East European Politics & Societies

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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

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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 pursued 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.

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, editors, 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 autonomy 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.”

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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 during the past dozen post-communist years that despite the nations of the region having transformed themselves into systems resembling 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).

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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 versus 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, and professional cultures and the evolution of vital civil societies.9 In fact, such a view of democratization is necessary if Attila Agh’s argument that the region’s “transition” can- not occur unless it integrates with Western Europe and that “there can be no European integration without a socio-economic and political consolidation, either”10 is to be carried out to its logical conclusion. It is necessary too because he defines this Europeanization or integration as involving “a particular type of political, economic and social systemic change which fits within the EU.” Unfortunately, he fails to emphasize that if this “particular” systemic change is to be made workable and is to meet “the quite concrete EU requirements,” it necessitates a changeover to types of cultures (social, political, professional, etc.) and a type of civil society not now found in Eastern Europe.11 Absent simulta- neous systemic and cultural transformations, we are left with “the phenomenon of a ‘democratic civic masquerade,’ meaning the attempt to suggest the real existence of civic commitment and

8. Jakubowicz, “Virtuous vs. Vicious.” Case A countries include Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic; Case B countries include Albania, Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia, Bul- garia, and Romania. 9. See, for example, Christiane Lemke, “Nachholende Mobilisierung: Demokratisierung und politischer Protest in postkommunistischen Gesellschaften,” Aus Politic und Zeitgeschichte 5 (1997): 29-37. 10. Attila Agh, The Politics of Central Europe (London: Sage, 1998), 44, 49-50. Agh speaks of an economic, social, and political transition that, he explains, denotes a direction and goals for changes, recognizing the necessary cultural changes only as the last stage of the social transition. 11. Ibid, 49.

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Downloaded from http://eep.sagepub.com by Carla Cruz on October 16, 2008 democratic practice through the fulfillment of merely formal cri- teria.”12 The equivalent is true for the Eastern European media. An examination of media transition-transformation and of their nature suggests that overall, there are far more similarities than differences between media in Case A and Case B countries in Eastern Europe. There are, of course, differences and similarities between Eastern European and Western media: the former, it appears, are pre-Western with some of their elements in a hyper- Western mode, as we will show, and some, in a select few areas of media evolution, are in a tentative, incipient consolidation phase. Thus, generalizations regarding media evolution in the region are possible, despite the glaring presence of some anoma- lies such as Albania, Bosnia, and Kosova.

Media transition and transformation The transition from communist media, and from underground or alternative media where they existed, was achieved almost instantly at the moment the communist regimes disappeared, and the transformation, in Oleg Manaev’s meaning of the term, began simultaneously with that occurrence.13 As many scholars exploring Eastern European media developments have pointed out, political, economic, and technological factors, as well as internationalization and globalization, affect the evolution of the transformation. The Eastern European media systems were transformed to resemble those in the West, but the East’s media systems were predominantly controlled by political parties, governments, indi- viduals, and commercial enterprises and to a lesser extent by reli- gious, ethnic, intellectual, and other groups. The one-party media systems became multiparty media systems until they too disappeared by the mid-1990s, replaced by more autonomous, if not independent, media. Newspapers, however, generally retained a decidedly partisan, politicized orientation; public broadcasting continued to be manipulated if not controlled by

12. Lemke, “Nachholende Mobilisierung,” 152. 13. Oleg Manaev, “Rethinking the Social Role of the Media in a Society in Transition,” Cana- dian Journal of Communication 20 (1995): 45-65.

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Downloaded from http://eep.sagepub.com by Carla Cruz on October 16, 2008 governments, and the rest of the predominantly commercial broadcast outlets remained entertainment oriented and generally politically biased in their news and public affairs coverage.14 There have been some short-lived attempts to bring most if not all broadcast media back under state control (e.g., Croatia and Serbia) and to manipulate elements of the national press (e.g., Hungary) in a similar manner to that found in Macedonia, where there was a struggle “to allow authorities a direct influence on the management and editorial policy of the ‘national media.’”15 How far along is Eastern European media’s systemic role and professional transformation, and are there any signs that they are ready to enter a consolidation phase and that integration with the West is possible?

