by the organizers of your congress and shall try to make a few remarks regarding this topic.

1.      As it is well know, in the communist, totalitarian regime the press was not allowed to play the role it normally plays in free societies - i.e. to inform about real developments in the country as well as in the whole world, to present various, often conflicting views about society, to discuss existing problems and to present alternative opinions. Due to it the official press could not play any important role in the efforts of millions of citizens of our countries aiming at dismantling communism. Nevertheless, the press was not sterile and in addition to it the reading between the lines was a permanent part of our life. As a result of it we were able to appreciate details and nuances the citizens in free societies were not always able to appreciate. And I must insist that significant details and nuances were there and that the society was diversified and structured. In the last years of “soft” communism or of softening of communism the power of the regime was significantly weakened and the regime was not able to control our thinking and partly even not the media.

2.      Having used the term official press, I have to - at least - mention the in official press as well. We can talk about it long time but in spite of the heroic stories afterwards, its role in the communist era was rather small. 

3.      Much more important role was played by Western media, to some degree accessible even behind the Iron Curtain. They gave us alternative information not only about the situation in the rest of the world, about Western ideas and intellectual or cultural trends, but also about our own society. Nevertheless, important was reading about the Western worlds, relatively unimportant was “sovietology“.

4.        The knowledge about the outside world was relatively good and because of the scarcity of such information, the searching for it was relatively very intensive. The interest in culture, which played a role of substitution, was visible bigger than now.

5.        When communism started collapsing in 1989 the official media (or most of them) reacted rapidly to the new freedom and helped in mobilizing people against the old regime. The abolition of all forms of state control and the deregulation of the entry into the market were among the first steps, which were taken at that time. Dozens of new periodicals appeared expressing all possible opinions. Hundreds of mostly young enthusiastic people became journalists and a totally new, free media culture emerged. It had many positive, but some negative features as well. Among the positive ones I can mention the enthusiasm for freedom, initial emotional support for rapid, inevitable, but sometimes painful changes, enormous courage of young journalists etc. Among negative characteristics I include a wide generation gap within the journalist community, the absence of experienced middle age people, lack of professionalism and an almost overwhelming inability of the media to get under the surface of the problems and to produce more than an oversimplified picture of what is going on.

6.        The press has become a part of business industry and as a result of it the commercial success is now the main driving force. Commercialization of the press has played – to the flustration of many leftist intellectuals - generally positive role and turned out to be a key factor in establishing the real independence of the media.

7.        Commercialization has produced very different kind of media as compared to what the Czech people were accustomed to be confronted with in the past. Scandals, crime, negativistic headlines - something unimaginable in the old regime - have become the standard. It was a shocking experience for many people. The one-sided negativistic critical picture, very often a result of non-professionalism of the journalists, succeeded in presenting a false virtual picture of the society we are living in.

8.      The political power of the press (and media in general) was recognized very early and some journalists were not able to resist the temptations to interfere in politics - actively and directly.  In the case of the printed media the situation was not so dramatic, because they are totally private and there is a high degree of competition. A different story is true about public TV and public radio, where a powerful professional lobby conquered strong positions and used the media to push forward their partial interests and to mobilize public support for their allies on the political scene. The crisis they organized at the end of the year 2000 has not been fully overcome until now.

9.      To summarize, the press in the Czech Republic has passed through two, probably inevitable, periods - the period of revolutionary enthusiasm and the period of non-professional negativism. The third stage is coming now. It is a period of gradual cultivation, of growing professionalism and of real independence. We all must support this trend.

*) Václav Klaus, Notes for Distripress Congress, Prague, 1.10.2001