The European Public Sphere and the Media: Europe in Crisis

The European Public Sphere and the Media

Also by Anna Triandafyllidou IMMIGRANTS AND NATIONAL IDENTITY IN EUROPE NEGOTIATING NATIONHOOD IN A CHANGING EUROPE EUROPEANISATION, NATIONAL IDENTITIES AND MIGRATION MULTICULTURALISM, MUSLIMS AND CITIZENSHIP: A EUROPEAN APPROACH (with T. Modood and R. Zapata Barrero) TRANSCULTURAL EUROPE (with U. H. Meinhof ) CONTEMPORARY POLISH MIGRATION IN EUROPE EUROPEAN IMMIGRATION: A SOURCEBOOK (with R. Gropas)

Also by Ruth Wodak DISORDERS OF DISCOURSE GENDER AND DISCOURSE THE DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTION OF NATIONAL IDENTITY (with R. de Cillia, M. Reisigl and K. Liebhart) METHODS OF TEXT AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS (with S. Titscher, M. Meyer and E. Vetter) METHODS OF CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS (with M. Meyer) DISCOURSE AND DISCRIMINATION (with M. Reisigl) CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS: THEORY AND INTERDISCIPLINARITY (with G. Weiss) A NEW AGENDA IN (CRITICAL) DISCOURSE ANALYSIS (with P. Chilton) THE DISCOURSE OF POLITICS IN ACTION: POLITICS AS USUAL

Also by Michał Kryzanowski ˙ (UN)DOING EUROPE: DISCOURSE AND PRACTICES OF NEGOTIATING THE EU CONSTITUTION (with F. Oberhuber) THE POLITICS OF EXCLUSION: DEBATING MIGRATION IN AUSTRIA (with R. Wodak) QUALITATIVE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES (with R. Wodak) DISCOURSE AND TRANSFORMATION IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE (with A. Galasinska) ´ THE DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTION OF EUROPEAN IDENTITIES BECOMING EUROPEAN: DISCOURSES OF IDENTITY AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN POLISH POLITICS AFTER 1989

The European Public Sphere and the Media Europe in Crisis Edited by

Anna Triandafyllidou Ruth Wodak Michał Krzyzanowski ˙

Selection and editorial matter © Anna Triandafyllidou, Ruth Wodak and . Michał Krzy zanowski 2009 Individual chapters © their respective authors 2009 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN–13: 978–0–230–21042–4 ISBN–10: 0–230–21042–2

hardback hardback

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The European public sphere and the media : Europe in crisis / edited . by Anna Triandafyllidou, Ruth Wodak, Michal Krzy zanowski. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–230–21042–4 1. Communication in politics—Europe. 2. Mass media—Europe, . I. Triandafyllidou, Anna. II. Wodak, Ruth, 1950– III. Krzy zanowski, Michal. JA85.2.E85E87 2009 320.9401’4—dc22 2008053020 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents List of Tables Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors

vii viii ix

Introduction Michał Krzyzanowski, ˙ Anna Triandafyllidou and Ruth Wodak

Part I: Europe and the Media at Times of Crisis: Theoretical Reflections 1.

2.

Europe – Discourse – Politics – Media – History: Constructing ‘Crises’? Bo Stråth and Ruth Wodak Media, Political Communication and the European Public Sphere Paschal Preston and Monika Metykova

Part II: Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates 3.

4.

Out of Maelstroms: Crises and Parlous Developments of Europe since World War Two James Kaye The 1956 Hungarian Revolution in the Hungarian, Austrian and German Media András Kovács, Anikó Horváth and Nadežda Kinsky-Müngersdorff

1

13 15 34

51 53

83

5.

The Berlin Wall Crisis: Global Cold War and the Role of Europe Hagen Schulz-Forberg

6.

Paris in May 1968: Social Conflict, Democracy and the Role of Europe Hagen Schulz-Forberg

135

‘Progressive’ versus ‘Bureaucratic’ Socialism: the Media Coverage of Prague 1968 in the ‘Other’ Europe Primoz Krasovec and Igor Z. Žagar

156

The Discursive Construction of Europe and Values in the Coverage of the Polish 1981 ‘State of War’ in the European Press Michał Krzyzanowski ˙

174

7.

8.

v

115

vi

9.

10.

11.

Contents

The Fall of the Berlin Wall: European and Value-Oriented Dimensions in the News Discourse Jessika ter Wal, Anna Triandafyllidou, Chiara Steindler and Maria Kontochristou Europe’s Role in the World: the Invasion of Iraq and the Outbreak of the Second Gulf War Jessika ter Wal, Anna Triandafyllidou, Chiara Steindler and Maria Kontochristou The Mohammed Cartoons Crisis 2006: the Role of Islam in the European Public Sphere Jessika ter Wal, Anna Triandafyllidou, Chiara Steindler and Maria Kontochristou

198

219

239

Conclusions: Europe, Media, Crisis and the European Public Sphere Michał Krzyzanowski, ˙ Anna Triandafyllidou and Ruth Wodak

261

Bibliography Index

269 283

List of Tables 5.1 Main topoi of crisis discourse (%) 5.2 Appearance of references to values in the media per country (%) 5.3 References to Europe (types/frequencies) 6.1 News coverage, number of articles (frequencies) 6.2 Main topoi (% and frequencies) 6.3 List of references to values (%) 8.1 Press reporting of the Polish State of War, 1981: analysed countries, newspapers and articles 8.2 Key topics of the press reporting of the Polish State of War, 1981 8.3 Key arguments (topoi) and corresponding values/ anti-values in the press reporting of the Polish state of war, 1981 11.1 Newspapers selected and number of reports published during 2–8 February 2006, by country 11.2 Reprints of the cartoons, chronologically, by newspaper

vii

119 125 132 136 142 145 177

179 194

242 243

Acknowledgements This book presents research findings from an EU-funded research project entitled: ‘Media and Ethics of a European Public Sphere from the Treaty of Rome to the “War on Terror” ’ (acronym: EMEDIATE). The editors and contributors to this volume gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the European Commission, Directorate General for Research, Sixth Framework Programme, Thematic Priority 7, Contract no. CIT2-CT-2003-506027 for the period 2004–7. Without it neither the project nor this book would have been possible.

viii

Notes on Contributors Anikó Horváth is currently a PhD student at the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, Hungary. She is writing on poverty and stratification in postsocialist urban settings. Horváth holds a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and a Master’s degree in Social Communication from Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania, as well as a Master’s degree in Nationalism Studies from the CEU. James Kaye is a historian, having recently completed a post-doctoral fellowship and work as a project coordinator at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute as well as the position of key researcher at the Ludwig Boltzman Institute for European History and Public Spheres in Vienna. Kaye is currently project director of the virtual library Readme.cc in Italy as well as the director of readme.cc’s academic board. His research and expertise are in historiography, photography and comparative discourses of modernity, community and conceptual history. Nadežda Kinsky-Müngersdorff is a PhD student at the Institute for Contemporary History at the University of Vienna. She is focusing on visual contemporary and cultural history, while writing on identity constructions in depictions of Vienna in Austrian film since 1945. She gained a Master’s degree in Nationalism Studies at the Central European University, Budapest as well as a Master’s degree in History and Studies of Nationalities at the University Professors Program, Boston University. She works as a freelance translator and researcher. Maria Kontochristou, teaches cultural policy and management at the Hellenic Open Univeristy and has worked as the Head of International Collaborations at the Hellenic Culture Organisation, Ministry of Culture. She holds a PhD in European and Media Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science and an MA in European Cultural Policy from Warwick University. She has studied politics, cultural management and mass communication in Greece, Germany and England. Her research interests include the relationship between media and identity construction (especially the construction of a European identity), theory of mediation, EU cultural policy, and strategic management of cultural organizations. Her recent publications include: Identity and Media in Contemporary Greece (ed.) (Athens: Papazisis). András Kovács is Doctor of Sciences at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Professor at the Central European University, Budapest. He is the Academic Director of the Nationalism Studies Programme/Jewish Studies ix

x

Notes on Contributors

Programme at the CEU. He is also Senior Researcher in the Institute for Ethnic and Minority Research at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Professor Kovács’ research interests include Jewish identity and anti-Semitism in postwar Europe, memory and identity, and socio-economic attitudes and political choice. His publications include NATO, Neutrality and National Identity: the Case of Austria and Hungary (ed. with R. Wodak, Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2003) and New Jewish Identities (ed. with Zvi Gitelman and Barry Kosmin, Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2003). Primoz Krasovec is currently Assistant Researcher at the Educational Research Institute, Ljubljana and a PhD student of sociology of everyday life at Faculty of Social Sciences, Ljubljana. He is the author of several scientific and newspaper articles on politics and the history of socialism, Yugoslav anti-fascism, ideologies of contemporary mass media and socially engaged film and theatre. Selected publications include: ‘Although It Is Not Yet Proven: Constitutive Gestures of Contemporary Institutional Racism’, Ljubljana: Druzboslovne razprave [Discussions in Social Sciences], no. 46, 2004; ‘Marx’s Critiques and Hate Speech’, Ljubljana: Borec (a journal for history, anthropology and literature), no. 639–42, 2007; ‘Uneventment after the Event’ (foreword), in Lev Centrih and Primoz Krasovec (eds), Uneventment of History, Ljubljana: ZAK, 2008. Michał Krzyzanowski ˙ is a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Linguistics at Lancaster University and Assistant Professor at the School of English of the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan. ´ He has researched and taught extensively on critical text and discourse analysis, linguistic and cultural diversity, as well as media and communication research in European contexts. Recent book publications include: (Un)Doing Europe: Discourses and Practices of Negotiating the EU Constitution (with F. Oberhuber, 2007); Discourse and Transformation in Central and Eastern Europe (with A. Galasinska, ´ 2008); Qualitative Discourse Analysis in the Social Sciences (with R. Wodak, 2008); and The Politics of Exclusion: Debating Migration in Austria (with R. Wodak, 2008). Monika Metykova works as a research associate at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where she researches media and cultural transformations in the context of enlarged Europe. Her previous research, conducted at the University of Sunderland, explored Eastern European migration to the UK. Paschal Preston is Head of the School of Communication, and director of the Communication, Technology and Culture research centre in Dublin City University. His latest book is Making the News: Journalism Practices and News Cultures in Europe (2008). Hagen Schulz-Forberg is Assistant Professor in International History at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. From 2004 to 2007 he was Research Fellow at the European University Institute in the consortium ‘Media and Ethics

Notes on Contributors

xi

in a European Public Sphere from the Treaties of Rome to the “War on Terror” ’ (EMEDIATE). He has collaborated with several research projects on the public sphere in Europe, for example the project ‘The Transnationalization of Public Spheres in Europe’ at the University of Bremen where he was an associated researcher. His recent publications related to the public sphere include ‘Cosmopolitanism or Ethnic Homogeneity? Roma Identity and the European Public Sphere’, in Cristiano Bee and Emmanuela Bozzini (eds), Developing the European Public Sphere: Institutions, Media, Civil Society, London: Ashgate, 2008; ‘The European Public Sphere and the Transnational History of the Notion of Europe since 1945’, in José M. Faraldo et al. (eds), Europe in the Eastern Bloc: Imaginations and Discourses (1945–1991), Cologne, Weimar and Vienna: Böhlau, 2008, 37–59; and, with Michael Brüggemann, ‘Towards a Pan-European Public Sphere? A Typology of Transnational Media in Europe’, in Hartmut Wessler et al. (eds), The Transnationalisation of Public Spheres, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Chiara Steindler is currently research assistant at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute in Florence and researcher at the Bruno Kessler Foundation in Trient. She holds an MA in Parliamentary Studies from the Seminar of Parliamentary Studies of the University of Florence. Her PhD, received in 2005 from the University of Florence, analysed the debates relating to foreign relations in the Convention on the Future of Europe. Her research interests include the quality of democratic process in the European Union and in the Italian context (national and local) and the external relations of the EU with its Middle Eastern neighbours. She has taken part in several research projects on these issues at the University of Florence and in the Seminar of Parliamentary Studies of the University of Florence. Bo Stråth is Academy of Finland Distinguished Professor of Nordic, European and World History at Helsinki University. From 1997–2007 he was Professor of Contemporary History at the European University Institute, Florence. His research focuses on European modernity and narratives on Europe as well as on comparative conceptual world history. For projects and publications, see www.helsinki.fi/hum/nordic/strath. Jessika ter Wal is Assistant Professor in Communication Sciences at the Utrecht School of Governance, Utrecht University. She is also, since 1997, Research Fellow at the European Research Centre on Migration and Ethnic Relations (ERCOMER) at Utrecht University. Jessika ter Wal holds a PhD in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute (1997). Since then she has undertaken international research on media and ethnic relations, and has been a guest lecturer at universities in Italy, Switzerland and Austria. Publications include (edited with M. Verkuyten) Comparative Perspectives on Racism, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000; (editor) Racism and Cultural

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Diversity in the Mass Media: an Overview of Research and Examples of Good Practice in the 15 EU Member States, Vienna: European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, 2002; and (in Dutch, editor with K. Phalet) Muslims in the Netherlands: Turks and Moroccans – Religious Involvement and Public Discourse, The Hague: Social and Cultural Planning Bureau, 2004. Anna Triandafyllidou is Assistant Professor at the Democritus University of Thrace, Greece, and Senior Research Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP), think tank in Athens. She was a fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre of Advanced Studies, European University Institute in Florence from 1999 to 2007 and has been Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges since 2002. Her books include: Immigrants and National Identity in Europe (2001, Routledge); Negotiating Nationhood in a Changing Europe (2002, Edwin Mellen Press); Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration (2003, Routledge, co-editor); Multiculturalism, Muslims and Citizenship: a European Approach (2006, Routledge, co-editor); Transcultural Europe (2006, Palgrave Macmillan, co-editor); Contemporary Polish Migration in Europe (2006, Edwin Mellen Press, editor); European Immigration: a Sourcebook (2007, Ashgate, co-editor); and What is Europe? (2009, Palgrave Macmillan). Ruth Wodak is Distinguished Professor of Discourse Studies at Lancaster University. Besides various other prizes, she was awarded the Wittgenstein Prize for Elite Researchers in 1996. Her research interests focus on (critical) discourse analysis; gender studies; language and/in politics; identity politics; prejudice and discrimination; and ethnographic methods of linguistic fieldwork. She is a member of the editorial board of a range of linguistic journals and co-editor of the journals Discourse and Society, Critical Discourse Studies and The Journal of Language and Politics. She has held visiting professorships in Uppsala, Stanford University, University of Minnesota, University of East Anglia, Georgetown University and University Örebro (Kerstin Hesselgren Chair of the Swedish Parliament 2008). See http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/profiles/265 for more information on her current research projects and recent publications. Igor Z. Žagar studied philosophy, sociology and linguistics in Ljubljana, Paris and Antwerp. He received his doctoral degree in Sociology of Culture from the University of Ljubljana. He is a Senior Research Fellow (and the head of the Centre for Discourse Studies) at the Educational Research Institute, and Professor in Rhetoric and Argumentation at the Faculty of the Humanities, University of Primorska (where he holds the position of the head of the Department for Slovenian Studies). He has lectured in Belgium, the United States, Italy, China, the United Kingdom and Russia. His interests lie in pragmatics (speech act theory, discourse analysis), argumentation and rhetoric. He is (co-)author and editor of ten books, and more than a hundred articles.

Introduction Michał Krzyzanowski, ˙ Anna Triandafyllidou and Ruth Wodak

The European Public Sphere: debates in academia and EU politics Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, we have witnessed a significant growth of academic interest in complex issues related to the public sphere (Wodak and Koller, 2008). Significantly fostered by the first English translation of Jürgen Habermas’ seminal work on The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Habermas, 1996), research on the public sphere has provided a variety of theoretical approaches which either postulate the imminent demise of the public sphere in (late) modern democracies (see Calhoun, 1992; Crossley and Roberts, 2004), or relate the evident crisis of the (national) public sphere(s) to the growth of global tendencies rooted in the emergent transnationalization of media production and reception (Fraser, 2003). It was particularly the second of the post-Habermasian approaches that influenced the debates on the European Public Sphere (henceforth EPS) which were initiated when the public sphere-oriented academic disputes reached Europe and became tied to the then-ongoing (predominantly normative, political-scientific) debates about the crisis of the European Union as a democratic, supranational constellation (see Majone, 1994; Moravcsik, 1998; Weiler et al., 2005). In what followed, a number of theoretical discussions about the need for creating a strong EPS were developed against the background of a claim that, without the EPS which could link the EU with its citizens/demos, no actual democratization of the EU could take place (Habermas, 2001a; Trenz and Eder, 2004). It was also argued that the thenstate-of-the-art of the EPS did not allow for any prediction of its imminent development (see Grimm, 1995; Kielmansegg, 1996) or any prompt achievement of its ‘strength’ and ‘quality’ (see Langenbucher and Latzer, 2006; Splichal, 2006).1 In particular, Splichal (2006) posed the relevant questions of whether the EPS is quasi ‘imposed’ and ‘essentialized’ by the EU or the researchers involved in trying to investigate it; and whether media analysis 1

2

The European Public Sphere and the Media

is the best and only way to investigate a possibly existing EPS, or whether other data or other theories should be drawn upon. The academic debates on EPS, however, were, if not results of, then at least parallel to the new discussions on the public sphere in political discourses at the supranational level. The European Commission’s White Paper on European Governance (2001) already pointed to a ‘widening gulf between the [EU] and the people it serves’ (see also Wodak and Wright, 2006, 2007). It was emphasized that not only does the EU suffer from a de facto inability to act, but the bloc is not even given credit when it actually undertakes appropriate actions. This results from the fact that ‘Brussels is too easily blamed by member states for difficult decisions that they themselves have agreed to or even requested’ (European Commission, 2001: 7–8). Taken together with the phenomenon that many people simply do not understand the mechanisms of the institutions, these issues lead to disenchantment and a lack of trust.2 An analysis of the situation suggests that, while these problems are not entirely of the EU’s own making and are not always fair, they are primarily the result of insufficient knowledge and communication and a ‘closeness deficit’. The problems arising from the ‘closeness deficit’ between the EU and its citizens underline the fact that the bloc can no longer derive legitimacy solely from its ability to improve trade and complete the internal market: ‘Its legitimacy today depends on involvement and participation’, and thus ‘the linear model of dispensing policies from above must be replaced by a virtuous circle, based on feedback, networks and involvement from policy creation to implementation at all levels’ (ibid.: 11). The proposals in the White Paper are thus underpinned by five principles of good governance – openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence – which are said to reinforce two further basic principles: proportionality and subsidiarity. Clearly, the communication deficit and the need to improve European governance as regards participation, accountability and openness, among other principles, are questions closely related to the existence and functioning of an EPS (see also Graham, 2008; Koller and Wodak, 2008; Wright, 2008). However, while the European Commission’s 2001 White Paper was signalling the likely development of the EU’s problems due to its lack of openness to, and closeness with its citizens, the ensuing events of the postNice process showed that what was once predicted in the White Paper was now becoming part of the reality. By 2005, the failure of almost all major EU ‘democratization’ projects had become obvious, which, defined jointly as the EU Constitutional Reform (see Krzyzanowski ˙ and Oberhuber, 2007), definitely reached their end with the radical rejection of the draft EU Constitutional Treaty in France and the Netherlands in 2005. In the aftermath of those failures, the EU (or, strictly speaking, the European Commission), invented a new ‘project’ called the ‘European Communication Policy’. Resulting in diverse types of policy documents which describe strategies of how to recommunicate Europe to the public and reconnect the former with the latter

Introduction 3

(see European Commission, 2005a, 2005b, 2006c), this new agenda culminated in a White Paper on European Communication Policy (2006a) which claims that ‘Europe’s communication with its citizens has not kept pace’ (European Commission, 2005a: 2) and that a large-scale debate on means and strategies of communicating Europe to the public must be initiated in order to ‘close the gap’ (ibid.). However, while using more or less the same set of ‘gap’ arguments as the 2001 White Paper on European Governance (see above), the White Paper on European Communication Policy goes further and devotes a whole section of its Part I to the explicit clarification of why and how to construct the EPS. As suggested in that section: [M]any of the policy decisions that affect daily life for people in the EU are taken at European level. People feel remote from these decisions, the decision-making process and EU institutions. There is a sense of alienation from ‘Brussels’, which partly mirrors the disenchantment with politics in general. One reason for this is the inadequate development of a ‘European public sphere’ where the European debate can unfold. (European Commission, 2006a: 4) Moreover, we learn from the White Paper on European Communication Policy that the EPS should occur at a national rather than supranational or international levels. Based on the premise that ‘people learn about politics and political issues largely through their national education systems and via their national, regional and local media’ (ibid.), a proposal is hence put forward that constructing the EPS necessitates that Europe ‘needs to find its place in the existing national, regional and local “public spheres” and the public discussion across member states must be deepened’ (ibid., p. 5). However, as it later becomes clear, what the European Commission has in mind in its White Paper is what could be defined as a (rather questionable) ‘deficiency-model of an EPS’. The latter should be constructed by adding a European dimension to the national debates and, by highlighting deficiencies in national governance, should foreground the advantages of EU policies; ‘that is why national public authorities, civil society, and the European Union institutions need to work together to develop Europe’s place in the public sphere’ (ibid.)

Aims and focus of this volume As the backdrop to these scholarly and political debates, several empirical studies (see Downey and Koenig, 2006; Eder and Kantner, 2002; Gerhards, 1993; Koopmans and Erbe, 2003; Risse and van de Steeg, 2003; Statham and Grey, 2005; Trenz, 2004) attempt to show how, mainly through the progress of the so-called ‘Europeanization of national media’ or through the rise of common or similar ways of referring to and interpreting specifically European occurrences, an EPS was already ‘in the making’. However, these empirical

4

The European Public Sphere and the Media

approaches share several characteristics: they are all rather ‘incidental’, synchronic case studies of isolated EU-specific or EU-rooted events (e.g. the 2000 Austrian ‘Haider Crisis’) and employ solely quantitative methods (content analysis and frame analysis). Additionally, all of the empirical approaches to the EPS to date have clearly disregarded the historical aspect of the development of the EPS (for example, the impact of the Cold War), and assigned a unique role to the EU as a crucial point of reference on the basis of which the EPS could or should be created. This volume,3 in contrast, hopes to make up for the above-mentioned deficiencies of recent empirical research on the EPS, from both an interdisciplinary and a critical point of view. It thus presents an empirical and longitudinal study of how, if at all, a European Public Sphere was created in the national media of several European countries at various critical times of post-war European history. The book illustrates how various disruptive moments in the history of Europe after 1945 (i.e. various ‘crisis events’, see below) caused a differentiated representation and negotiation of ‘Europe’ and Europe-oriented notions (e.g. ‘European values’, ‘European identity’ and the like) in the domestic public spheres of several European countries (see also Krzyzanowski, ˙ 2009; Krzyzanowski ˙ and Wodak, 2006a). Unlike earlier studies on the EPS, our approach is diachronic/longitudinal and predominantly qualitative. By studying the diachronic development of the EPS from a discourse-analytical perspective, we are able to show how different EPS-constitutive media discourses changed over time and in different contexts. We thus avoid (over-)generalizations (at the level of theory and analysis), typical of quantitative research on the EPS. By analysing different discursive patterns of ‘talking about Europe’ in the national media over time, we capture the qualitative and changing features of discursive constructions of Europe and the nation-state at different times of crisis. Thus, we adopt an abductive and retroductive approach (‘back-and-forth procedure’; see Reisigl and Wodak, 2001, 2009) which allows continuous mediation between theoretical exploration and empirically grounded and methodologically rigorous analysis (see below). This book is a follow-up and further development of our own contributions to the recent debates on the EPS, i.e. a set of critical discourse-analytic studies (see Kovács and Wodak, 2003; Oberhuber et al., 2005) and a set of diachronic perspectives on how Europe, as a social and political concept, has been constructed in national media (see Stråth and Triandafyllidou, 2003). Our research aims to escape the normative and, to an extent, deterministic perspectives on the EPS proposed so far (see above). The first crucial feature of our approach resides in its novel, open, yet historically conditioned way of defining and exploring the potential existence of an EPS. Thus, we define the EPS as a transnational arena of communication where social, political, institutional, cultural and economic actors voice their opinions and ideas which are then discussed, distributed and negotiated with reference to different (crucial) events. Such a transnational public sphere is European in three distinct and

Introduction 5

interrelated ways. It is European from a geographical perspective, defining Europe as the geographical area between the Atlantic and the Urals, the North Sea and the Mediterranean. It is European from the point of view of intellectual traditions in that it bears within it ideas and conceptions of European history, culture and modernity (see Stråth, 2000a, 2000c). And thirdly it is European in that it is a common arena where the existence, shape and scope of Europe and Europeanness, European unity or conflict, similarity or diversity, are discussed and contested. Thus our working definition of the EPS is not merely tied to geographical or geopolitical – seemingly neutral or objective – definitions. It recognizes the power games and struggles within the very definition and historically situated character of what Europe is or might be (Wodak and Weiss, 2007). Within our conception of the EPS, we ascribe a unique role to the (national) media as the key carriers of the ongoing negotiations of different ideas and different actors’ standpoints. Although the EPS may be seen as constructed at all times, one can observe a unique acceleration of its explicit/implicit constructions at disruptive moments in history, at times of international ‘crisis events’ (such as those studied in this book). During crises, perceptions and definitions of political objects of reference (such as Europe or the nation-state) are contested, negotiated, reformulated and reorganized. Our perspective on the role of different actors in creating the EPS also carries a significantly novel feature. We do not a priori ascribe a particular (crucial) role to different actors in the creation of the EPS (as was the case with, for example, the unique agency of the EU and its representatives/institutions in recent EPS-oriented empirical studies and political debates)4 but we attempt to discover which individual and collective, social, political, institutional, cultural and economic actors were indeed crucial for the diachronic construction of the EPS. In our view, the construction and functions of an EPS involve a continuous interaction and intertwining between different (nationally and transnationally incepted) ideas/viewpoints and various ethical notions, that are central to the negotiation and legitimation of different forms of (collective) identities. Therefore, we argue, the analysis of the construction of the EPS must not only consider the ways in which different ideas are portrayed or represented in discourse, but it also entails the analysis of how these discursively formed ideas are related to ethically charged notions (such as different values, see also below) and how the latter are mobilized to construct various forms of (intraand/or inter-)national or pan-European sameness/collectiveness or difference (Gemeinschaftlichkeit or Fremdheit; see Giesen, 1993). Hence, in our discoursehistorical analysis of the construction of the EPS in the national media, we study how different values are discursively constructed and negotiated so as to legitimize different viewpoints debated in/through the public sphere and the media (Wodak et al., 1999, 2009). The existence of a transnational public sphere, such as the European one, involves common issues debated at the same time by a variety of actors

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and located in different places which virtually recognize and interact with one another (see Schulz-Forberg, 2005). For a common transnational public sphere to exist these debates must have a common focus on different values and the questioning of these values. A transnational, and for that matter trans-cultural, EPS thus requires shared debates questioning certain values. In order to investigate and assess this feature of the EPS, we explore whether and how Europe is debated in national media as an ethically charged notion and also whether and how national ethics and values have been explicitly Europeanized or domesticated (i.e. reappropriated/recontextualized for specifically national purposes), during selected crisis events. We claim that moments/events of crisis are crucial for the ethically based negotiation of Europe and/or the nation(-state). It is within these crises that values are sometimes violated (e.g. values of freedom, or human rights) while different actors also use those crises to express (in/through the media) their defence of other values (e.g. democracy, social justice or peace) with a view to legitimizing their ideas about the existing social, political and economic order (see also Stråth and Wodak in this volume). It is within those crises, understood here as disruptive moments of history, that sensitive perceptions of different common objects of reference (e.g. ‘Europe’, ‘nationstate’ and relations between them) become particularly salient and vibrant, and open for a context dependent (re-)negotiation and (re-)appropriation. By the same token, the diachronic examination of the context-specific negotiations of different values at times of crisis allows us to assess whether Europe still remains the sole ‘invention of nation-states’ (Malmborg and Stråth, 2002) or whether it has already become a concept for post-national ways of thinking and talking about Europe (Krzyzanowski ˙ and Oberhuber, 2007). Finally, an important and novel aspect of this book is its emphasis on the links between discourse, media and history in the study of the EPS. In this book, discourse is seen as a strictly historical construct which is based on the ongoing negotiation of concepts and ideas developed in both synchronic and diachronic dimensions (Wodak, 1996). It is in those different historically specific contexts that various social and political concepts (in the understanding of the German Begriffsgeschichte or ‘conceptual history’, see Koselleck, 1979, 1985) are negotiated. These concepts may be recontextualized and redefined (Wodak, 2001) both in a historical/diachronic and in a synchronic dimension (discourse-historical approach). In this perspective, our key concept of ‘Europe’ is also seen ‘as a discourse . . . under continuous negotiation and re-negotiation’ (Stråth, 2000c: 14). Thus, different ways of understanding ‘Europe’ in different contexts change in discourse over time, creating ever-newer ways of understanding Europe as well as its medianegotiated, EPS-specific semantic fields (Ifversen, 2003; Koselleck, 2002) and its neighbouring- or counter-concepts (Nebenbegriffe or Gegenbegriffe, Koselleck, 1979).

