Young German Aspiring to Develop Belarusian Media

I spent my child­hood in the for­mer indus­tri­al heart of Ger­many – the Ruhr region. In the first half of the 20^th cen­tu­ry, it was in fact the cen­ter of the Euro­pean coal min­ing indus­try.

How­ev­er, nowa­days the rem­nants of heavy indus­try have been aban­doned, and many indus­tri­al build­ings and even whole quar­ters have stayed desert­ed. I grew up there, went to school, and then decid­ed to study cul­ture sci­ences, but in some oth­er place – in Frank­furt (Oder), a town with the pop­u­la­tion of 60 thou­sand bor­der­ing with Poland. Our Viad­ri­na Euro­pean Uni­ver­si­ty focus­es on East­ern Euro­pean stud­ies. There I start­ed learn­ing Russ­ian, although my par­ents took it neg­a­tive­ly, and gen­er­al­ly dis­liked all of post-Sovi­et. Per­haps, my inter­est arose from the sit­u­a­tion when the Euro­pean Human­i­ties Uni­ver­si­ty was closed, and our uni­ver­si­ty received a lot of stu­dents form Min­sk. That’s how I opened con­tacts with Belarus, I start­ed to take part in exchange pro­grams, those sup­port­ing the civ­il com­mu­ni­ty. I saw that there was some­thing of inter­est for me in it. I had worked in dif­fer­ent projects deal­ing with the sup­port of the media and civ­il soci­ety in East­ern Europe. And at the end of 2014, I decid­ed to apply for work at the IBB in Min­sk, and I got hired.

What issues do you see in the Belaru­sian media sphere?

I don’t think I will tell much new. The first dif­fer­ence of Belaru­sian media from Ger­man can be illus­trat­ed by this mate­r­i­al item: the col­lec­tion con­tains arti­cles from Ger­man mass media about the idea of cre­at­ing in Berlin a memo­r­i­al com­mem­o­rat­ing mur­dered Jews in Europe. The top­ic was wide­ly dis­cussed in Ger­man media, from var­i­ous aspects. The col­lec­tion illus­trates vivid­ly how much the media par­tic­i­pat­ed in the dis­cus­sion and helped the soci­ety shape the opin­ion regard­ing this or that issue.

The book shows that in Ger­many mass media are a plat­form for dis­cus­sion of burn­ing issues. In Belarus you can sel­dom come across such dis­cus­sions. Either they don’t start, or only one side speaks out.

Also, mass media in Ger­many has the sta­ble role of con­trol­ling politi­cians and the gov­ern­ment. Cer­tain­ly, there is a prob­lem when politi­cians use media, but in Belarus this prob­lem is very vivid. And it con­cerns not only state-run mass media – there is much to do with pol­i­tics in inde­pen­dent media, too.

As I observe it, Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists often refer them­selves to com­pet­ing camps. So to say, you are in the state-run camp, I am from the oppo­si­tion­al one, and there is a wall between us. It seems to me, some open­ness lacks here, some dia­logue. Of course, admin­is­tra­tion influ­ences peo­ple, but every­body has one’s own brains.

From the out­set of the School of Jour­nal­ism, the IBB stages meet­ings with­in Jour­nal­ists’ Club which is a unique plat­form for dia­logue between jour­nal­ists of state-run and inde­pen­dent mass media. Here hot issues are dis­cussed, all jour­nal­ists can par­tic­i­pate in the Club regard­less of belong­ing to any of the “camps”.

So, in Belarus I often come across with stamps, with ide­ol­o­gized infor­ma­tion. I won’t tell about nowa­days, I’m talk­ing about the past. Last year we worked a lot over the top­ic of mem­o­ry, we held a lot of events, met many peo­ple and did inter­views. And I noticed that many peo­ple talk not with their own words, they talk with stamps, clichés. I have an impres­sion that they read learnt phras­es from some books. In such atmos­phere, it’s clear, it is dif­fi­cult to orga­nize at least some­what civ­il dis­cus­sion, but some­times it is bad­ly need­ed.

One more indi­ca­tor for me is, for instance, the num­ber of com­plaints with which the pub­lic responds to this or that pub­li­ca­tion. In most Euro­pean coun­tries, there are civ­il coun­cils who con­sid­er dis­putes in media sphere. In Ger­many, let’s say, such coun­cil han­dles thou­sands of com­plaints. When a per­son is in doubt about this or that pub­li­ca­tion, he eas­i­ly applies to the coun­cil to con­sid­er the issue from the point of view of jour­nal­ism ethics. In Belarus, there is no such all-nation­al coun­cil.

But the most impor­tant thing for me is that here, pub­lic dis­cus­sion in the media is scarce.

In your view, is it pos­si­ble to solve these prob­lems? As in East Ger­many, before the uni­fi­ca­tion, there had also been prob­lems as such.

I think one should focus on the things that you can real­ly influ­ence. What­ev­er I’d want, I don’t have influ­ence on some glob­al process­es. But I can com­mu­ni­cate with peo­ple, offer them some changes, prospects.

I know many peo­ple in Belarus who strive for changes and want to influ­ence some­thing in their sur­round­ings. There are lead­ers of opin­ion in the media. There are also in the sphere of NGOs. And what the School of Jour­nal­ism can offer is to be plat­form for dis­cus­sion of var­i­ous top­ics from dif­fer­ent aspects. Nev­er mind, what media talk and to what camp they think they belong.

We can also offer a pos­si­bil­i­ty for jour­nal­ists to study and to rise lev­el. In all I think the best thing that can hap­pen to you in life is that you can learn some­thing new. The IBB School of Jour­nal­ism gives this pos­si­bil­i­ty. Last year, we had an edu­ca­tion­al course on the cul­ture of mem­o­ry. This spring we have also planned an edu­ca­tion­al course. Most like­ly, there will also be a course con­nect­ed with social issues and alter­na­tive cul­ture.

When you’ve been in con­tact with a per­son who caused some doubts in your world view – this is the first step towards changes, the first step towards a crit­i­cal view over one’s own cre­ativ­i­ty and opin­ions.

In autumn, we are going to hold an edu­ca­tion­al trip for jour­nal­ists to Ger­many. The main top­ic is how the soci­ety copes with glob­al prob­lems and what the place of the media is in this process. The trip aims to explore more about social issues – from migrants’ prob­lems to the ques­tions of devel­op­ing and expand­ing cities. This is how we are plan­ning to work for the process of changes in the Belaru­sian media sphere.