III. Media and Journalists within and beyond the Communist Media System
III.1 Media Control Mechanisms
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things that were contradictory in their nature, and struggling with these contradictory imperatives impacted the journalists and media discourse.
Restrained by the control mechanisms, journalists in the Chinese and Czech official media functioned in fact as Party activists, but once these mechanisms weakened, they could support the change in two different ways: either to emphasize their professionalism (which would imply independence, but also isolation from other social actors), or to keep functioning as media activists, but switch allegiance and start supporting regime opponents (which would imply collaboration with other social actors, in contradiction with one of the two key imperatives of journalistic professionalism).
When we look back at the possible contradiction between the journalistic professionalism and the media control mechanisms, it is obvious that during the anti-regime protests in 1989, in both Czechoslovakia and China the system of media control failed and the journalists were suddenly free to "speak the truth." As a result, some of the media provided factual and even sympathetic coverage of the protests, contrary to the interests of the regime. From the point of view of struggle between control system and professionalism, the reason for this failure might be a (temporary) victory of professionalism over conformity to the system, but it could also be a reflection of faction struggle among the power-holders (which would not require too much non-conformity, but only a choice between several possible masters), or even a result of blind spots in the design of the control mechanism itself.
Naturally, it might have been also a combination of all these mentioned reasons.
III.1 Media Control Mechanisms
Communist regimes are generally known for using the mass media as a tool for propaganda and for their tight control of media organizations. This control can be exercised on various levels by various means, and as the case of Czechoslovakia's brief abolition of mass media
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censorship and in 1968 suggests, there was actually a wide range in degrees of regimes' grip over the media. In 1980s, both China and Czechoslovakia could no longer count on journalists who would understand themselves primarily as party propagandists, so they had to maintain the control by external mechanisms of media control that ranged from influence over media organizations' personnel to support of self-censorship to limits of copies a problematic media outlet could print.
The Chinese system of media control in 1989 was more open and less tightly controlled than the media system in Czechoslovakia and the imperatives from the Party were increasingly contradicted by imperatives of the market, as increasing number of media had to combine conformity with the party line and economic viability. Theoretically, the articles that went to print were supposed to be checked by the respective Propaganda Departments, but thanks to the support of the reformists in the top positions, the few progressive media such as World Economic Herald could avoid this requirement and exercise relatively large editorial freedom while pushing for more. The example of World Economic Herald is quite revealing in this aspect. As a "local" magazine published weekly in Shanghai, it had somewhat limited influence compared with the national dailies from Beijing. Still, its impact was based on the fact that it was the most bold reformist media outlet. On the other hand, People’s Daily in its official capacity of Central Committee's mouthpiece had been closer to the power and often had to carry texts provided by the regime’s leaders regardless the opinion of the newspaper’s staff. Still, its top editors - some of them well-known supporters of Hu's and Zhao's reforms - could steer the general course of the daily beyond the simple hard-line discourse.171 Furthermore, as the main national newspaper, People's Daily had a much wider reach than the other reform-minded media that were few and usually with only a limited circulation.
