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PN 257
Cleansing in the Czech Union of Journalists After WWII
J. Cebe
1
1
Charles University and Metropolitan University in Prague, Department of Media Studies, Prague, Czech Republic
After the WWII ended, all European nations that were subjected to the Nazi Germany, or that collaborated actively with Germany from their own free will,
had to deal with the necessity to punish those that were guilty of the collaboration with the Nazi regime. Also the post-war Czechoslovakia had to deal with
the task how to punish the “traitors of the nation“. Special judiciary was established by three presidential decrees. It established the structure of people's
courts that were supposed to ensure the purge of the nation from those that collaborated with the occupiers. These courts also sentenced several dozen
journalists, often for heavy prison sentences. In seven cases, journalists were also sentenced to death penalty. Besides the condemnation of traitors by
the judiciary, purification of the cultural life was also proclaimed. Chapter XV of the governmental program announced the need of moral and intellectual
cleansing of the nation, and promised to eradicate all that actively cooperated with the invaders from cultural organizations and institutions. And because
government committed itself to “make thorough purge in the file of journalism, radio and film”, journalists themselves started the cleansing among their
own files as well. The purgatory commission in Czech Journalists Union examined around 400 people until February 1946. There were four types of the pun‑
ishment. The most serious form of punishment was the expulsion from the journalistic organization and following turn of the criminal to people's court.
This punishment concerned according to the available lists 73 people. The participation of Czech Journalistic Union, however, did not end by the expulsion
from the Union and handing over to the court, for the officials of the Union very often were sitting at the court as observers, and often they acted as main
witnesses of the charge. A little bit milder was the second type of punishment, which included the life expulsion from the journalistic organization and
a ban of further journalistic practice. It concerned about 40 journalists. These journalists were not sent to the public court, however, the Union decided that
they will be reported at least for the suspicion of crime on the basis of so called small retribution decree. In forty cases where the commission didn´t found
the guilt serious enough to hand the journalist at stake to the National court or to expel him, he or she was punished by a suspension from the journalistic
general practice for a limited period of time. The mildest form of punishment was the fine for the visits in so called “Presseklub”, social center of German
and journalists-activists during the protectorate. The professional purge among Czech journalists was very hard, even in comparison to other European
countries. Contrary to other western countries, the punished journalists often lost due to the later political development the possibility to fully return to
their profession.
PN 258
Post-1989 Survival Strategies of State Communist Journalist Elites in Central Europe: A Comparative Outlook
P. Tamás
2
1
University of Tampere, School of Communication- Media and Theatre, Tampere, Finland
2
Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Moscow State University, Budapest, Hungary
In the Central European state communist societies of the 1980s journalists had a double profile. On one side those professionals, especially in big papers,
radio and TV, were understood by the public opinion as parts of the political class and even of its elite. They had certain intellectual or political autonomy;
they were not reflecting automatically the opinions of the party state. But they were mostly on its side, their promotion and carriers were controlled by party
structures – in some periods and countries in brutal, in others in softer ways. Czechoslovakia after 1968 was an example of straightforward brutality, while
Hungary of the 1960–80s was an example of permanent negotiations of those relationships, and Poland represented a mixture in this respect. In Hungary
in direct ways, in other countries in indirect forms, the party offered better living conditions. Journalists had typically a higher salary thanmost professionals
in the country – they received cars sooner compared to average citizens constantly waiting for their orders and the same happened also for apartments from
state housing programs. At the same time, at least parts of those groups especially in Hungary, Poland and also in the 1960s in Czechoslovakia, were major
representatives of emerging reforms and autonomous development strategies, of the intelligentsia in the eyes of the public opinion. Papers, like Polityka in
Warsaw and Elet es Irodalom in Budapest were perceived as almost independent by the contemporaries. Journalist associations covered all of those different
actions, projects, negotiations. In the 1980s, before the collapse of the communist regimes, significant and visible parts of the journalist community were
already representatives of reform opinions. After 1989 those diverse parts of the community chose different strategies for their survival. The lifestyle and
income privileges disappeared, while stability of jobs was either guaranteed or controlled by the authorities. Journalists as a group which was participating
in the reforms of the 1980s knew that that it is coming soon and was not disturbed. For their further professional horizons they chose among four different
strategies: (1) A small minority (10–15%) continued to understand themselves as parts of the fallen party elites and tried to find places to survive in their
re-organizing networks, using their resources. (2) Another minority (10–15%) using their public image of reformers left journalism as a profession and
were integrated into new political parties, parliamentary groups and new independent movements. (3) Around 20% continued as core members, even stars
of the newmedia landscape with a new ideology of the“absolute freedom of press”. Referring to images of the democracy poplar in the 1990s, they resisted
any outside influence, trying to control the media. (4) The majority simplified, de-intellectualized and de-ideologized their professional identities. They
started to believe, that they are in a technical profession. Their role is information gathering and profession and not public performance at all. The paper
presents national combinations of these strategies in different periods of the transformation in four Central European countries: Hungary, Czech and Slovak
Republics, and Poland.