University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2013 Communities of Journalists and Journalism Practice at Radio Free Europe during the Cold War (1950-1995) Susan D. Haas University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the History Commons, and the Journalism Studies Commons Recommended Citation Haas, Susan D., "Communities of Journalists and Journalism Practice at Radio Free Europe during the Cold War (1950-1995)" (2013). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 869. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/869 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/869 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Communities of Journalists and Journalism Practice at Radio Free Europe during the Cold War (1950-1995) Abstract Susan D. Haas Dissertation Chair: Dr. Carolyn Marvin This study describes the construction, maintenance and defense of news practices by journalists at Radio Free Europe (RFE), an experimental U.S. government-sponsored organization whose mission was to act as a "surrogate free press", in effect, to disrupt state media-controlled public spheres of totalitarian states during the West's Cold War with communism. At RFE from 1950-1995, two groups of journalists cooperated to produce content: politically activist, exiled citizens - self-trained journalists -- from East- Central Europe working in semi-autonomous language services (radios) broadcasting through the Iron Curtain to the people of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, and, experienced journalists from Western democracies working in the Central Newsroom, an internal news agency serving the broadcast desks. This study outlines aspects of RFE and its Cold War context -- including journalists' knowledge of the human rights and informational deficits of audiences -- critical ot understanding these groups of journalists. It differentiates group conceptions of roles at RFE and means of constructing practice despite the paradox of doing news work from a position aberrant to Western journalism. Research includes 100 interviews and correspondence with 70 former RFE employees gathered from 2004-2012; and, for the first time in scholarship, the voices of RFE's Western journalists. It incorporates documents collected from and created by participants. It places these data in conversation with memoirs and histories by RFE insiders, and with corporate documents from archives opened to researchers during the past decade. It describes both groups of journalists as "exiles" practicing in the absence of legitimacy in the contexts of both Western journalism and communist states. It describes organizational challenges and group negotiations of news work. It posits émigrés as constructing national imaginaries available only in RFE broadcasts, and Western journalists as constructing a hyper-vigilant practice that modeled journalism for broadcasters and served as a credibility anchor for broadcasts. Translating different conceptions of the mission - modeling a free press -- into practice, absent legitimacy and in view of listener needs and risks, produced two different journalisms, each unique and hyper-vigilant. The study suggests that the RFE historical case presaged challenges facing contemporary journalism and journalists. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Communication First Advisor Carolyn Marvin Keywords authenticity, emigre, ethnography, government, news, RFE/RL Subject Categories Communication | History | Journalism Studies This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/869 COMMUNITIES OF JOURNALISTS AND JOURNALISM PRACTICE AT RADIO FREE EUROPE DURING THE COLD WAR (1950-1995) Susan D. Haas A DISSERTATION in Communication Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2013 Supervisor of Dissertation ____ ___________________ __ Carolyn Marvin Frances Yates Professor of Communication Graduate Group Chairperson __________________________ Joseph Turow, Robert Lewis Shayon Professor of Communication, Associate Dean for Graduate Studies Dissertation Committee Klaus Krippendorff, Ph.D., Gregory Bateson Professor of Communication John L. Jackson, Jr., Ph.D., Richard Perry University Professor of Communication, Africana Studies and Anthropology COMMUNITIES OF JOURNALISTS AND JOURNALISM PRACTICE AT RADIO FREE EUROPE DURING THE COLD WAR (1950-1995) COPYRIGHT 2013 Susan D. Haas This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ny-sa/2.0/ For my children, with love. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENT A brief list of people will be insufficient to acknowledge the breadth of support necessary to undertake and complete this study, but here’s the bedrock. The Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania – from its faculty to fellow students to funding - supported the research and writing of this dissertation. I am indebted well beyond what can be noted here to Dr. Carolyn Marvin, my dissertation advisor and committee chair, for championing the study, and for the intellectual freedom and guidance and faith in me as a student that made completion possible. Dr. Klaus Krippendorff advised the early research, helped me to explore the possibilities in the data, and supported my progress as a doctoral student. Dr. John L. Jackson, Jr. encouraged adoption of the widest possible definition of ethnography; his insights kept me continually questioning methodological assumptions. Dr. Paul DiMaggio of Princeton University provided critical readings of early analyses of organizational and group relationships at RFE, and discussion of the case study beyond the call of duty of visiting faculty. I am grateful to Professor Monroe E. Price at Annenberg’s Center for Global Communication Research, whose enthusiasm for the research early on, along with travel funding that took me to the UK, Germany, Hungary, Romania, and the Czech Republic, allowing me to locate and interview former RFE journalists in many nations. I thank the Annenberg School’s dean, Dr. Michael X. Delli Carpini, for summer fellowships that underwrote travel for interviews and archival research in the U.S. I could not have completed this dissertation without the counsel, suggestions and critiques of dear friends and Penn colleagues Drs. Robin Stanback Stevens, Mihaela Popescu, Weiyu Zhang, Kim Woolf, Mary Angela Bock, Emily Gasoi, Magdalena Wojcieszak, Anca Romantin, and Keren Tenenboim Weinblatt, and future PhD Deborah Lubken. Annenberg librarian and friend, Sharon Black, thank you. iv The suggestion that I devote a dissertation to journalism at RFE came from a former student dissident and member of the Civic Forum in Prague who broadcast as a stringer for RFE’s Czechoslovak language service from inside the Velvet Revolution of 1989-90; if I could retract the incredulous look with which I responded to that suggestion (at the time, it sounded outrageously infeasible), I would. This individual also offered a connection to the first interviewee for this project at RFE in Prague in 2004, along with extended stays with family members during my travels in the Czech Republic. Obviously, this study was possible only with the participation of many former RFE employees; I thank them for their time, trust, frankness and willingness to continue our conversations and fact checks, and for digging not only into their memories, but also into their boxes of personal papers to forward materials. The research benefited also from the advice of scholars and archivists who offered insights into research on RFE when there was almost no previous independent scholarship on its journalism practices. In particular, I am grateful to the archivists at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University who interrupted their work to locate materials on RFE’s Central Newsroom that were not yet fully catalogued, and at the Open Society Archive in Budapest who offered access when the timeframe available for travel coincided only with a period when the archive was otherwise closed. This work was completed in view of two eyewitnesses -- my wonderful children. I can finally answer their question, “How’s it going, Mom?” with the reply, “Finished!” Surrogate parents, Marja Schantz and Nancy Perkins, both of whom passed away while this research was underway, and Douglas Perkins, thank you for the wise counsel, unconditional love and encouragement. Treasured friends, Drs. Randa Sifri and Mike O’Leary, and Cathy McCoubrey, thank you. And thanks to all those not listed who offered kind words along the way – you and I know who you are. v ABSTRACT COMMUNITIES OF JOURNALISTS AND JOURNALISM PRACTICE AT RADIO FREE EUROPE DURING THE COLD WAR (1950 – 1995) Susan D. Haas Carolyn Marvin, Ph.D. This study describes the construction, maintenance and defense of news practices by journalists at Radio Free Europe (RFE), an experimental U.S. government-sponsored organization whose mission was to act as a “surrogate free press”, in effect, to disrupt state media-controlled public spheres of totalitarian states during the West’s Cold War with communism. At RFE from 1950-1995, two groups of journalists cooperated to produce content: politically activist, exiled citizens – self-trained journalists