Zoltán Tibori Szabó
The Limits of Public Sphere in the Case of Minorities
Abstract: This article is an approach to minority media and its stereotypes due to cultural prejudice. It enlists some common recurrences in the minority public speech in the East European area, focussing on the Hungarian minority in Romania.
Keywords: Romania; Hungarian minority; minority media; stereotypes; prejudices
There are many theories about the so-called self-censorship in the case of minorities. The great majority of scholars studying this issue are reaching mainly the conclusion that the public sphere of different minorities is very often too conservative, this being in their view the main reason why different important topics are not presented by the media of the minority in question.
We can agree that this is a reality: minority media present mainly “the struggle of the minority against discrimination”, “the struggle of the minority for human, civic, social, educational and economic rights” and “the struggle of the minority for keeping alive its mother tongue, traditions and all those institutions which help maintain their diversity”.
The mass media written or broadcast by minorities are trying constantly not to approach issues which are considered by their public as endangering the fight for the mentioned rights. Sociologists and political analysts agree that the main reason of this behaviour is the fact that the public sphere of minority media is against approaching such “dangerous topics”.
For a proper scientific approach it is important to study the roots and the mechanisms of this behaviour, as well as the limits of the public sphere in the case of minorities and the ways to demolish these limits.
Prejudices, stereotypes and hate speech
We are well aware that especially in transitional periods – for example during the transition from communist regimes back to capitalism – media operate with stereotypes, clichés and prejudices. Mainly with such basic principals as love and hate.
In the countries of the Balkans the media were oriented – as everywhere else in the world – towards a specific audience and were therefore filled with all the preconceived ideas of their audience. Working with this kind of ideas, media and audience used to influence each other like “inter-connecting vessels”, one kept feeding the other and vice versa. This principle is also valid for the debates that are taking place between the media of the majority and the media of different minorities and in the case of the public speech of politicians and intellectuals belonging to these groups.
Which is this principle? It is very important to recognise that both sides – the majority and the minority – are operating with stereotypes and prejudices created through history, already existing in the mind of their respective audience. Offering only chosen parts of the past and providing possibilities to prove whatever one wants to prove (from traditional hatred to territorial aspirations, from violence to the toleration of violence), the media promote divisions and individual concepts, and enforce myths and legends.
This mechanism is in the meantime fed by the public speech of those politicians – from both sides again – who try very hard to keep the aforementioned stereotypes and prejudices alive. Consequently, the public speech and especially the social, political or ethnical identity speech have become over these past few years the main place for the transmission of scientifically unfounded presumptions that are targeting the enforcement of stereotypes and clichés. This way the world is splitting into just two parts – “we” and “they”, and one of the consequences is the enforcement of an attitude, which expresses a great solidarity with all the members of a certain group and the rejection of everybody from outside of the group in question.
Behaviour of minority media
Because of the tensions created by the use of stereotypes, minorities are living in closed societies. They are in a certain way forced by the majority public speech to preserve this condition. The main reason why they do not want to demolish the boundaries of their society and to open it, is that the majority is not willing to accept the rights claimed by them, is not willing to enforce these rights with specific laws adopted by the parliament and to put the adopted laws and regulations freely into practice.
Subsequently, minority media are facing a great challenge. Editors are always trying to balance between the proper presentation of certain facts and the danger that the facts presented in an honest way will be turned against the minority in its fight for rights. This alternative is also the cause why the audience of minority media is a conservative one, unwilling to take any risks, often forcing the minority media not to talk about negative aspects and facts of the community.
Recent research made by the László Teleki Foundation from Budapest has shown that Hungarian audience in Romania is against the presentation of honest information on the internal problems that the traditional Hungarian churches or the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (DAHR) are facing. The conclusion of the study was that for the Hungarian media in Romania there are several “unspeakable issues”. Two thirds of the questioned journalists stated that they were directly or indirectly threatened for the articles they had published or were planning to publish on these issues. They also stated that mainly politicians tried to influence their work, unlike in the case of the majority media in Hungary for example, where journalists are influenced mostly by actors of the economic sphere.