Introduction 7

Methodology The empirical studies presented in Part II of this volume focus on how Europe, as an ethically charged idea, has been negotiated during selected periods of crisis in: (a) national public spheres of selected countries and (b) in a transnational EPS. Thus, by presenting a set of case studies of media discourses on the key crisis events of post-war European history, we illustrate in detail the difference between the two phenomena – i.e. national vs. transnational/European public spheres. We investigate whether the media-negotiation of crisis events of post-war European history gave rise to the elaboration of different (European) values, to the construction of different conceptions of Europe (and of the related notions of Europeanness and European identity), and whether and how discourses on Europe and values were linked in media discourses as well as how they might have changed over time. Our case studies of media discourse analyse the media coverage of the following crisis events in post-war European history: 1. The revolution in Budapest and the following intervention of the Soviet troops in Hungary in October and November 1956 (Chapter 4); 2. The definite separation of East (i.e. Soviet-controlled) and West Berlin through the building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 (Chapter 5); 3. The student and public protests in Paris in May 1968 (Chapter 6); 4. The political reform in Czechoslovakia and the subsequent invasion of the country by the Soviet-controlled Warsaw Pact forces in August 1968 (Chapter 7); 5. The imposition of the ‘State of War’ in Poland by the Soviet-obedient and military-controlled Polish government in December 1981 (Chapter 8); 6. The opening of the border between East and West Berlin and the ensuing ‘fall of the Berlin Wall’ in November 1989 (Chapter 9); 7. The invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies and the outbreak of the Second Gulf War in March 2003 (Chapter 10); 8. The debate on the publication of the Mohammed cartoons in several European countries in February 2006 (Chapter 11). These eight crisis events form a coherent thread running through contemporary European history (largely parallel to the history of the European integration processes) and represent some of the major political challenges faced by European countries in the post-war period (see also Kaye in this volume). The selection of these events gives this book a unique historical perspective coupled with an emphasis on the context at the time of each event and on the comparative media analysis between several European countries.5 To provide a maximally international perspective on the analysed events, each chapter investigates their media coverage simultaneously in several

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European countries: the 1956 revolution in Budapest in the Hungarian, Austrian and West German press; the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 in the West German, British and French press; the student revolt in Paris in 1968 in the West German, French and British press; the 1968 movement in Prague and Czechoslovakia in the Slovenian, Serbian, Croatian, Italian and British press; the declaration of the ‘State of War’ in Poland in 1981 in the Polish, West German, Swiss, Austrian and British press; the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 in the Greek, Italian, Dutch and British press; the outbreak of the Second Gulf War in Iraq in 2003 in the Greek, Italian, Dutch and British press; and finally the Mohammed cartoons crisis in 2006 in the Greek, Italian, Dutch and British press. Moreover, each empirical chapter analyses the coverage of the selected event in the two or three main quality broadsheets (including at least one progressive and one conservative newspaper in each national sample) of each respective country. We analyse the media debates for a seven-day period, starting two days before the event and finishing five days later. The discoursehistorical analysis focuses on news stories on the event but in most cases excludes commentaries and feature articles or editorials. All chapters analyse the same genre of media discourse. It is worth noting that this approach is unique in terms of the linguistic and geographical width of the case studies, and the comparative focus not only between countries but also between Western and Eastern European cases. Our analyses of the news coverage of a specific crisis event in different countries focus on Europe-related items and topics. Specifically, all case studies address a set of questions regarding definitions of Europe, the relevance of values, and in particular the construction of, and reference to, European values in the coverage. Each case study compares two or more countries with the aim of discovering and highlighting emerging local (national) as well as regional and possibly transnational or pan-European patterns of reporting on particular crisis events. Methodologically, our research poses several crucial questions which have pushed us to redefine the status of a case study approach, to rethink the limits of transnational comparison between nationally specific case studies, to cope with the limitations of qualitative analysis through the adoption of selected quantitative methods (mainly at the entry-level of analysis), and the integration of visual features in the analysis of our largely textual data corpus. Thus, the empirical chapters in this volume are guided by a congruent analytical methodology.6 According to the latter, each case study chapter is divided into three main parts. First the specific event is contextualized within its national and transnational, social and political setting. Here, we not only describe the character of the media in question and their national and transnational role in disseminating certain social and political views (e.g. liberal, conservative and so on)

Introduction 9

but also the meso-context of the particular crisis events (what led to the crisis and why). More importantly, we also allow for a macro-contextualization in both spatial and temporal dimensions. Within the former, we analyse the larger geopolitical context of the crisis in question (whether it was caused by any broader, changing international – possibly global – social and political or economic conditions). Second, the analysis offers a quantitative overview of the materials collected. Thus, we systematize the key features of our corpus and detect overall patterns, i.e. the frequency of news reporting on our crisis events in the respective media and the key genres employed. This quantitative approach allows us to downsize a huge volume of data to a more limited corpus of relevant (parts of) texts for the qualitative analysis (see Baker et al., 2008). Within this stage, a scrolling of all articles is also undertaken in order to devise lists of key themes or topics of discourse (see Van Dijk, 1982, 1988).7 The analysis of discourse topics proceeds in a dual fashion and is divided into: (a) a definition of the key themes/topics of the text (that is the list of two to four ‘salient’ or general topics), and (b) a definition of the sub-topics of the respective parts/passages of the text (the designation of a second list of ‘smaller’ topics embedded within the ‘larger’ ones). Still within this stage of the thematic analysis, we identify key, mainly political, actors who are mentioned in combination with the respective topics. Finally, the third step of the analysis is performed on a selected strand of the examined corpus. That strand consists of the relevant parts of the analysed texts which refer to: (a) Europe-specific dimensions of the analysed crises or (b) different values and/or value-driven activities related to those crisis events. This third step is oriented towards the analysis of macro-argumentation structures; its core analytical category is a topos (plural: topoi) which is applied to examine ‘standardized’ ways in which arguments are structured and endowed with a discourse-pragmatic meaning. Drawing on both classic (Aristotelian) and modern argumentation theory,8 the topoi are considered as specific ‘structures of arguments’ which are linguistically ‘realized’ through argumentative strategies leading – quasi as ‘short-cut’ (frequently without providing data and warrants) – to a particular (logical and intentional) conclusion intended by the author of a text.9 Other categories of our qualitative analysis encompass a set of discursive, linguistic and rhetorical categories which were already previously successfully applied to the analysis of transnational press reporting (see, for example, Oberhuber et al., 2005). They include: (a) metaphors and metaphorical expressions10 defined as linguistic-rhetorical devices supporting different arguments summarized by the topoi and (b) strategies of nomination and predication as well as other strategies of positive self- and negative other-presentation (see Reisigl and Wodak, 2001, 2009) which allow the detection of how the image and agency of different real-world individuals and groups are discursively constructed.11

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Outline of the volume Part I of this volume (‘Europe and the Media at Times of Crisis: Theoretical Reflections’) discusses the theoretical underpinnings of European media studies that investigate the creation and development of an EPS. Chapter 1 (Stråth and Wodak) explores the complex links between discourse, politics, media and history (as well as crisis) in their specific European contexts and connotations. Chapter 2 (Preston and Metykova) focuses on the role of national and European media in times of European crises while also pointing to how media itself can foster the discursive construction and negotiation of public sphere(s) in diverse European settings. The contributions to Part I of this volume are highly interdisciplinary, linking historical, sociological, political science, discourse analysis and media studies perspectives in a creative synthesis on the possible nature of the EPS. Thus, historical approaches are integrated with concepts from media studies, discourse studies and political science as well as sociology. More specifically, many aspects which have been neglected in the literature so far are focused on, i.e. the interdependence between what Pierre Bourdieu calls ‘the journalistic field’ and ‘the field of politics’. In particular, we discuss how journalism and the media also construct crises in a specific way which conforms to media formats and to the specific constraints of the national media. Indeed, one has to ask if media constructs its own narrative of the crises as a static and iconic moment in time (i.e. a snapshot), instead of long-term processes.12 Part II on ‘Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates’ opens with Chapter 3 (Kaye) which presents the historical context and dynamics for our case studies. The chapter proposes a historical thread marked by rupture, transformation but also continuity that runs through the eight crisis events. Some of the international crisis events (1956 in Budapest, 1961 and 1989 in Berlin, 1968 in Prague and Paris) were, by and large, related to further European ‘integration’ as well as ‘expansion’. Others, notably 1981 (Poland), 2003 (Iraq) and 2006 (cartoons), marked a moment of division and disunity within Europe. The chapter analyses the verbal and visual interpretative contexts that underpin different views of these crises, the perceived change or stability in Europe in these periods, and highlights the extent to which European post-war history is marked more by contestation and confrontation than consensus and compromise. Part II then moves to eight comparative studies of the media coverage of specific international crises in several European countries (Chapters 4–11). Each chapter focuses on a single crisis event and analyses its media coverage quantitatively and qualitatively across several European countries with the aim of identifying the definitions of Europe, European values and Europeanness or European identity/-ies inherent in the media debates. Naturally, our studies address both the presence and absence of references

Introduction 11

to Europe (and the related notions of European values and European identity/Europeanness) in the news coverage. The eight selected crisis events (see above) span across the whole postwar period until the present. They include the 1956 revolution in Budapest (Kovács, Horváth and Kinsky-Müngersdorff), the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 (Schulz-Forberg), the May 1968 youth revolt in Paris (Schulz-Forberg), the events of August 1968 in Prague and Czechoslovakia (Krasovec and Žagar), the declaration of a ‘State of War’ in Poland in 1981 (Krzyzanowski), ˙ the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 (ter Wal, Triandafyllidou, Steindler and Kontochristou), the outbreak of the Second Gulf War in 2003 (ter Wal, Triandafyllidou, Steindler and Kontochristou), and the Mohammed cartoons crisis in 2006 (ter Wal, Triandafyllidou, Steindler and Kontochristou). The countries studied include Austria, Croatia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia and the UK. Each chapter covers a selection of these countries (see above for details). Finally, the concluding chapter of the volume (by Krzyzanowski, ˙ Triandafyllidou and Wodak) pulls the results of our empirical analyses together and presents some general conclusions on the role of national media in international crisis and their discursive construction of an EPS. The concluding chapter elaborates on how the initial hypotheses and theoretical foundations of the volume are mirrored in the empirical case studies. Here, we first point to the diachronic and (trans-/cross-)national (ir)regularities which occur in the national media-based constructions and perceptions of ‘Europe’. We also discuss how a differentiated representation and negotiation of ‘Europe’ (as a concept) occurred in discourse by means of a variety of Europe-oriented notions such as, for example, ‘European values’, ‘European identity’ and the like, in the different domestic public spheres of several European countries.

Notes 1. See Bärenreuter (2007), for an extensive overview of the development of the EUrelated debates on the EPS. 2. See, most recently, the ‘No’ vote of Ireland to the Reformed European Constitution, 14 June 2008, and the panic and many debates that followed. 3. The volume stems from a transnational and transdisciplinary research project ‘EMEDIATE’ (Media and Ethics of the European Public Sphere: From the Treaty of Rome to the War on Terror) which we embarked on between 2004 and 2007. The research project was funded by the European Commission (Project no. CIT2-CT2004-506027; Sixth Framework Programme). Project partner institutions: Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies – European University Institute, Florence (Italy); ELIAMEP – Hellenic Foundation for the Study of Foreign and European Policy, Athens (Greece); Department of Linguistics and English Language – Lancaster University (UK); ‘On-Line More Colour in the Media’ and the University of Utrecht

12

4. 5.

6.

7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

The European Public Sphere and the Media (the Netherlands); School of Communications – Dublin City University (Ireland); Department of History – Humboldt University, Berlin (Germany); Department of Media Studies – University of Paris 8 / Vincennes (France); Nationalism Studies Programme – Central European University, Budapest (Hungary); Educational Research Institute – University of Ljubljana (Slovenia). For an overview, see Latzer and Saurwein (2006). While we are obviously aware that many other European crisis events could have been analysed here, we selected the analysed events in order to present a diachronic coverage of the entire 50-year period between 1956 and 2006, and necessarily excluded some due to limitations of space. The core of our methodology is based on the Discourse-Historical Approach in Critical Discourse Analysis (see Krzyzanowski, ˙ forthcoming; Reisigl and Wodak, 2001, 2009; Wodak, 2001, 2008). We are aware that some of the case studies had to opt for methodological adjustments, due to different types of analysed events, countries or media, or due to the authors’ varied disciplinary backgrounds. For other conceptions of ‘discourse topics’, see Brown and Yule (1983). See, for example: Reisigl and Wodak (2009), Van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1992); Van Eemeren et al. (1987). Additionally, at a theoretical level, there are ‘formal’ topoi which are based on the set of ‘classical’ topoi or ‘loci’ (such as the topoi of ‘difference’, ‘analogy’, ‘example’, ‘equality’, ‘consequence’, and so on; see Kopperschmidt, 1989) as well as context-dependent topoi (or ‘content-dependent’, see Kienpointner, 1992) which are ‘unique’ and ‘typical’ for specific functions of the texts and which are structured according to the author’s intentions. Metaphor is perceived here mainly from the point of view of ‘cognitive metaphor theory’ (see Goatly, 2007; Lakoff, 1993; Lakoff and Turner, 1989; Musolff, 2004). For the social actor-oriented analysis in discourse, see Van Leeuwen (1996). See also Benson and Neveu (2005); Bourdieu (1998).

Part I Europe and the Media at Times of Crisis: Theoretical Reflections

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1 Europe – Discourse – Politics – Media – History: Constructing ‘Crises’? Bo Stråth and Ruth Wodak

Those, who deal professionally in making things explicit and producing discourses – sociologists, historians, politicians, journalists, etc. – have two things in common. On the one hand, they strive to set out explicitly practical principles of vision and division. On the other hand, they struggle, each in their own universe, to impose these principles of vision and division, and to have them recognized as legitimate categories of construction of the social world. (Bourdieu, 2005: 37) Politics is a struggle to impose the legitimate principle of vision and division, in other words, the one that is dominant and recognized as deserving to dominate, that is to say, charged with symbolic violence. (Bourdieu, 2005: 39) ‘Europe’ has no essence per se, but is a discursive construct and a product of many overlapping discourses. Such hegemonic narratives (discourses) serve as part of the search for national (and European) identities. The narratives relate events and experiences from specific points of view, by selecting and foregrounding some events and relationships which suit the hegemonic positioning, and backgrounding others which are deemed less important (or indeed ‘sensitive or uncomfortable’) (Heer et al., 2008; Wodak, 2006; Wodak and de Cillia, 2007). According to Pierre Bourdieu, as exemplified in the two quotes above, politics and the media are linked in complex and intricate ways even though they constitute separate fields (see below). Indeed, simple conspiracy theories do not grasp the relationships between media and politics; the media neither completely dominate our views globally top-down, nor do they influence decision-making in politics in a unidirectional, simple and causal way. National media traditions – the diverse forms of socialization into the journalistic profession – and national narratives serve to complicate such a simplistic model. Symbolic violence and méconnaissance in a more complex model where media, politics, national narratives and histories have their distinct 15

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and interdependent roles imply that viewers and listeners are often led to believe the hegemonic ideologies and myths put forward by the elites because they have no access to other information, nor to counter-narratives. Bourdieu, however, also emphasizes the possibly conflictual processes we are all part of, and subject to, when constructing identity narratives. Thus, as extended research on various episodes of national history has illustrated, dominant discourses and narratives tend to relativize, deny or even reformulate dramatic events and to bury them under a cloak of silence; or to use a different metaphor: to leave the skeletons in the respective national closet. However, certain events are foregrounded and, indeed, acquire iconic status – as a foundation of a new national identity narrative, as a starting point of a new history and as a new nation-state. Often enough, iconic years symbolize such points and acquire the meaning of a ‘turning point’ in history. Examples of such perceived turning points are 1914 in Europe, considered generally as the beginning of a new age or the end of the old world; 1945, in particular in Germany, as an Hour Zero; 1956 with the Hungarian revolt and the Suez Crisis or 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis as condensed situations of international conflict; May 1968 as the symbol of a general European (and beyond) generational revolt; and August 1968 in Czechoslovakia as a European icon of a very different kind than the May revolt in Western Europe. The condensed situation in connection with the fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 is another case in point. The revolutionary events in 1789, 1848 and 1917 are other examples of condensed events with symbolic or iconic value. They are all through their intensity closely connected to the crisis concept and to contentious value mobilization (right/wrong, good/bad society, friend/enemy, etc.). Experiences of crisis are mediated through appeals to specific values, which in the turning point examples here all deal with right or wrong, good or bad. There is a clear connection between the crisis, the value contention and the public sphere. The situations of crisis are reflected and reinforced by the media in the public sphere. Crises are thus openly experienced and debated in democratic societies. Crises emerge through the communication of feelings of a complex situation with increased openness and uncertainty about the future. In such communication, complex processes are reduced to certain images; many other accompanying, often contradictory, processes and positionings are simply not mentioned anymore or they are swept under the carpet. History, thus, is reduced to static events captured by images and agenda-setting by journalistic news production. In this way, several fields in society relate to each other and are linked in complex ways, and sometimes serve differing (also economic) interests. This chapter will deconstruct the four dimensions of the theoretical framework which serves to clarify and explain the complex relationships and interdependencies when ‘crises’ are discursively constructed and acquire symbolic, metaphorical and iconic meanings.

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To start simply: journalists ( journalistic field) want a ‘good story’ – a story that will attract many readers due to the respective readership to which the newspaper is directed. Politicians ( political field) depend on the reporting in the media, otherwise their programmes would not be disseminated, and the media depends on politicians for information. Finally, various other groups in each society also push forward to get represented in the news in the sense of pluralistic reporting and heteroglossia (Lemke, 1995). Or, to quote Pierre Bourdieu: To understand what happens in journalism, it is not sufficient to know who finances the publication, who the advertisers are, who pays for the advertising, where the subsidies come from, and so on. Part of what is produced in the world of journalism cannot be understood unless one conceptualizes this microcosm as such and endeavors to understand the effects the people engaged in this microcosm exert on another. (Bourdieu, 2005: 33) The autonomy of the journalistic field (at least in parts), however, is only true for democratic and not for totalitarian societies, such as the former Communist regimes in Europe. Indeed, the case studies on national media reporting on specific ‘turning points’ (crisis) in the history of Europe illustrate in which way national political interests and the necessities of the journalistic field interweave to produce a whole range of different narratives which might stand side by side, or which might struggle for and acquire hegemony (see below). In periods of experienced crisis with a European dimension, we further claim, various understandings and meanings of Europe are proposed, confronted and negotiated. Various contentious and overlapping discourses on Europe create (mis)understandings of Europe or parallel and conflicting understandings. The value basis of Europe emerges and it is transformed through these processes. The values are not static but in flux. In order to achieve stabilization, references are made to imaginations of central values like enlightenment, tolerance, freedom, liberty, solidarity, human rights, and so on. Christian (or Islamic) values are also invoked in these contentious processes as particularly fundamental values. A case in point is the Western value clash about the Iraq War in 2003. The promoters of the war, namely US President George W. Bush, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar, all had some – at least implicit – Christian underpinning to their argumentation. The Pope was a keen resister of the war on the same Christian value basis. The invocation of Christian or, of course, Islamic values is a point of departure for politics as well as frequently exploited by politics. Human rights are often argued to be granted not by a certain epoch but by nature, i.e. they take on eternal proportions. However, exactly the situations

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of condensed crises demonstrate how malleable and contested they are. The Iraq War was argued to be exactly about human rights (and global security). The distance from human rights to Abu Graib and Guantánamo and from security to insecurity was, unfortunately, very small as we know. The negotiations – under conditions of experienced crisis – on what Europe is and should be moulds Europe together, albeit, however, in many different and also contradictory ways. Outlines of the past, under construction of a European history, influence the present and underpin outlines of the future of Europe in the sense of Reinhart Koselleck (1992 [1959]). He refers to the gap between the space of experiences, Erfahrungsraum, and the horizons of expectations, Erwartungshorizonte. These horizons are mobilizing instruments for political orientation and action. They emerge when experiences are interpreted and translated into future action orientations. Rather than talking about collective memories, Koselleck prefers to talk about the interpretation of experiences in processes of social work and social negotiation. Collective memories are discursively constructed. Being discursively constructed they are not uniform, but contested and full of various meanings and interpretations. Although they are contested, the discourses about them nevertheless weld together into a shared frame of reference for the debate. They are constructed in line with national myths or other strong narratives in the sense of Roland Barthes. Although Maurice Halbwachs (1967) himself, who coined the term ‘collective memory’, was clear on the ideological dimension of the term, the academic and political use of it during recent decades has, in practice, brought a tendency towards essentialization. Pierre Nora’s concept of lieux de mémoire points to a similar essentializing direction. This chapter analyses the complex and partly autonomous role of the media – which is crucial in these processes of negotiation – and the struggle for crisis mastery. The media constructs, through a plurality of voices (whether nationally tied or transgressing national public spheres), images of Europe with a positive or a negative value load. The media also follows its own logic in the journalistic field (see below) and often constructs a second virtual reality which corresponds to specific political interests and formal constraints (of the genre, format, and so forth); this second semiotic reality corresponds to the construction of ‘myths’ in Roland Barthes’ (2007 [1957]) sense – a new narrative is constructed which we, the readers, are supposed to believe in. Such myths, of course, serve various highly political, economic and ideological functions (Wodak, 2009). The logic of the media adds to the complexity of ‘constructing Europe’ (Kutter, forthcoming). We start our chapter by discussing the notions of ‘narrative’ and ‘crisis’ and their relevance in the construction of the European Union and European history. We assume that narratives serve the purpose of constructing the specific national Vergangenheitspolitik and are involved in Geschichtspolitik, and that the choice and construction of ‘crisis moments’ has a central

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role in these constructions. The function and role of discourse also has to be considered in these processes of ‘making history’, as all these narratives are conveyed via texts and discourses. We continue with a brief summary of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the ‘journalistic field’. To conclude, we propose an interdisciplinary framework which draws upon theoretical approaches in political science, media studies, history and discourse studies. We assume that this approach will give rise to new questions and offer new answers to the overall leitmotif in this volume: Do the various nationally consolidated public spheres constitute the European Public Sphere, either through referring to similar reported topics or events, or by converging in the assessment of events? And to what extent does this European Public Sphere transgress the national public sphere and is it more than the sum of its parts? This open empirical question is further discussed throughout this volume.

Constructing history narratives: Geschichtspolitik Narrative and (national) identities Narratives are (re)produced through films, documentaries, political speeches and schoolbooks. Moreover, they are also transferred into the private spheres of families and peer groups.1 Various groups in the respective society compete for the one-and-only narrative that should be hegemonic. The latter then also has a strong impact on the discursive construction of national identities (Le, 2006; Wodak et al., 1999, 2009) and draws on a whole range of collective and individual memories. Collective memory has no essence but it is a discourse – nothing more, nothing less. Collective memory, thus, cannot be equated to history, but it is linked to it and has multiple effects on the future: History defines us just as we define history. As our identities and cultures evolve over time, we tacitly reconstruct our histories. By the same token, these new collectively defined historical memories help to provide identities for succeeding generations. (Pennebaker and Banasik, 1997: 18)2 Historical narratives are constantly discursively and visually (re)constructed, changing and shifting, due to contexts and diverse, often contradicting and conflicting, political interests. Visual here means within discourses, not separate from them. Hence, there is not one single past, nor one unique narrative; quite the contrary – many narratives which are informed by different interests are in conflict with each other for hegemonic status. They are produced in many public spheres, interact and are recontextualized through the media and in everyday interactions (see below).3 These narratives are also constitutive of imagined communities (Anderson, 1983) and thus of the discursive construction of national identities (Wodak et al., 1999, 2009). The founding myths and the reconstruction and

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imaginaries which everyday recollections, as well as collective experiences, draw upon form a part of the official past of every nation-state. Constructions of national identities are necessarily narratives which relate the past, present and future in specific ways – a dimension which Denis Martin summarizes very succinctly: To put it in a nutshell, the identity narrative channels political emotions so that they can fuel efforts to modify a balance of power; it transforms the perceptions of the past and of the present; it changes the organization of human groups and creates new ones; it alters cultures by emphasizing certain traits and skewing their meanings and logic. The identity narrative brings forth a new interpretation of the world in order to modify it. (Martin, 1995: 13) Narratives, collective memories and history Historical consciousness, according to Reinhart Koselleck (1989), as mentioned above, arises from the polarity between experiential space and horizon of expectation. ‘Experiential space’ is taken to mean the entire heritage of the past to which a person or a group has access, and ‘horizon of expectation’ refers to the anticipation of a particular future that is full of wishes and fears, plans and visions. The polarity of these two modes of being develops and is realized in the living present of a particular culture. The present, in this case, is the mediation of the most recent past and the immediate future. Culture means ‘a historically handed-down system of meanings, with the assistance of which human beings pass on, maintain and further develop their knowledge of life and their attitude to life’ (Geertz, 1987: 3). Historical consciousness is generated in continuous movement which, proceeding towards the horizon of expectation, has an effect on the space of past experience and gains material from this encounter for the development of the meaning of the present as an action space. At this point, we may introduce the innovative model that was left incomplete by Maurice Halbwachs under the title La mémoire collective that was published posthumously in 1950. The fact that one does not remember alone, but also uses the memories of others, and that one grows up surrounded by phenomena and gestures, sentences and images, architectures and landscapes that are full of strange pasts that preceded the subject, enabled Halbwachs to claim that there exists a collective memory: ‘Every individual memory is a viewpoint on the collective memory’ (Halbwachs, 1967: 31). Ricoeur stresses the usefulness of this category for determining basic social facts and cultural processes, under the condition that it is not conceived as a strict analogy to the functioning and constitution of the individual memory but is used rather as an ‘operational’ concept. As the subject of collective memory one would then have to imagine, in Husserl’s sense, ‘higher order personalities’ – groups, tribes, nations. They are not subjects in terms of their existence, but

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in terms of ‘attribution’ (Ricoeur, 1997: 438). With this restriction, Ricoeur grants collective memory the attributes of individual memory; it may have recollections that have access to some continuity and which can constitute an identity. At this point Ricoeur comes close to an essentialization of the concept of ‘collective memory’, however, and this we find problematic. According to Ricoeur, collective memory may be ‘characterized as a collection of traces of the events that were important for the historical sequence of a particular group’, equipped with the capability of ‘bringing these common recollections back to life on the occasion of rites, festivals and public ceremonies’ (ibid.: 439) (see also Heer et al., 2008). While drawing on the approaches summarized above, we, however, would suggest talking about the past as a depository from which various events can be presented and brought together in a narrative about the past. Rather than referring solely to Halbwachs and Ricoeur, we would like to refer to conceptual history, Begriffsgeschichte. On the basis of the philosophy of language, Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Langshaw Austin and Quentin Skinner (with his seminal work The Foundations of Modern Political Thought in 1978) together with J. G. A. Pocock, Bernard Bailyn and others began to rewrite the history of Western political thought by reconstructing the precise context and meanings of words and ideas in the past, and showing how they had changed their shape and connotations over time like chameleons, so as to adapt to new circumstances and new deeds (Austin, 1975 [1955]; Pocock, 2003 [1975]; Skinner, 1978, 1998; Wittgenstein, 1958. Cf. Stråth, 2006b). The study of social reality through language and discourse constitutes the core of the German Begriffsgeschichte developed by Reinhart Koselleck (1985, 1989). Language as an agent and indicator of structural change is the defining moment of conceptual history. The growing emphasis on contextuality, obtained first through speech act theory and then through conceptual history, has brought about a perspective where the ideologies and imaginations of society are much more entangled, both overlapping and delineating, than in earlier historiography, which, particularly in the sub-discipline of history of ideas, preferred to see ideologies as long chains of continuity where alternative ideological master narratives existed in parallel. In this perspective, ideologies are not guidelines with prescriptions for the future, even if this is what they argue, but a semantic repertoire or an arsenal at the disposal of actors. The semantic field is, at the same time, a social field of communication and contention about alternatives (‘field’ here is used differently than by Bourdieu, see below). The selection of arguments from the ideological vocabularies and imaginations of values is always dependent on the context, and the outcome is always contingent. Path dependencies emerge only in retrospect of a historical construction of the past. Such retrospectively constructed dependencies have no prognostic values and must be continuously adjusted to the changing present which provides ever-new viewpoints from which the past may be viewed under

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contention and competition between alternative perspectives (Stråth, 1990, 2006b). Speech act theory has thus shifted the focus from the earlier approach in intellectual history (and in the history of political thought where ideologies were seen and analysed as more or less cohesive discourses with high continuity) towards a new focus on the intersection between rhetoric, pragmatics and action. Political thought became political action, while in the established tradition of intellectual history the focus was on how supra-political ideas were adjusted to and employed in politics. Certain limitations of the speech act school are its empirical focus on early modern politics and its narrow linguistic focus (Schiffrin, 1999). With the emergence of mass societies the preconditions of intentional action changed. The connection is no longer necessarily from speech to action. Acts might be unintended – or at least have unintended consequences – and speech might come after act in order to legitimize what has been done. Mass politics provides the framework of Michael Freeden’s theory of ideological morphology developed in his impressive work on liberalism and emerging welfare theories of the early twentieth century, where he discusses how it was used to cope with what was experienced as a growing social problem. In his study of British new liberalism, he investigated how specific conceptual arrangements created determinate fields of meaning from the raw materials available to the formulators of liberalism. His questions focused on how sense and meaning were produced, which options were opened and which foreclosed. In such meaning-producing processes cultural maps are superimposed on a virtual infinity of logical conceptual possibilities. Through the compound conceptual morphology of liberalism, he accounts for the dual possibility of state intervention and non-intervention in the liberal tradition as permanent and parallel features. Instead of understanding liberalism as monolithic in its postulates, assumptions and values, he views it as a cluster of concepts and goods (Freeden, 1978, 1996, 2005). It goes without saying that a corresponding approach could be used for socialism as a movement and a semantic field between revolution and reform, where ideas are selected and implemented in political practices. Instead of being cohesive chains of arguments, in clear demarcation to other ideologies, ideologies are entangled argumentative depositories, providing arguments which, depending on the context, can be combined in very different ways. History, crisis and narrative The point of departure for Koselleck in his conceptual history is the constant state of political crisis, by which he attempts to characterize ‘modernity’. Instead of seeing socialism or liberalism in terms of triumphal procession and historical progression, he emphasizes the repeated breakdowns of the liberal idea since the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment made social critique possible, and social critique resulted in recurring states of crisis.