Media systems The morphology of the Eastern European media systems resem- bles that of their Western counterparts. Yet the hypertrophy of the Eastern European media systems throughout most of the 1990s at once differentiated them from their Western European counterparts and signaled an inchoate transformation because it demon- strated developments that were in many instances devoid of commercial rationale and divorced from rich civil societies that media systems could claim they directly represented.16 Instead, these developments represent open societies on a wild search for a sociopolitical direction, with a plethora of political parties vying for power, a large number of cultural and sociopolitical ideas

14. See, among a multitude of studies on which this article depends for information and analysis, Splichal, Media beyond Socialism; Sparks and Reading, Communism, Capitalism, and the Mass Media; Tomasz Goban-Klas, The Orchestration of the Media: The Politics of Mass Communications in Communist Poland and the Aftermath (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994); Patrick H. O’Neil, Post-Communism and the Media in Eastern Europe (London: Frank Cass, 1997); Ekaterina Ognianova, “The Transitional Media System of Post-Communist Bulgaria,” Journalism & Mass Communication Monographs 162 (June 1997); David L. Paletz, Karol Jakubowicz, and Pavao Novosel, Glasnost and After: Media and Change in Central and Eastern Europe (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton, 1995); Peter Gross, Entangled Evolutions: The Media and Democratization in Eastern Europe (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002). 15. Vesna Sopar, “The Media System in the Republic of Macedonia: Between Theory and Prac- tice,” South-East Europe Review 1 (2002): 47-66. 16. Many of the Eastern European media could not have survived economically were it not for some form of subsidy from political parties in the first half of the 1990s; many if not most

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Downloaded from http://eep.sagepub.com by Carla Cruz on October 16, 2008 struggling for supremacy, and a mostly unregulated capitalism that played havoc with the region’s socioeconomic world. In short, the developments of and in the media systems mirror societies in the process of a transformation in which the new con- tenders in these political, sociocultural, economic, and even ethnic struggles considered the necessity of controlling and manipu- lating the media to be axiomatic. The commercial footing on which the new Eastern European media systems based themselves, distinct from their Western European counterparts, was weak, and this made economic survival an even greater driving force than politics by the end of the 1990s. Indeed, the exigencies of financial survival had enlarged the media’s commercial interests as early as the mid-1990s, clouding the demarcation between the (until then supreme) political and market roles. First, the symbiotic relationship with political parties and then the press-party parallelism that ensued in the second half of the 1990s were an extreme manifestation of the Western European model, providing for a great deal of political pluralism and diversity at a time when perhaps a “universal- ist” media would have more directly contributed to the process of resocialization and reeducation.17 That is, media whose loyalties are to their publics, to an objective journalism, and to a measure of uniformity in the presentation of resocialization and reeducation messages disseminated for democratization purposes. Unlike public service media in Western Europe, their cousins in the East were controlled by the governments in power, or at very least heavily manipulated, in the past 12 years. On the posi- tive side, public service broadcasting’s personnel, unions, and governing councils, as well as some parliamentarians and political parties, have resisted government interference. In response to

media were established to provide a political soapbox for political parties, politicians, or other groups who perceived a need to have a media outlet for social, political, cultural, reli- gious, and ethnic reasons. 17. While it is true that few political parties still own media (mostly extremist parties such as Romania Mare, owned by the party of the same name in Romania), there are quite a few politicians who own major media outlets, for example, Pavol Rusko who owns TV Markiza in Slovakia. For arguments on the need for a nonpartisan political media in the process of democratization, see Gross, Entangled Evolutions.

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Downloaded from http://eep.sagepub.com by Carla Cruz on October 16, 2008 such heavy-handed interference in the Czech Public Television, for example, there have been virtual revolts by their personnel; in Poland, there were calls in parliament to “take steps to de- politicize the country’s television and radio committee.”18 Prob- lems persist in the region’s public service media mainly because, as Andras Szekfu writes about Hungarian public service broadcasting, these problems have “deep roots in the unresolved con- tradictions [in] . . . political culture.”19 Nevertheless, the transformation is in full swing, that is, the public service model has been codified in law, advisory and leadership councils and boards have been established resembling those in the West, and the fight is over when, how, and which new culture will define the public service role and the workings of the councils and boards and television staffs. As noted already, Eastern European nonpublic service media systems were more or less on a market footing by the end of the 1990s, providing increased sovereignty vis-à-vis the political parties and politicians, engendering a struggle between the media elite and the political elite over editorial policies. Consequently, with some exceptions, this struggle also increased the media’s power. That is, the media have gained a modicum of control over the presentations of news, and by 2000, “politicians and political parties could no longer predict which ‘reality’ was going to be presented, and how it was to be presented or interpreted.”20 This does not mean Eastern Europe’s media have attained any- thing even remotely resembling an ideal media autonomy, one that is certainly not found in the West either and perhaps is impossible anywhere, or that the new roles assumed by the media and their journalism are now purposefully serving democratization. Media ownership remains the key foci of arguments surrounding media autonomy, mistakenly from our perspective.21

