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CZECHOSLOVAK SOCIETY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES |
CZECH PRESS - A GERMAN MONOPOLY?
Benjamin Kuras, London
The long awaited antimonopoly law
has at last come into effect. It limits the market share in any given sector to 40%. It is
riddled with a maze of exceptions, but also with the failure to prevent cartel-formation.
In other words, it fails to prevent two companies from agreeing a joint strategy to carve
out up to 80%. An unlikely event, you might think, but the Czech newspaper sector is
pretty much getting there. It is being conquered by two publishing companies who just
happened, shortly before the law came into effect, to conclude a holding agreement to
portion out their Czech press ownership into two separate playing fields. They also both
happen to be German.
One
has bought up practically all regional and municipal newspapers and two national dailies
with mostly provincial readership, average sales half a million copies. The other took two
national dailies which seemingly compete with each other in the centre-right opinion
segment. This gives them another almost half a million copies, or 440,000 to be exact.
Close to a million between them.
The
total sale of Czech dailies is approximately 1,640.000. So who owns the remaining 700.000?
One of the bestsellers - the low-brow Blesk - belongs to the Swiss publisher Ringier, in
whose able hands several Czech publications spent a transitory period on their way to
German ownership. That's another 327.000 copies. The business daily Hospodáoské noviny,
with 75,000 copies, belongs to the financial publisher Dow Jones-Handeslblatt in
Düsseldorf. The only dailies remaining fully in Czech hands are the ex-Communist Právo,
and the Communist Haló noviny. Between them, they sell some 275.000 copies. Today, Czechs
own less than 20% of their daily press, and mostly Left-wing, at that.
There is a good reason to feel
queasy about German eagerness to own Czech press and influence Czech public opinion. The
Czechs have had a rough ride from their expansive neighbours for over a millennium, and
went through several periods when the very survival of the Czech language and culture was
at stake. Their emergence as a sovereign and democratic nation after three centuries of
linguistic, cultural and political Germanisation under the Austrian Empire, would have
surprised even Karl Marx who, as early as mid-19th century, predicted their imminent
disappearance and absorption into the German nation. The latest German attempt at the
annihilation of Czech nationhood remains within living memory.
That
memory is being eagerly re-written, with the Czechs slowly but steadily emerging from
history as, if not the chief villains, then at least as bad as the Germans. Several cases
amounting to censorship have already been documented. The threat hanging over editors,
reporters and freelance contributors is strictly business-like. Dismissal is an easily
justifiable method in an industry with gross over-employment.
At least one of the two German
cartel members has a fair amount of experience with media manipulation from their home
ground. Passauer Neue Presse (PNP) - operating in the Czech Republic through its
subsidiary Vltava-Labe-Press - gained international fame in the 1990s with its five-year
censorship of one of the biggest stories of their gemütliche Passau: A student girl named
Anna Rosmus who, while researching what was to be a celebratory essay on Passau's
anti-Nazi resistance heroes, discovered that just about the whole of Passau had been one
big bunch of active Nazis, including some of the PNP proprietor's family. At a time when
Passau was turning into a neo-Nazi rallies centre, with David Irving a frequent visitor,
Anna stubbornly pursued and published facts about her town's Nazi past. She was awarded
several journalism prizes - and hounded out by her neighbours, with threats to her life,
into exile in the USA.
The
other cartel member is the Duesseldorf publisher RBVG, about whom I know little and refer
an interested reader to Czech-Canadian historian Borivoj Eclovskı who has been closely
observing and documenting this media Drang nach Osten for a decade. He can be found on
e-mail borivojc@volny.cz or fax 069-624 3091.
An
early warning of a German media invasion which "could pose a very serious threat in a
crisis" was given to President Havel in the early 1990s by German writer Günter
Grass who witnessed it in his birthplace Gdansk. But neither Havel nor other Czech
politicians seem unduly bothered. Former Foreign Minister Zieleniec saw "no signals
that this would pose any threat to Czech interests". Senate Chairman Pithart used PNP
as advisors on the new Press Law. Prime Minister Zeman defends German newspaper ownership
as part of "our country's interest in joining the EU, therefore applying the
principle of free movement of capital". The only one "very distressed by
it" is Culture Minister Dostál who, however, has "no authority" which
would enable him "to address the issue".
Nor
will it come as a surprise that the transfer of Czech press into German ownership has been
carried out by Czech communists, with ample help from Czech anti-communist expatriates to
Germany. And, of course, dozens of conniving Czech editors and journalists.
Benjamin
Kuras is an Anglo-Czech writer, author of Czechs and Balances, As
Golems Go, and Is there Life on Marx?
e-mail: benkuras@aol.com
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