Media and Politics
What happens when you sit journalists from the world’s most powerful and influential publications at the same table with a Polish columnist or the editor of a small Slovakian daily? How does the dialogue between America and Europe change when voices from Eastern Europe are included? The Institute for Human Sciences at Boston University found out last November during a two-day conference on media and politics.
The conference was held in conjunction with an exhibit (Poland on the Front Page: 1979–1989) of front-page newspaper stories from US and Polish titles depicting the evolution of journalism in Poland and the role of the media in shaping public perceptions and as an instrument of democracy. The first session of the conference, Freedom Movements and the Press, brought together three of the journalists featured in the exhibit with other writers active on behalf of freedom movements in Eastern Europe. There was agreement among the six journalists that a free media, the dream of Adam Michnik’s generation, continues to be, as John Darnton put it, “a catalyst for change, a vehicle for change, and even a guarantor of change.” But as Jonathan Schell pointed out, “the press that existed in 1989 does not exist today” and the so-called “free media” has become a source of confusion and disinformation.
Much of the discussion focused on the problems facing today’s media, namely corruption and the market forces that undermine the autonomy of the press, which should, according to Michnik, serve as a barrier against corruption. Veron Surroi described how easily the media can be subjugated to politics, and underlined the necessity of media pluralism for the existence of a pluralistic society. Jackson Diehl, acknowledging the role of his own paper in supporting the cause of the Polish Solidarity movement in the 1980s, said that Western journalists today “have to avoid becoming surrogate ambassadors and political actors in other countries.” Thanks to the Internet, he said, the role of the Western press abroad as a surrogate source of information has grown enormously, giving rise to new challenges. The more appropriate role for the Western journalist, according to Diehl, is as “watchdog of our own government.” Martin Simecka, recalling the case of Vaclav Havel, did not disagree but described how helping dissidents become well known can actually protect them from danger. Corruption persists, Simecka said, because people are afraid to speak out.
The focus of the second panel, Transatlantic Media Wars, was on shifting perceptions across the Atlantic, and the role played by the press in the growing rift between the United States and Europe. In his keynote speech, Michael Naumann said the topic was only slightly exaggerated. The Internet, for all its popularity, represents an amassment of political and informational power in the hands of one—American—nation. He briefly discussed the growth of media conglomerates and the declining quality of print journalism in the US. He was critical of the US media coverage of Europe, including the virtual absence of reporting on Germany, but noted that Europe is not the only thing missing from the pages of US newspapers. He cited his own paper’s scoop that Colin Powell’s source on mobile chemical labs in Iraq was unreliable, a piece of information that reached the American public only a year later when the Los Angeles Times published the story.
William Drozdiak, recalling images from Hurricane Katrina accompanied by the headline “Third World America” in the European press, said that “[w]e have to bear in mind the diversity that corresponds to our countries and particularly in presenting the news.” There is a lot of commentary in the European press about the United States, on issues such as the death penalty, but little criticism of China’s use of the death penalty, for example. Sylvie Kauffmann responded that this is because it is so difficult for Europeans to understand how in a country where the rule of law is so important, people can accept a process [what process?] that is so flawed. She noted that whereas American reporting on events in Europe, even when exaggerated or flawed, will typically generate a response by European journalists, European commentary on America is largely ignored.
William Pfaff insisted that the press is not at war: the conflict, he said, is between governments and ideological groups; the press is merely conveying the debate, not generating it. He said part of the problem is that journalists tend to accept the conventional wisdom, that is, the pictures people have about certain countries. What is essential to the debate, he continued, is “second order agreement,” which he described as the ability to say: “I can tell you what your position is on some controversial matter in a way in which you would say, yes, that is a relatively fair statement, and you can do the same about me.” Polish columnist Jacek Zakowski saw the “transatlantic media wars” on the order of a family quarrel, and suggested that one function of the media is to export internal tensions abroad.
The third panel, The Changing Shape of Today’s Media, addressed the question of journalism’s future in light of media concentration, the growth of the Internet, and declining circulations of regular newspapers. In his keynote speech, Orville Schell admitted that he did not have an answer to the question of how to react to these changes. He cited a conversation he had had with Peter Jennings during a dinner just before the war in Iraq, in which he inquired when the issue of whether America should go to war would be debated. Jennings looked at him, rather stunned, and said, adamantly, “It is not going to happen.” Schell commented: “So there was the contradiction, right there, staring us in the face: of all the thousands of hours that the networks broadcast in a given week or a month, there wasn’t an hour and a half to put a debate on the air about going to war.” Later, he said, the BBC did the debate, “but it was our decision, our war, our policy issue, and nobody got to see it.”
James Hoge agreed that the concentration of power in media is a threat to democracy. He said that the pressure to make money is more intense and coverage is “timid.” Eugeniusz Smolar said that fragmentation in today’s media market and the individualistic nature of media consumption will lead to the creation of two different markets: a truly mass media, entertainment-oriented market, and another, more “elitist” yet serving the public interest. Good governments, he said, “require openness, transparency, and public control.” Unfortunately, he added, “the only thing we see in the serious media at the moment are financial cuts.”
Fred Barnes was less pessimistic, arguing that despite media concentration, there was still plenty of competition. He noted that the major newspapers are giving their content away for free on the Internet. It is a consumer-driven market, and ultimately, Barnes said, “we are going to have to give the people what they want.”
Both the fingerprints in his visa application and Fox News on his hotel’s TV reminded Martin Simecka of the communist regime in his own country some years earlier. Nevertheless, he was as optimistic as Fred Barnes, for different reasons, based on the success of his own paper, Sme, with 10% of the readership of Slovakia. His focus is not on giving people what they want, but on educating readers and preparing them for times to come. He said he guides his paper by one principle: getting it right. He said that for his newspaper, “until the last reader, it’s OK.”
Participants and Program
Opening Remarks
John Schulz, Dean, College of Communication, Boston University
Session I: Freedom Movements and the Press
Keynote Speech
- Adam Michnik, Editor in Chief, Gazeta Wyborcza
[Listen to the podcast of the keynote speech]
Panel Discussion
- Jonathan Schell (Chair), Harold Willens Peace Fellow at the Nation Institute; Peace and Disarmament Correspondent, the Nation
- John Darnton, Associate Editor, the New York Times
- Jackson Diehl, Deputy Editorial Page Editor, the Washington Post
- Martin Simecka, Editor in Chief, Sme
- Veton Surroi, Member of the Parliament of Kosova for the ORA Civic Group; Former Chairman, KOHA Media Group, Pristina
[Listen to the podcast of the panel discussion]
Session II: Transatlantic Media Wars
Keynote Speech
- Michael Naumann, Publisher, Die Zeit
[Listen to the podcast of the keynote speech]
Panel Discussion
- William Drozdiak (Chair), President, American Council on Germany
- Sylvie Kauffmann, Le Monde
- William Pfaff, Author and syndicated columnist
- Jacek Zakowski, Columnist, Polityka Weekly, Poland
[Listen to the podcast of the panel discussion]
Session III: The Changing Shape of Today’s Media
Keynote Speech
- Orville Schell, Dean, Berkeley School of Journalism
[Listen to the podcast of the keynote speech]
Panel Discussion
- James Hoge (Chair), Editor in Chief, Foreign Affairs
- Fred Barnes, Executive Editor, the Weekly Standard
- Martin Simecka, Editor in Chief, Sme
- Eugeniusz Smolar, Senior Fellow, Centre for International Relations, Warsaw