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What in the idea of the French Revolution was still kept together in one Denkfigur under the motto of liberté et égalité, had, by 1959, when Koselleck published his doctoral dissertation and seminal work Kritik und Krise, brought the world to the brink of nuclear self-destruction in the name of two clashing ideas less than fifteen years after the end of World War Two (Koselleck, 1992 [1959]. Cf. Koselleck, 1985). Koselleck argues that since the French Revolution, the relation between past, present and future has undergone fundamental changes. As the organizing basis for action in the present, experiences have been supplemented with horizons of expectations with the implication that history was given a progressive direction that it did not have prior to the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods. In an age of accelerating time characterized by an unceasing accumulation of new problems, experiences have become a category of limited capacity. The acceleration of time means that the action-capacity based on experiences has shrunk and fails to make ‘modernity’ comprehensible. The construction of new concepts, loaded with values and significance, or the reinterpretation of old ones, involved the anticipation of a possible future at the same time as it was an expression of an agonizing inability to understand developments in the present on the basis of past experience. The same concepts were used by different agents in the political arena, yet with varying meanings. Consequently, disputes arose over the correct interpretations; attempts were made to exclude one’s political opponents from using the same words to say and wish for that which might differ from one’s own conception. The outcomes of conceptual struggles are always uncertain. The outcome of the battle among social forces about the interpretation of a concept is a highly contingent affair that is emergent, and not causative. In the theoretical frame of our problem we also want to refer to Hayden White’s path-breaking Metahistory (1973), where he demonstrated the ambiguity and the multi-interpretative dimensions in narrative structures. He shifted the focus from the sources and the events as such towards their emplotment. Metahistory alluded, of course, to metaphysics. That history is basically an ideology was White’s conclusion – at the time highly controversial but today generally accepted. History is not the past per se, but a reflection on the past from the present. Our approach thus focuses on the discursive construction of histories as creative and purposeful processes that ‘allow for the fabrication, rearrangement, elaboration and omission of details about the past, often pushing aside accuracy and authenticity so as to accommodate broader issues of identity formation, power and authority, and political affiliation’ (Zelizer, 1998: 3; see also Le, 2006: 28ff.). Coming to terms with the past (Vergangenheitsbewältigung) Values are closely connected to discursive constructions of collective memories. Individuals have memories, but collectives have as many memories

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as there are individuals. Therefore, collective memories are constructed rather than remembered in a shared way. Memories are narratives. For Germany, Jürgen Habermas, drawing on philosophical reflection by Karl Jaspers, Hannah Ahrendt and others, has argued that a new kind of identification and allegiance to a democratic Germany can emerge and has emerged through a confrontation with the dark sides of the past. Through Vergangenheitsbewältigung emerges Verfassungspatriotismus; through the confrontation and attempts to come to terms with the dark past emerged a commitment to militant defence of what had been achieved after 1945 in order to prevent a reiteration. Constitutional patriotism is an alternative to more holistic and potentially dangerous imaginations of ethnic community. An important question is to what extent these specific German experiences and solutions can be translated into a wider European model. Memory and militancy have repeatedly been advanced as elements that might ‘thicken’ a supranational European constitutional patriotism without thereby making constitutional patriotism into a variant of ethnic-based nationalism, a European demos as opposed to the identity language about a European ethnos. Jan-Werner Müller argues that a ‘thick’ constitutional patriotism, enriched by memory and militant preparedness to defend it, could indeed be made coherent at the European level. He is, however, more doubtful as to whether European political elites should embark on a political project of emphasizing memory and militancy, since both components carry significant dangers of illiberalism. The West German generational revolt (1968) against the foundation myth of 1945 (‘Hour Zero’) can in one reading be understood as emancipation, and in another, given the development of the 1968 movement, as a wary example of illiberalism. Memory and militancy reinforce identity through negative contrasts. Given the dangers of illiberalism, Müller argues for a thinner European memory construction, with the aim of relativizing existing national attachment (Müller, 2006). ‘Relativizing’ must be understood here as destabilizing and transgressing. Müller also emphasizes that constitutional patriotism does not necessarily depend on a strong focus on negative memories, but might also emerge through attention to positive political principles such as historical examples to be emulated. He also argues that a European ‘nation’ and a European constitutional patriotism in this thinner version depends on a European Public Sphere. The question here is to what extent a more general European rewriting of its history under integration of its dark sides as much as its light sides is conceivable. Is there the potential for a transgressive Europe coming to terms with its past and what does ‘its’ past refer to? Could the German Vergangenheitsbewältigung serve as a model? What does ‘coming to terms with’ mean? Is Bewältigung at all possible? Are Aufarbeitung or ‘work on’ better terms? ‘Coming to terms with’ suggests a final point whereas ‘work on the past’ never ends but indicates an ongoing revision when the past is perceived and interpreted

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from constantly new perspectives. In contrast to Bewältigung, Aufarbeitung means that there is never a point where the confrontation with the past can be settled once and for all but it is the matter of a continuously ongoing process. Europe coming to terms with its past would have an internal as well as an external dimension and both are important in order to promote new points of departure for cultural dialogue. The confrontation with the past would have to go beyond a debate where the Holocaust represents the evils of Europe and where the blame thus can be reduced from a European to a German issue where Germany alone represents the dark sides of Europe. Such a solution is too easy and cannot serve as the basis of a European values debate.4 An illustration of the difficulties in a confrontation with the past is the European Convention on a constitution. The leaders there, with strong general support, wanted to inscribe in the preamble a master narrative about a euphoric representation of history with a naïve belief in European progress (Krzyzanowski ˙ and Oberhuber, 2007). The story they wanted to insert dealt with a few far-sighted Staatsmänner, who after World War Two, committed themselves to a visionary supranational project which brought the European peoples ever closer to each other under the enjoyment of more prosperity. It was probably only the insistence of Polish representatives that at the end allowed for a brief reference also to Europe’s ‘bitter experiences’ as a shorthand for all historical enmities, totalitarian violence and ideological control and uniformization in the past (Wolf, 2007). One problem involved in a rewriting of Europe’s history is that there is no shared point in time like 1945 in Germany and 1975 in Spain, nor are there the same experiences of shared trauma all over Europe from which a ‘therapy’ or reformulation could start. The recognition of distant atrocities like slavery does not cost anything, like the (West) German recognition of responsibility for the Holocaust, and is therefore relatively easy. Already when confronting colonialism things become more difficult. The decision by the French National Assembly on a more positive commemoration of the colonial past in its schoolbooks is a case in point. When the same National Assembly decided to criminalize as a French crime the denial of the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Empire in 1915, it did so without wasting any words on the atrocities in Algeria. Geschichtspolitik as Gegenwartspolitik We must emphasize at this point that our approach does not in any way equate ‘material reality’ with ‘discourse’. Rather, we are concerned with exploring relationships between the events and the facts, namely the interpretation of events and of collective, as well as individual, experiences of reality. Historical interpretations thus consist of narratives about events from different perspectives. These perspectives, consciously or otherwise, are always influenced by vested interests. Societies, as systems of competing and

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mutually supportive groups, provide the raw material for (collective) identity formation by virtue of their multilayered, mostly dissonant discourses. This raw material acquires form through agents of memoria (Sandner, 2001: 11) of which media in all its genres and modes is one. These may be societal interest groups – communities defined by shared experiences, victim groups, and groups of perpetrators, political parties, media, etc. – as well as direct or indirect agents of the state such as governments, parliaments and judicial, scientific and educational institutions. These ‘institutions of the state’ have an often neglected significance, particularly insofar as they are empowered, by means of legislation, to produce settlements between victors and the vanquished, to judge previous injustices according to the laws of today, and to ensure that, besides the perpetrators, the voices of the victims are also listened to and taken into account. They are in a real sense the responsible political agents for dealing with the past, but since the past is part of politics in the present the label should be Gegenwartspolitik (politics of the present) instead of the frequent references to Vergangenheitspolitik. Geschichtspolitik as Gegenwartspolitik is concerned with the question of ‘how, after overthrowing a dictatorial or authoritarian regime, do you work mentally on its immediate human and material legacy’ (Bock and Wolfrum, 1999: 8f.). The goal of Geschichtspolitik as Gegenwartspolitik, according to this definition, is to make sense of the past. Its task is to ensure, historical ‘ruptures’ notwithstanding, continuity in the collective self-image, integration of the most important social groups, and the projection of an acceptable image to the outside world. This act of making sense does not take place instantly or by consensus, but is an enduring and conflict-ridden affair. It is not ordained, but results from communicative processes, struggles for hegemony, and debate. Its end-product will be a historical account around which a consensus can be constructed, a history which can serve as a unifying narrative. The media, of course, has an important role in ‘making sense’. We might even suggest that, in many instances, it is the primary agent which ‘makes sense’ because it dominates the national public spheres. All Geschichtspolitik is now necessarily Gegenwartspolitik with the past as a tool. That is to say, all political instrumentalizations of history are now directly concerned with the question of ‘coming to terms’ with the past. Far from transcending the scope of previous conflicts over values and disputes over interpretation, the construction of history has now become both the setting for, and the product of, processes normally encountered only in individual psychology as the phenomena of ‘denial’, ‘repression’ and ‘splitting’. Their common language is that of silence (Rauschenbach, 1992: 38ff.). However, this silence can assume eloquent forms. Saul Friedländer’s surmise that what he describes as Vergangenheitspolitik is obliged to construct ‘common memory’ in order to avoid ‘deep memory’ (Friedländer, 1992: 41) is confirmed graphically by the case of the national narratives in Austria and Germany after World War Two (see Heer et al., 2008).

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Crisis and narratives Crisis comes from the Greek word κρινειν (krinein), to judge, in the sense of separate, distinguish, decide, determine. It was in this sense that the Greek historian Thucydides used the term in his accounts of the Peloponnesian War and the battles on land and sea which had led to the crisis in the big conflict between the Greeks and the Persians. In the same way, the Greek physician Hippocrates referred to the crisis which occurs in diseases when the disease either increases in intensity or begins to abate. In Thucydides’ depiction of the pest in Athens he describes how the crisis came after seven to nine days. From crisis in this vital and existential meaning with totally different future prospects, philosophers Rousseau and Paine used the concept more than 1,000 years later in order to describe an emancipatory dissolution of the old order. From here the step was not far to Karl Marx’s crisis theory, when he described the economic depressions which had occurred since 1825 as crises that were unavoidable and in the end mortal mechanisms built into the capitalist system. From Marx the concept spilled over into neo-classical economic theory, which regarded crisis as a temporary disequilibrium in a natural state of equilibrium, where the end of each crisis on principle was given, as in Marx but opposite, and the equilibrium was reestablished. With the use of the crisis concept by the neo-classical economists, the term had fully lost its original meaning of openness towards the future. This openness was re-established by Reinhart Koselleck in his dissertation Kritik und Krise (1992 [1959]) (Critique and Crisis, 1988) (see above). According to Koselleck, history since the Enlightenment, the époque of modernity, is characterized by social critique which leads to crises and more or less successful political attempts to respond to them. Crisis has no predictable end; the future is open. The public sphere and the contention about values is the framing of the dynamics between critique and crisis. It is in this open-ended sense that we want to use the concept of crisis. Crisis in our understanding comes close to another Greek word with fateful content, καιρoς (kairos), which has the double meaning of time and tempest. In French, the common etymological origin is even more obvious than in English: temps and tempête. The word refers to a dense and tense situation in which everything is at stake and everything can lose or win.

Narrative and discourse In the discourse-historical approach in critical discourse analysis, social actors and publics involved in finding ways of dealing with the past are identified and analysed in a differentiated manner. This approach was developed and refined in the course of research into media reporting about Slovenians in Carinthia (Menz et al., 1989), a study of post-war anti-Semitism (Wodak et al., 1990), an analysis of media debates on the Nazi period in the context

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of Austria’s ‘Year of Commemoration 1988’ (Wodak et al., 1994), a study of discrimination against Romanian refugees in the press following the fall of Communism in 1989 (Matouschek et al., 1995), research on the discursive construction of national identities (Wodak et al., 1999, 2009) and lastly, in the comprehensive theoretical overview of discourse and discrimination by Reisigl and Wodak (2001). In line with recent work in critical discourse analysis (for an overview, see Reisigl and Wodak 2001), discourse is assumed as ‘social practice’, and that speaking and writing always represent, produce and reproduce attitudes, beliefs, opinions and ideologies.5 Furthermore, and more specifically, one needs to distinguish between ‘discourse’ and ‘text’, following Jay Lemke’s definition (1995: 7ff.): When I speak about discourse in general, I will usually mean the social activity of making meanings with language and other symbolic systems in some particular kind of situation or setting . . . On each occasion when the particular meaning characteristic of these discourses is being made, a specific text is produced. Discourses, as social actions more or less governed by social habits, produce texts that will in some ways be alike in their meanings . . . When we want to focus on the specifics of an event or occasion, we speak of the text; when we want to look at patterns, commonality, relationships that embrace different texts and occasions, we can speak of discourses. By analysing media discourses and texts, we gain information about collectively shared immanent ideologies and attitudes. The socio-cognitive model of Teun van Dijk represents another important theoretical starting point for our approach. Van Dijk (1998, 2006) describes how the attitudes and ideologies of groups are produced discursively, stored in schemata and mental models, and subsequently reproduced, in media and when reading/listening or viewing media texts. Michael Billig introduces a concept that is also relevant to the analysis of political and media discourses. He argues (Billig et al., 1988) that ‘ideological dilemmas’ are manifested and revealed in utterances and texts, and that, above all, everyday interactions and discursive practices almost necessarily contain contradictions and inconsistencies, reflecting ambivalence on the part of the speaker or writer. However, planned texts such as speeches rarely display ‘ideological dilemmas’ because the careful production of a text ultimately tends to avoid such contradictions. If tensions nonetheless do arise, then precisely such inconsistencies help in making inferences about subconscious processes. Texts must therefore be scrutinized for inconsistencies of logic, argumentation, form and content, which serve as indicators of underlying attitudes, beliefs, opinions and ideologies.

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Discourses are defined both in terms of topic and genre and are realized in individual texts. Every text refers diachronically and synchronically to other texts; this historical dimension is referred to as intertextuality. Intertextuality thus corresponds to the way in which a text relates to other texts that are ‘outside it, yet in some way brought into it’ (Fairclough, 2003: 40). Interdiscursivity, on the other hand, corresponds to the way in which discourses about particular topics sit alongside, overlap, or intersect with one another within a particular heterogeneous text (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001: 37). Moreover, particular arguments are realized differently in different public arenas and genres; they are transferred and transformed (recontextualized) from one public arena to another. Recontextualization, as a theoretical construct, explains how social and discursive practices (must) evolve and change systematically, when social conventions and normative rules apply.6 Representing social practices (including discursive practices) thus involves recontextualizing them, ‘appropriating’ their elements into the context of another social practice (Wodak, 2000: 77). Recontextualization is also synonymous, for example, with decisionmaking, particularly in organizational contexts where discursive practices are characterized by their transformation of the ‘here and now’ into the ‘there and then’. As Van Leeuwen and Wodak (1999: 6) explain, ‘recontextualization always involves transformation and what exactly gets transformed depends on the interests, goals and values of the context into which the practice is recontextualized’. Van Leeuwen and Wodak distinguish between four main transformations involved in recontextualization: the rearrangement of elements (e.g. rearranging the order of activities); the deletion of elements; the addition of elements such as purposes or justifications; and the substitution of elements. These transformations play a major role when analysing the discursive construction of narratives of the past and the related Begriffsgeschichte, as will become evident throughout this volume. As we are concerned with conflicts and crises, which inevitably surface when we deal with experiences of traumatic pasts, we must also anticipate a range of strategies of legitimization and justification (see Van Leeuwen and Wodak, 1999).

The journalistic field: complex relationships between politics and the media The ‘journalistic field’ as conceptualized by Pierre Bourdieu facilitates ‘radical contextualization’, i.e. the taking into account of the ample structural constraints, professional practices and interactions that affect journalistic discourse production. While media studies usually concentrate on contextual factors that relate to a certain realm, level and theoretical framework of analysis (e.g. political economy, media organization studies, etc.), the field

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concept allows for the integration of macro- and micro-level perspectives. We propose to integrate Bourdieu’s approach into our discussion of the media, the discursive construction of crisis, and national narratives because, in this way, the impact of national media traditions and news production systems can be theorized. Bourdieu defines the ‘field’ and positioning in the field (in our case, the fields of politics and the media) in the following way: Every position, even the dominant one, depends for its very existence, and for the determinations it imposes on its occupants, on the other positions constituting the field . . . the structure of the field, i.e. the space of positions, is nothing other than the structure of the distribution of the capital of specific properties which governs success in the field and the winning of external or specific profits (such as literary prestige) which are at stake in the field. (Bourdieu, 1993 [1983]: 30) Hence the field concept is based upon the assumption that social beings struggle for material and symbolic means (capital in Bourdieu’s terms) that enable the acquisition of social prestige and, consequently, a hierarchical positioning vis-à-vis others. Apart from assets, social and power networks or capital acquired during education/socialization (e.g. linguistic skills) it is professional reputation – the specific capital of a certain realm of specialized social activity (‘field’) – that social agents struggle for in order to obtain recognition and power. This struggle takes place in multiple arenas: vis-à-vis peers in the different professional fields and towards representatives of other fields and in public. The media has become the major arena for public struggles for prestige as it monopolizes instruments of mass distribution and consecrates notoriety publicly.7 However, as with other fields, the journalistic field is a ‘game apart from social macro-cosmos’; the consecration of notoriety follows media-specific field-internal logics. Thus, when trying to study the construction of historical narratives and crisis, we need to take the structures of the fields of politics and media and their interdependencies and links to each other into account. These links may be dominated by power structures in specific political systems, and/or through economic means, audience orientation, and so forth. According to Bourdieu, what is at stake in the journalistic field is ‘scoops’ – news that promises to attract the readers’/spectators’ attention – and to set agendas hence generating public consecration power for a certain media outlet. Thus, we claim that the discursive construction of crisis in the media depends inter alia on agenda-setting, on decision-making in the field of media and the inherent logic in this field. The field can be more or less autonomous from the political field; journalists, editors and owners of media may have more or less autonomy and power in the process of news production: Whatever its degree of independence, it continues to be affected by the laws of the field which encompasses it, those of political and economic

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profit. The more autonomous a field becomes, the more favorable the symbolic power balance is to the most autonomous producers and the more clear-cut is the division between the field of restricted production [on the one hand], in which the producers produce for other producers [only, B.S./R.W.], and the field of large-scale production (la grande production) [on the other], which is symbolically excluded and discredited. (Bourdieu, 1993: 39) Several practical and theoretical skills have been generated throughout the history of journalistic professionalization that enable journalists to produce news according to this competitive logic and the functional exigencies of their respective media segment. What determines the position-taking of a certain media segment, outlet or individual journalist in the field is the question of to what ends these skills are employed: in order to acquire large-scale distribution and reputation that is based upon the consumers’ plebiscite or in order to acquire ‘purist’ journalistic reputation that adheres to values of journalistic independence and its democratic functions. Since the beginnings of mass cultural production, the journalistic field has been torn between these two sources of professional legitimacy. However, the latter source of legitimacy, according to Bourdieu, makes up the constitutive element of journalistic independence and the very functioning of the field since it safeguards journalism against sheer commercialization or political instrumentalization. In Bourdieu’s words: Journalists – we should really say the journalistic field – owe their importance in society to their de facto monopoly on the large-scale informational instruments of production and diffusion of information . . . Even though they occupy an inferior, dominated position in the fields of cultural production, journalists exercise a very particular form of domination since they control the means of public expression. They control, in effect, public existence, one’s ability to be recognized as a public figure, obviously critical for politicians and certain intellectuals. (Bourdieu, 1998: 46) Bourdieu warns that, under conditions of increased market-competition in the media field (and its widespread acceptance, one might add), the field-internal competitive logic yields professional habits that undermine pluralism and ‘purist’ journalism as a constitutive pole of the field: it is first of all success in economic terms (distribution, advertising) that counts, and news and actors are selected according to their potential in creating this success, i.e. according to their sensational news value and media affinity (‘fast-thinking’). The effect might be, Bourdieu argues, structural and mental closure (inter-media agenda-setting, self-censorship, put-up debates with a constant set of actors), and the banalization of pure news and service journalism (as opposed to investigative journalism) – the distribution of news that does not harm, but does not bring up issues that are relevant for democratic

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citizenship either. In this way, journalists have become important actors on the stage of politics as they co-construct agenda and, hence, also the relevance of a specific event as crisis – or not, and the related hegemonic narrative. The journalistic field, which is increasingly heteronomous . . . subject to the constraints of the economy and of politics, is more and more imposing its constraints on all other fields, particularly the field of cultural production such as the field of the social sciences, philosophy, etc., and on the political field. (Bourdieu, 2005: 41)

Conclusion In this chapter we have emphasized the issue of power in discourse and power over discourse – i.e. the struggle for hegemony in presenting narratives of the past in the case of crises in the media. The connection between discursive power and political action-oriented power has in many respects been lost in the globalization and governance rhetoric which for a few decades has propagated an image of history not as man-made but as an unfolding progressive teleological natural force marching towards a predetermined goal if man (‘the state’) does not intervene (Schulz-Forberg and Stråth, forthcoming; Wodak, 2000, 2006b). The connection to history as man-made through inventive and mobilizing discourse is clearly established in this volume through the emphasis on crisis and value contention as manifested in media reporting. The emphasis on crisis and political rhetoric for value mobilization is an alternative view to the frequent construction of analogies between the history of European integration and the history of the European nation-states. Our analogy does not focus on concepts like ‘identity’ and ‘collective memory’ but on the related struggle about values in the public sphere through the dynamics of critique and crises. Our emphasis is on bottom-up rather than top-down – or on the dialectics between top-down and bottom-up – and on contention and conflict rather than consensus as the points of departure for social and political integration. Discursive power, in this understanding, is social and political power.

Notes 1. See Anthonissen and Blommaert (2006); Benke and Wodak (2003); Ensink and Sauer (2003); Heer et al. (2003, 2008); Martin and Wodak (2003); Wodak et al. (1994). 2. For a discussion of the connection between myth, memory and history, see Stråth (2000). 3. Le (2006: 25ff.); Wodak and de Cillia (2007). 4. For an attempt to go beyond the reduction to Holocaust, see Mazower (1998). Note also the large-scale collective attempt in the making through the research project ‘The Shadows of the Past(s) over the Construction of Europe’ at the University of Bremen and European University Institute, directed by Christian Joerges.

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5. See Wittgenstein (1967); Wodak (2001); Wodak and Van Dijk (2000). 6. See Iedema (2003); Muntigl, Weiss and Wodak (2000). 7. At this point we should emphasize that Bourdieu’s theory is inscribed in a broader interpretative framework dealing with the intellectual and hermeneutic dimension of social power. Friedrich Nietzsche and Max Weber delivered substantial inputs to this centenary debate, and Karl Marx did it in his own specific way, when he identified history in a problematic, predetermined structural fashion. Antonio Gramsci is in this respect much more interesting with his concept of hegemony based on the power over interpretative frameworks. Social power is also interpretative power and power over definitions, access and agenda setting. This relates to Michel Foucault with his emphasis on epistemic power. All these thinkers have contributed to our understanding of the connection between discursive power and social and political power. They provide a rich theoretical depository of arguments which we can draw on. We should here also refer to Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, who with their Dialectic of Enlightenment emphasized the power of mass media (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1972 [1944]; Foucault, 1969; Gramsci, 1978 [1921–6]).

2 Media, Political Communication and the European Public Sphere Paschal Preston and Monika Metykova

This chapter draws on the communication studies literature to consider key aspects of the role of the media in the construction and negotiation of the public sphere and related concepts that impinge on the concerns of this book. We discuss conceptualizations of the public sphere that relate, in particular, to media and political communication. We also pay particular attention to the spatial aspects linked to concerns over national vs. transnational dimensions of the political and cultural public spheres.

Media and the public sphere(s) Disintegration of the public sphere Jürgen Habermas’ seminal The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1989 [1962]) provides a basis for discussions of the public sphere in contemporary societies. In his historical narrative informed by the Frankfurt School tradition, Habermas traces the development of the bourgeois public sphere and its consequent transformation. According to him, the bourgeois public sphere reached its peak in the early to mid-nineteenth century and it emerged as a space in which private individuals came together as a public to use their own reason to discuss the power of the state. The development of competitive market capitalism led to the creation of institutions within civil society (such as newspapers, debating societies, salons and coffee houses) that occupied a space distinct from both the economy and the state. With the onward advance of laissez-faire capitalism the public sphere underwent significant, and according to Habermas detrimental, changes as a consequence of rapid social developments, industrialization, urbanization, the growth of literacy and the popular press and other related factors. With the mutual penetration of state and society (refeudalization) dissolving the private sphere, the basis for a relatively homogeneous public composed of private citizens engaged in a rational-critical debate was threatened and competing organized private interests invaded the public sphere. 34

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The rational-critical debate that characterized the bourgeois public sphere at its peak was replaced by consumption or such debate began to be entirely shaped by the media. Thus, for Habermas a public sphere continues to exist but largely in appearance only. Further changes in the public sphere followed with the emergence of the welfare state. This brief summary of Habermas’ arguments does not by any means constitute a full account of his thesis. Here, we will concentrate on just one of Habermas’ factors in the disintegration of the public sphere – the mass media. Habermas argues that serious problems arise due to the conflation of journalism and literature which results in conjuring a peculiar reality, even a conflation of different levels of reality: ‘Instead of doing justice to reality, [journalism] has a tendency to present a substitute more palatable for consumption and more likely to give rise to an impersonal indulgence in stimulating relaxation than to a public use of reason’ (1989: 170). However bleak this picture may seem, the role of radio and television in the disintegration of the public sphere is even more profound. In comparison with printed communications the programs sent by the new media curtail the reactions of their recipients in a peculiar way. They draw the eyes and ears of the public under their spell but at the same time, by taking away its distance, place it under ‘tutelage’, which is to say they deprive it of the opportunity to say something and to disagree. The critical discussion of the reading public tends to give way to ‘exchanges about tastes and preferences’ between consumers – even the talk about what is consumed, ‘the examination of tastes,’ becomes part of consumption itself. (ibid.: 171) In more concrete terms, Habermas identifies the degree of economic concentration, industrial influences and technological-organizational coordination in media as a threat to the critical functions of publicist institutions. In respect of this problem he points out that due to the high degree of concentration, governments often opted for putting media under public control rather than private ownership. Thus the original basis of the publicist institutions, at least in their most advanced sectors, became practically reversed. According to the liberal model of the public sphere, the institutions of the public engaged in rational-critical debate were protected from interference by public authority by virtue of their being in the hands of private people. (ibid.: 188) Habermas’ concept of the bourgeois public sphere and its transformation has been criticized on three main grounds (see, for example, Dahlgren, 1993; Fraser, 1993; Garnham, 1990). First, although Habermas admits the exclusionary nature of the bourgeois public sphere in terms of class, he neglects the

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question of gender. Second, he remains silent on alternative public spheres. In this respect the work of Negt and Kluge (1993) provides an interesting comparison, with their notion of a proletarian counter-public sphere. And finally, as, for example, Peter Dahlgren points out, Habermas’ approach is characterized by an ‘absence of reference to the complexities and contradictions of meaning production’ as well as ‘to the concrete social settings and cultural resources at work’ (1993: 6). Habermas (1997) himself acknowledges that some of his arguments need revision and in particular that his ‘diagnosis of a unilinear development from a politically active public to one withdrawn into a bad privacy, from a “culture-debating to a culture-consuming public” is too simplistic’ (1997: 438). However, the factors that Habermas explores remain relevant for discussions of the public sphere(s) and we return to some of them in later sections of this chapter. Public service media and the European Public Sphere In contemporary European societies the public sphere ideal is closely linked to mass media. For example, Curran argues that ‘the media are . . . the principal institutions of the public sphere or, in the rhetoric of nineteenth-century liberalism, “the fourth estate of the realm”’ (Curran, 1993: 29) as they play a key role in enabling the public to exercise informal control over the state. Somewhat similarly, Carpignano et al. point to the ‘unquestionable truism’ that ‘the mass media today are the public sphere and that this is the reason for the degradation of public life if not its disappearance’ (1993: 93, original emphasis). It is especially public service broadcasting – a quintessentially European form of broadcasting – that has been associated with the construction of the public sphere; in John Keane’s words ‘the public sphere ideal is linked to the institution of public service broadcasting, which is seen to have an elective affinity with public life and to be the best guarantee of its survival in the era of state-organized, consumer capitalism’ (1995: 3). The establishment of public service broadcasting was partly linked to spectrum scarcity, and an understanding of the spectrum as a public good, but also to the view that broadcasting should be closely linked to issues of citizenship – it should provide information as well as spaces for debate that would enable citizens to participate in the political process. Murdock (1992: 33) argues that public service broadcasting played a key role in organizing a new system of representation which aimed at extending citizenship rights. It enabled a public forum where platforms of the major political parties and legitimized interest groups were presented and packaged for consumption by the public at large. Further, it provided a new source of surveillance and feedback to those in power as well as (due to being a national service) creating associations between ideals of citizenship and definitions of the nation and its culture. It also redrew the boundary between the public and private spheres.

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It is important to bear in mind that public service broadcasting is a typical and crucial modern institution central to the process of nation building (see for example Scannell et al., 1992; Van den Bulck, 2001). Van den Bulck, for example, demonstrates in the case of Flemish public service broadcasting that it was given ‘the task of contributing to the creation and development of a national identity and culture. As such it had a threefold responsibility: education (as an extension of the national educational system), information (to create a political consciousness) and entertainment (to articulate a national culture)’ (2001: 57). The role of public service broadcasters in the European Public Sphere cannot be overlooked, however, as they tend to be predominantly nationcentred. Attempts at creating pan-European media that would link Europeans above all in their role of citizens have been largely unsuccessful (e.g. the EuroNews channel). The problem of facilitating the public sphere within the European Union has been explored widely and among the main obstacles we find a missing or weak European news agenda, complications brought about by the multiplicity of languages spoken in Europe, the lack of a European collective identity and the gloomy prospects for the Europeanization of the media system. Media and public spheres in periods of ‘political crisis’ In order to explore the role of media in periods of political crisis it is helpful to begin with relevant conceptualizations of journalism and media. Apart from the concept of the public sphere which we discussed above, the role of journalists/media can also be explored using the analogy of a mirror or a messenger. According to this conceptualization, journalists are neutral professionals who report on events in an objective and impartial manner. Another important understanding of media/journalists in democratic societies is linked to the role of media as watchdogs, acting as a check on government power. All these conceptualizations tend to understand media as autonomous institutions independent of the institutions of state power. However, this independence as well as the neutral professionalism supposedly characteristic of journalistic work has been questioned (not only) at times of political crises. In a highly influential study of the role of media in the Vietnam War, Hallin (1986) argues that at first sight the treatment of this conflict in the media appears to be a perfect illustration of the separation between media and the state in modern US politics. Yet this separation is more apparent than real. Hallin demonstrates that decisions about the course of the Vietnam War were not a result of adversarial media coverage as some argue, rather the more critical media stance present since 1968 reflected serious divisions over the war within the political elite. ‘The establishment itself – and the nation as a whole – was so divided over the war that the media naturally took a far more skeptical stance toward administration policy than in the early years. Vietnam, in other words, entered the Sphere of Legitimate

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Controversy, and the administration could no longer expect to benefit consistently from consensus journalism’ (Hallin, 1986: 162). A similar point is made by Herman and Chomsky (1988) who argue that while the US media are adversarial towards the US government on foreign policy issues there are institutional filters that ensure that media stay within the bounds of debate set by the political elite. This thesis is supported by a number of empirical studies carried out in a variety of countries. For example, in relation to the war in Kosovo a number of studies on media coverage theorize media as institutions of the public sphere or as watchdogs and argue that media did not fulfil either of these roles satisfactorily as their coverage uncritically replicated the official NATO discourse (Hammond, 2000; Knightley, 2002; Taylor, 2000) or created discourses that legitimized the intervention (e.g. Thussu, 2000). On the other hand, McLaughlin (2002) argues that not all of the reporting was uncritical and that studies need to work with reliable and representative samples of coverage. In any case these findings reflect [a] pattern that has often been observed in situations of political crisis: The media in such periods typically distance themselves from incumbent officials and their policies, moving in the direction of an ‘adversary’ conception of their role. But they do not make the ‘system’ – or its core beliefs – an issue, and if these are questioned, usually rise to their defense. (Hallin, 1986: 208) A number of authors point to reliance on official sources as a key factor in biased coverage. For example, Hammond (2000) suggests that we can identify new trends in the reporting of post-Cold War conflicts which lead to significant convergence with official discourse. These trends include the closer relationship between media and the military, the emergence of a journalism of attachment, the manufacture of warfare through the demonization of enemies and the mystification of ethnic conflict. It is also worthwhile considering the extent to which media coverage supports the frame of debate introduced by supranational political elites (such as European Union officials) at times of crisis. In relation to the coverage of the war in Kosovo, Grundmann et al. (2000) explore to what degree the French, German and UK mediated public spheres were synchronized, i.e. to what degree media contents were synchronized and perspectives and evaluation of events converged. They arrived at the conclusion that in all three countries there were marked differences in the framing of the issues and that Europe and a shared European perspective/evaluation was weakened by the total absence of the European Commission in the coverage. This study thus suggests that national political elites play a more significant role in framing the outlines of media coverage than supranational ones.

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Changes in the characteristics of political communication processes are among the developments that have been mapped in relation to contemporary European mediated political public spheres. We now move on to discuss some of these changes and their implications for the European Public Sphere(s).