In practice, media control mechanisms worked on several levels. Individual journalists
171 Jernow 1994, 4
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were controlled through the system of work units and their selection had been closely watched by Party cells within their media organizations. On the institutional level, the TV, film and radio were controlled by the CCP Propaganda Department, People’s Daily had a specific rank equal to that of a ministry and World Economic Herald’s position had been decidedly unclear. The Party branches were more or less closely watching both the media workers and the content of the media, as did the organizations acting as the media’s publishers. However the control was rarely overt and instead of formal censorship, the journalists and editors worked after incentives to practice careful self-censorship. "Proofs of articles are not regularly sent to a government censor for pre-publication approval as they are in some countries. Instead, censorship is embedded in the entire process of producing a news story, from the assignment and writing of it to the editing and layout. An article on a sensitive subject might be shown to the local Party chief for review, but critical articles are not likely to be written at all. Self-censorship, not censorship, is the norm."172 In order to keep the media within Party line, the propaganda departments organized regular meetings for the newspaper editors, circulated bulletins informing them which topics should be emphasized, limited the number of officially sanctioned sources, making the newspapers to display
"united propaganda front." Another result of this mechanism was that "rather than writing their own stories and risk errors of judgment on delicate subjects, newspapers often recycle stories from People’s Daily and Xinhua, the government news agency" because "instead of defining limits in advance, Party committees prefer to discipline those who cross invisible lines."173
Although it promoted self-censorship and passivity, this system of media control also allowed courageous journalists and editors to "try their luck" and actually test where the invisible lines are located at a given moment. During the "opening-up" period, journalists
172 ibid., 5
173 ibid., 6
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from the closely watched mainstream media could publish their sensitive texts in more progressive, but less mainstream media, local journalists could criticize problems of their province in a local media of another province, the prominent investigative journalists such as Liu Binyan could circumvent the censorship by using a specific genre of "literary reportage"
etc.174 Also the growing number of periodicals made the control by Party propaganda departments more difficult.
The journalists also increasingly felt the contradiction between professionalisms and Party requirements: they were supposed to speak for the Party, but also to speak – in a plurality of voices – for the people.175 However, their efforts to drift away from the Party control had mixed results. Throughout the 1980s, the need for press reform has been widely discussed especially in the professional journal News Front, the new generation of journalists graduating from the Institute of Journalism at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (with teachers such as Liu Binyan, Hu Jiwei or Wang Roshui) clearly preferred professionalism over propaganda and increased exposure to the West, exchange students and journalists from abroad created a climate in which the propagandist function of the media became out of fashion and media autonomy the desired goal.176 The leading reformer Zhao Ziyang also supported critical reporting and in the late 1980s, the increase in investigative, analytical and bold independent reporting became prominent despite occasional criticism.177
In the end, despite periodic campaign against "spiritual pollution", the journalists did push the line of the permitted further. In case of official disapproval, they could negotiate about offending articles, using the ongoing disputes between the hardliners and the reformers to their advantage, or provide a pro-forma self-criticism and continue in what they were
174 ibid., 9
175 ibid., 4
176 ibid., 10
177 ibid., 11
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doing before.
In Czechoslovakia between 1948 and 1989, private ownership of means of production was not allowed and the only legal newspaper publishers were political parties of "National Front" and some affiliate organizations such as youth organization or labor union.178 Thus, according to their front pages, Rude Pravo had been a "newspaper of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party" and Svobodne Slovo a "paper of Czechoslovak Socialist Party." Logically, while these papers were supposed to be used by their parent political parties as vehicles for presenting their parties' views, at the same time they had to work semi-independently, e.g. the staff could not just passively wait for the Party leaders to dictate them what to write. Moreover, being a journalist was a full-time occupation and therefore the rank-and-file journalists could not be at the same time full-time politicians.
Organizational separation between the parties and their dailies was one of the conditions allowing for this semi-autonomy.
According to Rude Pravo's chief editor Zdenek Horeni, the daily indeed had this semi-autonomy. In an interview he later said: "We were even working spontaneously. It was not like that someone would tell us every day what we should write. [...] In any case, this autonomy had its limits. It is without any doubt. The newspaper collective had been mandated to spell out general political line of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and we did indeed, in accordance with our consciousness, fulfilled this role by writing our newspaper articles."179 He also adds that all of the Rude Pravo journalist had to be Communist Party members. Moreover, as and chief editor of Rude Pravo, Horeni was member of the Secretariat of the Party Central Committee180 and thus he was one of the highest exponents
178 D. Tomasek, Pozor, cenzurovano! [Attention, Censored!] Praha: MV CR, 1994.
179 R Kalenska, "Korunni princ Stepan byl v KSC nejhorsi." [Crown Prince Stepan Was The Worst in Communist Party] in Lidove noviny vol. 17, no. 212, 2004, p. 15.
