Bohemian paradox
By Christopher Lord Posted Mon, Jan 1 2001
The rest of the world looked on in surprise Jan. 3 as the Czech Republic experienced its largest public demonstrations since the Velvet Revolution of 1989. An estimated 100,000 people gathered in Wenceslas Square to support a sit-in protest organized by journalists at both Czech state television channels on Dec. 27, 2000.
It all began when President Vaclav Havel appointed Jiri Hodac as general director of Czech Television. The journalists rebelled, saying this was an attempt by the Civic Democratic Party, ODS, to take over news reporting.
Hodac, who has close ties to the ODS and former Prime Minister Vaclav Klaus, denied it, but the public believed it and demonstrated to prevent it from happening.
An exhausted Hodac quit on Jan. 11, but the protesters continued. They also wanted Hodac’s entire management team out and the staff that Hodac fired to be reinstated. Analysts said fallout from the strike was growing, threatening to undermine the country’s reputation in a bid for entry into the European Union by 2004. Havel, feeling the weight of the crisis, signed legislation on Jan. 23 that would put the nomination process in the hands of non-governmental bodies and expand the Czech Television Council.
Major events throughout the 1990s, such as the division of Czechoslovakia in 1993, its joining NATO and the Kosovo war in 1999, did not mobilize this many people. The issue of political control over the media did.
A similar situation took place in 1992. The Czechoslovakian government, in its last year of existence, privatized the third Czech state TV channel. Eventually the government gave separate licenses to Czech and Slovak companies. An ad-hoc panel oversaw the process. When the bids came in, the panel found that most of them, including one connected with ODS, were openly or covertly linked to political parties. The panel deemed this unacceptable, so the license for the Czech Republic went to a non-party commercial group called CET 21, which created TV NOVA, the first private TV station in the former Eastern Bloc.
On one hand, the public does not want to be at the mercy of politically biased news reporting. On the other, one of the two main political parties in the country is more or less openly trying to take over the state media in order to prevent criticism of its policies. This looks like an open contradiction. If people care so much about bias in the media, how could ODS or anyone else get away with such a project? The truth is that the normal media culture of the Czech Republic accepts political bias. They are just not quite sure when to stop.
For instance, during the lengthy discussions about joining NATO, opinion polls showed that a sizeable part of the population was yet to be convinced that it was a good thing. You would never have guessed this from the media coverage, which presented exclusively pro-NATO views. The only source for skepticism in print was the former Communist Party newspaper, Pravo. There was no real public debate. This was, and still is, seen as a good thing.
During the bombardment of Kosovo, some Czech journalists and a few politicians started expressing doubts about supporting NATO. They have been pilloried in the press ever since for letting the country down in its hour of need.
This strange function for the press has its roots in the Czech nationalism and pan-Slavism of the 19th century. Culturally overshadowed by Germany and swallowed up politically by Austria-Hungary, the Czechs struggled to find an independent voice. Once they found it, the main values expressed were national solidarity and loyalty to the national cause. In academic life and in the arts, they were quickly established as the norm. The news media accepted the concept throughout the 20th century. Czech communism was nationalistic communism, and the capitalism established after 1989 was essentially nationalistic capitalism. The divorce from Slovakia only stressed the nationalistic element further.
The first Czech government, under Vaclav Klaus and the ODS party, enjoyed almost total support from the mainstream press after the divorce. No major daily, apart from Pravo, sought to criticize it. Had it succeeded in taking over the third TV channel, perhaps it would still be in power today. But a string of increasingly public corruption scandals eventually forced it from power. Supported by a press, which saw it as a national duty to praise the nation’s government, officials had apparently been accepting bribes in return for legislation and had opened a secret Swiss bank account to hold the funds. It was not the press or the public outcry that broke them. The party leadership broke up when influential figures decided it was better to blow the whistle than to carry on like this.
Since then, ODS has been licking its wounds and hoping to return to power. The journalist strikes ended on Feb. 9 when the Chamber of Deputies appointed Jiri Balvin as interim general director, who has since hired former Czech Television employees as the new program and financial directors. The fight is not over by any means. The political reforms that resulted from the battle over Hodac had left hiring and firing of senior staff in the hands of parliament, including the ODS-dominated Senate. If ODS can find a way to finesse it, future appointments at Czech Television could well be made through a party political filter.The public can see it coming.
They have heard the party line before.