Mediatization: the ‘professionalization’ of both media and politics? Mediatization and political communication There is a crippling sense that national politics have dwindled to more or less intelligent management of a process of forced adaptation to the pressure to shore up purely local positional advantages. It is a perception that deprives political controversies of their last bit of substance. The muchlamented ‘Americanization’ of electoral campaigns reflects a situation so troubled that it seems to rule out any comprehensive overview. (Habermas, 2001b: 61) As regards the concerns of this book, one of the most significant and relevant trends revealed by our research strand (addressing the media studies research literature and changing journalistic cultures in eleven EU countries) comprises the increasing mediatization of political communications more generally, and news genres in particular (Preston and Horgan, 2006). The mediatization concept is highly pertinent to developing a historical and diachronic perspective on the media’s role in relation to evolution or reconstitution of the public sphere(s).1 We agree with Habermas that these trends point to a highly ‘troubled’ situation for those concerned with the unfinished project of modernity and democracy in Europe, but not quite ‘so troubled that it seems to rule out any comprehensive overview’ (Habermas, 2001: 61). Rather – precisely because it is so troubling and relevant to present concerns – it deserves some attempt at an overview, if only to name some of its key elements and challenges. Researchers and theorists in both the communication and political studies fields have pointed to an increasing ‘mediatization’ of political communication in European democracies since the early decades of the twentieth century (e.g. Blumler, 1997, 1999; Blumler and Kavanagh, 1999; Desmond, 1980; Negrine, 1999). Indeed, in many respects, these trends may be seen to largely mirror developments unfolding in the US since the beginning of the twentieth century linked to the increasing professionalization of communication and organization or funding of ‘the means of social influence’ (Mayhew, 1997). This corpus of research points not only to the increasing role of the media in the conduct of political communication processes in electoral democracies, but also underlines significant changes in the very qualities or characteristics of such processes. Mayhew (1997), for example,

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indicates how professional specialists, using marketing research, opinion polling techniques and promotional campaigns have come to dominate public communication in the US. He suggests that the modern public of the Enlightenment based on free and open discussion between citizens and political representatives has been replaced by a ‘new public’ subject to mass persuasion through systematic advertising, lobbying and other forms of media manipulation (Mayhew, 1997; Splichal, 2002). In analysing the key changes in society and the media that have shaped political communication over the post-war period, Blumler and Kavanagh (1999) identify three distinct periods or stages. In the first, political communication was subordinate to relatively strong and stable political institutions and beliefs. In the second stage, the activities of political parties became increasingly ‘professionalized’ as they adapted their communication practices to the news values and formats of limited-channel television. In the third (still emerging) period marked by media abundance, political communication is being further reshaped by five major trends. These comprise: intensified professionalizing imperatives, increased competitive pressure, anti-elitist populism, ‘centrifugal diversification’ and changes in how people receive politics. For Blumler and Kavanagh (1999), this emergent new political communication system is full of tensions, and it reopens many long-standing but fundamental issues of democratic theory. In essence then, the concept of mediatization refers mainly to the important shifts at the broad societal and institutional level but it has overlaps with other concepts which are primarily concerned with shifts in the discursive forms, language and grammars of the news media. For example, the concept of media logic (Altheide, 2004; Altheide and Snow, 1991) refers to the increasing emphasis on entertainment-orientated and consumerist definitions of news and forms of news culture which, in turn, serve to diminish the audience’s identity as members of a public or engaged citizenry. Such trends may have been first developed and become most widely diffused in the commercial media landscape that predominates in the US (e.g. Altheide, 2004). Yet, as our research reveals (Preston and Horgan, 2006), these have also become increasingly prominent features of the news media and the performance of political communication – and so form part of the recent transformations of the political public sphere – in European countries. The issues here concern much more than the media expanding beyond their traditional functions in democracies. Firstly, they concern the ‘power without responsibility’ (Curran and Seaton, 1997) features of the media as institutions. There are few, if any, constitutional or regulatory provisions to ensure that the ‘fourth estate’ (the media) can be held accountable for their increasingly powerful roles or actions (Mazzoleni and Schulz, 1999). Secondly, the concerns expressed over the growing mediatization of politics (as with the transformation of the public sphere) are strongly linked to the increasingly commercial character of the media and the kinds of news values

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and content forms associated with such commodification processes. They may also be linked to a progressive ‘hollowing out’ of politics associated with the long-run shift towards neo-liberal discourse and regulatory regimes since the late 1970s. The latter privileges individualized consumer identities whilst marginalizing the forms of collective identities and social citizenship rights which had been distinctive features of the democratization of political culture in many European countries over the previous century (Preston, 2001). This combination of mediatization, market and consumerist logics has been transforming both the substance of ‘the public’ and political communication processes by turning politics into a market-like game that undermines its specificity, authority and legitimacy, and at the same time devalues the audience’s identities as citizens and their associated dignity and rights. In their detailed review of the relevant research, Mazzoleni and Schulz (1999: 248) report how critical researchers observe that the commercial media tend to present politics as entertainment by focusing on battles of images, conflicts between characters, polls and marketing. This combination of increasing commercialization and mediatization of politics has marginalized coverage and debate about political ideas, ideals and issues. It has encouraged thin conceptions of citizenship and favoured passive roles/identities as consumers of a narrowly scripted form of politics that is not only enacted through, but also largely defined by, the media. Furthermore, we observe that many communication and political studies researchers have pointed to a secular trend towards the appropriation of political communication processes by an overlapping complex of media and political professionals. The growing role of these professional specialists or elites has been accompanied by a concomitant decline in the participation, engagement and influence of the mass of ordinary citizens. Even the minority of ‘active’ citizens who comprise the membership of the political parties are increasingly marginalized by the practices and strategies of the professionals and are forced into the role of mere ‘consumers and spectators in the late-modern media spectacle’. In essence, political communication researchers and critics tend to identify the professional ‘media complex’ as the immediate source of significant transformations and distortions in the formal institutions and processes underpinning the legitimacy of electoral democracy in modern European politics. A media-driven democratic system is frequently identified as a key cause of ‘the decline of the model of political organization born with the liberal state, as the political parties lose their links with the social domains of which they have been the mirrors and with the interests the parties traditionally have represented’ (Mazzoleni and Schulz, 1999: 248). One detailed account (and instructive case study) of aspects of such mediatization processes in the British context is presented in a recent work by Curran et al. (2005). Some other researchers, however, take a very different view of the recent trends towards the increasing professionalization,

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commercialization and mediatization of political communication processes. For example, McNair (2006) invokes ‘complexity theory’ (briefly) in an effort to advance a thesis of fundamental shifts towards more equality and openness in ‘the relationship between journalism and power in a globalized world’ (2006: vii). Here we are presented with a much more comforting image of the transformation of the media system thanks to the expanding array of new media technologies alongside the increasing professionalization of journalism and the overlapping complex of media and political professionals. Together with an array of technology-related changes, McNair highlights key shifts arising from expanding numbers of media outlets, faster information flow, less censorship and a more competitive cultural marketplace. These are deemed to result in ‘enhanced critical scrutiny of elites’; ‘enhanced critical scrutiny of media’; decentralization and diversification of media production; and globalization of public spheres (McNair, 2006: 170).

‘Democratic deficits’: not merely or mainly a ‘spatial’ matter? Despite McNair’s optimism, other media researchers suggest that the growing mediatization of political communication and the related ‘professionalization’ of formal political processes are intricately linked to a certain long-run decay (but not necessarily, ‘death’) of civic culture and citizens’ participation or engagement in the Western electoral democracies (Mazzoleni and Schulz, 1999). The current state-of-the-art in the corpus of research on such ‘mediatization’ trends seems to pose a number of important considerations related to the present book’s agenda. Firstly, the ‘mediatization’ of politics refers to a long-run and increasingly pervasive tendency rather than a completely established practice or process in any European society. This tendency still seems to be more pronounced in the US than in most European countries (e.g. Altheide, 2004; Mazzoleni and Schulz, 1999: 258–9). Yet, in all countries, the undoubted growth of ‘media politics’ does not mean ‘politics by the media’ in any totalizing sense (Mazzoleni and Schulz, 1999: 260). Secondly, our project’s review of the relevant corpus of European research indicates that the contemporary challenges of a ‘democratic deficit’ arise even before (that is quite apart from) the specific spatial or transnational questions posed by political communication at the EU/European level. Concepts such as mediatization, media logics, the politics of spin, and the like, help us get a more grounded grasp of the processes that are corroding or transforming the substantive characteristics of both ‘the public’ and ‘public spheres’. In essence, they help illustrate more precisely some of the key processes or mechanisms which are tending to deprive ‘political controversies of their last bit of substance’ (Habermas, 2001b: 61). Furthermore, they also suggest that the primary feature of the current ‘democratic deficit’ in EU-level political communication is more a matter

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of the ‘public’ dimension than that of the ‘sphere’ – with its spatial connotations. The primary feature concerns the ‘substance’ of its politics – a failure of political imagination to construct a precisely political vision, mission or myth that reaches beyond the political, economic and media elites to engage with and mobilize major social groups and movements in the project of constructing and legitimating the proposed new transnational ‘public’. Thirdly, despite the media’s growing role in agenda-setting with respect to political communication, the relevant corpus of communication research also indicates that audiences are not ‘passive’ consumers of the media’s definitions or representations of politics. In other words, the mediated communication of politics is becoming increasingly powerful, but as yet the media are not ‘all-powerful’ vis-à-vis the processes of politics embedded in civil society. For example, even in the case of the US, the deepening mediatization of politics has also been accompanied by a deepening distrust in the media as sources of authoritative information in recent decades (Preston, 2008). Fourthly, many contributions to the communication studies literature on audience engagement with mediated texts, mediatization, and related processes or concepts also pose major questions about the potential efficacy of the ‘top-down’ communication strategies. These suggest that the contemporary ‘democratic deficit’ in Europe cannot be addressed by a media-centric strategy or any other top-down propagandistic approach that is solely or primarily media-based. This applies to the failures so far to mobilize the requisite ‘public’ support for, or engagement with, any new EU-level constitution-byanother-name that aspires to the status of ‘democratic’ legitimacy. As the French citizens’ ‘No’ in the referendum on the EU constitution in 2004 illustrates, the public (or indeed, public opinion) cannot be equated with the voice of the political, industrial and media elites (all the major French newspapers advocated a ‘Yes’ vote in the referendum). This case also illustrates how the critical question is not a spatial issue (of national versus transnational political space), but more crucially a matter of the political substance and form of the latter. As with the so-called ‘anti-globalization’ movements, the primary issues cannot be grasped or addressed through the fetishization of spatial categories such as local, national and global. Rather, the focus must fall on the political ‘substance’ of proposals for new regimes to frame, monitor, regulate and control the latest stages of the ever-expansive spatial sway of industrial capitalism’s economistic logic – and whether or how these regimes address the very different social, political-economic and cultural issues linked to the vital interests and concerns of the major/wider publics who are situated at ever greater distance from the corporate and other elites. Indeed, mention of ‘globalization’ or so-called ‘anti-globalization’ movements serves to remind us of a fifth and final implication, related to our present concerns. Ironically, given their concerns with transnational aspects

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of political, economic, social and cultural relations, the issues of shifting identities and values and relations with ‘others’, many contributions to the recent academic and policy literature on emergent European Public Spheres reveal a marked ethnocentricity, a striking and disabling Euro-centrism. Finally, we observe that the concept of mediatization is closely allied with ‘the linear model of dispensing policies from above’, one which ‘must be replaced by a virtuous circle, based on feedback, networks and involvement from policy creation to implementation at all levels’ as the European Commission recognized in its White Paper on European Governance (2001). But despite the White Paper’s rhetorical genuflections to ‘five principles of good governance: openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence’, the EC’s public communication practices remain centred around the top-down model and fully in line with the characterization and operations of mediatization described above (European Commission, 2001: 11).2

Media ‘spaces’: from national to European ‘public spheres’? Tech-fix: from national media cultures to ‘global village’? We have been alerted to the spatial fallacy – the limits of perspectives which accord primacy to local, national, transnational aspects of political communication, whilst marginalizing the core ‘substance’ of the political and public stakes at issue. But that does not imply that the spatial dimension is itself of marginal or nil importance in the discourses and practices surrounding the EU integration project, its associated public spheres and modes of representation. In the decades surrounding the end of the nineteenth century – which in a media-centred historical account may be defined as the ‘first wave multimedia’ era – we observe the growing role of utopian discourses emphasizing the power and benefits of the then new communication technologies to create a more closely integrated, harmonious and peaceful international political and economic order. This strand of discourse took on a new prominence in the post-World War Two era, for example as manifested in the popularity of McLuhan’s slogans about an emerging ‘global village’ and the decay of nationalism thanks to the communicative power of television, satellites and other electronic technologies during the 1960s. Whilst most communication scholars dismissed McLuhan’s ideas as fatally flawed (for example their reliance on a heady cocktail of technological determinism and their failure to engage with historical or other empirical evidence) they found ready support in influential policy and industrial circles. Indeed, McLuhan was ‘virtually’ disinterred and anointed veritable patron saint of the digital technology sector during the dot.com delirium of the 1990s (Preston, 2001). By then, of course, technology-centred discourses were more firmly established in the mainstream political agenda. For example, they have been

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playing a much more prominent role in framing and defining the developmental mission and key policy strategies of both the EU and its member states, at least since the Bangemann Report in the early 1990s (Preston, 2001, 2005). The academic field has also frequently embraced the ‘born-again’ fashion for technology-centred analyses, not least in the growing corpus of publications on the forms and drivers of ‘globalization’ since the early 1990s. Some influential contributions to the globalization discourses have been based on rather crude technological determinist analytical frames (e.g. Castells, 1996) or space-centred efforts to retheorize the social and political analysis of modernity (for example Giddens, 1991). These contributions are flawed not only by an excessive technological determinism, but also by an excessive privileging of space over time and history (Rosenberg, 2000). They also reveal an impoverished historical understanding of the role and evolving evolution trajectory of electronic/broadcast media in shaping the rhythms, rituals and tempo of national culture in everyday life – even as McLuhan was declaring the death of the national, by electrocution as it were (see, for example, Scannell et al., 1992). What we observe here is that influential discourses on the relation between successive new information and communication technologies on the one hand and the spatial scale or cultural forms and features of mediated communication on the other, are marked by some eminent memory lapses. Here we must remember that there are many grounds to be wary of the all-too-frequent resort to technology-centred or determinist accounts of the relations between the technical characteristics of various carrier platforms on the one hand, and the spatial scale, forms or features of news culture or other mediated communication genres on the other. We must recall how some of the seminal European contributions to the emergent communication studies field (in the early post-World War Two decades) indicated the highly contingent and variable character of such relations. This was a key lesson within the overall thrust of Raymond Williams’ work on the evolution of national popular culture as ‘a long revolution’ and his work, contra McLuhan, emphasizing the variability of cultural forms that may be supported by the same technical mode or media platform (e.g. Williams, 1974). Whilst McLuhan’s favourite resort to ‘the rear-view mirror’ may reveal correlations between the growth of print media and the rise of specific national political cultures or values in the case of European history, other cases show that these relations were highly contingent rather than necessary or causal. Likewise, if we transcend a purely Eurocentric lens on history and political culture, we find that the expanding international role and sway of electronic platforms and networks has been accompanied by the growth of ‘national’ identities and nationally framed media cultures (contrary to McLuhan’s predicted ‘implosion’ towards a cosy global village). Recalling these contrasting perspectives on the relation between new communication technologies and socio-cultural space is of more than academic

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interest. In defining the EU area’s future mission and developmental agenda, the European Commission has enshrined the aim of making the EU the most dynamic and competitive ‘knowledge-based economy’ in the world. If this mission is to be successful, then like any other ‘knowledge-based’ project it must advance by building on the key insights and concepts from relevant prior research and studies, not least in the field of political communication. Our project’s reviews of the relevant research reveal that the EU’s communication sector policies have been marked by a one-sided celebration of techno-centric visions of the role of new information and communication technologies and their capacities to erode established spatial frames. Such policies have a comfortable resonance with the technocratic features and operations associated with the mediatization of political communication. But the striking neglect of more nuanced concepts and insights from the communication studies field (advancing the socio-cultural shaping perspective) does not augur well for the long-term success of such high-level, technology-centred developmental strategies. In particular, they run against the grain of the present book’s core concern to explore the often contingent links between the evolution of public communication (‘history’, ‘media’ and ‘discourse’) and the study of the European Public Sphere. ‘Techno-economic space’ vs. ‘socio-political space’ in mediated communication Europe had been a powder-magazine ever since the French Revolution stung the European nations into self-consciousness . . . today Asia, Africa, America and the Pacific area are full of explosive material also. It is of the essence of foreign policy in this age of expanding economic forces, of selfdetermining peoples and, let us add, of sensational journalism, to operate in a powder-magazine. (Zimmern, 1923: 89; emphasis added) The decades immediately before and after 1900 witnessed not only the advent of truly ‘mass’ (print) media, and the first wave of multi-media technologies. They also witnessed a significant wave of new evolutionary-tinged theories emphasizing the growing international integration of economic and social relations. The crucial temporal and political context was that of ‘imperialism’, when the European powers and the US had pressed the remainder of the world’s population into a system of formal or informal colonial possessions. This was the culmination of first-stage modern globalization, the creation of a world-scale ‘market’ of sorts for many key economic commodities and resources under the visible hand and hegemony of the (British) ‘empire on which the sun never sets’. Indeed, many influential writers at the time celebrated the power and benefits of the then new communication technologies (e.g. telegraph, telephone, radio and in later accounts, film/cinema) in creating a more closely integrated, harmonious and peaceful international political and economic order.

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But then, as now, we find compelling reasons to avoid techno-centric views of the power or potential of new communication technologies to forge new spatially extended forms of social, political or cultural ‘integration’. For, even amongst the Atlantic countries lying at the core of the international imperial system at the beginning of the twentieth century, political relations were much more contentious and freighted with conflicts than they were a century before. For example, the seminal theorist of modern imperialism, John Hobson (1903) observed how the European political and economic elites at the beginning of the twentieth century had become much more nationalist and much less cosmopolitan in orientation compared to their counterparts at the close of the eighteenth century – despite the development and diffusion of radical new ‘space-compressing’ technologies such as the telegraph, telephone, railway and steam-powered shipping. The aforementioned insights from media studies’ scholars on the complex and contingent relations between media technical systems and the spatial aspects of political communication were prefigured by those of Hobson and other subtle historians and commentators in the international affairs/relations fields. Indeed, it is also instructive to recall how the latter long ago observed and complained about the apparent contradictions between a world becoming much more closely interconnected via modern communications systems (alongside deepening economic integration or interdependence) on the one hand, and the growing role of national cultural boundaries and political identities on the other. Indeed, they indicate how new space-compressing technologies (such as the electrical telegraph) were appropriated to support various forms of ‘sensational journalism’ which in turn amplified the conflicts between the core (European and US) imperial powers and fanned their peculiar forms of hyper-nationalism in the period leading up to World War One (Zimmern, 1923). Essentially, such work leads us to emphasize one vitally important, but often neglected, distinction between two very different modern layers or domains of spatiality linked to ‘communications’ on the one hand and ‘mediated communication’ on the other: first, there is ‘techno-economic space’ which concerns the spatial structures, scales or forms related to technical communications systems/networks, or ‘connectivity’. Since the mid-nineteenth century (at least), this layer has been evolving in line with economic integration dynamics/tendencies and has thus been characterized by increasing and intensifying internationalization. Secondly, there is ‘socio-political space’ (alias ‘socio-cultural’ or ‘discursive’ space) which includes the spatial structures, scales or forms related to mediated communication, and thus embraces aspects of the late-modern cultural and political public spheres. The typical spatial scales and forms in this domain are much more fragmented and diverse – for example, there is much variation by genre. Overall, however, they tend to be much more national and less international in scope than the connectivity layer.

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In the case of mediated news and current affairs genres, the national remains the crucial spatial scale or ‘container’ in the selection, definition and presentation of news events. Even in the coverage of external/international news events, the national prism tends to stamp or frame its encoding by news media in distinctive and specific ways (Preston and Horgan, 2006). Of course mediated news and current affairs genres relate most directly to the political public sphere, and the typical production routines or normal operations of the former will tend to favour national over supranational (or ‘European’) news events. Entertainment and sports-related media genres tend to display much more spatial variability than news and current affairs – and some of these relate to the ‘cultural’ dimensions of the contemporary public sphere. Some sub-sets, such as the US-produced (‘Hollywood’) feature films, have long been characterized by high levels of transnationalization. Certain highly visible and popular examples of these entertainment and sports-related genres clearly operate at transnational spatial scales in the European context (for example, the annual Eurovision song contest and the European football championship).

Conclusion This chapter has discussed certain insights and findings from media and communications studies literature that relate to contemporary mediated public spheres in Europe. We have devoted attention particularly to changes in the public sphere related to media practices (‘mediatization’ of political communication) as well as to the changing nature of publics. We have argued that one of the key challenges and lessons (especially in these technology tempered times) is to avoid exaggerating the power of mediated communication (technologies and/or institutions) as determining levers or forces of change in constructing new spatial or politico-cultural identities. The research and arguments considered above tend to underline the considerable gaps or shortfalls between the idealizations of an emergent transnational public sphere in Europe on the one hand, and prevailing media practices and cultures still primarily framed around the national as ‘the crucial container’ of social identities and political practices on the other. Media news genres (central to the political public sphere) tend to remain highly bound by national and sub-national concerns relative to the supranational (international or transnational) and there is indeed considerable research evidence to suggest that ‘foreign’ news content and coverage has been declining in the mainstream media in many countries. However, we would not like to reject or rule out the possibilities for a more meaningful transnational public sphere and an increasingly shared or integrated political and media culture in the (medium to long-term) future. The pace and patterning of such future potential developments will not be determined by any presumed technological logic, nor by any media-centred

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social engineering but crucially depend upon a mix of well-nuanced strategies addressing both material and normative dimensions of these challenges. The future shape of an increasingly integrated shared/common European media space or mediated public sphere may be imagined in two basic (and non-exclusive) forms. The first one is a novel EU/Europe-wide media service sector which produces and distributes content and information for most or all member states. However, given the experience of efforts to create such pan-European media in the recent past, the prospects for this kind of media development do not appear to be particularly bright in the short- to medium-term future. The second form involves a deepening (if gradual) Europeanization of national public spheres and media spaces. This would include a better representation of EU and/or ‘Europe’-related developments and issues in the diverse national media as well as an expanded coverage/exchange of views and knowledge concerning developments and issues of various kinds in the other EU/European countries. Yet given the restrictions and pressures on ‘foreign’ (including European) news coverage in the established and increasingly commercial European media revealed in our research, this is not likely to be a spontaneous or market-driven development. Thus, the realization of this potential option may require a renewed policy commitment to existing and novel/innovative forms of publics and media. This includes a renewed commitment to genuine ‘public service’ media institutions and forms which have been so severely pressured by the commercial and techno-centric logic underpinning many EU and national level policy initiatives over the past twenty years.

Notes 1. One advantage of the recent mediatization literature is that it provides a rich resource of empirical work relevant to understanding the contemporary trends in the performance or operations of political communication – and so links directly to current media practices related to the political public sphere. One drawback is that the relevant authors often fail to distinguish consistently between trends associated with ‘sheer mediatization’ (Mazzoleni and Schulz, 1999: 258) on the one hand and the growing commercialization of the media on the other. Consequently, it is useful to treat the research and literature on mediatization and the (political) public sphere as complementary or overlapping domains (as we do here). 2. This is manifest in the persistent resort of EU officials to the elite outlet of the Financial Times as their favoured avenue for breaking news stories. But its most striking recent manifestations lie in the Commission’s dismissive response to the ‘No’ vote expressed by the citizens of France and Netherlands to the referendum on the constitution, and its subsequent strategy of substituting ‘constitution’ with ‘Treaty’ and the coordinated effort to minimize any prospect of citizens’ participation in the approval process (apart from Ireland where the national constitution renders a referendum compulsory for that country’s tiny (1 per cent) share of the overall EU population).

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Part II Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates

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3 Out of Maelstroms: Crises and Parlous Developments of Europe since World War Two* James Kaye

Europe through crises A fundamental aim of this volume is to explore the relationship between and the ways in which the experience of events – classified as international crises within international crisis eras by the authors – have affected the development of ideas and a polity of Europe. An additional interconnected aim is to investigate values and value production through (and in what they define as) European discourses that were sparked in these international crisis eras. This is the contribution of the case studies in Part II of this volume. The current chapter will set the individual crises1 and crisis eras within a framework by documenting their slightly wider historical context and the dynamic of the eras that is both coherent and at times fragmented, insofar as it is marked by both continuities as well as ruptures. The aim is to contextualize and narrate aspects of the crises in which these events and the development of values are studied. Specifically, international crises in Europe are under investigation. International crises are most commonly understood to be interactions between states in which a high probability of war exists (Lebow, 1981). Wars and the fear of war do indeed define the eras in which crises are addressed in this volume. The eras begin with one in which Europe had just been the central showplace of the second of two colossal world wars. The narration of these wars was far from closed or unified when the second of these Eurocentric conflicts had come to an end. ‘Postwar’, the title of Tony Judt’s impressive monograph on European history since 1945, is extremely well chosen. Europe in this epoch was so profoundly and negatively stamped by these wars that a return to any pre-war or inter-war situation could hardly be desired as witnessed in the cry ‘Never Again!’ (Judt, 2005). This epoch began to wane around 1989. Europe became a central battleground of a third new form of war, the Cold War, in the aforementioned epoch. The eras in question end with a period following the close of the Cold War which initiated a new world order. In this age, Europe has been, and remains, peripheral to and, at times, on opposing 53

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sides of the contemporary war and engagement in Iraq. The majority of the international crises studied in this volume approach definition as possible pre-stages of war, others can be considered ‘wars’ themselves such as the Warsaw Pact invasion of Budapest in 1956 in which over 2,000 people died in battles between Hungarian soviets (councils) and Warsaw Pact forces, and the Allied invasion of Iraq in 2003. In yet others, war did not take place or appear imminent such as with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 or the Mohammed cartoons crisis in 2006 which paralleled war in Afghanistan and Iraq. The emergence of war was a significant threat in 1981 following the strikes and declaration of martial law in Poland (in one narration a salvation from war), as well as the unresisted Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. The unrest generated by the mass protests and strikes in Paris in 1968 raised the spectre of civil war in France. These were all media events and that is a significant criterion for their selection in this narration. Nevertheless, an international crisis as an event in which the possibility of war exists need not necessarily have been a media event within the framework of the Cold War. The Cold War was itself a long enduring proto-war replete with proxy-wars foreshadowing, and possibly precipitating, an apocalyptic third world war. A fictive example of such an event is presented in the world-destroying international crisis in Stanley Kubrik’s meticulously researched Dr. Strangelove (1963). In fact, due to fear and misunderstanding, the Able Archer incident of 1983 might have brought the world closer to the brink of nuclear war and annihilation than it had ever been (Andrew and Gordievsky, 1993). Able Archer was not an international crisis that is – or could be – studied in this volume, however, because as a secret event it was absent from contemporary media. In contrast, the international crisis incidents investigated here were fullblown media events as well as widespread discourses. They were reported and commented in diverse media across state bounds and were the raw stuff out of which much political capital was forged. This makes crises fundamentals of the discursive construction of the social and political world. The crises studied in this volume were selected because they were widely covered in the media and thus had consequences and meaning, or meaning was imparted to them. Specifically, the claim is that since World War Two they have contributed as an important factor to the production of a particular form of European polity. This connection between the concept of international crisis and the probability of a future war, as well as being the raw stuff of the construction of the social and political world, implies that the crises were perceived to have had significant importance beyond themselves. This is the reason for their inclusion in this narration. They were not crises in a stripped-down form, unassociated with causal narratives when they were narrated.2 The crises are conceived as revealing of, or decisive in, larger situations beyond the crises themselves. They occurred in a context characterized as perilous where

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change may reveal or precipitate the survival or demise, success or failure, of a greater constellation. An example of this capacity to reveal can be seen in the coeval revolt in Hungary and the invasion of Egypt by Britain, France and Israel in 1956. These events and their combined solutions marked an era. They were important factors in the revelation of how the world had shifted from one in which European states were central and dominant, as they had been since the accumulation of power that had taken place among European states since the Renaissance, to one that was defined by the post-war balance of Soviet and US power within which European states would have to operate. In its immediate wake the Rome treaties were signed and ratified in 1957. Revelation often leads to action and decision. This represents further amplification in meaning and causality in connection with crises and these crises particularly. Crises are events in which (difficult) decisions,3 which may emphasize the importance of actors within perilous situations, must be made. These decisions may then have determinant effects. An example of this is the resolution by the GDR Council of Ministers in 1989 to reform travel rules and its announcement by Günther Schabowski. This decision and its pronouncement effectively influenced the fall of the wall that divided Berlin as well as the Iron Curtain that divided Europe. Additionally, the international crises occurred and are assessed within complex networks – the crisis eras. These networks are not individual events but form the context of the crises explored in this volume. They differ from individual events, like the three mentioned above, since they are clusters of events and thus not simply international crises but blocks of border-transcending crises. We claim that the crises were cumulative, if not directly concurrent and related due to their temporal proximity. The claim, however, is that neither the individual crises nor these phases were necessarily perceived to be European when they occurred over the past five decades, but because they were international in scope and because they became media events. They were relevant to politics and society in Europe when they occurred and influenced the concomitant construction process of what has become the European Union. Grouping the crises in eras offers a special perspective from which the construction and transformation of a European polity, European society and conceptions of Europe can be observed in the media since the end of World War Two or, as it has since been dubbed, the ‘European Civil War’.4 Nevertheless, as opposed to a simplistic teleological narrative of progressive expansion and integration resulting in an ever-larger and stronger polity they reveal the precarious nature of the construction of a European polity and European unity over the epoch. Notably, it was not until the post-war era that a transgressive, enduring European project around concrete political orders was constituted and developed. Clearly the difference between language – or better, rhetoric – and institutions is fundamental with respect to this development. Yet even if the

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concept, idea or ideal of Europe was appropriated to national ends, as for example in the exploitation of the idea of European unification in an attempt to rescue European nation-states and their institutionalization through coordination and cooperation (Milward et al., 1992), a growing understanding as well as a polity of (at first Western) Europe as a special transforming transnational unit was constructed in the long aftermath of World War Two. Thus, language, specifically the allure of the concept of Europe, was an important factor in the creation of European institutions and a degree of transnational European sentiment in this era. This is evident in both the institutions that were invented and the ways in which they were used and transformed over the decades into the EU as well as the Council of Europe. These polities dwarfed inter-war attempts to unite Europe such as the Pan Europa movement or the ineffective European-based and dominated League of Nations. Six eras, alluded to above, have been selected for this research. The first covers the mid-1950s and ends in 1957 including the revolt in Budapest, the signing of the Treaty of Rome and the Suez Crisis. The second frames the years 1961–3 in which the Berlin Wall was erected, the French–German entente cordiale was created and John F. Kennedy declared that he was a Berliner. The third epoch includes events from 1968 to 1973 with the revolts in Prague and Paris, the Vietnam War as well as the oil crisis and first stage of European expansion. The fourth period spans 1979 through the early 1980s during which the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, Margaret Thatcher came to dominate British politics, François Mitterrand and the Socialists came to power in France, and martial law was declared in Poland. The fifth encompasses the implosion of the Communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, in particular the unforeseen sea-changing initial period from 1989 to 1991. The sixth as well as final time period begins in 1999 and includes the introduction of the euro, the accession of seventeen new member states (primarily former members of the Eastern bloc) and continues with the ongoing ‘war on terror’ and the European constitutional crisis. Within these periods the case studies of media discourses include an enormous spectrum of information. They constitute an investigation of the political aspects of media history and the medial aspects of political history. The contention is that media are the forum for, and expression of, politics. Specifically, the studies address selected crisis events as they were reported in samples of national media. The investigations confront the, at times ambiguous, contradictory and banal media discourses in and of Europe that transcend exclusive oppositional discourses and reveal a number of pluralities and contradictions that exist in much of the contemporary research on Europe. Recently the concept ‘Europhrenia’ has been proposed to describe this situation (Stråth and Triandafyllidou, 2003).