18. Vojtek Kosc, “Czech TV Crisis Prompts Poland to Rethink Its Own Public Media,” Transi- tions Online (retrieved from www.tol.cz, 2001). 19. Andras Szekfu, “The Crisis in Hungarian Public Service Broadcasting—Margin Notes on Two Reports,” South-East Europe Review 1 (2001): 83-92. 20. See Gross, Entangled Evolutions, 56. 21. For the mixture of indigenous and foreign individual and groups who own media and whose purpose is owning newspapers and broadcast stations, leadership and functional

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Downloaded from http://eep.sagepub.com by Carla Cruz on October 16, 2008 Ownership does not tell us much about professional autonomy or subordination because it is “the overall cultural mix . . . that will tend to fix the position of the media on [the subordination- autonomy] continuum.”22 Significantly, in Eastern Europe, this “cultural mix” is in constant flux and “the region’s legal, conceptual, structural, and even normative constraints on the media are simply unsettled, undefined, and unsecured and suggest, in this case, that the stage is not yet set for the consolidation phase to begin in Eastern Europe’s media world.”23 Ultimately, journalism’s autonomy is largely dependent on the journalists, editors, and directors and the degree to which they demand their right to practice an independent journalism (more on this in the next two sections). A tentative and limited trend in this direction began by the end of the 1990s, but institutionalizing this autonomy is difficult to achieve in a situation in which the owners struggle for economic survival, corruption is extensive, clear support from the public is lacking, and the absence of independent judicial systems restricts the autonomy of journalists. There are other common problems shared by Eastern Europe’s media systems, problems that differentiate them from Western European media systems and that inhibit their contribution to democratization. First, there is a dearth of professional personnel capable of managing noncommunist media enterprises. Second, journalism education is relatively poor in most of the region’s

definitions for their outlets vary significantly, thus at the very least signaling a relative pluralism and diversity in the system. In Bulgaria, by virtue of the importance of the media owned by foreign corporations, foreign media control took on the appearance of a quasi- monopoly; that is, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation and Antena, a Greek media com- pany, own the two most popular television stations in Sofia, BTV and Nova, respectively, and the German WAZ publishing giant owns Bulgaria’s two largest newspapers, 24 Tchassa and Trud. See Zoltan Jakab and Mihaly Galik, Survival, Efficiency and Independence: The Presence of Foreign Capital in the Hungarian Media Market (Manchester, UK: European Institute for the Media, 1991); Karol Jakubowicz, Conquest or Partnership? East-West Euro- pean Integration in the Media Field (Dusseldorf, Germany: European Institute for the Media, 1996); Tom Fenton, Betting on the Media: Foreigners in for Low-Ante, High Stakes Central European Game (Arlington, VA: Freedom Forum, December 1995); Polia Alexandrova, “Media, Mafia, and Monopoly in Bulgaria,” World Press Review (retrieved July 17, 2001, from www.wordpress.org). 22. Michael Gurevitch and Jay G. Blumler, “Mass Media and Political Institutions: The Systems Approach,” in George Gerbner, ed., Mass Media Policies in Changing Cultures (London: Wiley, 1977), 263. 23. Gross, Entangled Evolutions, 136.

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Downloaded from http://eep.sagepub.com by Carla Cruz on October 16, 2008 nations. Third, the new laws governing defamation and the broadcast media, although mostly resembling Western media laws, are still interpreted and applied in a manner different from those in Western Europe, even if in this realm there have been internal and external pressures from international media/journalism organizations and foreign governments to “Europeanize” their interpretation and application.24 Furthermore, the absence or weakness of access to information laws and legal protections for journalists is detrimental to the practice of journalism. Fourth, trade unions and journalistic organizations are relatively weak.

Media roles The wide range of political, social, ethnic, and cultural issues covered and the biases the media display points to a great deal of pluralism and diversity in Eastern European media. On the most fundamental level, the role of the Eastern European media, particularly in the first half of the 1990s, has been that of supporters of or opponents to the governments in power. Thus, in Poland,

The “civic attitude” inherited from the [communist era now leads] editors and journalists to do their utmost to promote the cause of their own political camp and its version of reality, rather than to inform objectively and provide a cool and dispassionate analysis of the situation (such an attitude was wholly out of the question).25

Some observers claim that the media, by being partisan and highly politicized, are “counterpowers,” and still others claim that they have a “substitute” function similar to that of the Romanian media in which, as Alina Mungiu writes, the media after 1989 were substitutes “of power, and of opposition [to it], a substitute

24. It is interesting to note that indirect, outside pressures have convinced the Romanian government to bring Articles 205 and 206 of the Penal Code that deal with insults and defamation up to “European standards.” See Razvan Savaliuc, Ziua (retrieved May 22, 2002, from www.ziua.net/docs). It remains to be seen if the change in wording will also bring a change in the application and interpretation of the modified articles by the Romanian courts, that is, if there will be a change in the overall culture that dominates the legal system. 25. J. Zakowski, “Etyka mediow,” as quoted in Karol Jakubowicz, “Normative Models of Media and Journalism in Central and Eastern Europe” (Paper presented at “The Profession of Jour- nalism in Democratic Society: East-West Perspectives” Conference at Napier University, Edinburgh, UK, September 1998).

