East European Politics & Societies

East European Politics & Societies http://eep.sagepub.com Between Reality and Dream: Eastern European Media Transition, Transformation, Consolidation, and Integration Peter Gross East European Politics and Societies 2004; 18; 110 DOI: 10.1177/0888325403259919 The online version of this article can be found at: http://eep.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/18/1/110 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com On behalf of: American Council of Learned Societies Additional services and information for East European Politics & Societies can be found at: Email Alerts: http://eep.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://eep.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Downloaded from http://eep.sagepub.com by Carla Cruz on October 16, 2008 10.1177/0888325403259919BetweenEastern European Reality and Politics Dream and Societies ARTICLE Between Reality and Dream: Eastern European Media Transition, Transformation, Consolidation, and Integration Peter Gross This article explores the progress made in the transition and transformation of Eastern Europe’s news media and the potential for their integration into the Western European media scene. Transformation and consolidation in Eastern European societies and in their media systems should not be pur- sued in the name of integration. For these societies, these processes have a raison d’etre of their own: reaching the stated desideratum of a bona fide democracy, which means a degree of sameness in the key aspects of their political culture; for the media, it means professionalization based on shared standards of journalism and media roles. Keywords: Eastern Europe, media, transformation, integration This article explores the progress made in the transition and transformation of Eastern Europe’s news media and the potential for their integration into the Western European media scene. The processes of change in Eastern Europe have suffered from a lack of a guiding blueprint, leading to the adaptation of various general theories mostly developed by political scientists, histori- ans, economists, and sociologists who studied other regions in the throes of transition from authoritarian regimes.1 These theories have informed the materialist, standard, radical, idealist, and poetic media theories, all predicated on the effects that politics, economics, and/or technology have on changes in the media systems, the nature of the laws governing media, the role(s) media 1. See, for example, Larry Diamond, Juan Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, eds., Democracy in Developing Countries: Latin America (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1989); also Geoffrey Pridham, ed., The New Mediterranean Democracies: Regime Transition in Spain, Greece, and Portugal (London: Frank Cass, 1984). A good summation of applicable theories can be found in Michaela Tzankoff, “Die deutsche Transformationsforschung nach 1989—Ein Uberblick,” in Barbara Thomas and Michaela Tsankoff, eds., Medien und Transformation in Osteuropa (Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 2001), 9-38. East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 18, No. 1, pages 110–131. ISSN 0888-3254 110 © 2004 by the American Council of Learned Societies. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1177/0888325403259919 Downloaded from http://eep.sagepub.com by Carla Cruz on October 16, 2008 are to play in postcommunist societies, and the practice of journalism.2 Consequently, the nature of the changes in the media systems, both in 1989 when the communist regimes were top- pled and in the subsequent years, was seen to be driven by factors external to the media. Our analysis follows Dankwart Rustow’s sometimes overlapping phases of change (preparatory, decision, and consolidation):3 1. the preparatory phase in which there is a breakdown of the non- democratic regime is the media’s transition from communist forms in 1989, begun in some countries, it could be argued, before 1989, thanks to well-developed underground and alternative media; 2. the decision phase in which a democratic order is first established constitutes the transformation to media forms and roles, laws, and journalism that resemble those in the West, a phase whose main features have been noted by a number of media scholars and syn- thesized by Jakubowicz as a “systemic social transformation”;4 and 3. the consolidation phase in which democracy is further developed and becomes ingrained in society. For the media institutions, it is a phase in which a new political culture of owners, directors, edi- tors, journalists, and audiences becomes consonant to a democratic society and thus demands the institutionalization of new behaviors, attitudes, and habits (new media management and journalistic practices, etc.) and new definitions of media auton- omy and journalistic independence, new roles that serve democracy and its civil society. The key indicators for change in every phase are not clearly delineated and agreed on by students of the post-communist evolution, a fact that makes assessments of progress in each phase difficult. Suffice it to say that the success of the consolidation phase is indeed the last arbiter of a society’s democratization because whereas “democratic culture is certainly not a precondi- 2. See Karol Jakubowicz, “Virtuous vs. Vicious Circles: Systemic Transformation and Media Change in Central and Eastern Europe” (Paper presented at the “Democratization and Media” Conference, Bellagio, Italy, April 9-13, 2001); Colin Sparks and Anna Reading, Com- munism, Capitalism and the Mass Media (London: Sage, 1998); Slavko Splichal, Media beyond Socialism: Theory and Practice in East-Central Europe (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994). 3. Dankward Rustow, “Transitions to Democracy: Toward a Dynamic Model,” Comparative Politics 2 (1970): 337-365. 4. Jakubowicz, “Virtuous vs. Vicious.” East European Politics and Societies 111 Downloaded from http://eep.sagepub.com by Carla Cruz on October 16, 2008 tion for the initiation of democracy,” such a culture establishes its core ethos.5 Unfortunately, establishing new cultures is a difficult and slow process, particularly given that Eastern European societies are not a tabula rasa, their pre-communist and communist eras having embedded cultural traits inimical to democracy that are “durable and persistent.”6 We know from observations made dur- ing the past dozen post-communist years that despite the nations of the region having transformed themselves into systems resem- bling those found in the West, their cultures have not yet changed into ones fitting functioning democracies. Furthermore, to have lasting affects, these changes need to be institutionalized, and through a formal or informal educational process, the operative attitudes, behavior, habits, and values to sustain the new culture are to be inculcated, in a pattern of development suggested by Franz Boas.7 Thus, Rostow’s consolidation phase may include (possibly overlapping) subphases in which first a new culture is established and then acculturation to it takes place. In fact, both the transformation and consolidation phases may have overlapping elements, and most media scholars see external factors driving these phases. Yet there are significant internal factors at work as well when one examines the attempted changes in the nature of public television (e.g., in the Czech Republic), the (re)interpretation and rewriting of post-1989 media laws (e.g., in Bulgaria and Romania), and the role and practice of journalism (e.g., Adam Michnik’s Gazeta Wyborcza, when compared to other Eastern European media), to name but a few elements of endogenously driven ferment in the regions’ media worlds. 5. See Larry Diamond, ed., Political Culture and Democracy in Developing Countries (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1994), 239. This ethos is outlined by Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz, and Seymoure Martin Lipset, eds., “Introduction: Comparing Experiences in Democracy,” in Pol- itics in Developing Countries: Comparing Experiences with Democracy (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1990), 16-17: “Belief in the legitimacy of democracy; tolerance for opposing parties, beliefs, and preferences; a willingness to compromise with political opponents, and under- lying this, pragmatism and flexibility; some minimum of trust in the political environment, and cooperation, particularly among political competitors; moderation in political positions and partisan identifications; civility of political discourse.” 6. Lucian W. Pye, Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authority (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 29. 7. Franz Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man, rev. ed. (New York: Greenwood, 1983). 112 Between Reality and Dream Downloaded from http://eep.sagepub.com by Carla Cruz on October 16, 2008 Generalizing the changes in the region is, of course, one of the potential problems, as most media analysts have more or less fol- lowed Karol Jakubowicz’s approach in exploring the patterns of change based on his Case A and B scenarios, or the northern ver- sus southern models of democratization.8 The separation of Case A and Case B countries is to some extent warranted from the perspective of political scientists, economists, and sociologists, but one of the core problems these nations share in entering a consolidation phase is related to the nature of their respective cultures, a theme left largely unexplored. The essences of democratization are the value orientations and habitual processes that underline changes in the political, social, economic,

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