180 M. Vanek and P. Urbasek, Vitezove? Porazeni? II. Politicke elity v obdobi tzv.normalizace. [Winners? Losers?
Political Elites from the Era of So-Called Normalization] Praha: Prostor, 2005, p. 139.
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of the regime and he was in close contact with other top leaders. He was also formally responsible to the Secretariat: "According to the rules, Rude Pravo was subordinated directly to the Secretariat of the Central Committee; or, the meeting of the Central Committee should, according to the rules, appoint and fire the chief editor. It was not in the rulebook to whom the Rude Pravo as an institution had been subordinated, but traditionally it was the Secretariat, which firstly approved the budget [...], secondly it approved the top cadres of the Rude Pravo hierarchy, the members of the editorial board, section chiefs, and thirdly, every half year it discussed editorial plan. [...] But I can pronounce my skepticism about the Secretariat, as I have already said, it was kind of 'appendix' [...]. In comparison, the leadership of the Central Committee, it was effectively the state government."181 Therefore, the Party's newspaper has been formally subordinated to a second-class Party organ and the influence of the Party leaders on Rude Pravo was rather informal, which again increased its autonomy.
This Horeni illustrates on a case of Slusovice, an innovative and enterprising agricultural cooperative about which Rude Pravo planned to publish an article.
"We all wanted to set Slusovice as an agenda. That task ended up with me. So I went to the secretary, I mean ideological secretary Jan Fojtik. He immediately agreed with me, but he also told me consult also the agricultural secretary. At that time, it was Frantisek Pitra, who later became premier of the Czech government. He was also in absolute agreement with me and said that he fully agree, but I should also consult with [the president and, until 1987, Party's General Secretary] Comrade Husak. What a nuisance! So I called him that I have a problem that will take about thirty minutes, and if he can see me. These thirty minutes looked like this: I immediately explained the problem and Comrade Husak immediately opposed. He did not agree with my idea. [...] Twenty five minutes were gone, I looked at my watch and thought that I lost. [...] And in the end, Husak said: 'Well, you try it, you try it. But push that Cuba [chairman of Slusovice] to the wall.' Hurray! The newspaper
181 ibid., 152
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got wings, immediately we prepared an interview with Cuba done by our best interviewer at that time, Jan Lipavsky. He made a huge interview with Cuba and we published it in the weekend supplement Halo Saturday. The next day after publishing the interview, the TV called what happened, is this a new directive? There is no directive, I said, it is or journalistic initiative. And the TV had immediately during that week a debate about Slusovice, so that Slusovice ceased to be a taboo topic."182
Svobodne Slovo, published by the Socialist Party, also had a certain degree of autonomy:
while it was required to follow the Socialist Party line and all the regime’s directives, in its daily operations it followed decision making of its own editors. On the other hand, neither the Socialist Party nor the daily could go against the regime as the Socialist Party has been a puppet controlled by the Communist regime and its secret police. According to Pejskar, the Socialist Party's chairman in the years 1968-1989 Bohusalv Kucera had been a "secret collaborator" of the secret police.183 To run this party as their rubber-stamp organization was not difficult for the regime also because the Socialist Party membership was quite small (in 1989, it had only 14 thousands members compared with Communist Party's 1,7 millions members).184 According to Jan Skoda, a Socialist Party chairman who replaced Kucera in 1990, the goal of his party was to change its subservient position within the Communist regime and therefore supported various reforms which were nevertheless always blocked the Communist Party.185 This might be one of the reasons why he and other Socialist Partly leaders including Kucera and also the Svobodne Slovo journalist Marta Bystrovova met on the weekend after the November 17 crackdown and formulated the statement condemning the crackdown that has been published in the daily's front page on Monday.
182 Vanek and Urbasek 2005, 148
183 J. Pejskar, Od boje (proti komunistům) ke kolaboraci. [From Struggle (Against Communists) to Collaboration] Fallbrook: [self-published], 1993, p. 76.