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Downloaded from http://eep.sagepub.com by Carla Cruz on October 16, 2008 for a political class which has only recently and incompletely been educated, a substitute for justice [system] often weak and inefficient, and for some hesitant investigative organs.”26 These claims are not supportable for the following reasons:

1. The media can play an effective “substitute” role only when they have high credibility and, save perhaps for the Czech media, only when they and their audiences have “different news values.” There are no data to substantiate such a claim.27 Furthermore, the suggested substitute role implies that the media are serving as reformers in a transformation period. Yet there is no evidence that they do so and, besides, as Walter Lippmann rightly argued in 1922, the media are “no substitute for institutions.” In addition, the substitute role suggests that the media are “more powerful, more independent, and more determined to pursue their own interests through a professional culture of their own making” than is clearly the case; nor is there any indication that the media are purposefully taking on “political functions formerly performed by party and party-controlled media, such as political socialization.”28 2. The “counterpower” role is far removed from an adversarial role in the Western sense of the concept and specifically from the American ideal because Eastern European media’s adversarial role is generally politically partisan rather than independent. That being said, political independence has selectively crept into the journalistic practices of some media outlets by the end of the 1990s, with Adam Michnik’s Gazeta Wyborcza being the primary example in a still rather small field.

26. Alina Mungiu, Romanii dupa ‘89. Istoria unei neintelegeri (Bucharest, Romania: Humanitas, 1995), 254. 27. See Everett M. Rogers and James W. Dearing, “Agenda-Setting Research: Where Has It Been, Where Is It Going?” in Doris A. Graber, ed., Media Power in Politics (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 1984), 77-95; see also Steve Kettle, “Development of the Czech Media since the Fall of Communism,” in Patrick H. O’Neil, ed., Post-Communism and the Media in Eastern Europe (London: Frank Cass, 1997), 43; New Democracies Barometer III (Vienna: Paul Lazarsfeld Society, 1994) shows that the media are trusted by only 15 percent (mean of Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Poles, Slovenians, Belorussians, and Ukrainians. See Richard Rose, William Mishler, and Christian Haerpfer, Democracy and Its Alternatives (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 87; for Romania see, for example, U.S. Information Agency, “Romanians’ Confidence in Media Steadily Declining” (research memorandum, Washington, DC, February 1992). Other studies show that more than 39 percent of Bulgari- ans, more than 55 percent of Hungarians, 62 percent of Poles, and 68 percent of Romanians distrust the media in their respective countries. Data collected between March 1998 and March 2000, as cited in Slavko Splichal, “Imitative Revolutions: Changes in the Media and Journalism in East-Central Europe” (Paper presented at the “Democratization and the Mass Media: Comparative Perspectives from Europe and Asia” Conference, the Rockefeller Bellagio Center, Italy, April 9-13, 2001). 28. David L. Swanson and Paolo Mancini, eds., Politics, Media and Modern Democracy (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996), 15-16.

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Downloaded from http://eep.sagepub.com by Carla Cruz on October 16, 2008 Equally as important to the tenuousness of the “counterpart” argument, as Jean-Francois Revel points out, is that the media have

no business claiming to be a counterpower [automatically] and in every circumstance. Besides, the very notion is absurd, for if things really happened in this way, and if the government in power invari- ably deserved to be opposed, it would be sufficient reason to despair of democracy, for it would mean that a democratically elected government is always mistaken, and therefore that the people electing it are afflicted with a congenital, incurable idiocy.29

Croatia is one of the very few examples where the counterpower argument was actually given a boost after Franjo Tudjman’s departure from power thanks to the successor government’s actions, which created a “bipolar disorder” in the media, with a “government media group” and the “largest private media concern.”30 There are still only two clearly discernable, purposeful roles for the region’s media, both different from and limited compared to the roles of their Western counterparts: a partisan political one and a commercial one. The media, some wittingly and others unwittingly, play less than salutary roles in the political, sociocultural, and commercial realms by contributing to confusion, a sense of uncertainty, and misunderstanding of what democracy is and what a market economy is given their tendentious, politicized reporting/analysis. And the media’s unprofessionalism is counterproductive to help- ing establish new cultures of tolerance, trust, and respect for facts. Jonathan Stein best summarizes these negative contributions, pandemic in the region, in a brief article describing the Czech press:

Readers . . . have been treated over the years to stories that emphasize the fact that privatization was poorly regulated, that fraud is pervasive

29. Jean-Francois Revel, The Flight from Truth: The Reign of Deceit in the Age of Information (New York: Random House, 1991), 237. 30. Katarina Luketic, “The Croatian Media, after Enduring Ten Years of Repression under Late President Franjo Tudjman, Seem Poised to Once Again Fall under the Yoke of Govern- ment,” Transitions Online (retrieved from www.tol.cz, 2001).

