Europe

Transition from Cold War Media

In the period between World War II and 1990, the two halves of Europe were locked in an ideological conflict, pitting Western Europe's liberal democratic system against Eastern Europe's Communist/popular democratic system. At least theoretically, Western European countries believed in a democratic system based on freedom of speech. Journalists were not only allowed to speak their mind, but were expected to play a societal “watchdog” role, investigating potential wrongdoing by those in power. Economic power (such as ownership of a newspaper) was not supposed to be concentrated in the hands of those who already possessed political power, and the economy was, in large measure, market-based, thus encouraging competition among product/service providers (such as newspaper publishers).

By contrast, Eastern Europe's domination by the Soviet Union led to the complete subordination of the media and other forms of cultural production to the interests of the political elite. The journalists' priority, therefore, was not to be “objective,” but rather “educative,” meaning they were responsible for communicating to the citizens the decisions reached by the leaders, and for rallying the [Page 555]populace around various “national objectives” (such as producing more iron in the next five years, or increasing the country's population). Unlike in the West, where the media were mostly privately owned and lived off advertising revenue, in the Communist East all media were owned by the state, which appointed editors and directors, and subsidized newspapers and television stations. During the cold war period, therefore, Eastern and Western European media differed drastically in ownership patterns, perceived societal roles, and day-to-day journalistic practices.

The last months of 1989 saw monumental changes in Eastern Europe, as the Communist regimes toppled one after the other. The breakdown of the political establishment had multiple repercussions: the dictatorial Communist parties gave way to a myriad of parties competing for citizen votes, and state assets such as factories and newspapers were privatized. Communist ideology was officially denounced as both tyrannical and inefficient, and was replaced with a “wild” version of liberalism and capitalism that was also quickly denounced by many in Europe. The predictable vacuum in the political and economic arenas was filled by unsavory characters—in many cases former Communist decision-makers who had “reinvented” themselves into seeming businessmen and patriots. The media industry was not spared from these transformations. A large variety of privately owned newspapers and television stations mushroomed in every Eastern European country, and quickly became a battleground for competing economic, political, and ideological interests. In many cases, entities associated with the reformed Communist Party (now usually called the Social-Democrat or Socialist Party) owned a newspaper that espoused left-wing ideology (such as the Bulgarian Duma), while the opposition forces controlled a corresponding publication (in the Bulgarian case, the Demokracia newspaper linked to the Union of Democratic Forces). Toward the mid-1990s, large international corporations began investing in Eastern European media, achieving, in many cases, near dominance of the local market while also introducing new journalistic standards. The Eastern European media had traveled a long way to a chaotic yet immensely popular mix of “professionalism” (i.e., striving to abide by the Western media standards of “objectivity” and “freedom of speech”) and “hitman journalism” (i.e., selling its influential voice to the highest bidder).

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