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Six crisis eras The first three international crisis periods (1953–7, 1961–3 and 1968–73) as well as the fifth (1989–91) were, by and large, followed by deepening European integration as well as expansion. This was less apparent between 1979 and the early 1980s and the question as to whether European integration and expansion will continue following the disputes sparked by the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the cartoons controversy within our contemporary crisis era remains open.

The mid-50s through 1957 The first period runs from the early 1950s to 1957. In 1952, European heads of government decided to deepen the mutual relations of the countries they represented. At the height of the Cold War, in which the death of Stalin led to uncertainty as to what to expect from his successor, the 17 June 1953 uprising in Berlin inaugurated a series of crises, which pitted NATO (founded in 1949) against the Warsaw Pact (founded in 1955), culminating in the 1956 Budapest occupation and the Suez Crisis. In the wake of these events, the Treaty of Rome was signed on 25 March 1957. The Treaty of Paris entered into force on 23 July 1952.5 It established the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), created several institutions responsible for the pooling of Europe’s coal and steel resources and, in addition, to maintain peace in Europe, established a High Authority assisted by a Consultative Committee, a Common Assembly, a Court of Justice and a Special Council of Ministers. The ECSC served as the basis for the later development of the European Economic Community (EEC). The greatest achievement of the ECSC was perceived to be the establishment of the foundations for reconciliation between France and Germany. Developments in the Eastern bloc were less promising. Following significant economic problems for the GDR primarily resulting from the state’s high defence and reparations costs (amounting to 20 per cent of the budget) and swelling emigration from the East to the West, the Central Committee of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, abbreviated SED) decided to take action. On 14 May 1953 a decision was made to raise by 10 per cent the required production of each worker by 30 June, Walter Ulbricht’s 60th birthday. The act was widely considered a provocation. On 11 June, however, a ‘Neue Kurs’ was announced. It included concessions to artisans and small businesses, i.e. the bourgeois/middle class, but maintained the heightened demand put upon the workers. Strikes began among construction workers in Stalinallee on 16 June and a protest march was organized to the union headquarters (where they were not received by union leaders) and to the government seat in Leipziger Strasse. Workers’

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demands escalated beyond a repeal of the 14 May decision of the SED, to a resignation of the government and free elections. On 17 June 1953, the day that saw mass strikes spread throughout the GDR, a state of emergency was declared by Major General Pawel T. Dibrowa, the Soviet commander in East Berlin, and Soviet troops and tanks were deployed, crushing popular resistance. Popular resistance would also arise elsewhere in the Eastern bloc. After misguided economic policies failed in Hungary, the Hungarian leadership was summoned to Moscow, and Imre Nagy was elevated to head of government in 1953. Peasants were allowed to leave collective farms and industrial wages were raised. Oppression lessened and political prisoners were released. Nagy was subsequently stripped of his power and party membership by hardliners allied with his predecessor, the secretary general of the Communist Party, Mátyás Rákosi, in the spring of 1955. Former victims of oppression and political prisoners reacted with vehement criticism. The most significant critical platform was the Petöfi Circle, a debating club established by the Alliance of Working Youth (DISZ).6 On 27 June 1956, writer Tibor Déry would appeal before thousands for ‘the young people, the Hungarian youth, don’t forget your ancestors, the March youth . . . It is my desire, comrades, that there be a youth of 1956 that will conquer the future’ (James, 2005: 11; Berecz 1986). Two days later, riots in Poznan in Poland gave Rákosi the opportunity to end the debates. Students subsequently drafted demands including reciprocal relations with the Soviet Union, freedom of expression, freedom of the press and religion, and free elections and multiparty democracy. On 23 October students in Budapest demonstrated in support of the Polish reform movement, while hundreds of thousands joined and took to the streets. The revolt had begun and the first shots were fired that evening. Nagy was reappointed prime minister and declared martial law. Nevertheless, several thousand urban insurgents clashed with Soviet forces in the days that followed. On 30 October, Soviet troops were withdrawn from Budapest and other parts of Hungary, while others crossed into Hungary from the Soviet Union. Nagy announced Hungary’s withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. Negotiations began with a Soviet delegation on 3 November, but the KGB arrested the military leaders of the revolt, including defence minister Pál Maléter. The Soviets then launched an attack. The offensive consisted of a combined strategy of air strikes, artillery bombardments, and coordinated tank-infantry actions (6,000 Soviet tanks) penetrating urban core areas. While the Hungarian army offered uncoordinated resistance, it was working-class Hungarians, organized by their councils (i.e. soviets),7 who played the key role in fighting the Soviet troops. These actions continued in an improvised manner until the workers’ councils, students and intellectuals called for a ceasefire on 10 November. The invasion immediately followed the French and British assault on the Suez Canal, making the Soviet Union less

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susceptible to criticism from the West and, specifically, from its former European allies in World War Two. Political Europe was absent or silent in the West, and revolting Hungarians were left alone in demanding rights, fighting and dying for Western values – long-coined in and associated with Europe – against an oppressive East. Following Egypt’s nationalization of the Suez Canal in July 1956, a secret meeting between Israel, France and Britain (with the company that operated the canal, Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez) took place at Sèvreson on 22–23 October. It was agreed that Israel should invade Egypt and that Britain and France would subsequently intervene, instruct the Israeli and Egyptian armies to withdraw their forces to a distance of 16 kilometres from either side of the canal, and then place an Anglo-French intervention force in the Canal Zone around Port Said. On 29 October 1956, Israel invaded the Sinai and made rapid progress towards the Canal Zone. As per a prior agreement with Israel, Britain and France offered to reoccupy the area and separate the warring armies. Nasser refused the offer, which gave the European powers a pretext for a joint invasion to regain control of the canal and topple the Nasser regime. To support the invasion, Britain and France deployed large air forces to Cyprus and Malta. The operation to take the canal was highly successful from a military point of view, but due to external forces it was a political disaster. The Eisenhower administration imposed a ceasefire upon Britain and France. Part of the pressure that the United States piled on Britain was financial, as Eisenhower threatened to sell the US reserves of the pound and thereby precipitate a collapse of sterling. There was also a measure of discouragement for Britain in the rebuke by the Commonwealth prime ministers St. Laurent of Canada and Menzies of Australia, at a time when Britain continued to regard the Commonwealth – the residue of the British Empire – as an important entity and as a source of unquestioning support in its effort to retain world power. Under significant pressure, Eden was forced to resign and the invading forces withdrew in March 1957. Before the withdrawal, Lester Pearson, Canada’s acting cabinet minister for external affairs, visited the United Nations and suggested creating a UN Emergency Force (UNEF) in the Suez to ‘keep the borders at peace while a political settlement is being worked out’. The UN promptly accepted this suggestion and the force was sent, greatly improving conditions in the area. Pearson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for his efforts. The UN’s peacekeeping force was Pearson’s creation and he is considered the father of the modern concept of ‘peacekeeping’. The events underlined the shift in the post-war global balance of power from the victorious Western European powers in the First and Second World Wars to the US and the Soviet Union as well as the newly founded UN. Capping this era on 25 March 1957, the Treaties of Rome establishing the EEC and the European Atomic Energy Community were signed by the representatives of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the

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Netherlands. The ceremony took place in the Sala Degli Orazi e Curiaz in the Palazzo dei Conservatori.8 The treaty establishing the EEC laid down the initial provisions for the economic community, including the development of the internal market and the common agricultural policy, as well as the structure of EEC institutions. The act has come to be seen as a first concrete move towards unification under the banner of Europe and the economy. This, however, is Europe in a narrow – or seedling – sense. The Council of Europe at the time had a far broader membership, and the European Free Trade Organization founded in 1960 challenged the project as a whole.

1961–3 The second period frames the years 1961–3, when the Berlin Wall was built, the US and the UK agreed on the Polaris missile sharing and deployment, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world close to a nuclear conflict, and former French President Charles de Gaulle strongly opposed the inclusion of the UK in the EEC. Finally, de Gaulle enforced the agreement on Germany in January 1963 – as a ‘European’ response to the Polaris agreement – and President Kennedy, answering and trumping the French–German entente cordiale, declared in four illustrious words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.’ The construction of the Berlin Wall was the result of a crisis within the GDR. From 1949 to 1961 roughly 2.6 million Germans fled from the Republic in an increasing trend amounting at that time to about 15 per cent of the population (a number of Poles and Czechoslovaks also fled to the West via Berlin). Most were young; many were educated professionals and skilled workers. One result of this, quite literal, voting with the feet was dire economic prospects for the GDR as well as a vote of widespread rejection. Walter Ulbricht conceived of a wall to stem this flow and he was supported by the Soviet Union. Construction began on 13 August 1961. It was a success insofar as it stemmed the flow of illegal emigration to a total of about 5,000 from 1962 to 1989, but it also testified to the failure of the system and became a propaganda liability. Its official designation in the East as part of the ‘antifaschistischen Schutzwalls’ as a barrier to Western invasion and agitation rang hollow and was confined to official discourse in the East. The phrase which can be translated as ‘anti-fascist embankment of protection’ was a designation for the entire line of division between East and West Germany and referred to the fortified frontier from the Baltic to the Mediterranean not just the Wall itself (‘Mauer’) around Berlin. Although the Wall only encompassed West Berlin, it possessed iconic significance as a symbol representing contested fundamental values far beyond the city. If in the East little political capital could be won from the Wall, in the West it became a tangible reification of the metaphoric ‘Iron Curtain’ descended across Europe, that Winston Churchill had coined almost two decades before the erection of the Wall in Berlin. As the representative and most evocative

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part of the ‘antifaschistischer Schutzwall’, it was used as a standard point on the itinerary and photo opportunity for Western politicians visiting Berlin. Although the Wall was the paramount reification of division in Europe, the continent at this point was divided along many fronts other than those delineated by the Wall, which ironically to an extent imparted a degree of unity to those on either side of it.9 There was also clear division and tension on each side between the EEC and EFTA, NATO and neutral states west of the embankment and the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact and their respective satellites, as well as the neutral and otherwise linked states. On 18 December 1962 in the town of Nassau in the Bahamas, just 300 kilometres from Miami and thousands from London, a treaty named the ‘Nassau Agreement’ was negotiated and signed by Kennedy and Harold Macmillan. The US pledged to provide the UK with Polaris missiles in return for the lease of a submarine base in Holy Loch near Glasgow, Scotland. In the agreement the UK acknowledged that the Polaris missiles were part of a ‘multilateral’ NATO force and not to be used independently, with the exception of cases of ‘supreme national interest’. It was a divisive issue between the UK and France, six years after collaborating in a joint military expedition against Egypt in which they were transformed from waning colonial powers to bystanders – at worst pawns – in a big game. New power structures were developed, one more Atlantic and a second continental with France at the helm. This contributed to a division of Western Europe; this close bilateral collaboration of the UK with the US was a factor that influenced de Gaulle’s effort to exclude the UK from the EEC. Europe was, nevertheless, dependent upon the military and technical dominance of the US as the protector from the Soviet threat. On 22 January 1963 the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Konrad Adenauer and de Gaulle signed a treaty of friendship in the Élysée. The Élsyée treaty was seen as a turning point towards cooperation after more than a century of Franco-German animosity, often seen as hereditary enmity (respectively inimitié héréditaire or Erbfeindschaft). The treaty bound the heads of state and government to a minimum of biannual consultation and foreign ministers and defence ministers to meeting on a quarterly basis. Military chiefs of staff as well as family and youth ministers were to meet on a bimonthly basis. With respect to foreign affairs it was stressed that consultations would specifically include questions of the European communities, East–West relations, NATO, the Council of Europe, the West European Union, the OECD and the UN. In the final clause the signatories pledged to continually notify the member states of the European communities of their cooperation. Cooperation and seeing eye-to-eye was, however, not without hitches. The Germans desired a preamble to the treaty in which their close relationship with the US was stressed and willingness for British accession to the EEC was expressed. This was contrary to de Gaulle’s vision which entailed the

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creation of a counter pole to Anglo-American power. The treaty would remain without a preamble. Europe was, nevertheless, embedded in the treaty and French–German reconciliation following the two worlds wars could be seen as a second very ‘special relationship’ and was central to and became a motor for a European project. France was empowered through this relationship following their exclusion of Britain as US-oriented. In a next step the FRG would be courted by Kennedy in Berlin. The US also entered a special relationship with the FRG in a symbiotic and popular exchange. This was not European, but universal. On the fifteenth anniversary of the first landing of a plane in the Berlin airlift, on 26 June 1963, Kennedy gave his renowned speech in front of the Schöneberg City Hall in Berlin. When Kennedy, flanked by Willy Brandt, said ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ he did not mean, nor was it understood to mean, that he was from Berlin, Germany or Europe. As he stated in the speech it signified his ascription to a Western tradition, history and culture with reference to the historical venues of Rome and Europe as well as the contemporary values of peace, freedom and democracy. 1968–73 The third epoch includes events from 1968 to 1973. This era saw an international youth resistance movement throughout the West, as well as across Central and Eastern Europe with particular vehemence in Czechoslovakia. The Vietnam War had brought the profound generational rift of the first post-war generation in the West to the forefront, transcending opposition to the oppressive politics of the Communist bloc. Another response to insecurity and instability in the West was the opening towards the past and Eastern Europe in terms other than European community affiliation. Nothing illustrates this opening better than Willy Brandt’s genuflection in Warsaw as well as his policy of Ostpolitik. Societies throughout Europe profoundly changed with this reassessment of Germany, firstly from beyond Germany, and subsequently by Germans themselves. Generations and their respective understanding of social and societal organization became increasingly oppositional. This was highlighted by demands for participatory democracy, educational reform and protest against US engagement in Vietnam. Simultaneously a further deepening of integration of the EEC as well as enlargement took place. Decisions made at the Hague summit in December 1969 supported the establishment of a European Monetary Union (the Werner Plan) and a European Security Political Union (the Davignon Plan). On 1 January 1973 the EEC would add its first new members since its foundation in Rome. On that date Denmark, Ireland and the UK acceded to the Community. Nine foreign ministers of the member states also signed the ‘Declaration on European Identity’ in Copenhagen on 14 December 1973. This followed a cessation of the shipment of petroleum to states supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur War on 17 October of that year by

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Arab members of OPEC, as well as Syria and Egypt, and marked the beginning of a political strategy that would render Europe and the European Community more visible and endow the latter with symbols of a state such as a flag and an anthem, uniting Europeans and creating a bond of shared values and convictions between them. Following economic and social crises within Czechoslovakia in the early 1960s, a technocratic opposition was led by the Central Committee member and head of the Economic Institute of the Academy of Sciences Ota Sik. A social market economy was proposed as an alternative to a planned economy. Along with these calls for economic reform, political and artistic liberalization was permitted. The work of Franz Kafka was rehabilitated and fundamental debates on the possibility of Marxist alienation of the workers within a socialist society received considerable attention in the literature review Literární Noviny (with a circulation of 140,000). Following the brutal suppression of student strikes under the First Secretary of the Communist Party Antonin Novotny, leadership was transferred to Alexander Dubˇcek. With popular support, Dubˇcek embarked on a course of widespread reform and liberalization in a movement that he described as ‘socialism with a human face’. Criticism from the Soviet Union and other Communist states climaxed in an invasion of Czechoslovakia on the night of 20 August 1968, in an effort to quell the ‘counter-revolution’. All Warsaw Pact armies took part – with the exception of Romania and East Germany (although the latter did participate officially). The Czechoslovak government decided against military resistance and all strategically important positions were taken within hours. Dubˇcek and other Prague Spring leaders were taken to Moscow where they agreed to the temporary presence of Soviet troops on Czech territory in the ‘Moscow Protocol’. In the resistance 98 Czechoslovak citizens were killed, as were 50 invading Warsaw Pact soldiers. About 150,000 Czechoslovak citizens fled the country, 500,000 were expelled, and a repressive regimen was installed. In 1967 and 1968 mass protests also spread through West Germany, the US, Italy, Poland, Japan, Mexico, Argentina and to a lesser extent a host of other countries. In Poland, student anti-Communist protests sparked an antiSemitic backlash in an effort to divert anti-government sentiment; this went as far as the forced emigration of tens of thousands of Jews. Nowhere, however, did the protests reach the strength of those in France. On 13 May 1968, French workers called a one-day general strike in solidarity with the students to protest against recent police violence. Among the students’ demands were reform of the ‘bourgeois’ university system and an end to the ‘police state’ as well as the release of their imprisoned leaders. Workers demanded better state salaries and an end to centralization and discrimination. The general strike, which also protested against the ‘professional’ leadership of the unions and the Communist Party, grew to 10 million participants – one-third of the entire workforce. This brought France to a virtual standstill. The situation was so

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grave that de Gaulle briefly fled to a French military base in Baden-Baden. On 30 May, after de Gaulle had been assured of sufficient loyal military units to back him, Georges Pompidou was able to persuade him to dissolve parliament and hold new elections. He ordered workers to return to work, threatening to institute a state of emergency. Revolutionary sentiment waned, workers returned to their jobs, and student leaders cancelled demonstrations. The June 1968 elections were a major success for the Gaullists and their allies as the parties won 358 of 487 seats. The victory was short-lived, however. On 29 April 1969 de Gaulle resigned after losing a referendum on regional reform and the transformation of the senate that he declared to be a personal vote of confidence. In February 1969, shortly after having taken office, US President Richard Nixon selected Europe as the destination for a first trip abroad. He spent three days in Paris, longer than anywhere else on the visit which also took him to Belgium, Germany, the UK, Italy and the Vatican. This is in stark contrast to Kennedy’s visit in June 1963 when there was no stop in Paris. The stops selected for this first foreign visit of the president do not necessarily reveal European values but a high valuation placed upon Europe, i.e. major European players and EEC members save the Vatican and the UK, by the US. Particular attention was given to France; Nixon admired de Gaulle and made a point of meeting with him privately. A visit to the Berlin Wall had become a required stop, photo-opportunity and propaganda event for US presidents and other Western dignitaries visiting Berlin. Nixon was one of its first illustrious visitors. The Wall itself had become established as a division of Europe, the representative of a clash of basic values that could be employed to positive political ends in the Western self-styled ‘free’ world, by American presidents as well as West German Christian Democrats and Socialists for whom the words ‘freedom’, ‘equality’ and ‘democracy’ had very different meanings than they did in the ‘Socialist’ world. On 7 November 1970 Willy Brandt and Władysław Gomułka signed the Treaty of Warsaw. In it the FRG and Poland committed themselves to nonviolence and accepted the existing border of the two Germanys and Poland, the Oder–Neisse line. This act was eclipsed in the West, excluding Germany at that time (and for the future in Germany), when Brandt unexpectedly fell to his knees upon a visit to the Warsaw Ghetto monument. It was reported immediately in the Western press as a significant act, although not by the German press which concentrated on the meaning of the treaty. The knee fall did, however, spawn controversy in Germany. The act was unplanned and surprising; it received so much attention that a Spiegel survey on its propriety was published on 14 December 1970 (Der Spiegel, 1970). The results revealed that 48 per cent of West Germans responding found the act to be exaggerated, 41 per cent found it appropriate and 11 per cent were uncertain. The knee fall was even referred to as a submissive ‘Conossa’ ritual in Germany.

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Nevertheless, the act increased respect for Germany around the world and, in addition to his policy of Ostpolitik, contributed to the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Brandt the following year. The gesture was later widely recognized in Germany as significant for the re-entry of Germany into European politics. Based on the consultations mandated by the Elsyée treaty, French–German relations within a European framework made significant strides between 1967 and 1973. At the tenth consultation in July 1967 it was agreed that each government would appoint a coordinator for bilateral relations. At the eleventh consultation, in February 1968, the states jointly supported the enlargement and advancement of the EEC. In March 1969 negotiations were closed on the joint Airbus project. At the fifteenth consultation in January 1970, the French agreed to support German Ostpolitik. In December 1971, French President Georges Pompidou and German Chancellor Willy Brandt found a monetary compromise that was readily approved by both the US and the member states of the EEC. In June 1973 the member states agreed to establish joint European social politics. French–German relations had changed following the departure of de Gaulle, Brandt’s knee fall in Warsaw and the shock of 1968 in Paris. In the midst of the Yom Kippur War on 17 October 1973, the Arab members of OPEC together with Syria and Egypt stopped the shipment of petroleum to states supporting Israel in the war. A second motivation for the boycott was the decreased profits of the oil-producing countries due to a devalued dollar (a result of the costs of the US engagement in Vietnam) and the virtual monopoly on oil production, refinement and distribution of Western-controlled oil companies. Inflated oil prices and supply shortages were detrimental to the economies of the targeted countries. The fragility of Western economies and their almost existential dependence upon foreign commodities was revealed. 1979–82 The fourth era in which we have pursued research spans 1979 through 1982. This was an era that, in retrospect, involved great change that went unacknowledged at the time. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979 was central to this as it signalled both the weaknesses of the Soviet Union as well as the rise of Islamic fundamentalism as a factor in world politics. Margaret Thatcher, in office as prime minister from 4 May 1979, came to dominate British politics and led to a dominance of conservative political philosophy in the English-speaking world. The term ‘Thatcherism’ and its practice would be a model and/or influence for ‘Reaganomics’ in the US, ‘Rogernomics’ in New Zealand and ‘economic rationalism’ in Australia. Following Thatcher’s election two additional major Western European leaders began long terms in office before the end of 1982 making it the first year of the extended terms of leadership of the most populous West European states

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by three powerful individuals. In 1981, François Mitterrand was elected president of France. He became the most politically successful, longest ruling Socialist in French history and the first Socialist president of France in the post-war era, remaining in that post until 1995. Helmut Kohl was elected chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1982 and would remain in that post until 1998, making him Germany’s longest serving chancellor to date. Kohl’s election led to the defeat of the anti-deployment movement in Germany. Other central events of this era include the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II (who began his long papacy in October 1978) on 13 May 1981 in which he was shot and critically wounded by Mehmet Ali A˘ gca, a Turkish gunman. In addition, the government of the People’s Republic of Poland declared martial law (stan wojenny in Polish, loosely translated as ‘state of war’) on 13 December 1981. This was done in response to the rising power and influence of Solidarity, the anti-Communist trade union. In contrast to the previous resistance to Communism in Poland, which involved intellectual or workers’ protests,10 the intelligentsia and the workers united in Solidarity forming a resilient social movement that could resist repression. Ultimately this played an important role in the ending of Communist rule in Poland less than a decade after the declaration of martial law.11 Challenges in Poland were followed by others such as the Monday peace prayers at the St Nicolas Church in Leipzig under the direction of its pastor, Christian Führer. These were initiated on 13 September 1982, and continued on every successive Monday through the 1990s. Colonies of the European Community member states also became relevant for different reasons in this era. The first colonial matter was also notable for the EEC as an event unique until this day. Greenland had gained homerule status from Denmark in 1979, giving its government responsibility for many economic and social matters (defence and foreign policy remained with Copenhagen). Having gained power over economic matters, the most important of which was fishing rights, the ‘Common Waters’ policy of the Community was, to say the least, unappetizing. Contrary to the doctrine of expansion and integration, an act of contraction occurred. In Greenland on 23 February 1982, which had joined the EEC with Denmark nine years earlier, 52 per cent of the electorate voted to exit the Community (46 per cent were opposed) in a referendum with a 75 per cent participation rate. The status that Greenland desired at the time was that of an Overseas Country and Territory (OCT) as outlined in the Treaty of Rome and similar to the status of the Falkland Islands, Dutch Antilles and French Polynesia (Archer and Scrivener, 1982). Although it has not in fact done so, this could possibly have set a precedent that might have been followed by others. Problems of another nature arose in the overseas territories of a second of the states to accede to the EEC in 1973. On 2 April 1982, a faltering governing junta in Argentina sent its military forces to occupy the British

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overseas territory of the Falkland Islands. This was the invasion of an overseas territory of the European Community to which the Community responded by declaring economic sanctions against Argentina on 10 April that ended imports to the EEC from Argentina and prohibited Community members from exporting arms to Argentina. This ultimately represented the toughest sanctions that the EEC had imposed, making those imposed against the Soviet Union and Poland in the previous years seem ‘laughable’ (Martin, 1992). Although Britain did not win this support without considerable effort as well as concessions with regard to the Common Agricultural Policy, it represented strong Community solidarity, taking clear precedence over national economic interests with respect to foreign policy. 1989–91 The fifth crisis period encompasses the implosion of the Communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, signalled, but not widely acknowledged, just years before within the framework of the crises of the early 1980s. This took almost all those involved and observing entirely by surprise. In particular, the unforeseen sea-changing period from 1989 to 1991 heralded the similarly unanticipated EU enlargement and integration contributing to the rapid redrawing of political, social and mental maps of Europe. As a crisis era this one stands apart from the others due to the fact that the changes occurring in these three years were of a magnitude that approaches the revolutionary. The era was not revolutionary in the sense of the industrial and bourgeois revolutions in terms of transforming means and quantity of production, the production of a new class and a lasting belief in the proximity of utopia but revolutionary in that in addition to reforming Europe along lines similar to that of its inter-war existence, it once again raised the question of whether liberal democracy with its concurrent economic components would ultimately triumph and dominate the world. Francis Fukuyama, indeed, argued that the events of 1989 presaged not only the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government. (Fukuyama, 1989: 4) This final victory appeared imminent to many observers. A widespread belief in the proximity of this triumph was, however, shortlived. Nevertheless, in addition to ending broad belief in the Marxian ‘end of history’ and seemingly dissolving the concept of class, this era represents, within our framework, the solution to a number of the questions and problems that arose in preceding crisis periods; it also unearthed problems of the past and created entirely new ones.

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The physical demolition of the barriers that had been constructed between East and West in the preceding eras continued as the barriers were progressively felled. In 1968 a barbed wire fence had been constructed along the Austro-Hungarian border in an attempt to restrict emigration and flight to the West. This was a continuation of the reification of the ‘Iron Curtain’ begun with the construction of the Berlin Wall some seven years earlier. Following the resistance in Poland and Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost and perestroika in the late 1980s the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and Communism in Central Europe was led by Hungary in its shift towards multiparty democracy and a market-oriented economy. This was specifically prefigured by Janos Kadar’s ‘goulash Communism’ in which degrees of political freedom within the Hungarian Communist Party as well as limited economic freedom and freedom of speech were permitted in Hungary following the invasion in 1956. In 1988 these freedoms were expanded when opposition groups began publicly to question the very legitimacy of the Soviet domination of Central Europe. The criticism of the stationing of Soviet troops in Hungary as well as support for free elections did not exclusively emanate from the opposition; it was also an objective of party and government members such as Imre Pozsgay and Gyula Horn. Another narrative that began on 13 September 1982 – the peace prayers at the St Nicolas Church in Leipzig under the direction of its pastor Christian Führer, repeated on successive Mondays – would also come to fruition in this period. In 1988 the Monday prayers became a magnet for those who desired to emigrate from the GDR as well as oppositional voices in the GDR. On 2 and 7 October (the 40th anniversary of the foundation of the GDR) and on 8 October 1989 security forces confronted the demonstrators with force. The demonstration on the following Monday, 9 October, was the first mass demonstration to take place on a Monday in Leipzig. Shouting ‘Auf die Strasse!’, ‘Keine Gewalt!’ and ‘Wir sind das Volk!’ 70,000 people marched through Leipzig past the ‘Runden Ecke’ Stasi headquarters in Leipzig. Six prominent Leipzigers, including the Director of the Gewandhaus Kurt Masur and three SED district leaders, pleaded for a non-violent demonstration. Avoiding violence was paramount for a significant number of supporters of the demonstrators as well as those of the government. The peaceful and successful character of this demonstration generated wider participation in the following weeks, with 120,000 people taking to the streets on 16 October and 320,000 the following Monday. In autumn 1989 Monday demonstrations spread through the DDR, taking place in towns and cities including Dresden, Karl-Marx-Stadt, Rostock and Plauen. They were non-violent and often led to dialogue with members of the government and the SED. The government of the GDR had been catapulted into crisis during the late summer and autumn of 1989 when thousands of East Germans fled the state. More than 13,000 escaped through Hungary, which had lifted its

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border restrictions, to Austria on 23 August; others were able to flee through embassies in Central Europe particularly in Prague and Warsaw. Following Erich Honecker’s forced resignation and replacement by Egon Krenz, on 9 November the GDR Council of Ministers (Ministerrat) proposed a resolution to reform travel rules. A media event ensued. The proposed resolution to reform travel rules was announced towards the end of a press conference at 6.57 p.m. when SEDPolitburo member Günther Schabowski casually read a note that he had received. Schabowski was unprepared and not properly informed about the rapidly changing current situation. Schabowski read: Private visits abroad can be requested unconditionally, without travel justification and irrespective of familial relationships. The permits will be summarily distributed. The offices of registration of the VP [Volks-Polizei Regional Offices in the GDR] are responsible to unconditionally distribute visas for unlimited travel without the presentation of the legally mandated travel justification. An unlimited number of exits will be possible via all boarders between the GDR and FRG. Journalist Riccardo Ehrmann (from ASNA) asked: When will this be effective? Schabowski leafed through his papers and responded: To my knowledge immediately, without delay.12 This exchange was broadcast and followed by reports on radio and television in West Germany and Berlin, under the headline ‘The Wall is Open!’ These broadcasts were received across most of East Germany and as a result thousands of East Berliners immediately headed to the border crossings and demanded that they be opened. Neither the border troops nor the passport control officers were prepared for this mass exodus. Without any concrete orders, and under the pressure of the masses, the first border crossing was opened shortly after 11.00 p.m. at Bornholmer Straße in Berlin. Late that night masses of people viewed the spectacle on television and many joined the events. They joined the crowd through the Wall into West Berlin. If the Wall had not yet been torn down, it was demonstrated that it could be breached. Following the opening of the checkpoints for the free transit of East German citizens to the West and back on the evening of 9 November and the celebrations that occurred on the following days, the Wall continued to mark the border between the GDR and the FRG. Border controls were reinstituted, and ten new border crossings were erected up to 11 November. Crowds gathered to observe the opening of these crossings where networks of streets had been truncated 28 years earlier. The Wall had not disintegrated, although it was guarded less and less intensively. There were attempts by

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individual ‘Mauerspechte’ (Wall peckers) to demolish the Wall. The Wall was initially repaired by GDR soldiers but they became successively more lax and ultimately tolerated the demolitions and ‘unauthorized’ crossing through holes. Another power shift that can be seen as a conclusion to a narrative with chapters in the preceding crisis eras was dubbed the ‘Velvet Revolution’. It took place between 17 November 1989, when a student protest was brutally suppressed by riot police resulting in the injury of hundreds of people, and 28 and 29 December 1989 when Alexander Dubˇcek and Václav Havel were elected parliament speaker and president of Czechoslovakia respectively. Following the mistreatment of the students in Prague an indefinite student strike was called, and actors on Prague’s stages immediately joined in solidarity. Ironically a bit of unsuccessful theatre took place that day when Ludvík Zifcák, an agent of the secret police, lay on the street, posing as dead. Zifcák . . . had orders to ‘die’ that day, while other secret police agents – also posing as students – spread the news of his death to Western media. The idea was to provoke a little local unrest, which would give more dynamic Communist leaders a pretext to take power . . . they hoped, as he told me, to save Communism; in fact, they precipitated its demise. (GartonAsh, 1999) Protests spread throughout Czechoslovakia. On 19 November, in the Laterna Magica theatre, the ‘Civic Forum’, a mass popular movement for reform, was founded at 10.00 p.m. (Its equivalent in the Slovak part of the Republic ‘Public Against Violence’ was founded two hours earlier.) The Forum called for the dismissal of the top officials responsible for the violence, an independent investigation of the incidents and the release of all political prisoners. Newspapers started publishing information contradictory to the Communist interpretation. Mass demonstrations followed and Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec guaranteed that no violence would be used against the people. On 22 November, the Civic Forum announced a two-hour general strike for Monday 27 November. At first live reports of the demonstration in Wenceslas Square appeared on Federal Television. They were, however, quickly cut off when one of the participants began to denounce the government in favour of Dubˇcek. Employees of the Slovak section of Federal Television required its leaders to provide true information on the events in the country under threat of strike. Uncensored live reports from demonstrations in Bratislava followed. Following the two-hour strike on 27 November in which 75 per cent of the working population participated, the Culture Ministry released anti-Communist literature for public use in libraries. This effectively ended censorship and concluded the ‘popular’ phase of the revolution, after many public demonstrations.