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Downloaded from http://eep.sagepub.com by Carla Cruz on October 16, 2008 on the capital markets, and that political parties engage in shady financing practices. The leftist media’s treatment of these stories created a caricature of economic liberalism as the ideological refuge of an aloof, venal officialdom and its avaricious, well-heeled clients.31

In addition, elements of the media in the region, most notably in some of the republics of former Yugoslavia, have contributed to xenophobia, ethnic hatred, and intolerance; others have simply failed to fight such attitudes. The media’s relationships to society and other institutions have much to do with how they define their roles and with the cultures of their owners, publishers, directors, editors, and journalists, and these role definitions and cultures are constantly changing. Thus, the Eastern European media’s relationships with their institutional and individual constituents are difficult if not impossible to define, unlike in Western Europe, where media roles and the culture of owners and media personnel are more stable, changing slowly and in tandem with changes occurring in the culture of their audiences. The unwitting roles the media play in these post-communist years also vary widely and relate to the new social, cultural, political, and market realities and may indeed be contributing to the process of transformation and consolidation. Thus, the media, by being diverse and pluralistic, present the new Eastern European citizen with a bewildering array of choices, and given their expanded coverage of varied sociopolitical and cultural issues, they unwittingly encouraged civil society’s growth. In fact, despite their partisanship, politicization, and overall lack of pro- fessionalism, the media did not induce apathy and depoliticization among citizens, as many observers have claimed.32

31. Jonathan Stein, “Still in Bed Together: Czech Journalism and Party Politics,” The New Pres- ence (retrieved from www.new-presence.cz, January 1998). 32. See, for example, the findings by Katrin Voltmer and Rudiger Schmitt-Beck, “The Mass Media and Citizens’ Orientations towards Democracy: The Experience of Six ‘Third-Wave’ Democracies in Southern Europe, Eastern Europe and Latin America” (Paper presented at the “Political Communication, the Mass Media, and the Consolidation of New Democra- cies” Joint Sessions of Workshops of the European Consortium for Political Research, Turin, Italy, March 22-27, 2002).

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Downloaded from http://eep.sagepub.com by Carla Cruz on October 16, 2008 Audiences rejected the party press in the early 1990s, and the media have since played a variety of intentional and uninten- tional roles, and a slow, limited, and selective change began. By the end of the 1990s, partisanship lost preeminence, and a few media outlets asserted their independence, increasing somewhat their credibility with a more objective journalism and demon- strating a sense that the role of the media has to be defined in regard to society rather than to any of its institutions, to individu- als, or to ideology and politics. In this context, a clear, well-understood, and applied informative role for the media has not been institutionalized. The media institution has yet to become a true Fourth Estate, playing a watchdog role and consistently offering its audiences a balanced, fair, fact-based journalism devoid of the journalists’ opinions and advocacy. Some newspapers have taken smaller or bigger steps in that direction, for example, Pravo and Mlada Dnes in the Czech Republic, Nepszabadszag in Hungary, Gazeta Wyborcza and Rzeczpospolita in Poland, and Adevarul in Romania, thus ini- tiating a preconsolidation phase of sorts, whose impact on the press system is unclear, and allowing for the beginning of a nomi- nal, conceptual integration of media roles with some elements of Western media. One of the more glaring failures in Eastern Europe has been the lack of a definition of the role public service media are to play in and of themselves and in their competition for audiences with commercial media; it is an ongoing struggle that has not borne sufficient fruit to allow for a consolidation phase to begin.

Journalism From Albania to Serbia, post-1989 journalism consists of tendentious, opinionated, highly politicized, and often inaccurate reporting. In addition, the presence of tabloid-like yellow journalism that panders “to low instincts and prurient tastes” gives journalists an unsavory reputation.33 Nevertheless, “the absence of a shared sense of purpose, role, ethics, ethos, and practices

33. Karol Jakubowicz, “From Party Propaganda to Corporate Speech? Polish Journalism in Search of a New Identity,” Journal of Communication 42:3(Summer 1992): 16.