Hungarian journalists from Romania identified some of this “unspeakable issues” as being the question of autonomy, the inter-ethnic relations, the independence of Transylvania, the economic affairs of the leaders DAHR and the internal conflicts of the Hungarian churches. The majority of the questioned journalists said they were following those unwritten rules of the local Hungarian press, because they did not want to face any troubles, and they did not want to be blamed by the audience.
Nobody has pointed out yet what causes this type of behaviour. Nobody has yet studied carefully why the political pluralism of minorities is so difficult to be accepted by the members of these groups. The Hungarian minority communities living in different states of the region have solved this last dilemma in different ways. For example: within the DAHR there are several so-called platforms, constituted along different political orientations, but in Slovakia there are several political parties which joined the Party of Hungarian Coalition, one of the members of the Slovakian governmental coalition. The pattern is the same: the common “enemy” is forcing these structures with different political views to become parts of one organisation, and to accept only one agenda.
The minority media reflect the daily life and the facts according to this pattern, becoming instinctively manipulative. This character of the minority media is a consequence of the fortunate nature of those regulations, which would transform the community in an open society. According to these conditions, daily editorial work is becoming more or less a question of continuously balancing issues: the editor must decide if a specific item of information is helping or not the fight of the community for the acceptance, adoption and enforcement of its claimed rights. This is the main reason why the negative news of the minority group is not transmitted by their media.
The two levels of public speech
Based on this behaviour, the minority public sphere develops a two-level publicity. One is the “official” level, on which the media broadcast “positive” information (“The parliament has voted against the educational rights of the minorities”, “The mayor is not willing to put the local administration bill into practice, so he is not accepting bilingual signboards on the public institutions”, “At the meeting with the president, the leaders of the DAHR protested against the nationalist speech of the PM” aso.). The other is the “unofficial” level, which broadcasts, almost exclusively orally, “negative” information that is targeted only at the members of the minority (“There are Hungarians involved in different corruption cases in Bucharest”, “X. Y. could not account for the money received by the community from different Hungarian foundations”, “The Hungarian priest rented the properties of the church in his own interest” aso.).
The so-called historical Hungarian churches have played an important role in the development of the described conservative behaviour. According to their leaders, the presentation of the “negative” facts in the Hungarian media is unacceptable. Hungarian journalists doing this are immediately considered “bad Hunga-rians”, individuals who try to demolish the walls surrounding the community, who put the entire group in danger. Simply because the conservative leaders of different historical churches consider reporting about negative facts, about corrupted Hungarian politicians as being against the highest interest of the community, the minority media are very often impeached for exposing internal corruption, stealing from community funds and other crimes.
Based on these views, there are “strategies to protect the nation” and also “strategies to protect those who are protecting the nation”. And because Hungarian churches played an important role in preserving the mother tongue and the traditions during communism, their impact on the audience of the Hungarian media is very high.
Of course these strategies are adopted immediately by the majority – the Hungarian majority in Hungary. It is interesting to note that the Hungarian media in Hungary also present mainly the “positive” information about the Hungarian minorities living abroad.
What can we do?
There are three actions we have to take. One is to intensify the dialogue between the majority and the minority public spheres by different methods, in order to demolish all prejudices and clichés. The second is that the majority public sphere has to explain as soon as possible the necessity of adopting all those laws and regulations that will have as an effect the opening of the closed minority communities. And the third: it is very important to continuously educate the journalists from both sides towards tolerance, towards rejection of hate speech, stereotypes and prejudices. This last question is a simple matter of transforming the East-European journalist into a really professional one.
Notes
1 Milica Pesic: Media in the Balkans. Paper presented at the Conference about the Media of the Balkan Countries. Varna, Bulgaria, May 15-17, 1998.
2 Marius Lazar: Aparitia şi transmiterea cliseelor si prejudecatilor interetnice de la o generatie la alta. In: Dialog Interetnic, Cluj, an. V., nr. 10(51), octombrie 1998, p. 2.
3 Tabutémák a romániai magyar sajtóban. Az RMDSZ és az egyház belsó ügyeit “nem illik” teregetni. In: Szabadság, 2001.08.01., p. 3.
4 Tibori Szabó Zoltán: A kisebbségi jogok és a nyilvánosság. In: A nyilvánosság rendszerváltása. Ed.: Vásárhelyi Mária, Halmai Gábor. Új Mandátum Könyvkiadó, Budapest, 1998, p. 58-61.