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Other significant events of 1989 included the death of Andrei Sakharov from a heart attack in Moscow on 14 December. As a physicist he had been a key figure in a number of theoretical and military projects including the construction of the Soviet hydrogen bomb. As a humanist he became an activist fundamentally promoting human rights as the basis for all politics. Although he had personally supported victims of persecution in the Soviet Union from the early 1950s and his questioning of the moral and political implications of his work began in the late 1950 (he contributed to the creation and ratification of the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963), he would only become a public political activist a decade later. Following internal protests to Soviet leadership on the dangers of antiballistic missile defence, Sakharov published an essay entitled ‘Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom’ in samizdat in May 1968 and on 22 July of that year it appeared in The New York Times. This led to the loss of his position in military-related research, although he continued to study fundamental and theoretical physics and was able to found the Moscow Human Rights Committee in 1970. In 1975 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1980, following his protests of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he was arrested and sent into internal exile in Gorky. In 1985, on the tenth anniversary of his reception of the Nobel Prize, and while Sakharov was under police surveillance in Gorky (1980–6) the European Parliament established the ‘Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought’, as a means to honour individuals or organizations who had dedicated their lives to the defence of human rights and freedoms. The European Parliament awards the human rights prize on or around 10 December, the day on which the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed in 1948. The 1989 recipient of the prize was Alexander Dubˇcek. In that same year Sakharov was elected to the Congress of People’s Deputies, the Soviet Union’s first supreme governing body to be elected in a contested race. Having held the position since 1965, Nicolae Ceau¸sescu was ‘re-elected’ leader of the Communist Party for an additional five-year term in November 1989. Ceau¸sescu refused a request from Mikhail Gorbachev to resign. Having departed from Moscow’s line before, Ceau¸sescu would attempt to do so again. Following this resolve, protests broke out following government attempts to expel an assistant pastor László Tokés in Timisoara from his church on 16 December. The demonstrations snowballed, riots ensued on 17 December, provoking violent responses by the Securitate (the Romanian secret police) and climaxing in a march of over 100,000 protesters, including massive columns of workers convening on the Opera Square in Timisoara on 19 December. Their chants echoed those of the GDR ‘Noi suntem poporul!’ (We are the people!), ‘Armata e cu noi!’ (The army is on our side!), ‘Nu va fie frica, Ceau¸sescu pica!’ (Have no fear, Ceau¸sescu will fall!). Workers armed and sent by the government to crush the demonstrations joined the protests instead of attacking. These events were broadcast in Romania on Radio Free

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Europe and the Voice of America and news was additionally distributed by word of mouth. In a television broadcast that evening, Ceau¸sescu labelled the protesters ‘enemies of the socialist revolution’. On the following day he addressed a crowd of 100,000 from the balcony of the Communist Party Central Committee building. The crowds were unmoved by his litany and in an apparent coup attempt allegedly organized by Securitate generals, shots were fired above the crowd, bullhorns were used to convince them that a ‘revolution’ was underway and the rally transformed into a protest demonstration. Turmoil ensued as swelling ranks of protesters were confronted by soldiers, tanks and special anti-terrorist troops. Many were shot, killed and crushed by armoured vehicles. On the morning of 21 December, thousands of workers gathered in downtown Bucharest. Security forces and the army then defected to join the protesters. Martial law and the prohibition of the convergence of groups of larger then five were ignored and made absurd by the hundreds of thousands of people on the streets. Ceau¸sescu attempted to address the crowd from the Central Committee building only to be shouted down. Protesters stormed the building in an attempt to capture Ceau¸sescu and his wife Elena but they managed to escape by helicopter. While elated crowds celebrated in the centre, fierce fighting was underway at the airport, the troops claiming that they were confronting ‘terrorists’ or forces loyal to the old regimen. These ‘terrorists’ attacked the crowds as well as strategically and culturally important points in the capital. Battles ensued in the streets with the military on both sides, resulting in many casualties. War raged through the city until 27 December when ‘terrorist activities’ ended abruptly. The Ceau¸sescus were arrested in the town of Târgoviste and sentenced to death by an ad hoc tribunal on 25 December. They were found guilty of numerous charges including genocide and the illegal amassment of wealth and summarily executed by firing squad. The trial and execution were videotaped and the footage was promptly released. 1999 through 2006 The sixth time period begins in 1999 with the introduction of the euro, includes the accession of fifteen new member states to the EU (primarily former Eastern bloc members), and continues with the ongoing ‘war on terror’ and the European constitutional crisis. Europe-wide discussions on Europe’s role and responsibility within the world have been launched in much of the media. Many of Europe’s ethical components have been at the centre of attention. They are connected with enlightenment, humanism and Christianity; and they refer to notions of individual freedom, religious tolerance, a liberal capitalist economy and social justice. Foremost, however, in addition to

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Christianity the quasi-religious ideas of identity and memory have become central arguments within public discourse. Following the Cold War, and in the wake of the sea changes in its immediate aftermath, a value system was promulgated in Europe as a point of reference for the legitimacy of political action. This was a Western form of democracy with a social market economy. Today, a common set of values are being negotiated, debated and contested in a public sphere. Throughout the debate on war in Iraq, a common pool of values has been accessed in an effort both to condemn war on the one hand, and to legitimize war on the other hand. The latter point of view resonates with connections to the protection of an assumed homogeneous Western civilization and the notions of freedom and tolerance it incorporates, and with the conviction that this cultural achievement should be brought to Iraq as well, ‘liberating’ the country from a dictator in order to install democratic structures – an argument that was dominant in British, Polish and Danish legitimizations of the invasion. The former point of view, taken predominantly by France, Germany and Russia, pinpoints Europe’s civil virtues based on tolerance and dialogue, seeking to prevent crises through dialogical communication, with reference to ‘Old Europe’ as a value-laden model. The current crisis era once again brought war and its brutality to Europe. Fighting between security forces of the rump Yugoslav state and the Kosovo Liberation Army, involving acts of barbarity against numerous civilians, accelerated in winter 1998–9. On 15 January many in the West condemned the Raˇcak incident.13 NATO members broadly accepted a massacre narrative and a conference organized by NATO to defuse the crisis was held at Rambouillet. Yugoslavia refused to sign the NATO draft agreement that would have created an autonomous Kosovo within Serbia. On 19 March 1999, following the failure of the talks – extended over a month beyond their planned conclusion – OSCE monitors withdrew, Serbia accepted autonomy for Kosovo Albanians in principle, and NATO bombing began on 24 March. ‘Operation Allied Force’ commenced with the bombing of ‘targets’ in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia at 8 p.m. Central European Time (CET). The suspension of bombing took place at 4 p.m. CET on 10 June 1999. The ‘targets’ were often dummies, while bombs (intelligent and otherwise) often missed their ‘targets’ or the targets were incorrectly selected. In an effort to minimize NATO casualties the campaign was almost exclusively one involving large-scale, high-altitude aerial bombing of Yugoslav targets. The operation was claimed to be successful and officially involved no combat fatalities. Civilian casualties were estimated at between 2,500 and 5,000 Yugoslav citizens (Serbs and Albanians). All NATO members were involved in the bombing to different degrees. The first combat mission for the German Luftwaffe since World War Two took place and Italy

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as well as Greece, although adamantly opposed to the bombing, offered assistance. Beyond the war, another great integrating and palpable change affecting hundreds of millions of people occurred during this crisis era. Although not available for use in the form of notes and coins at the time, and not even seen except for in a few advertisements, the euro’s virtual introduction on 1 January 1999 made it the ‘national currency’ of the eleven members of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). This changed in January 2002 when the euro gradually replaced circulating currencies, finally appearing in bank accounts and on bills. The word ‘euro’ and its symbol, a, widely became a symbolic marker for value – in addition to monetary value – in its own right. The euro has become one of the – if not the most – common visible symbols and significant creations of the EU. Different to other widely traded ‘world currencies’ such as the pound sterling, the US dollar, the Japanese yen, the Swiss franc or even the Hong Kong dollar, euros are not backed by a single state, but by a union of states. The euro is not a national but a transnational currency. Thus the euro creates a transgressive European area in both monetary and conceptual terms. The currency also briefly created a land in conceptual terms: ‘Euroland’. The use of the term ‘Euroland’ predates that of the ‘Eurozone’ as well as that of the official term, the ‘Euro Area’, used by the European Central Bank (ECB) today. The Euro Area is defined as ‘The area encompassing those EU member states in which the euro has been adopted as the single currency in accordance with the Treaty and in which a single monetary policy is conducted under the responsibility of the Governing Council of the ECB’ (European Central Bank, n.d.) Prior to its establishment, the principal justifications of the euro as a transEuropean currency were claimed to be two-fold, part and parcel of those of the larger European project that sponsored it. It was seen as a mechanism to maintain peace in Europe and to counter the slow growth rate and high level of unemployment that was prevalent in Europe at the time. As to whether the euro was really useful in maintaining peace at that time is doubtful since peace among the European states was already a given. The establishment of a monetary union was, however, an important French stipulation to the unification of Germany. Thus it was seen as a means of maintaining a degree of French influence. It may also have been seen as a mechanism to further the political union of Europe (Congdon, 1998).14 The euro has proved neither to have significantly propelled the political union of Europe, nor to have been impossible without further political union. Since the introduction of the euro the constitutional project has come to a halt, yet the euro has proven to be, if not universally popular, then at least a stable and trusted currency. It is also difficult to say that the euro has necessarily made the Euro Area more competitive globally. Many of the more successful European Union economies are not in the Euro Area (Sweden, the UK and Denmark) while the least successful are (Greece, Portugal and Italy).

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Ireland is an exception, being both successful and within the Euro Area. The euro has become a tangible part of life in the Euro Area and for many of those living there a reification of the European Union in daily life. Yet it is also exclusive, creating two categories of EU member states: those inside and those outside the Euro Area. The euro has also spawned numerous names and classifications, from euro shops and bars to euro super petrol. Euro Disney, however, predates the euro: it opened in 1992 and its name was changed to Disneyland Paris in 1994. Mark Eisner, then the CEO of the Euro Disney Group, noted with respect to the name change a marked difference between US American and European understandings of the concept ‘Euro’. For the Americans, the word ‘Euro’ is believed to mean glamorous or exciting. For Europeans it turned out to be a term they associated with business, currency, and commerce. Renaming the park ‘Disneyland Paris’ was a way of identifying it with one of the most romantic and exciting cities in the world. (Eisner and Schwartz, 1998) In terms of wider European politics prior to the introduction of the euro at the Gothenburg European Council on 15–16 June 2001, the following political positions of the European Union were agreed upon: enlargement negotiations and the finalization of the framework leading to a positive conclusion; the advancement of the debate on the future of the Union; the adoption of a strategy for sustainable development adding an environmental angle to the Lisbon process for employment, economic reform and social cohesion; support for growth and structural reforms of the political economy; and the firm intention to take concerted action against current crises, particularly those in the Middle East and the Balkans (European Council, 2001). It was additionally the occasion for an EU–US summit, attended by George W. Bush, marking the first visit of a US president to Sweden. Never before had so many heads of state and government met simultaneously in Sweden. This provided an example of how membership in the EU can impart importance to states with smaller populations. While crises were debated at the summit meeting, another crisis took place outside its venue. Over 50,000 demonstrators with significant agendas gathered, primarily in opposition to business, currency and commercial interests that according to Eisner in the above quote, were associated with the concept of Euro in Europe. The three most prominent agendas were (1) anti-EU, (2) anti-globalization and anti-neo-liberalism, and (3) anti-US, opposing war and promoting environmental issues. Significant efforts were undertaken by the leadership of groups of demonstrators, the City Administration of Gothenburg and the police in the establishment of a convergence centre, a psycho-tactic police unit to launch dialogue with demonstration organizers and to ensure that the demonstrations were conducted as peacefully as

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possible. However, riots occurred on 14 June and continued the following day when a police squad was attacked and responded harshly, which resulted in a near-fatal shooting. Whether police tactics provoked the demonstrators or the demonstrators were themselves intent on violence is hotly debated. Notably, this was not an isolated case of violent demonstrations accompanying a summit in Europe; it echoed the EU summits in Amsterdam (1997) and Nice (2000) where primarily ‘anti-global’ protesters and police clashed, spreading fears that similar events would occur at the 2001 G8 meeting in Genoa. These demonstrations were important factors behind the shift of European Council meetings to Brussels where the authorities were seen as better prepared to confront anti-EU protests and to provide security for the participants. Since February 2003, thirteen of the seventeen Council meetings have taken place in Brussels. Thus, although an open sphere of demonstrators against Europe was developing in Europe, the openness and approachability of EU politicians to hear, confront and respond to these groups has diminished. An additional inclusive (and exclusive) European initiative is the G8 ‘club’. The G8 superseded the G6 which was formed in 1975 when French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing invited the heads of state of five major industrialized democracies – Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US – to a summit in Rambouillet in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis. There, Giscard proposed regular meetings. Canada joined the group in 1977 and Russia began to participate fully in 1998, marking the group’s expansion to the G8. Representatives of the European Union have attended the conferences since 1977 without becoming representatives of a member themselves. The G8 group is claimed to be an unofficial forum of the heads of the leading industrialized democracies (the European Union has a limited participatory status). This forum was designed to harmonize attitudes to acute economic (and now social) problems. A G8 summit was scheduled to take place from 18 to 22 June 2001 in Genoa. The Italian government suspended the Schengen accords and patrolled the frontiers following expectation of unrest subsequent to demonstrations at the EU summit in Göteborg, just days earlier. Over 20,000 police officers and carabinieri were stationed in Genoa. Yellow and Red Zones were created around the summit venue in the centre of Genoa. The Red Zone in the centre of town that had been declared off-limits for non-residents and surrounded by a barricade was then dubbed ‘Fortress Genoa’. Politicians spoke of conditions resembling those of civil war. The protests against the G8 meeting in Genoa began with a massive demonstration by anti-globalization activists. At least 50,000 people met in the late afternoon to march through the town along the Red Zone which had been sealed by police. Ultimately 300,000 were drawn to the city. The Italian government insisted that it used the minimum necessary force but demonstrators accused the police of brutality. The police undertook raids of social and media centres, union premises, law offices etc. across Italy throughout

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and following the summit. One violent demonstrator, Carlo Giuliani, was shot dead, and numerous others were injured during the protests. Although charges were dropped against protesters, twenty-nine police officers were indicted for false arrest, planting evidence, and physical and mental abuse. Subsequently, the reputed planted evidence mysteriously disappeared from legal custody. The EU has not been entirely immune to social problems within its own borders. Although the EU is among the most prosperous of the world’s economic zones, with an internal market and human potential of over 450 million citizens, radical economic and social differences among various member states (particularly since the accession of ten new states in 2004) and regions are seen as factors that weaken its dynamism. A cluster of European institutions, the European funds, structural funds and cohesion funds, under the umbrella of the European Regional Policy allocates more than a third of the budget of the EU to the reduction of the gaps in development among the regions and disparities among the citizens in terms of well-being. The budget is intended to promote economic as well as social cohesion with the aim of enhancing overall solidarity. The means to this end are the promotion of employment, training, competitiveness of firms, improvements in infrastructure, the information society and research. [T]he Union seeks to use the policy to help lagging regions to catch up, restructure declining industrial regions, diversify the economies of rural areas with declining agriculture and revitalize declining neighbourhoods in the cities. It sets job creation as its primary concern. In a word, it seeks to strengthen the economic, social and territorial ‘cohesion’ of the Union. (European Commission, 2006b) Nevertheless, the solidarity and cohesion between lagging and leading states is not exhibited in the distribution of funds to the various regions. On an annual basis over seven years (2000–6) the EU15 received 233,328 million euros for a population of 149.13 million or 224 euros per capita annually in Objective 1 and 2 areas. The new member states received 24,451 million euros for a population of 73.19 million in Objective 1 and 2 areas over three years (2004–6) or 111 euros per capita annually. The percentage of the population targeted by the funds in the EU15 (40.3) was also less than half that targeted in the EU10 which measured 97.7 per cent (European Commission, 2006c). The last of the crises analysed in this volume followed the publication of twelve caricatures of the prophet Mohammed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten on 30 September 2005. This makes it an ironic and wellsuited final punctuating case for our analysis because as a media event it sparked media discourses, and then with republication, another media event inflamed the crisis. It is also highly relevant since it raised fundamental

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questions relating to European and Western moral and legal traditions including freedom of the press, respect for the beliefs of others and pragmatism. The publication of the Mohammed cartoons was a response to a debate generated by the difficulty of finding an illustrator to draw the prophet for a children’s book in Denmark. This led to a Danish debate on self-censorship reaching an apex in the publication of the caricatures in Jyllands Posten. Flemming Rose, the culture editor of Jyllands Posten commented and justified the publication within the framework of this debate with the following statement: Modern, secular society is rejected by some Muslims. They demand a special position, insisting on special consideration of their own religious feelings. It is incompatible with contemporary democracy and freedom of speech, where you must be ready to put up with insults, mockery and ridicule. It is certainly not always attractive and nice to look at, and it does not mean that religious feelings should be made fun of at any price, but that is of minor importance in the present context . . . we are on our way to a slippery slope where no one can tell how the self-censorship will end. That is why Morgenavisen Jyllands Posten has invited members of the Danish editorial cartoonists union to draw Muhammad as they see him. (Rose, 2005: 3)15 What was declared to be an attack on and criticism of self-censorship, and not Islam, by Jyllands Posten became an affront to millions of Muslims. It was not merely the fact that a number of the images portrayed Mohammed, a contravention of both the prohibition of images and aniconism spurring fears of idolatry present in all Abrahamic religions, but that the images were seen to ridicule Mohammed and Islam.16 The publication in September 2005 was followed by a wave of protests including letters and a demonstration of thousands outside the editorial offices of Jyllands Posten in Copenhagen and threats to the lives of the cartoonists (Denmark, 2006). Ambassadors from ten Islamic countries sent a letter requesting an audience with the Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen to discuss the incident on 12 October 2005 (Ok et al., 2005). Rasmussen, however, refused to meet the ambassadors. He suggested in his response nine days later that the Danish legal system was responsible for prosecuting acts of discrimination and discrimination (Rasmussen, 2005). Subsequently on 27 October 2005, Islamic organizations lodged a protest with the Danish police claiming a breech of sections 140 and 266b of the Danish criminal code, the former prohibiting blasphemy and disturbance of public order and the latter threat or degradation due to skin colour, ethnic roots, faith or sexual orientation. The regional prosecutor found no case for prosecution and thus no basis for criminal offence and discontinued the investigation on 6 January 2006 (Denmark, 2006). In the interim the crisis escalated, diplomatic sanctions were imposed by Libya and Saudi Arabia, recalling their diplomats from Copenhagen and

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calling for a boycott of Danish goods. Two delegations of Danish Imams toured the Islamic world (3–11 December and 17–31 December 2005) with the ‘Akkari–Laban dossier’17 to support their case against Jyllands Posten. From October 2005 through January 2006 the images were republished in a number of major newspapers including journals in the Netherlands, Germany, Scandinavia, Belgium and France. Papers in Canada, the UK and the US avoided publication. This resulted in Islamic boycotts of Danish goods, widespread demonstrations in the Islamic world, the firebombing of Danish embassies in Syria, Lebanon, Indonesia and Teheran, riots that resulted in hundreds of deaths and death threats against those responsible for the cartoons.

Conclusion This chapter proposes a historical narrative marked by rupture and transformation but also continuity that runs through the six crisis eras investigated. Public and political events provide the framework for the media discourses examined, and it is within this field of tension that values, shared and individual, are constructed. One basis for the framing of this research in crises lies can be found the research of Reinhardt Koselleck. According to Koselleck, the critical character of an Axial Age in Europe that he termed the Sattelzeit18 was the driving force behind ideological and discursive shifts that led to a series of redefinitions and re-evaluations of individuals’ and societies’ self-perceptions. That is to say that social criticism created crises and this was countered by attempts to integrate and canalize the critique (Koselleck, 1992). Values constructed and transformed during these political and social crisis periods were used to justify, support and further political agendas for peace and prosperity, and even happiness and justice. These were alternatively evoked as tools, ideals and goals during the Sattelzeit. A point of departure for this research lies in questioning whether and how societal and political transformations since World War Two have continued to be critique-based, formed in crises and provide a capacity and dynamic for change since the Sattelzeit (Schulz-Forberg, 2005). In comparison to the Western industrial/bourgeois ‘revolutionary’ era of great change from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, in which there was a widespread self-perception of the imminence of a utopian age, the transformations of the post-war era may seem petty. The former witnessed the rise of bourgeois society fuelled by the Industrial Revolution, and although it began in Europe, its repercussions were global in scope. These were events, alterations, of a new order not confined to the individual lives of small elite segments of populations in specific areas but affecting most of the inhabitants of the globe on a clearly perceptible level (Koselleck, 1992: 5). The era we research begins roughly a century from the close of the Sattelzeit. Even with a greater understanding of the transformations since World War Two, it is difficult to see the era as having spawned such fundamental

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shifts as occurred in the Sattelzeit. This calls into question the idea of a continual acceleration of time in the wake of the Sattelzeit. In fact it may have been an era in which many of the conflicts spawned in the Sattelzeit were still relevant, that is to say newly contested and confronted under transformed exigencies which brought them to the forefront in the context of crises. For Europe, crises in this framework may also be moments in which a new type of European Public Sphere emerged and was defined.19 It was in this era that the European polity that would become the European Union was constituted and the process accelerated, albeit unsteadily and not without setbacks, its institutional development. Thus on a macro level, studies of these eras offer the opportunity to glimpse the relevance of conceptions of Europe and the EU (including its precursor institutions) because the concept and the institutions are either explicitly contested or more or less conspicuous in media discourses and debates within the framework of these crises. These are the central issues examined in this volume. The six crisis periods classified as European and international political crisis eras in the post-war epoch were selected based upon Koselleck’s thesis of critique and crisis. One claim that can be made in support of this chronology is that European values and politics in a transgressive sense have been actively developed in the wake of the Cold War experiences of the 1950s as an active space for identification and the development of political order. More importantly, a European polity different from any previous European order has developed during the epoch under investigation. This has not been exclusive from, and has in fact developed in irregular synchronism with, national as well as bloc cultures. The history of European enlargement and integration in institutional and political terms, beginning in the 1950s, also signified an acceleration of European cultural dynamics. These are marked as much if not more by contestation and confrontation than by consensus and compromise. Notes * I would like to express my gratitude to the editors of this volume for their help and encouragement. This chapter is the product of research completed within the framework of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for European History and Public Spheres in Vienna as well as FP6 project EMEDIATE (CIT2-CT-2004-506027). 1. In this volume, Stråth and Wodak conceptualize crises as an important factor in value contention as well as value construction and the images reflected in public spheres. 2. Crises may be understood as isolated events in which extreme difficulty, trouble or danger is experienced and/or perceived but without effects. In this sense crises have no residual meaning, or no meaning is imparted to them in the development or construction of anything beyond themselves. 3. See Stråth and Wodak in this volume. 4. The categorization of wars from the Franco-Prussian through to World War Two as a period of ‘European Civil War’ was itself a significant step in the construction of a transgressive idea of Europe that was developed with particular strength at

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5.

6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

11. 12.

the London School of Economics. These wars include World War One, the Russian Revolution and the Spanish Civil War, and sometimes further conflicts from the Cold War until 1990. See Preston and Mackenzie (1996). The Treaty of Paris, unlike the Treaty establishing the European Community, was conceived as finite in a temporal sense. Its expiration date was fixed at 50 years from its inception. It was not subsequently extended and thus the ECSC ceased to exist on 23 July 2002; on that date the EU assumed its responsibilities and assets. Sándor Petöfi, after whom the circle was named, was a Hungarian poet and key figure in the Hungarian Revolution of 1848. A soviet republic is a council. The short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic established in 1919 was the second soviet republic in history. This same venue would be selected for the signing of the ill-fated EU Constitutional Treaty on 29 October 2004. Recently the Wall’s iconic value as a symbol of the division of Europe for the European Union was exhibited by the re-erection of a segment in front of the European Parliament in Parc Léopold just days before the 1 May 2004 accession of ten new member states. These new member states were primarily from the ‘other’ side of the Wall. The Wall can be seen as the central symbol of a divided Europe. In addition to dividing Europe the Berlin Wall divided families and friends, and places of work, residence and leisure. Here fundamental personal values and rights are evoked insofar as much of what had been taken for granted in Europe was denied. At the same time, Europe had a history of denying that which before had been taken for granted. The key and central value at stake with the Wall was freedom, or the freedoms, to move, assemble, speak, decide, write and protest. This was truer for the Wall than other parts of the fortified frontier because it ran through a large and prominent city and created an island. The 1956 protests were in Poznan, those of 1968 occurred in Warsaw and Radom, and those of 1976 in Ursus. The first and last of these were predominantly ‘worker’s’ protests and the second, in 1968, were primarily intellectual. Cf. Michal Krzyzanowski’s ˙ contribution to this volume. ‘Privatreisen nach dem Ausland können ohne Vorliegen von Voraussetzungen – Reiseanlässe und Verwandtschaftsverhältnisse – beantragt werden. Die Genehmigungen werden kurzfristig erteilt. Die zuständigen Abteilungen Pass- und Meldewesen der VP – der Volkspolizeikreisämter – in der DDR sind angewiesen, Visa zur ständigen Ausreise unverzüglich zu erteilen, ohne dass dafür noch geltende Voraussetzungen für eine ständige Ausreise vorliegen müssen. Ständige Ausreisen können über alle Grenzübergangsstellen der DDR zur BRD erfolgen . . .’

Frage eines Journalisten (Riccardo Ehrmann von der italienischen Agentur ANSA): Wann tritt das in Kraft? Schabowski (blättert in seinen Papierstapeln): Das tritt nach meiner Kenntnis – ist das sofort, unverzüglich.’ (Flemming and Koch, 1999: 116). 13. The Raˇcak incident was a massacre of dozens of Albanians by Yugoslav security forces near Raˇcak triggering the Kosovo War. The Yugoslav government claimed that the victims were KLA fighters. 14. Notably, the monetary union of the FRG and GDR also preceded the incorporation of the GDR in the FRG. There was also widespread doubt as to whether a monetary union could exist without political union. 15. ‘Det moderne, sekulære samfund afvises af nogle muslimer. De gør krav på en særstilling, når de insisterer på særlig hensyntagen til egne religiøse følelser. Det

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16.

17. 18. 19.

The European Public Sphere and the Media er uforeneligt med et verdsligt demokrati og ytringsfrihed, hvor man må være rede til at finde sig i hån, spot og latterliggørelse. Det er bestemt ikke altid lige sympatisk og pænt at se på, og det betyder ikke, at religiøse følelser for enhver pris skal gøres til grin, men det er underordnet i sammenhængen. Det er således ikke tilfældigt, at folk i totalitære samfund ryger i fængsel for at fortælle vittigheder eller afbilde diktatorer kritisk. Det sker som regel med henvisning til, at det krænker folkets følelser. I Danmark er det ikke kommet så vidt, men de anførte eksempler viser, at vi er på vej ind på en glidebane, hvor ingen kan forudsige, hvad selvcensuren vil ende med . . . Derfor har Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten opfordret medlemmer af danske bladtegneres forening til at tegne Muhammed, som de ser ham.’ The publication, or even republication of historical or non-compromising images of Mohammed would also have served to make a point about self-censorship. Notably, in the Lutheran tradition caricature had confronted religious Catholic themes brutally since its earliest days. Named for its primary compilers, the Danish Islamic leaders Ahmad Abu Laban and Akhmad Akkari. On Koselleck’s Sattelzeit as the Axial Age see Wagner (2005) and Kaye (2003). The public-political and the private individual were linked in the creation of an aspect of bourgeois society that Jürgen Habermas designated using the term Öffentlichkeit in this era of revolutions. The thesis published by Habermas in 1962 was translated in 1989. The German term Öffentlichkeit was translated as the term ‘public sphere’and discourses concerning the public sphere have mushroomed despite Habermas’ doubts as to its application to industrially advanced mass democracies organized in the form of welfare states. More recently, a new public sphere on a European level has become an object of political desire in Europe. This has necessitated and resulted in reconceptions of the term. Cf. Habermas (1964, 1989) and Schulz-Forberg (2005).