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Downloaded from http://eep.sagepub.com by Carla Cruz on October 16, 2008 made the Eastern European journalist corps far more heteroge- neous than its Western counterparts,” thus contributing to the pluralism and diversity of news presentations and views.34 Overall, there is a degree of ideational similarity between Western and Eastern European journalism in their shared (Emil) Zola-like approach to the profession. However, the persistent “domination of ideological conviction over informative reliability,” as Adam Michnik defines the main enemy of an independent media, is still greater in the East than in the West and perhaps greater still when compared to the United States.35 As a result, the region’s journalism at times resorts to “outright disinforma- tion . . . manipulation and the triumphalist and anesthetic effect.”36 Karol Jakubowicz aptly describes journalism in the region as combining “a didactic journalistic norm, leadership and guardianship/stewardship roles vis-à-vis the audience, a special form of the social responsibility paradigm, [and] a critical/ dialectical role in society, assigning to the audience mostly the roles of ‘pupils,’ citizens, partisans and followers.”37 And so it is no surprise that Romanian journalism is manipula- tive and political journalism in particular became a sort of “Don Juanism” in the service of politics, political parties, and politicians.38 In Hungary, journalists feel that “giving the news in itself” is “not enough,” and together with their colleagues in the region, they resist adopting Western journalistic standards and continue to “damage [their] impartiality.”39 The Albanian media became a “soapbox for party propaganda” during the last election by cater- ing “more to party politics . . . than to individual politicians, their egos, and their bickering” and in the process “made political advertisements and political news indistinguishable to readers.”40

34. Gross, Entangled Evolutions, 102. 35. Adam Michnik, “After Communism, Journalism,” Media Studies Journal 12:2(Spring/Sum- mer 1998): 104-13. 36. Liviu Antonesei, “Cultura Politica si Terapie Sociala in Romania Post-Comunista,” Revista de Cercetari Sociale 1 (1994): 118. 37. Karol Jakubowicz, “Normative Models of Media and Journalism,” 16. 38. Stefan Stanciugelu, “Gazetaria ca forma de donjuanism,” Dilema (February 1998): 7. 39. C. Gombar, “Introductory Address,” in Anthony Pragnell and Ildiko Gergely, eds., The Polit- ical Content of Broadcasting (Manchester, UK: European Institute for Media, 1992, media monograph no. 15), 4-6. 40. Llazar Semini, “The Albanian Media Set the Tone for the Recent Elections, and the Results Were Noticeably Different,” Transitions Online (retrieved from www.tol.cz, 2001).

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Downloaded from http://eep.sagepub.com by Carla Cruz on October 16, 2008 And Bulgarian journalism attempts to “tell us what to think,” and “instead of serving the reader, journalism places itself above the reader.”41 Journalistic practices have changed between 1989 and 2002, even in those instances in which journalism’s transformation was retarded by political events. Thus Serbian journalism after the brief Milosevich era, for example, if we accept Vladan Radosavljevic’s conclusions, is increasingly independent and maturing, sufficiently so that the “Serbian media are no longer a political ‘crystal ball.’”42 Still, the Eastern European approach to practicing journalism puts a ubiquitous premium on “analysis” rather than on reporting. Consequently, the media continue to offer a journalism that was, throughout the 1990s, as Tomaz Goban-Klas accurately describes it in Poland, “fundamentally deficient in terms of its comprehensiveness, objectivity, and pro- fessionalism.”43 Interestingly, there is no indication that the East- ern European media outlets that came under Western European ownership have in any way measurably improved their journalism. As to the impact of technology, computer technology is insufficiently widespread to make much of a significant difference in news gathering; new print and broadcast technologies that have been adopted in Eastern Europe have made a significant contribution to improving the presentation of journalistic materials, but not to better journalism. By the end of the 1990s, some good journalism, particularly in economic and investigative reporting, was being practiced by a small handful of journalists working for a very few media outlets, and the toning down of partisan journalism was also in evidence in most of the region. These endogenous developments will continue, and, in fact, as is the case in Hungary, “the formation of an

41. Roumiana Deltcheva, “New Tenedencies in Post-Totalitarian Bulgaria: Mass Culture & the Media,” Europe-Asia Studies 48:3(March 1996): 305-16. 42. Vladan Radosavljevic, “The Milosevic’s Estradition to The Hague Has Made the Difference between Djindjic and Kostunica More Visible, But It Has Also Proven Serbian Media’s Increasing Maturity and Independence,” Transitions Online (retrieved from www.tol.cz, 2001). 43. Tomasz Goban-Klas, “Politics versus the Media in Poland: A Game without Rules,” in Pat- rick H. O’Neil, ed., Post-Communism and the Media in Eastern Europe (London: Frank Cass, 1997) 32.