184 see O. Krejci, Proc to prasklo. [Why It Collapsed] Praha: Trio, 1991, p. 39.
185 Hvizdala 1990, 36
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Structurally, the journalists of Svobodne Slovo were in clearly different position than their Rude Pravo colleagues. While the editor of Rude Pravo has been also a member of the Standing Committee of Politburo,186 this was not the case for the editor of Svobodne Slovo, making the newspaper even more distant from the centre of the power. The distance applied also for the staff. While, at least according to Horeni, the Rude Pravo journalists wrote
"spontaneously" in favor of the regime, according to Bystrovova, some Svobodne Slovo staff wished for straying from the official line, but they were not allowed to do that. In an interview, this Svobodne Slovo journalist described the situation in the daily in this way:
"I would say that the revolutionary atmosphere in the daily started already one year before and surely it got its final shape last January [1989], because all these protests were taking place right under our windows. We saw this stupidity like from the watching tower, and we were completely hopeless. We were not allowed to write anything [...]. It has been horrible situation. We had the newspaper in our hands, but were not allowed to write anything. So at least we held a meeting [...] and wrote a letter, which we intended to send to our publisher – the Socialist Party, Journalists' Union, Prime Minister etc.
The content was simple: that we see it and completely disagree, and that we also disagree with how it is covered in the media. And that we ask for a change and a dialogue. When we had the final version, we met again and invited the bosses. They were completely horror-stricken and told us that our activity is really anti-state, and that we will be arrested and the whole newspaper closed. But because our standpoint was not backed by all journalists – we were just a group of several people – we had not sent the letter. Only the chief editor promised us to give it to the party leader which he did, and the party leader told us he gave it personally to [General Secretary of Communist Party] Jakes, or something."187
In comparison with quotations of Horeni, it is clear that while Rude Pravo staff could actively set the agenda, Svobodne Slovo staff was limited by outside control and the
186 Vanek and Urbasek 2005, 152
187 ibid., 55
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protection that their party could provide them against the regime did not exist until November 17, 1989. Moreover, we can imply that while the journalists of Rude Pravo were mostly supporters of the regime, at least some journalists of Svobodne Slovo were against the regime - although we have to use caution with Horeni's statements as he was a chief editor talking about enthusiasm of his ex-subordinates. In any case, while the staff of Rude Pravo consisted of selected and approved Communist Party members, this was not the case regarding Svobodne Slovo, and thus after the media control mechanisms collapsed after November 17, the Rude Pravo journalists were "left alone" to continue doing what they have been actively doing until then anyway, while the Svobodne Slovo journalists were suddenly free to "speak the truth" and set their own agenda.
Story of Bystrovova also illuminates the conflict between journalists’ sense of professionalism on one hand and constrains of the control system on the other hand: the journalists could not publish the truth they could observe. The story also illuminates the position of the Socialist Party: a rubber-stamp organization, closely cooperating with Communist Party, could also function as a rubber bumper between the daily and the regime.
According to Jan Skoda, leader of the party in 1990, to get rid of that rubber-stamp status, leaders of Socialist Party were in favor of reforms; but their initiatives were blocked by the Communists.188 Vaclav Havel’s old classmate Skoda also took part in first meeting of anti-regime activists before the article condemning the police crackdown has been published.189
The publishing of this article was a daring act, possible only due to a hole in the system of media control. The pre-emptive censorship in Czechoslovakia was abolished during the Prague Spring in 1968, but soon it was replaced by a system of subsequent control.190 The
188 ibid., 36
189 ibid., 37
190 Tomasek 1994, 153
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new system was based on the fact that the media workers were responsible for their media outlets and the scale of sanctions went from note to the publisher to temporary withdrawal of
new system was based on the fact that the media workers were responsible for their media outlets and the scale of sanctions went from note to the publisher to temporary withdrawal of