4 The 1956 Hungarian Revolution in the Hungarian, Austrian and German Media András Kovács, Anikó Horváth and Nadežda Kinsky-Müngersdorff

On the afternoon of 23 October 1956, thousands of university students marched through the streets of Budapest. The aim of the demonstration was to force the government to listen to their demands through twelve points aimed at re-establishing political freedom and fostering the national independence of the country. Early in the evening, the large crowd besieged and later occupied the building of the Hungarian national radio station whose leaders had refused to air their demands. The events led to a general crisis. On the one hand, the Soviet occupying army intervened in order to disperse the crowds and entered into bloody street fights with groups of poorly armed insurgents. On the other hand, the former Communist leadership resigned, and Imre Nagy, an old Communist veteran and former reformist prime minister (1953–4), who was considered to be the leading personality of the anti-Stalinist reform Communist opposition and had therefore been excluded from the party in 1955, became the head of the new government. The new political leadership, albeit strongly criticizing the Stalinist policy of its predecessors, distanced itself from the ‘counter-revolutionary elements’ of the street. After five days of street fighting and political turmoil, however, the party leadership and the government – composed mainly of the followers of Nagy – gave up its former position on the ‘counter-revolutionary’ nature of the recent events, declared a ceasefire, asked for the withdrawal of the Soviet troops, announced the dissolution of the hated political police and started negotiations with the representatives of the insurgents. In the following days a coalition government was formed with the participation of the representatives of reorganized parties of the post-war democratic period – the Smallholders’ Party, the Social-Democratic Party and the National Peasant Party. The new government denounced the Warsaw Pact and declared the neutrality of Hungary, and at the same time issued an appeal to the United Nations and to the four Great Powers to guarantee the neutral status of the country. At dawn on 4 November, the Soviet army launched a general attack against Budapest and other centres. The Soviet military machine broke 83

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the armed resistance of the scattered urban guerrilla groups in a couple of days and simultaneously installed a puppet government composed mainly of second-rank Stalinist functionaries. Janos Kadar became the leader of the party, now called the Hungarian Socialist Worker’s Party. Over the following months the new government and the reorganized political police with the effective support of the Soviet military administration destroyed the remaining centres of peaceful resistance, the Worker’s Councils, and launched a brutal campaign of physical repression in which approximately 500 people were sentenced to death and several thousands to long-term imprisonment. This chapter’s analysis of the press coverage of the Hungarian crisis of 1956 in Hungary, Germany and Austria aims to illuminate in what way this press coverage displays the presence of an idea of Europe and European values in the public spheres they address and represent. In order to do so, the main points of interest will be to ask how far the events are framed in a European context; to what extent values called upon in the context of the events are defined as or draw on being European in some sense; whether the newspaper coverage appears to address a national or already a European Public Sphere; and whether one can discern a political interest or context in which notions of Europe, European values or a European Public Sphere are called upon. However, in order to understand the status of the European issues in the analysed texts, one has to define the broader context in which they were written. During the Cold War the division of Europe was not considered to be definitive, eternal and unchangeable. Especially after the death of Stalin, quite a few political speculations emerged about the possibilities of a new arrangement. After the Berlin uprising in 1953 the idea of the reunification of Germany under certain conditions emerged as an acceptable option for the Soviet leadership. In general for the Soviet bloc countries three existing political models could serve as examples for the way out of the Soviet satellite system. The first was so-called ‘Finlandization’. Finland, a Western-type democratic country with a government that guaranteed non-alignment and the unconditional acceptance of Soviet security interests, was accepted by the Soviet Union inside its sphere of influence. The second was the Yugoslav model of non-alignment based on the so-called Bandung principles, and the third was the neutral status of Austria based on the Treaty of 1955. The common element of all three models was that they were defined in terms of the post-World War Two status quo as direct descendants of the agreements of the four Great Powers stemming from the Yalta–Potsdam process, carried through mainly by the United States and Great Britain, on the one side, and the Soviet Union on the other. Consequently, any modification to the European status quo was only conceivable with the active participation of the US, which was considered to be the main guarantor of the security of the Western world. It is no accident that ‘Europe’ appears only very rarely in the contemporary discourse. The players of the European game were regularly – and systematically – described as the ‘East’ and the ‘West’, Warsaw Pact and

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NATO, and as the ‘Great Powers’, with the US and the Soviet Union being the main actors. The consensually accepted playground was either the UN or different institutions of the Great Powers (such as the Geneva talks). All these factors substantially limited the possibilities of framing the responses to European crises exclusively in a European perspective and on the basis of specific European values. This conceptual paradigm deeply influenced the way in which the Hungarian revolution was depicted in the Hungarian, Austrian and German media during those dramatic days in October and November 1956.

1956 in the Hungarian media The media in the 1956 revolution: general remarks The media played an active role in the preparation of the 1956 revolution as well as during the events themselves. In the period following Stalin’s death, the period of the ‘thaw’, the first publications criticizing Stalinist policy were published in certain intellectual newspapers, mainly by disillusioned former Stalinist journalists and writers who exploited the chances offered by the conflict of ‘conservative’ and ‘reform’ Communists and took the side of the latter. These voices could not even be silenced in the period of Stalinist restoration that followed (1954–5). Some leading journalists of the party organ Szabad Nép (Free People) played an important role in supporting Imre Nagy’s reforms, and they continued to back the reformist opposition even in the period after Nagy’s fall. Some other newspapers, those that had already existed before the war and survived the Stalinist years under total control, also seized the opportunities offered by the thaw. One of those was the Magyar Nemzet (Hungarian Nation), the leading conservative-liberal anti-fascist daily of the years preceding the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944. After Stalin’s death, at the time of the first Nagy government, the paper was designated to serve as an organ of the People’s Patriotic Front, the main fellow-traveller organization, and as such the editors were allowed to publish texts slightly different from the strict party line. This offered the editorial board a chance to open their pages for moderate ‘constructive’ criticism. The weekly of the Writer’s Union, Irodalmi Újság (Literary Journal), enjoyed the same privileges. These papers and the disillusioned former party journalists working for them played an important formative role in the preparation of the revolutionary events. In the formation of the print media landscape of the revolutionary days, three decisive tendencies can be observed. The first was represented by the journalists of the Communist media. A group of those continued to represent conservative Stalinist views and denounced the revolution and the revolutionaries as counter-revolutionary agents of Western imperialism. The second sub-group of the former party journalists strongly supported Nagy’s reform Communist line. The main terrain of their fight was the party paper, Szabad Nép, which was controlled by the conservative group until 28 October, but

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after the change of the former party line it was taken over by the reformists, who continued to publish it under the new name Népszabadság (People’s Freedom). Due to their former positions, contacts and presence in the media, the journalists of this paper had the best access to the institutional sources of information and to the political leaders throughout the events. The second group of print media consisted of those journals which preserved their pre-war names, and now, having got rid of censorship, tried to return to their traditions. This group included Magyar Nemzet, to which some members of its pre-war staff, banned from journalistic activity or totally marginalized in the post-1948 years, returned and which also attracted some of the more radical reform Communists. Certain newspapers of the coalition parties were revitalized: the Social-Democrats received back Népszava, (People’s Voice), the legendary journal of the Social-Democratic Party that had been founded in 1877, but was expropriated and published as the daily of the Communist trade unions after the forcible unification of the SocialDemocratic Party with the Communist Party. On 1 November 1956 the Smallholder’s Party relaunched its party paper Kis Újság (Small Journal) which had been founded in the late 1930s. The third substantial group of journals was represented by a wide array of new newspapers that were founded in the days of the revolution by different revolutionary groupings such as Magyar Függetlenség (Hungarian Independence) and Igazság (Truth). They voiced the positions of the different spontaneously formed groups and grassroots organizations of the revolution. The journalists of these papers were mostly young people and active participants of the events. All these groups had differing, clearly distinct approaches to the events; therefore, this threefold typology – reform Communist, conservative, and revolutionary media – was used when choosing the newspapers for the analysis in this chapter. Changes occurred in the broadcast media market as well. Although after 4 November, when Soviet troops attacked Budapest and other revolutionary centres, only a few regional radio stations were able to air information about what was happening in Hungary, during the days of the revolution the only major-impact and nationally broadcasting radio station was Radio Kossuth. From 23–29 October, Radio Kossuth was still the conduit of the former political elite. Accordingly, in that period, radio journalists presented the revolution as ‘counter-revolution’, the revolutionary masses as the ‘mob’, and they tried to downplay the size and importance of fighting and resistance. However, on 30 October the editors declared their ‘liberation’: they changed the formerly Communist management, fired compromised journalists, and adopted a new name, ‘Radio Free Kossuth’. Being the only national broadcasting station their position in the media market was different to that of the print media. Radio, during the week under examination in this study, apparently was considered by the masses and by political and public figures

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to be the ‘people’s radio’, where (theoretically) everybody could make his/her voice heard. While journalists were still the primary gatekeepers of the information that was being aired, they did not necessarily have a monopoly on the ways that information was formulated and transmitted. During this period, the formerly rigid structures determining who could talk on the radio, and when, how and with whose mediation, were significantly loosened. Thus, although print media was much more personalized during the revolution than at any other time before or since, the fact that article writing required more skills than talking on the radio tended to filter the content of newspapers more than the content of radio. As a result, in radio broadcasts some journalistic genres were over-represented (headlines, news, declarations, interviews and field reports), while others (news reports and background articles) were completely missing. It was also characteristic that in most journalistic genres broadcast during that period it was not the journalists, but rather laymen and political elites, who contextualized and interpreted the events. Another important characteristic of the Hungarian media landscape during the 1956 revolution was that all forms of journalism had a revolutionary, partisan character. The main characteristic of this ‘partisan journalism’ was that articles were always framed in terms of the dichotomy between a positive, unified and homogeneous ‘we’ (the revolutionary nation) and a negative, depersonalized and dehumanized ‘they’ (former Communist elites and the Soviets). Or, to put it differently, the dominant media discourse in Hungary during the revolution which cut across all political orientations (reform Communist, conservative, revolutionary) and types of media (print, broadcast) was the attempt to construct a revolutionary identity for Hungary and Hungarians. The major components and characteristics of this revolutionary identity fall into four broad thematic areas: 1. The revolutionary events in Hungary. In this case the purity, unity, solidarity and heroism of Hungarian people were emphasized. 2. Democratic values and political developments. Here love of freedom, neutrality and the democratic attitudes of Hungarians were pointed out as the major elements of the new revolutionary identity. 3. Former Communist elites and the USSR. In this case the image of a divided Hungarian nation emerged, wherein the ‘real’ nation of good workers, peasants and intellectuals was juxtaposed with the ‘rotten’ old Hungarian and Soviet Communist elites who were viewed as having no place within the ‘reborn’ Hungarian nation. 4. ‘Others’ from the ‘outside world’. Hungarians were portrayed as a nation rewriting world history by its unique revolution, as a model for all countries aspiring to national independence; as a would-be universal model of exemplary political organization; as well as a member of the group of the free ‘culture nations’ of the ‘developed’ world.

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From each of these four categories a few dominant characteristics emerged and became components of a new, all-encompassing Hungarian national identity. This new Hungarian national identity was portrayed as the product of the revolution through which the nation took on a new lease of life. Since Europe and European values did not appear prominently in the 1956 Hungarian media discourse, but the above four categories are relevant in understanding what the featured values were and how they were linked to Europe, our analysis of the Hungarian media is structured around these four broad areas with a special focus in each section on Europe and related values.

Data and methodology From the total of 14–18 days of the 1956 Hungarian revolution, only the media of one week were selected for analysis (29 October–5 November). Although these seven days do not include the outbreak of the revolution, they do include the appearance and consolidation of the idea of a multiparty system in Hungary, the founding of several new parties, the most important negotiations with the USSR and the UN, as well as the time period when the Soviet tanks invaded Hungary. In the case of print media the focus was on national, wide-impact newspapers (42 in total). Six major ones were selected, based on their political orientation1 : 1. Reform Communist newspapers (Szabad Nép; Népszabadság); 2. Conservative newspapers (Magyar Nemzet; Kis Újság); 3. Revolutionary newspapers (Magyar Függetlenség; Igazság).2 In the case of radio, the only major-impact, national broadcasting radio station was Radio Free Kossuth. The most comprehensive anthology of the radio texts of the revolution was published by Kenedi and Varga in 1989. We used this edited volume for our analysis. The qualitative analysis of the texts was performed in two steps. In the first step, all news reports presenting the events in an exclusively national, eventdriven and detail-driven manner were eliminated, because they proved to be of no importance from the point of view of this research. The exceptions were those articles where, although the focus was exclusively national and eventcentred, the underlying context referred to certain broader value categories (multiparty system, church and religion, pluralistic society, democracy, etc.). Further, news reports received from different Hungarian and foreign news agencies were removed, because they were not representative of the media discourse of the respective newspapers. The only exceptions were those news agency reports where the editors of the newspaper added their own comments to the press agency article. As a result of the pre-sorting of 219 news reports, 60 (27.39 per cent), were chosen for a more detailed analysis: three

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news reports from Szabad Nép (out of 6); five news reports from Népszabadság (out of 24); fourteen news reports from Magyar Nemzet (out of 64); ten news reports from Kis Újság (out of 32); thirteen news reports from Magyar Függetlenség (out of 43); and fifteen news reports from Igazság (out of 50). In the case of the radio texts – lacking proper news reports – we selected the commentaries. Thus from Radio Free Kossuth twenty radio commentaries broadcast during that period were selected for analysis. In the second step, discourse analysis3 was used as the method of data analysis. The pilot-study showed that four larger thematic areas (contents) could be distinguished in the Hungarian media during the 1956 revolution: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Discourse on the revolutionary events in Hungary; Discourse on democratic values and political developments; Discourse on former Communist elites and the USSR; Discourse on ‘others’ from the ‘outside world’.

All the above categories were relevant in understanding how media discourse on Europe and European values developed in the Hungarian media of that period. An analysis of each sub-topic by the main discursive strategies applied, the argumentative schemes and the topoi4 used follows below.

Discourse on the revolutionary events in Hungary Most articles (regardless of their journalistic genre) in the examined issues of the six selected newspapers, as well as in radio commentaries, were about the daily events of the revolution: street fights in major cities; the dayto-day shortages of food, warm clothes and medication; the accelerated changes in national politics; and the negotiations with the Soviet Union and the UN. Most journalists attempted to define and describe the events as the awakening and rebirth of the Hungarian nation. Some of them did this by assuming openly the task of building a revolutionary (and through this also a national) identity: while they reported on the factual events they integrated and linked everything to the national character of Hungarians. Others – seemingly reporting on the events in a distant and objective manner – had a similar, but hidden agenda, and their commitment to the construction of a revolutionary identity was revealed only by the discourse analysis. The other, also very important and dominant portrayal of the revolution which paralleled the construction of the Hungarian revolutionary (and national) identity was that of the liberation from a long, foreign subjugation. The dominant and positive portrayal of the revolution as a national war of independence and of the government as the new national Hungarian government called almost automatically for the constant negative portrayal of an ‘other’, the ‘enemy’. The figure of that ‘other’ could be easily identified in this case: the occupying Soviet troops, their political and army leaders back

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in the USSR, and the former Hungarian Communist Party elite and the secret services who ‘betrayed the Hungarian nation’ and ‘sold the country’ to these ‘foreigners’ (Magyar Függetlenség, 2 November): ‘Our enemy is the Soviet military force, which subjugated our nation’ (Fuggetlenség, 30 October). The most frequent argumentative scheme applied was that of juxtaposing the two sides. For example, secret service officers were said to behave like ‘vipers’, ‘criminals’ and ‘janissaries’, who ‘could not escape their fate and were eliminated’ by the Hungarian youth which, in contrast, was innocent and ‘ideologically clean’, and ‘could not be raised by any of the “democratic alliances” of the former Communists to become their own kind’ (Magyar Nemzet, 2 November). Further, the ‘bad Communists’, whose ‘rule diverged from the needs and aspirations of the people and who were sycophants of the personality cult of a foreign power’ (namely the Soviets), were contrasted with the ‘good Communists’, who ‘always remained close to the people, and stayed autonomous in their thinking, even at the risk of being marginalized’ (Szabad Nép, 29 October). Since reporting on revolutionary events was used by journalists as a pretext to redefine the major characteristics of the Hungarian nation, the most often used discursive strategies were the constructive strategies. Examples of constructive strategies (a) Argumentative strategy of emphasizing intra-national homogeneity/sameness

• Topos of the nation In this type of argumentation Hungary, the Hungarian nation, was presented as being homogeneous: ‘The Hungarian people/nation claims to . . . ’ (Igazság, 1 November). ‘For the happiness of the Hungarian nation . . . ’ (Magyar Függetlenség, 2 November). ‘There are no parties or different political believers. There are only Hungarians who all want the same thing’ (Kis Újság, 2 November).

• Topos of unity In this case class unity was especially emphasized, but in certain contexts references to ethnic unity were also made. Unity based on basic democratic ideals – freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of religion – was also mentioned: The revolution was portrayed as a worker–peasant–intellectual and soldiers’ movement. The non-ethnic dimension of the fights was emphasized (especially because of early accusations of being a fascist counter-revolution): ‘The so-called fascist revolutionaries defended the visibly Jewish secret service officer from the angry masses, in part, not to give anyone the

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opportunity to stigmatize this great revolution as “anti-Semitic, and fascist”‘ (Igazság, 30 October).

• Topos of flag (and other national symbols) In the early days of the revolution the flag with a hole in it had already become the symbol of the liberation from foreign occupation. A few days later additional symbols appeared – the Kossuth-blazon, the cockade, the tricolour armband, and the national hymn – all to symbolize the revolution: ‘We have Kossuth’s blazon on our flags, and our mother country shall start down a new road of national independence with these watchwords’ (Radio Free Kossuth, 29 October). (b) Strategy of emphasizing national uniqueness (singularization)

• Topos of pure/innocent revolution, topos of youth and topos of heroism Many articles presented the revolution as pure and innocent, where maximal trust among people existed, and where people did not betray the democratic ideals around which they organized by committing inappropriate acts (stealing, robbery, violence, etc.). The Hungarian revolution was presented in several articles as unique in world history, using metaphors about the everlasting pureness of this revolution. Mainly youth was portrayed as fighting heroically, without fear, and the ‘new/pure era of revolution’ was contrasted with the ‘corrupt/rotten communist past’ (Szabad Nép, 29 October): ‘Fight of youth cannot be contaminated’ (Magyar Nemzet, 30 October). ‘The unarmed Hungarian youth stood in the front of the tanks of a great power’ (Magyar Nemzet, 4 November). (c) Strategy of avoidance: marginalizing intra-national differences

• Topos of threat The external threat that existed (the Soviet army) and the internal threat (the still hiding and organizing secret service officers) was always referred to as a threat which should trump all ideological differences and lead to total unity among Hungarians: Because of the still persisting mentality of Stalinist forces in Hungary, which try to implement the rule of ‘divide et impera’, ‘all honourable patriots should do everything that stands in their force to keep order and unity among all forces of the nation’ (Magyar Függetlenség, 1 November).

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Although foreigners, foreign countries, foreign governments and politicians were mentioned quite often in the discourse on revolutionary events, there were very few references to Europe in these texts. The most frequent division which was made among countries in this type of discourse was that between ‘free’ and ‘not free’. Even in those cases when direct reference was made to democratic values achieved/won by the revolution, Europe was rarely mentioned. It is interesting that the open contradiction between praising countries of the free world and the repeated denial of capitalism is not problematized in any of the texts: in Hungary the old world of ‘bankers and capitalists is over for ever’ and ‘we will fight any attempts of capitalist restoration’ (Magyar Függetlenség, 1 November). In the few cases where references to Europe were made, it appeared as a vague and undefined geographical/cultural entity: ‘We, Hungarians, want to live like the flag-bearers of the intimate family peace of European nations’ (Radio Free Kossuth, 3 November). In all other contexts a more encompassing categorization, that of ‘Western countries/nations’ (the place from which the ideals of freedom and humanism originated), was used: ‘It makes us happy to hear that leaders, poets, writers of the big-cultured nations, which are the torch-bearers of freedom and humanism, call the Hungarian revolution the most beautiful humanistic revolution of the modern era’ (Radio Free Kossuth, 31 October). In addition, as a strategy of justification (to explain Hungary’s situation), shift of blame and responsibility appears in some of the texts: ‘Hungary always suffered because of the wars of independence it had to fight in the protection of Western countries’ (Radio Free Kossuth, 3 November).

Discourse on democratic values and political developments After 28 October, Hungarian media became a forum for different political, civil (social) and religious groups. The duality of status – reporters of political developments and medium (mouthpiece) of the interest groups with whom the editors were aligned – left visible marks on the way the media functioned during the revolution. While they reported on political developments and adopted the democratic values for which the revolution fought (independence from foreign powers; neutrality of Hungary; freedom of speech, press and religion; re-establishing human and civil rights; free elections and the reintroduction of the multiparty system in Hungary) many of them openly advertised the political beliefs of their own organizations. This explains why it is that although ideals of democratic transformation, of political discontinuity, as well as of socialism appear in all media products, they have different meanings and interpretations based on the political orientation of the respective media. In the discourse on democratic values and political developments the most often used macro-strategy was that of transformation. Below is a

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short account of the most frequently used secondary strategies, and of the argumentative schemes applied. Examples of strategies of transformation (a) Strategy of continuity/discontinuity The singular and non-recurrent nature of the revolution was strongly emphasized. While political discontinuity with the immediate and the more distant past was declared, continuity with ideals and symbols of other singular, heroic and revolutionary events from Hungarian history was highlighted (e.g. the 1848–9 revolution).

• Topos of democratic transformation Democratic transformation was used in at least three different types of arguments. Reform Communist newspapers portrayed reform Communist transformations as ‘democratic’ and saw as their ultimate goal the realization of a ‘real workers democracy’ or a ‘socialist democracy’ (Népszabadság, 2 November). The conservative press portrayed democratic transformation as the introduction of a multiparty system and creation of a pluralistic society in Hungary modelled on those in the West. It was also in the conservative press that claims for sharing political power were first voiced. In contrast, the reform Communist press was covertly against the above interpretation of democratic transformation: ‘Democratic transformation in the Democratic Republic of Germany did not mean that liberalization was introduced in order to restore capitalism’ (Népszabadság, 3 November). Another interpretation was when ‘democratic transformation’ and ‘democracy’ were used interchangeably and in this context democracy equalled economic success and growth: ‘Real democracy will make it possible for Hungary to become a flourishing country’ (Kis Újság, 3 November).

• Topos of political discontinuity Although the need for political discontinuity was used as an argument by all media outlets, a correlation between political orientation and different interpretations of the political past and future of the country could be seen. While reform Communist papers argued for political discontinuity with the former Communist elite, but not with the idea of socialism as such, both conservative and revolutionary newspapers advocated the need for discontinuity with the whole of the Communist past. Nevertheless, the political options they identified as being realistic for Hungary

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were different. Journalists in the revolutionary press dreamed of an exemplary, new, nation-specific political system, where the positive aspects of socialism would be incorporated: ‘We do not negotiate, we do not restore, we grew out the old system, so we demand a new one, because we won!’ (Magyar Függetlenség, 31 October). ‘Prime minister Imre Nagy can now . . . secure the road to freedom and independence, to democracy and honest/decent socialism for the Hungarian nation’ (Magyar Függetlenség, 1 November). While conservative journalists did not exclude the possibility of return to the political and social system of the late 1940s, they also strongly emphasized discontinuity with capitalism: ‘National independence, democracy and welfare. This is the threefold goal of our great national revolution . . . and in Hungary we think with great respect of Yugoslavia, the country which was the first among Eastern European countries to implement socialist democracy, independence and neutrality’ (Magyar Nemzet, 4 November). (b) Strategy of positive self-presentation

• Topos of comparison and topos of difference By talking about the positive aspects and uniqueness of the Hungarian revolution, the discontinuity with other European or world revolutions was created: ‘I do not think . . . that there ever existed in world history such a heroic and determined fight against oppression as now exists in Hungary’ (Radio Free Kossuth, 2 November). In a slightly contradictory manner some of the basic ideals of the Hungarian revolution were portrayed in some articles as a heritage or legacy of great Western revolutions: ‘We fought for a world in which we will again have the rights won by the blessed European revolutions to challenge and refuse any acts and ideals that are against people and society’ (Magyar Függetlenség, 2 November). In the discourse on democratic values there was a more frequent and explicit contextualization of ‘Western’, ‘free’, ‘democratic’ and ‘developed’ countries and of ‘European values’. However, when listing democratic values, it became evident that in the majority of cases it was not the political/state organization of the Western countries that was being referred to and lauded

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but rather more universal values: ‘We are filled with passionate yearning for freedom, democracy, beauty, humanism, daring, and peace’ (Magyar Függetlenség, 2 November). Moreover, in all contexts and media outlets, when the possible introduction of capitalism in Hungary was mentioned, the model was openly rejected, and the ideal of a ‘classless society’ was sketched instead (Radio Free Kossuth, 29 October). Here, as in the discourse on revolutionary events, strategies of positive self-presentation (sometimes using covert comparisons with the West) were used by some journalists: ‘Hungary became the symbol of the freedom-loving (i.e. Western) world’ (Magyar Nemzet, 4 November); ‘The Hungarian revolution shook up the Western public from the lethargy and apathy with which they had, for many years, observed events in Eastern Europe’ (Magyar Nemzet, 4 November); ‘Hungary should now be the model for all nations’ (Igazság, 2 November).

Discourse on former Communist elites and the USSR This is probably the only area of discourse of the four where there are no references to Europe or to countries within Europe. Since knowing the attitudes of the Hungarian media towards former Communist elites and the USSR could help one to better understand the overall approach of Hungarian journalists to the revolution, this type of discourse was also included in the analysis. However, only a very short summary of the major strategies is given in this section. The dominant macro-strategy in this discourse was that of justification and relativization. Former socialist/Communist elite Strategies of justification and relativization

• Strategy of emphasizing difference.5 As already pointed out, great distancing from the former Communist leadership and its legacy existed in all media outlets. Two types of major discursive approaches could be identified in media: the difference was emphasized, on the one hand, by the demonization of these former Communist Party leaders and their political activity (topos of demonization), and, on the other hand, by the deconstruction and subjecting to ridicule of the almost godlike image Communists built for themselves during their eleven years of rule (topos of deconstruction and ridicule). Some of the means of realization were contrasting: ‘The few socialists purified in the fire of the national revolution represent a bigger moral power already than the once existing mammoth-party, kept together by the ties of Stalinism’ (Népszabadság, 3 November).

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‘The Hungarian nation stood with naked body in the rattle of the deathspreading firearms of the Soviet tanks’ (Magyar Nemzet, 3 November). Another frequently used strategy was to create common names from the names of the compromised communist leaders – ‘hegyigyulák’, ‘ger˝ ok’, ‘rákosik’ – in order to create irony and grotesque. The USSR Strategies of justification and relativization

• Strategy of shift of blame and responsibility. Although, as mentioned earlier, shift of blame for the situation of Hungary directed towards Western countries appeared a few times in newspaper articles, the major actor to be blamed for what Hungary became after World War Two was the Soviet Union. The emphasis on previous extra-national dependence (topos of dependence) and assigning blame to the USSR for Hungary’s bad economic situation (topos of exploitation) were the main features of this discourse: ‘The natural resources of Hungarian land should be quested and utilized only by Hungarian experts’ (Magyar Nemzet, 4 November). ‘Hungarian people will not start production until they know for sure for whom they produce!’ (Magyar Függetlenség, 30 October). ‘The Hungarian homeland will finally belong to Hungarians’ (Magyar Függetlenség, 1 November) etc. The most interesting aspect of this type of discourse is that only here did the Hungarian media grant ‘Great Power’ status to the USSR: ‘The Hungarian ministry of national defence in the company of the military attaché of the four Great Powers – thus this includes the Soviet military attaché as well – visited the border area’ (Magyar Nemzet, 4 November). And, even in this context, the wording carries a certain degree of scepticism, as if the legitimacy of this status is being questioned. In all other places Hungarian journalists avoided calling the Soviet Union a ‘world power’ or ‘Great Power’. In only one other context – when talking about the innocence and heroism of Hungarian revolutionaries – was it implied in the text that the USSR was a world power. In these cases, the term was not used in a regular sense, but to emphasize the asymmetry of the power relationship between the two adversaries, and by this to give even more emphasis to the heroism of the Hungarian revolutionaries.

Discourse on ‘others’ from the ‘outside world’ This type of discourse proved to be the most interesting from the point of view of this research. Since the research question was broad enough to make possible the inclusion of all references to ‘others’, it became possible to sketch the global, as well as the stratified, image of the outside world as it was portrayed in contemporary Hungarian media. By way of introduction it should

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be noted that Europe as such appeared only in very few articles, but the more inclusive grouping of ‘Western countries’ (including Europe) was used frequently in the Hungarian media. The analysis showed that at least two levels of the media discourse existed in relation to foreign countries. In their approach to ‘soft’ topics (not related directly to Hungarian and world politics) Hungarian journalists were very universalistic and open to the world’s people and countries, as evidenced in the statements: ‘The Hungarian revolution is in the centre of the world’s attention’ (Magyar Függetlenség, 3 November); ‘We are not alone . . . small and big nations in their hearts fall in line under our flags’ (Igazság, 30 October); ‘The world people’s unconditioned help and moral support takes us closer to Hungarian freedom and independence’ (Igazság, 30 October); ‘The entire world is with us’ (Igazság, 1 November); ‘Many thanks to our foreign friends’ (Magyar Függetlenség, 2 November); ‘Loving kindness does not know any geographical borders’ (Magyar Nemzet, 2 November). In contrast, in their approach to ‘hard’ topics (national and international politics) Hungarian journalists saw the world in an almost rigidly stratified way. In most cases they presented foreign countries from the perspective of the power and position they held in the international arena. If one had to draw a political map of the world based on these representations by Hungarian media, the four world powers (US, UK, France, USSR) would definitely occupy the biggest surface on this virtual map. In addition, only a regionalized Europe would have a place: the Scandinavian states (especially Sweden), the neutral states (especially Austria and Switzerland), West Germany, the Communist countries (especially Poland, and to a lesser degree Yugoslavia, East Germany and Czechoslovakia), and a very ‘small’ Mediterranean (especially Italy).6 Although the Suez region appeared several times in articles, it was portrayed primarily as the acting ground of the world powers. Some of the headlines were: ‘Things reach a crisis between three world-powers’ (Igazság, 1 November); ‘Suez conflict – smelling of oil – in world politics’ (Magyar Függetlenség, 3 November); ‘US will not let it be dragged in Suez conflict’ (Népszabadság, 2 November). Hungary’s position on this virtual map varied significantly based on the context. Nevertheless, it was most commonly portrayed as a small, unimportant and forgotten nation, which by a singular and heroic act had suddenly become an equal of the great nations of the free world: The world probably would have continued to ignore the slow death of a small nation, had we not provided a lasting memorial to the love of freedom and bravery during these days. But in the hours of our promethean fight the Hungarian nation became a giant in the eyes of the nations! (Igazság, 30 October) The unified view among Hungarian journalists was that the great act of the revolution opened the way for Hungary to become again part of the ‘big

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family of the cultured nations’ (Magyar Függetlenség, 3 November). It was clear from the perspective of the journalists that, in the future, Hungary should and would maintain a place of prominence among the nations of the world. Hungarian media outlets portrayed a further division of Europe and the world along the East and West line: ‘Western countries’, ‘free countries’, ‘developed countries’, ‘cultured nations’ were contrasted with ‘Communist/Eastern countries’ and the (uncultured/uncivilized) Soviet Union. ‘The West’ was presented as homogeneous in contexts where the key issue was its supportive and positive attitude towards Hungary, and as divided and diverse on other issues, especially on the Suez question. Further internal division of some European countries was portrayed: the political leaders (opposition/government) of the UK and France were portrayed as being divided on the involvement of their countries in Suez. ‘The East’ was also portrayed as internally divided: Poland and Hungary stood against the USSR, East Germany and Czechoslovakia (two countries presented as allies of the Soviets), while Yugoslavia was portrayed as middle-of-the-road. Poland and the Polish people – because of their fight/resistance against the Soviets – were portrayed as siding with Hungary and Hungarians. This went so far as to construct a shared history of the fight for national independence and against foreign oppression: ‘Polish heart to replace spilled Hungarian blood’; ‘Warsaw turned wholeheartedly towards the heroic and brotherly Hungarian nation’; the Polish nation’s ‘big, faithful heart which beats for the Hungarian nation as well’; ‘In 1848–9 Polish revolutionaries helped Hungarian people . . . in the spirit of Petofi’s friendship’. What was interesting in the portrayal of Eastern Europe was that further divisions were introduced between the political elites and the wider masses, as well as between the public and private sphere. Several articles presented the political elite of East Germany and of Czechoslovakia as adversaries of the Hungarian revolution, while the populations of these countries were portrayed as expressing great sympathy and support in their ‘family homes’ and ‘among their friends’ towards the Hungarian revolution. In line with previous findings, Europe was portrayed as an existing (unified) entity only when geographical or cultural references were made: ‘Europe’s 74 big radio stations suspended their broadcast almost at the same time to announce in almost all Europe’s languages that Hungary declared its neutrality’; ‘At that moment Europe’s radio stations broadcast victorious Hungarian music’; ‘Airplanes of the Red Cross fly from America to Europe’ (Igazság, 1 November). Another interesting aspect of this type of discourse was that reporting on non-Communist foreign countries, and especially on the three Western world powers, was characterized by moderation and distance. For example, all articles on the Suez conflict were taken from foreign news agencies. No commentaries on this topic were written by Hungarian journalists.