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Downloaded from http://eep.sagepub.com by Carla Cruz on October 16, 2008 objective, less ideological press shows promise, but only in the long run.”44 Thus, the transformation continues, and the consolidation phase remains a distant promise, creating uncertainty in the role, usage of, manipulability, and effectiveness of media in these changing societies. There are several international factors that have contributed to the (slow) transformation: sustained and extensive foreign training programs sponsored by Western European and American institutions, exchange agreements between a handful of foreign and indigenous media outlets, regular contributions by Eastern European journalists (sometimes under contract) to Western media outlets, and the establishment of journalists associations or trade unions.45 Most significant, however, is the endogenous push for a post post-communist journalism, as suggested earlier, and this is the development that is most promising in regard to preparing for the consolidation phase.

Media and integration We are assuming here that because democracies have certain commonalties in their systems, ethos, and political cultures, they require media that also share similar systemic forms, definitions of media roles, media laws, and journalistic practices. Let us return now to questions posed earlier: What does integration really mean, and how much or how little transformation and consolidation is sufficient for it to occur? Are transformations and consolidations, on one hand, and integration, on the other hand, necessarily related, logical outgrowths of one another? The first question is difficult to answer for the following reasons:

1. International and intercultural comparisons that allow for any decisions on whether there are objective grounds for integration or Europeanization, as Steffen Kolb’s and Uwe Hasebrink’s works suggest, are difficult to carry out. Until there is catholic agreement

44. A. Lanczi and P. H. O’Neil, “Pluralization and the Politics of Media Change in Hungary,” in Patrick H. O’Neil, ed., Post-Communism and the Media in Eastern Europe (London: Frank Cass, 1997), 99 (emphasis added). 45. Albania is the one glaring exception in the region: it has no journalism association or trade unions.

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Downloaded from http://eep.sagepub.com by Carla Cruz on October 16, 2008 on the key indicators, the possibility of judging East-West integration remains a speculative exercise.46 2. The target of Eastern Europe’s integration is a moving one. Since the 1980s, Western European media has undergone several transformations, particularly in broadcasting: media conglomerates have multiplied, media laws have changed, relationships between media and political parties were altered, and journalistic practices are no longer what they used to be.

In fact, the changing practice of journalism in the West is perhaps the best example of the “moving target” Eastern Europe is supposed to hit and is exemplified by the slowly thinning demarcation between Western European and American journalism that used to be widely different.47 For a number of reasons that perhaps also include internationalization and globalization, the differences between Western European and American journalism have changed to the point where even French journalism, if we are to believe James Napoli, is becoming more “‘objective,’ fact-driven, adversarial, investigative, and highly structured.”48 In Sweden, media have distanced themselves from political parties, and a “large number” of media are now “more interested in the superficial, or commercial, aspect of political coverage” and thus Americanizing to some extent.49 On the other hand, American journalism is becoming more analytical, often divesting itself of objectivity and neutrality and approaching the coverage of issues with a foreordained goal, assembling the storyline first and then gathering the facts and

46. Steffen Kolb, “The Functional Equivalence Concept as an Approach to Allow a Broad Level of Comparability in General Media Statistics” (Paper presented at the ENTIRE conference, “Defining Key Indicators in the Field of Media and Communication Research in Europe,” Dortmund, Germany, May 23-25, 2002); Uwe Hasebrink, “Comparing Children’s Media Environments and Media Use across Europe” (Paper presented at the ENTIRE conference, “Defining Key Indicators in the Field of Media and Communication Research in Europe,” Dortmund, Germany, May 23-25, 2002). 47. Wolfgang Donsbach, “Lapdogs, Watchdogs, and Junkyard Dogs,” Media Studies Journal 9 (Fall 1995): 30. 48. James Napoli, “American Journalism and the French Press,” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 6:2(Spring 2001): 104-12. 49. Lars W. Nord, “Americanization v. the Middle Way: New Trends in Swedish Political Com- munication,” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 6:2(Spring 2001): 113-19.

