Freedom of speech is undergoing a peculiar change in the Czech Republic. Extremists, whose opinions in their full force could only be found on their web pages, suddenly found space in the regular press. What has changed and what does it mean?
Regular news coverage
The first sign of it could be found in Mostecký deník. “How the police beat the pensioners and children, a reportage of a Janov march participant,” was printed in the daily’s news part last year in October after the first neo-Nazi march in Litvínov Janov. Regional office of the daily decided to print a reportage of a Workers’ party (DS) member and a participant of the banned march Jiří Šlégr as a sign of their independence. The text was printed right beside those of professional authors and for a lay person it was not easy to distinguish between them.
Many things have changed since then, extremist marches through Czech towns have become the hit of the spring and the most popular daily Mladá fronta Dnes printed an interview with the founder of the national resistance and one of the main representatives of the neo-Nazi movement Filip Vávra at the beginning of May.
“We wanted to offer space to everybody without making any difference,” editor-in-chief of the Mostecký deník Ondřej Hájek said. When asked why, the supposedly reportage text works with unconfirmed information (the information about police beating children, announced in the headline, is not mentioned in the text and no witnesses could confirm it), he is unable to answer. “Of course I do not believe in. It was a hectic time. We did not know what to do with it,” said Hájek. “We would think twice about it today. We are more experienced,” he added.
Mladá fronta Dnes went much further half a year later. One page interview with Vávra was the first interview with a neo-Nazi representative in a national media in the Czech Republic. Vávra received the same space as the ČSSD leader Jiří Paroubek one week before or the writer Benjamin Kuras one week later.
What is going on? Reportedly, the discussion of whether or not to do an interview with a neo-Nazi was “complicated” in the daily’s office but in the end the recency of the topic and the need to show the real thinking of Filip Vávra, the “racist and xenophobic” one won, according to the editor-in-chief Robert Čásenský. They thought that if the interview was lead by an experienced journalist this would come through. “And it did work,” Čásenský said, commenting on the work of his deputy Viliam Buchert.
The editor-in-chief does not share the worry that an extensive interview with a neo-Nazi is a problem since there is no point in trying to lead an open discussion with someone whose aim is to spread hate. “It was a regular news coverage text,” Buchert said. “Interviews are being done with the Communist party representatives too and those are also extremists.”
There is no point
Yes, that happens sometimes but the fact is that in Mladá fronta Dnes, in the last year, there cannot be found a single extremist, not even a communist interview in the great amount of regional governors, ministers and cultural representatives.
“The far-right should receive space coverage corresponding to their election preferences in the Czech Republic. That would be very little,” said Miroslav Mareš, Masaryk University politologist, specialising in both left and right-wing extremism. Moreover, Filip Vávra is not – at least according to his own words – a member of any political party and does not run in the current European Parliamentary elections. The need (and the equal right to inform when it comes to political competition) to give him space, just like the far-right Workers’ party got, does not work in this case.
Experts prefer to include the extremists’ opinions among the analytical texts mapping the plans and ideology of the neo-Nazis. “Interviews represent an unequal battle. You are facing someone whose answers are based on lies right from the start and you need to keep on proving them wrong,” said Jan Charvát, Charles University politologist. If the daily has decided to do an interview in the first place, it should follow the route of a thorough confrontation.
That has not happened. “The journalist failed to confront Vávra with his violent past, for example,” said the politologist meaning the fact that the paper accepted Vávra’s attempt to explain that he is “not a fan of violence but self-defence”. Coming from a man investigated for an attack on a Prague gay bar or disorderly conduct in front of a synagogue it does not suffice as an answer. And the reader does not learn why he had to “defend” himself in these two cases.
What next
In reaction to Vávra’s penetration into the good company, the politologists and people from the NGO sector talk about the need of discussion targeting the way to inform about the extremists among the journalists.
It is not a very hot topic among the journalists though. “A more mass media discussion would certainly be great but I do not think it will actually take place,” said Jindřich Šídlo, editor-in-chief of the home news coverage of the Czech Television and a former expert on right-wing extremism. He thinks the facts going against it are purely practical (time) but the competitive intolerance or extreme loyalty towards other members of the profession can play a role. Local journalists simply are not used to argue constructively sitting at one table and usually they only meet when they are being threatened (like the recent case of the wire-tapping law).
In addition to that, there is the belief that a democratic society will deal with anykind of ideas on its own and so the freedom of speech is limitless. “Even though the journalists hate to hear this, they are the ones who create public opinion and so they are responsible for it. If the most popular serious daily leads an interview with Filip Vávra, it legitimises his opinions and turns him into an important personality,” said lawyer Klára Kalibová. And she added that she carries an idea for a multimedia lecture for the journalists in hear head. Money ate the problem, of course, and also the fact that because of the NGO sector participation, the debate would lose the semblance of independence.
There is at least some movement on the academic field: sociologist Ivan Gabal in cooperation with Charles University is putting together a workshop for the journalists to take place at the end of May. Gabal supports the idea of giving space to neo-Nazis in media but only when it means a deeper insight into their social, political and violent background. “If the media give up on this ambition, they become the mouthpiece of an unacceptable tolerance and racism that has already got us into a terrible war once and then resurrected in the 1990s in the Balkans and lead to Srebrenica.”
