Posted on August 31, 2010 - by Venik

Austrian conference hosts ‘politicians versus journalists’ debate

ALPBACH, Austria: I am interrupting my blog holiday to report on a session of a conference here organised by the International Press Institute at the European Forum Alpbach 2010.

It didn’t matter to us panellists that the question under discussion – “Politicians construct and journalists search for reality?” – was a statement rather than a question. We knew well enough that we were being asked which really constructs reality for the public they claim to serve?

In order to do that, as the moderator, Michael Prüller, deputy editor-in-chief of Vienna’s Die Presse, explained at the outset, it was important to unravel the “uneasy relationship between politicians and journalists.”

Verena Nowotny was in no doubt that both were engaged in the construction of reality, but she clearly wished that journalists made a better fist of it.

Her views are coloured by her dealings with the media, now as spokesperson for the Austrian government at the United Nations, and formerly as the communications chief for the ex-Austrian chancellor, Wolfgang Schüssel.

Journalists only tell one story, she said, and it becomes the defining story. To illustrate her point, she said that the outside world thought most Austrians were Nazis who locked up their children in cellars.

This creation of a myth was due, in part, to the over-simplification of reporting. Journalists, she said, “have to give citizens a chance to experience a reality that does not only consist of villains and heroes, of losers and winners, of devastating catastrophes and landslide victories.”

Lance Price, who did much the same job as Nowotny as director of communications for Britain’s former prime minister, Tony Blair, dealt with the reality of the running battle between politicians and journalists.

One of his key themes was about the way in which journalists – or, more properly, their owners and editors – seek to exercise political power.

But, as he rightly noted, attempts to displace politicians or to influence the political process usually fail. Despite this fact, politicians misguidedly believe the media is powerful and therefore spend too much time and effort cosying up to the media. “This weakens them as politicians,” he said.

Then came his major point, about the greatest threat to democracy occurring when journalists collude with politicians, “when they find themselves on the same side rather than on opposite sides… when journalists decide to be cheerleaders.”

He listed several examples – appeasement before the outbreak of the second world war, the Suez misadventure, the Falklands war and, most notable of all, the invasion of Iraq.

Whatever their faults, journalists in Britain and Austria continue to act as watchdogs on politicians. Andrei Soldatov, co-founder of the Moscow-based website agentura.ru, painted a gloomier picture of journalism in Russia, suggesting that politicians hold sway.

He lamented the fact that newspapers had reduced their commitment to investigative journalism. New media may be one answer, he said, because it has challenged the status quo.

But websites pose “no threat to the authorities because in most cases they are just aggregators, have no staff, and rely entirely on the few remaining independent newspapers, which are hesitant to use new media sources.”

Afterwards, Andrei added to his depressing news by telling me that the level of audience interest in investigative journalism is very low indeed among the burgeoning Russian middle class.

The Hungarian online journalist, Péter Szegö of hvg.hu, sought to illustrate how the media do not construct a single reality but, through different interpretations of the same event in different news outlets, different reports appear.

As for my own contribution, I argued that both politicians and journalists, while paying lip service to acting in the public interest, have forsaken their original commitment to public service.

I see I was quoted in the conference paper, Alpbach News, as saying that the two élites of political and media professionals were engaged in a public dance, a masquerade, in which the majority of the people were merely passive viewers. So I guess I said it.

As if on cue, just as my fellow panellists were making their concluding remarks, the hall was invaded by a horde of cameramen and photographers following the former Croatian prime minister, Ivo Sanader, who is at the centre of a corruption scandal.

He had entered because he was due to speak at the panel after ours. He smiled away. They snapped away. Austrian politician Franz Fischler told the journalists to behave. They ignored him.

So the dance went on in front of us. Politicians and journalists were doing what they always do, and just as we had said, getting on each other’s nerves.

Original article

Popularity: 1% [?]

Related posts:

1. History is much too important to be left to politicians | Jonathan Steele
2. Journalists Killed in Iraq
3. Roy Greenslade: Environmental journalists caught up in war
4. Global newspapers to Russia’s president – start protecting journalists
5. Play about journalists who risk all to tell the truth