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Downloaded from http://eep.sagepub.com by Carla Cruz on October 16, 2008 becoming “a swamp in a way that the older [descriptive] style wasn’t.”50 Forms of internationalization and globalization, terms whose full, practical meaning are still to be clarified (is there really a confluence of journalistic models?), are potentially integrative trends. For now, however, East-West European media integration is possible if defined simply as cross-region ownership, Eastern European media reaching exchange agreements with their West- ern counterparts and joining international journalism organiza- tion, Eastern European journalists training and working in the West, and international agreements on copyright, broadcast laws, and so forth. As it stands now, the differences and similarities between Western European and Eastern European media are difficult to assess because of the absence of any agreement on the key indicators to be compared, as mentioned earlier, and the lack of ade- quate data from the East. Comparisons are largely based on (1) the data available from Eastern Europe, data that are constantly changing and whose reliability is sometimes questionable, and (2) observations by scholars who have studied Eastern European media. Based on these two types of sources, some cited in this article, we note that there are general differences and similarities in the media in the East and West (see Table 1). The larger question is whether integration should be a goal for Eastern Europe because when discussing European integration in general, including media integration, we should pause and reflect on Robert Conquest’s words, which hint at the necessity of transformation and consolidation phases to facilitate Western European integration, before becoming the object of Eastern European integration:

The European Idea is both obsolete and premature . . . obsolete in the sense that the physical propinquity, the cartological tidiness, on which the whole idea so largely rests is no longer as real as it might have been in the days of Sully. It is premature in the sense that the

50. Thomas E. Patterson, Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press at Harvard University, as quoted in Judith Sheppard, “Playing Defense,” American Journalism Review 20:7(Sep- tember 1998): 48-56.

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Downloaded from http://eep.sagepub.com by Carla Cruz on October 16, 2008 Table 1. Media Similarities and Differences between the East and West

Similarity Difference Media laws In their interpretation and application Media management Absence of a strong economy allowing for a solid market footing Codification of public Interpretation of the nature, autonomy, service media and responsibilities of public service and their laws media Varied ownership Consolidation is much more evident in and consolidation the West than in the East of media conglomerates Pluralism and Extreme pluralism and diversity diversity Politicization and Extreme politicization and partisanship partisanship Inclination toward Limited objectivity, accuracy, analytical journalism completeness, fairness in reporting; a and a Zola-like “tell them how to think” mentality social responsibility instead of an orientation toward being informative; an extreme Zola- like approach, heavy on personal opinions Media roles and their application Journalism education The nature and quality of journalism and training education differ greatly in the East programs Media ethics Trade unions and Weaker in the East than in the West journalistic organizations (continued)

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Downloaded from http://eep.sagepub.com by Carla Cruz on October 16, 2008 Table 1. (continued) Similarity Difference

Growth in foreign language/ethnic media (most striking has been the growth of the Romanian media)a Membership (individual and institutional) in supranational and international journalism associations/organizations a. Orhan Galjus, “Stateless: Roma and the Media Today,” Roma Rights 4 (1999): 69-72; “Romani and Traveller Media in Europe,” Roma Rights 4 (1999): 73-80.

political cultures involved are not yet similar, or assimilable, enough for what is intended.51

In other words, before broaching the subject of Eastern Euro- pean integration, the question “Into what?” has to be clearly answered, and all indications are that this is an impossible task. The Western European media systems may share some similarities but do not represent a homogenous whole and neither does the varied types of journalism they practice. Are Eastern Euro- pean media supposed to practice a Swedish, German, Spanish, or Greek type of journalism? Are they supposed to assume roles similar to those they play in Italy or in France? Which of these represents “European” journalism in a clear enough way to allow an evolutionary path to be developed for Eastern European media and their journalism in their attempt to integrate with Western Europe in general and with Western European media in particular?

51. Robert Conquest, Reflections on a Ravaged Century (London: W. W. Norton, 2000), 266 (emphasis added). Similar arguments are made by Tony Judt, A Grand Illusion? An Essay on Europe (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996).

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Downloaded from http://eep.sagepub.com by Carla Cruz on October 16, 2008 Conclusion For Eastern Europe’s media to be in the consolidation phase, the driving force and ethos behind the systems, roles, and journalistic practices would have to resemble those in the (ever-changing) West; Eastern European media law would have to be interpreted in a similar fashion to their interpretation and application in the West and not just resemble them in form. The assertion of a modicum of autonomy by media owners and by media personnel vis-à-vis their owners and the tentative adoption of Western roles and journalism practices by the Eastern European media move the transformation forward and perhaps portend entry into a preconsolidation process. That is, there has been a demand, and in some instances a small, tentative change, in the operative media culture. In a small number of cases, journalism has sufficiently changed to allow for Eastern European journalists to contribute to Western European outlets, but to date, the only Western and Eastern European media integration in evidence, other than what was already mentioned, is that which is found in the accounting books of Western owners of Eastern European media. Until and unless the Eastern European media fully institutionalize the cultural changes that have not yet even been accomplished, the concomitant or the resulting need for an acculturation to a newly institutionalized culture is not going to take place, and therefore the expectation of a significant and lasting reinterpretation of media roles and journalistic practices will have to wait. Finally, transformation and consolidation in Eastern European societies and in their media systems should not be pursued in the name of integration. For these societies, these processes or phases 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.

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