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However, the analysis of the titles and organization of these texts showed that Hungarian journalists did have a hidden attitude/agenda in relation to the events: most of them disapproved of the intervention of France and the UK in this conflict and they thought that world-power interests – and their rivalry for oil – lay behind the events. However, these opinions were not spelled out or discussed openly. The only open criticism of the world powers was published in the revolutionary media in relation to the UN Security Council’s meeting about Hungary: ‘We remember very clearly what the fate of the Recommendations submitted to the Security Council was when they would have curtailed world power ambitions and needs’ (Magyar Függetlenség, 2 November). Borders – both in real and figurative terms – also had a prominent place in this type of discourse. When talking about ‘physical’ borders, their closing down at the end of the 1940s by the Soviets was emphasized, an act which ‘isolated Hungary from the free world for more than a decade’. Mentioning borders in a figurative sense, or emphasizing the lack of borders, was used primarily to emphasize the unity of Hungary with other nations of the world: ‘The one and undivided world’ (Magyar Nemzet, 3 November); ‘In the name of mankind’ (Magyar Függetlenség, 2 November); ‘Love and brotherliness do not know any geographical borders’ (Magyar Nemzet, 2 November). The aid coming to Hungary from other countries was a prominent topic in contemporary Hungarian media. One interesting aspect of this discourse can be linked to the portrayal of Western countries (and indirectly to Europe): there are references to the fact that the ‘decadent West’ and the ‘capitalist countries’ (Hungarian journalists working in print media outlets used both terms in an ironic way) were probably not as decadent and cynical as they were portrayed by the former Communist elites. This can probably be attributed to the fact that the West offered significant support and expressed great sympathy towards the Hungarian revolution. As mentioned previously, in this type of discourse, several strategies were applied in a more or less balanced way: constructive strategies, strategies of justification, and strategies of transformation. Most of the argumentative strategies and means of realization presented in previous sections were to be found here as well.

Conclusions The most important finding that needs to be re-emphasized is that in the 1956 Hungarian media discourse there were only a few articles mentioning Europe. However, quite a few articles talked about the ‘Western world’, ‘cultured nations’, ‘free and not free nations’, etc. Thus, it can be stated that the most dominant portrayal of the world was along those dividing lines that stem from the Cold War perspective, such as West/East, free/not

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free, and cultured/not cultured nations. Making this last type of divide, Hungarian journalists, although only implicitly, portray the Soviet Union as ‘not cultured’ and as the political power that forcibly separated former ‘cultured nations’ (such as Hungary and Poland) from the world’s other cultured nations. This formulation can be seen as an indirect and value loaded border-setting between two ‘Europes’. Based on our analysis we can try to answer our questions formulated in the introduction. 1. We found that framing the events in a European context did not occur in the analysed texts. The quantitative7 and qualitative analysis provided evidence that during the 1956 revolution, reports in the Hungarian media did not use a European context. They were instead dominated by a strong national and general international focus. The international factors were, however, weighted and evaluated from a national perspective. There was a positive correlation between a European country’s power position in the international arena and the amount of coverage and references that country received in the media. 2. The journalists only exceptionally defined values either as being European or deriving from the European experience. During the discourse analysis of the articles three values – freedom, independence, and the right to disregard/disobey any actions deemed to be against people and society – surfaced as being a quintessential part of the ‘Western’ experience. Freedom was interpreted by Hungarian media in its broadest possible philosophical sense – free speech, free press, freedom of religion, freedom of thought and opinion, etc. Independence had a primarily political meaning – being free from any foreign rule and oppression. The two abovementioned values were presented as inherent and foundational in Western culture. Only the third, a ‘right to dissent’, was presented as being an exclusively European value ‘won by the blessed European revolutions’. 3. The Hungarian newspaper coverage of the events intended to address both Hungarian and European Public Spheres. Qualitative analysis makes it clear that Hungarian journalists aimed to reach an international, but not exclusively European, audience as well as their Hungarian audience. Two discursive elements in particular point to the existence of this aim. On the one hand, the constant portrayal of Hungary as a ‘model country’ and ‘model nation’ presupposes the existence of an audience beyond one’s national borders. On the other hand, the existence of a certain degree of cautiousness among Hungarian journalists when writing about sensitive topics (especially the events of the Suez conflict) also leads one to believe that Hungarian journalists assumed that their publications reached a foreign audience. 4. Contexts in which references to Europe, European values and/or the European Public Sphere were – if Europe was mentioned at all – almost always cultural or

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geographical. Europe as a unified political entity occurred very rarely; only the value of national independence appeared in political context.

Austrian and German press reports on Hungary 1956 Austrian and German media: general remarks The coverage of Austrian and German media was analysed as comparison cases to the Hungarian media coverage with regard to the events in 1956. While the Hungarian media coverage as the view from ‘inside’ the situation provided the main focus, the coverage in these two countries serve as examples of outside views within Europe. Hence the analysis does not cover quite as broad a media spectrum as the Hungarian analysis, but focuses on one liberal and one conservative newspaper each per country. They provide cases that are quite different in terms of both involvement and interest. The rather different situations in Germany and Austria in 1956 led to different coverage of the events in these countries. The events were of great relevance to Austria because of the two countries’ proximity, the recent nature of the Austrian State Treaty of 1955 and the events coinciding with the first Austrian state holiday – a day to commemorate Austrian independence and neutrality. Thus, the Austrian public was sensitized to key issues such as neutrality, the image of the flag and independence, and also reacted far more sensitively to the topos of ‘Soviet occupation’, which plays an important role in the Austrian post-war period narrative. The shared history of Austria and Hungary invoked images of brotherhood which would far outweigh any common Europeanness. Due to the common border, the Hungarian crisis became a political issue in Austria, too, with regard to border guarding, neutrality, refugees and Austrian aid. The Hungarian crisis deeply influenced Austrian history and self-definition, and the crisis as well as the above-mentioned topoi are still significant parts of the Austrian narrative. Germany had in contrast experienced an economic boom and had quite squarely established its international role. It had joined NATO the previous year and had been at the centre of the economic joint ventures in Europe that had aimed at pacification, offset by an internal focus on the division of Germany itself by the Iron Curtain. Hence the events in Hungary were framed in terms of their repercussions in Eastern Germany. The events came at a time when hope of a reunification of the two halves of Germany were high which was not, however, related to thoughts of a united Europe. The analysis is based on two newspapers each from Austria and Germany, where one per country is taken from the left side of the spectrum and one from the right. For Austria, the liberal (left-wing) viewpoint is represented by the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) broadsheet daily Die Arbeiterzeitung 8 (AZ), while the conservative Austrian viewpoint is represented by Das Kleine Volksblatt 9 (VB), the organ of the People’s Party of Austria (ÖVP),

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smaller in format and of less quality. For Germany, the articles to be analysed are taken from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 10 (FAZ) and the Süddeutsche Zeitung 11 (SZ). The former represents the conservative standpoint, while the latter is a liberal newspaper. Both are large, quality newspapers with a wide circulation, addressing an educated audience. The quantitative analysis for the time period of 29 October–5 November 1956 showed the following overall results: the Arbeiterzeitung, with an average page length of 536 column lines devoted all together 6,263 column lines to the topic of the Hungarian events in the five days on which papers were published in Austria in this time period. The coverage was distributed evenly throughout the time period with no particular peaks. In the early days, coverage spread evenly throughout all sections of the paper, while later background and photo stories were most represented. In the Volksblatt, with an average page length of 480 column lines, 4,795 column lines were devoted in total to the events. As before, coverage intensity showed no particular peaks, but within the paper, news stories were most frequent, which is also due to the structure of the paper, with fewer commentaries and more short news stories. In Germany, there was proportionally less coverage (the newspapers are significantly larger and each article is longer, and papers were also published on two days more in Germany than in Austria). For both papers, the average page size is 800 column lines per page, and in the whole period, the FAZ dedicated 5,328 column lines to the topic, while the SZ gave 6,491 column lines. In both papers, news and background stories were most represented; in the SZ commentaries also appeared. There were two clear peaks of coverage, the first on 29 and 30 October and the second on 5 November 1956. The overall picture given by the quantitative analysis was that of greater and more steady attention being paid to the events in Austrian media throughout the whole period. The qualitative analysis covers the time period 24 October–5 November 1956. As Austrian papers were not published on Monday, 5 November, the Austrian analyses stretch to the following day in order to be able to include the impact of the re-intervention of Soviet troops. This relatively lengthy time period was chosen due to the elongated and disjointed nature of the events. It makes it possible to include the reactions to the initial outbreak of the protests, the subsequent developments and brief period of calm and apparent victory of the protests as well as the brutal entry of Soviet troops and enforcement of the pro-Soviet regime. The following analysis establishes the positioning of the public sphere in these papers vis-à-vis the events and their protagonists and then focuses on the main aspects of the four large discourse topics chosen for analysis in order to pinpoint the presence and role of a European notion in the reports. Overall, Austrian newspapers dedicated proportionally far more coverage to the events in Hungary than German newspapers did, although in both countries the events were extensively covered, including human interest

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aspects such as eyewitness reports, background stories, biographies and photo collections in addition to news reports and commentaries. Most coverage consists of news reports, followed by background stories and commentaries. The fact that the German newspapers both have regular commentary columns every day explains why more commentary appeared in German papers. Background stories grew fewer as the crisis went on and human interest stories were overtaken by political interests. In Germany, the revolution is not covered throughout the paper; large sections of the papers are left without any mention of the events. In Austria, the revolution touched on all areas of reporting, and spread throughout the paper. This is also visible in the spread of news and news reports. In Germany, the Suez crisis displaces the Hungarian revolution and in particular shifts it from the top placements on the front page, while in Austria the front-page concern largely remained with Hungary and the USSR. The front-page placement for items related to the Hungarian events was also more prominent in Austria, where it was more likely to be in the upper half of the page, while the front-page placement in Germany tended to be relegated to the lower half of the front page, and articles treating news items without any relation to Hungary, including articles on Suez not brought into connection with the Hungarian events, were placed in the top half. Europe in the sense of Europeanness as such only finds its way into one small FAZ article, which is placed on the fourth page only. In Austria, it also hardly features – the two AZ articles in the analysis are repetitions of the Socialist International statement on the revolution, and thus do not necessarily represent the paper’s line. The VB definitely has the most mention of a notion of Europe in terms of values or a common sphere; however, even here it remains negligible: albeit strongly where they do occur, they enter only three articles, one of which was classified as a news report. In Germany, although only three small articles cover both Eastern Germany and Hungary, many articles on Eastern Germany were published that were clearly inspired by the events in Hungary, but did not mention Hungary itself at all and were thus left out of this analysis. Positioning of the public spheres The Austrian public sphere, unlike the German one, is positioned closely to the Hungarian events. The immediate neighbourhood translates simultaneously into danger, neighbourly solidarity, and reflected and own glory. Austria is still very much in need of positioning itself in the Western context; the press and population take this opportunity to do so. The immediate reaction to the events is that of reassurance, especially via the main topos of border reinforcement. The frequent mention of all border activities, however, also raises the awareness of both physical proximity and potential immediate involvement of Austrians in the conflict, while it is at the same time asserted that the laws and responsibilities of Austrian neutrality

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disallow such involvement. This strategy of establishing proximity includes further topoi: neighbourhood (‘our Hungarian neighbour’), personal involvement (Austrians are also involved in the conflict as victims and as mediators) and casting similar roles. The latter achieves solidarity with the Hungarians as well as implying that a ‘Western’ Hungary could in the future relieve Austria of certain difficult roles. Periods of ‘suffering’ in the Austrian narrative are related to the Hungarian experience. Simultaneously, both papers feature informative maps positioning Hungary ‘between East and West’, a role that had been part of the Austrian self-image. Furthermore, a connection is made to the Austrian narrative of ‘Soviet occupation’ via the topos of the Soviet military machine. German reporting, in contrast, in both papers employs distance by several means: the description of stations along which the information had to pass to reach the paper; the use of the passive voice; the distancing of informants on the situation by placing them, for example, in Vienna; the repeated information that Budapest or Hungary are cut off from the outer world; and the lack of Germans in proximity to the events. The impression of chaos is underlined by the fact that the situation is repeatedly reported as being entirely unclear in FAZ as well as in SZ: The situation in Hungary appears to be very chaotic. The reports on Radio Budapest contradict each other nearly hourly and no longer give a clear picture. In Vienna, one concluded from the confusion of the report on Thursday night that the situation must be very serious for the Hungarian government. (SZ, 26 October, p. 2) Structures communicating the passivity of the reporters are employed as introductory sentences by both papers: ‘The following situation is yielded by the reports of our Viennese correspondent’; ‘On the basis of reports by Radio Budapest, there prevailed the impression that . . .’ Distancing is reduced somewhat as the events continue but remains lingering, particularly so in the SZ reports. The FAZ dispatches a correspondent to Budapest, who sends her first ‘own report’ on 4 November. The information delivered in the Austrian papers is much more at first hand. Although similar topoi of distancing are used, they are followed by firmer statements, re-establishing control. Austrian analyses indicate a greater familiarity with the Hungarian situation. Both Austrian newspapers make a point of their own close connections to Hungary, especially so the AZ, which is also a means of creating credibility for the newspaper at a competitive time in the Austrian newspaper market. Particularly striking is the immediate inclusion of the crisis into innerAustrian discourses and topoi. The presence of the Hungarian crisis in the Austrian press and public sphere is overwhelming, remaining top news and the main frame of reference throughout. In Germany, both the German

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political reaction as reported in the newspapers and the reporting itself communicate great distance from the events in Hungary. The main tangent between the countries is the common link to Eastern Germany. As different as the positioning of the events and the proximity to and links with Hungary are in Germany and Austria, no connection is made in either country to a common European Public Sphere. Discourse on the revolutionary events in Hungary and the Eastern bloc In attempting to define the revolutionary events and their actors, the press reporters follow various strategies of construction, including personalization, depersonalization and justification, using topoi of hope, innocence, breadth of involvement, history and symbolism. Much space is devoted in German newspapers to speculations on the political aims of the revolutionaries, particularly so in the period 29 October– 1 November due to the apparent success of the revolution. Early on, they differentiate between ‘anti-Communist powers’ and ‘militant, anti-Stalinist Communists’. The revolutionaries are treated as a volatile component as it became a matter of relevance what line they would take. The focus on the political dimension reveals a concern for the outcome of the events and their repercussions for the region. It is not, however, stated, whether this concern is fed by an understanding of European stability. It certainly does not rest on notions of European values. The topos of hope features prominently both in German and in Austrian reporting, also linked to the events in the entire Eastern bloc. ‘Hungary is not yet lost’, the AZ front-page headline from 24 October states; the report personalizes the country and implies hope for it to ‘join the fold’ of ‘Western normalcy’. Reporting also expresses speculations on the next stage of revolution. This continues throughout, but is particularly present at the outbreak, suggesting overspill and the potential for further spread, and on the first November weekend by focusing on the potential end of the Warsaw Pact. Nevertheless, especially the SZ voices doubts as to the actual outcome of the events, returning to expressing passivity and distance. The events are enhanced by vague wording with sub-headlines in telling juxtapositions: ‘Hope and horror’, ‘Promise and violence’. Two sides to the conflict are especially in Austria established in classical black/white painting, while the grand scale of the conflict is indicated by not containing it in a given definition. The juxtaposition of personalization of Hungarian actors and depersonalization of Soviet actors enhances the topoi of innocence, heroism and degree of identification with the Hungarian revolutionaries. These are also realized by symbolism, trivialization and a subsumation of the actors in non-threatening groups (‘women and children’, ‘medical students’). Including unlikely actors underlines that the entire population is involved. Next to women and

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children, this concerns Hungarian soldiers. Their passivity or even involvement in the revolution is mentioned as early as 25 October (particularly the removal of Soviet emblems from uniforms in symbolic separation from the Soviet army). Soldiers stationed on the border were a frequent contact for Austrians. In Austrian reporting, portraying the border soldiers as the communicative bridge to Austria pulls the Hungarian revolutionary population some way towards the ‘West’, where it is felt they belong, while they are subjected to a conflict that is part of the ‘East’, signified by the Soviet tanks. The choice of information places the revolutionaries into the innocent, defensive position vis-à-vis the Soviet military machine. The ‘Soviet betrayal’ according to the FAZ called forth ‘scenes of incomparable bravery’. The collective names for the revolutionaries differ in each of the papers and vary over the course of events. The events are differently brought into connection with the idea of a freedom fight. The VB, which uses glorification throughout, is the only paper to speak of a ‘freedom fight’ and ‘freedom fighters’ from the beginning of the events and to stick to this phrasing throughout. The AZ, on the other hand, does introduce the term ‘freedom fight’ on 27 October, but intersperses this with the use of ‘uprisers’, revolutionaries’ or even ‘resistance’ (26 October, 6 November). Individual actors are rarely mentioned: the revolution is taking place collectively. The AZ focuses the topos of heroism particularly on Anna Kéthly, leader of the Hungarian Social-Democrat Party and close link for the AZ to Hungary: the heroic figure is personalized and associated with the Social-Democrats. In German reporting, the terminology used displays growing definition of the sides. While the term ‘revolt’ is used throughout, the word ‘freedom fight’ only emerges later. It is frequently used once it is clear that the revolution will not be suppressed. In the FAZ, the initial use of ‘demonstration’ is followed by ‘uprising’, culminating in ‘revolution’. The events are unfailingly placed in a context of chaos, even ‘civil war’, immense brutality and bloodiness. Destruction and the need for reconstruction in Budapest are particularly in the SZ used as a metaphor for political rebuilding. Both German papers initially refer to the ‘uprisers’ (SZ) or ‘revolutionaries’ (FAZ), gradually switching to ‘freedom powers’ (SZ) or, albeit later, ‘freedom fighters’ (FAZ). The Hungarian revolutionaries are portrayed as an innocent, freedomloving, courageous collective, pitched as the small David versus the Soviet Goliath. These strategies fit into the narrative of the Cold War, pitching East against West and framing the USSR as the oppressor of the Eastern bloc countries, who should by rights be part of the ‘West’. However, no particular connection is made to Europe. Discourse on democratic values and political developments The topos of freedom is central, communicated via demands for freedom of press and free elections. The topos of return to normalcy is communicated by a return of the national symbols, which is commented on in particular

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juxtaposition with the Soviet position, focusing on the removal of Soviet emblems from flags and soldiers’ uniforms, symbolizing the removal of the Soviet oppression and the return of the ‘real’ Hungarian symbols. There is an overriding strategy of justification in the discourse on democratic values and political developments. Austrian recent history is by association with the Hungarian events reasserted especially via the topos of neutrality and the Austrian national holiday ‘Day of the Flag’. Here occurs a rare mention of European security, citing the official Austrian governmental appeal: Supported by Austria’s freedom and independence, as ensured by neutrality, the Austrian government advocates a normalization of the conditions in Hungary with the aim that the reinstatement of freedom in the understanding of human rights will strengthen and ensure European peace. (AZ, 30 October) Political developments, neutrality and freedom are clearly placed, via Austrian history, into the context of European safety. It is only via certain democratic values, most of all neutrality, that stability and peace for the entire continent can be achieved, linking the fates of the individual countries together. In contrast, neutrality is not an issue in the German public sphere and thus it is not brought into a meaningful connection with the conflict or its potential European repercussions. Citations of friendship with the West and the soldiers’ wish to ‘live in friendship with the Western countries’ are given special relevance, both to underline the differentiation between the Hungarian people and the Soviet tanks and as a strategy of reassurance in this contact with the Eastern sphere and potential military conflict. The constructive strategies focus on the topoi of the people and the people’s real will. This is particularly realized via speculations about the ‘style’ of democracy envisaged, the words ‘in the Western sense’ featuring prominently. Attempts were made to define the line of the new governments and their leaders throughout the commentary. The main topoi are those of history and the uprightness and uncompromised position of individuals. In Austria, there is a plethora of information on the positions of those involved in the new government, while in Germany the level of information on the political parties does not appear to be very thorough and the wording communicates uncertain ground via half-statements and incomplete biographies. Democratization is strongly associated with the end of the one-party system and the formation of a coalition government ‘like in 1945’, the year zero of normalcy. Presentations of the cabinet are coloured by the papers’ political allegiances, with the AZ at pains to separate the Social-Democrats from the further left, while both the FAZ and the VB cite the role of a free church, with the FAZ reporting the sounding of church bells on the radio for the first time since Communist rule began. The VB, definitely the paper to pay most attention

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to notions of Europe, refers to the Union of all European Christian-Democrat Parties – membership in this union validates the new Hungarian Christian Democrats and the revolution as well as its aims. This is one of the very few occasions where ‘Europe’ denotes the ‘free world’ and democratic values. Discourse on Communist elites and the USSR The depiction of the Soviet side follows a strategy of depersonalization and dehumanization. Collective terms in the form of military material or bureaucratic institutions are largely employed to denote the Soviet soldiers (‘Russian tanks and planes against Budapest’; ‘Jet fighters against the uprisers’). This use of collective terms is changed when speaking of ‘Russian soldiers’ who deserted and cooperated with the Hungarian revolutionaries. They, like the Hungarian deserting soldiers, attain individuality as soon as they perform the symbolic act of ripping the Soviet star from their uniform. Brutality typifies the portrayal of Soviet behaviour. From the beginning, there is talk of ‘bloody suppression’. Blame is clearly placed with the Soviet army or the Hungarian security police. Emotionalization of the discourse in the context of the innocence and vulnerability of the Hungarian revolutionaries contributes to the impression of great brutality in Budapest, including the use of establishing clear sides and drawing black and white images of the events. The condemnation of the Soviet invasion on 5 November is very strong in all newspapers, the wording conveying immense brutality, Hungarian powerlessness and the end to the hopes for political change that had been voiced carefully in the previous days. The second important strategy is delegitimization. Lack of trust in all Russian statements is implied by questioning in phrase (‘Russians leaving Budapest, but will they leave Hungary?’) and content (‘Nobody believes Nagy’s words’). Especially the AZ and SZ (where ‘Soviet despotism’ is pitched against ‘the free world’) are very sceptical, careful to include conditional sentences. The VB shows particular scepticism at the intentions of specific individuals involved (‘[Nagy] wants to earn the fruits of the upriser’s victory and save the CP ministerial seats with a backhanded betrayal by joining the side of the freedom fighters’). Lack of trust is also communicated via missing knowledge on the Soviet position (‘the outcome of which is still entirely unclear due to the uncertainty on Moscow’s position’), and especially propaganda or misinformation. Thus the AZ brings a report of young Hungarian medical students who were terrified at arriving at the Austro-Hungarian border since they had been told that they would be shot on sight by Austrian border police if they tried to cross. This story combines the major topoi of Soviet misinformation and abuse of innocent populations, Austrian open-heartedness, neutrality, being part of the ‘free world’, the border and Austro-Hungarian brotherhood. The German conservative FAZ follows the strategy of alienation of the Soviet Union very decidedly, also by referring to history, alienating Russia from the European sphere. The defining spheres are, however, East and West; Europe

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does not clearly feature, although the historical point of reference used (1848) is a significant European date. Any individualization of Eastern European countries occurs only prior to 6 November, when ‘the Iron Curtain has fallen again’, removing the countries again to a unified ‘Eastern bloc’. The USSR is clearly poised as the dark power that is removing innocent populations from the West (again, not Europe). In Germany, the topos of Eastern Germany clearly emerges as the most important concern. To the German public sphere, the crux of the Hungarian events is the developments in the entire Eastern bloc rather than in Hungary alone. Most specifically, the real interest lies in the potential effect on Eastern Germany and its future development. Discourse on the Western response What is collectively termed ‘the West’ means often only England, France and foremost the United States, especially when calls for intervention are concerned. The West is constructed as one entity that is most of all related to freedom, including unifying strategies that show no discernment of a European entity. An important strategy is that of displacing political responsibility towards the US, the UN or the ‘Great Powers’, which is followed by defensive strategies justifying the inability to help. The US is viewed as the power holding the greatest acting ability, both economic and political. All Western responsibility is placed on its agenda. The US is the main actor in bringing democracy to Europe via its economic powers. Further, the UN is seen as the main protector of Hungary in the West; its inability to act does not lead to a call to individual action by single countries. As the US is pitched throughout as the main Western power in the UN, and practically the only cited representative, the picture drawn is again the familiar one of East versus West, represented by the USSR versus the US. Europe has no place in this, other than as a passive potential victim or beneficiary. Although responsibility is effectively displaced to a stronger actor, the German reports nevertheless also reveal a defensive strategy, which mixes self-accusation and justification. Reporting on Western action in response to the crisis can be divided into three phases: first the demand that something be done; then a more cautionary note, which still contains frustration at the failure to help Hungary but argues that action could also contain a danger and communicates fear at an outbreak of conflict between the US and the USSR; and finally anger and frustration at the failure to avert the crisis, which is blamed on the Soviet representative’s delaying tactics in the UN meetings and to a lesser degree on the Suez crisis. This is framed as a ‘failure of the Western world’ towards Hungary. A strategy of self-glorification and justification features humanitarian aid (in juxtaposition to the above strategy, removing responsibility on a political level). Aid drives are focused on in human interest stories, highlighting the extent to which the ‘simple man in the street’ is willing to help. This is

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sometimes placed in a Christian frame (especially in VB), but more often associated with ‘democratic attitude’, ‘human duty’ and ‘solidarity’. The implication is that the ‘free world’ is also the seat of humanitarianism. This topos is particularly important in the Austrian narrative of the ‘Austrian golden heart’, where the topos of solidarity is also invoked by two means: enhancement of neighbourhood and common history by association and justification (‘in the sentiment of the old Hungarian–Austrian friendship’) and comparison with Austria’s own position (‘hopes for the neighbouring country to be as happy as Austria is’). Austria is featured as playing an important role in Western contact with the crisis area. This concerns also the topos of the border, which is a major focus for the Austrian public during the period, combining assurance of border security and Austrian ability to guard its border with the more prominent concern for refugees and the role of Austria as a realm of freedom and protection for Hungarians. The role of the Austrian border as the outer border of freedom also enhances Austria’s position as a Western and free country with an important strategic position in the Cold War constellation. The terms ‘the West’ and ‘the free world’ are used interchangeably. Repetition and association occur more frequently towards the end of the period under analysis, when the West is increasingly associated with more ideological terms such as the ‘free world’ and the Hungarian rebels are connoted as ‘freedom fighters’. The own situation is reported as positive, while responsibility is derived from the desire to share. Although Austrian reporting (AZ) mentions the Socialist International statement placing a ‘democratic duty’ on ‘the entire democratic Europe’, and there is a statement that the Hungarians now deserve ‘the same help the democratic states of Europe were granted after the destruction of the war’, this is never translated into a call for action. The VB, however, is the only one of all four analysed papers to print this very short notice: ‘The European Council today in Strasbourg demanded of the European governments to urgently test, whether the Security Council can be called up because of the unrest in Hungary and Poland’ (27 October). It is the only indication of joint institutional action in Europe. Especially in the context of the aid drives, the German papers employ unifying strategies – solidarity is offered by ‘the entire Western world’. Neither Europe as a whole nor European actors are singled out. The only Western individuals to be mentioned repeatedly are representatives of the US. The actors mentioned are denoted by topographical terminology, i.e. by country names or ‘the West’. ‘The West’ is heavily personalized. Thus, it may be ‘outraged and concerned’, while it remains implicit that there is no specific actual actor who could assume responsibility. The presence of Europe in the treatment of the Western response is somewhat greater in Austria than it is in Germany. This may be due to Austria’s need to still position itself clearly in the European landscape. Nevertheless, the notions of freedom, solidarity and basic values referred to are not

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associated with Europe, but with ‘the West’. ‘Europe’ appears passive and helpless and unable to serve as a protective entity. There is no notion of a European unity, either in terms of a separation from the US in the complex of the ‘Western powers’ or in the sense of a European obligation or ability to act for the continent.

Comparative remarks As our analysis has shown, media discourse on the 1956 events in Austria, Germany and Hungary remained basically within the conceptual framework that had emerged as a consequence of the Cold War division of Europe. Following the logic of the Cold War narrative, the most frequently used categories in all three countries’ media discourse were those of ‘East’ and ‘West’, where ‘East’ incorporated the USSR and the countries behind the Iron Curtain, while ‘West’ was constituted by West European countries and the US. The dominant pattern in all the examined contemporary media was that European countries were divided into the aforementioned two categories rather than being subsumed under the adjective ‘European’. Another common feature of the Hungarian, Austrian and German media discourse was that Europe was seen as a geographical region, and was not viewed at all as a community based on shared values or ideals. It is only in this context that all geographically European countries – including those behind the Iron Curtain – were presented as belonging to ‘Europe’. The second important finding of the above analysis is that the national political perspective had a decisive effect on the ways the media in these three countries framed and narrated certain aspects of the crisis. The difference in national perspectives created different contexts for similar subjects. Therefore the same concepts tend to bear different meanings: ‘West’, ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ have different connotations in the three analysed discourses. On the other hand, national point of views influenced strongly the selection of values relevant for the discourse. While in Hungary the most often cited values were those of national independence and freedom, both in Austria and Germany the most strongly emphasized values were humanitarian ones that arose in the context of aid efforts. In all three countries these values were mentioned explicitly as universal human values, and in particular as values of the ‘ordinary man in the street’. The European dimension did not appear in the discourse. On the political level, democracy was frequently mentioned in all three countries as the desirable goal/outcome of the revolution. The Hungarian interpretations of the term, however, offered only very narrow overlaps with those given in the Austrian and German media discourses. While in Austria and Germany ‘democracy’ was most often understood and referred to as ‘Western democracy’, in Hungary there was a two-fold understanding of the term, showing strong correlation with the political orientation of the

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examined media. Reform Communist newspapers wrote about a ‘real workers democracy’ and a ‘socialist democracy’, and preserved a certain critical distance from the Western model of liberal parliamentary democracies. The conservative press was hoping for the introduction of a multiparty system and the creation of a pluralistic parliamentary democracy in Hungary, but at the same time ready to accept some limitations for it as a political compromise (e.g. the legalization only of parties of the post-war anti-fascist coalition). However, in none of the countries was ‘democracy’ more closely defined in terms of values (beyond ‘Western’ or ‘socialist’). The analysis of Austrian and German coverage showed several parallels in the content of the coverage but important differences particularly in the weighting of information that reveal the positions of the countries in the world. This can be seen again as a consequence of the difference in national viewpoints. Thus one can clearly discern that the Austrian public sphere is positioned more closely to Hungary and that the events in Hungary are seen as relevant to Austria both in terms of the immediate repercussions of the crisis for Austria and on grounds of a shared history. This resulted in a closer identification with the Hungarian people. In Germany, on the other hand, the background of the division of Germany was accentuated where possible in the context of the East/West conflict, and the Hungarian events were seen from this perspective. Consequently, German media also tended towards more coverage of world events on the one hand and a more global view of the crisis on the other – thus the German media referred more frequently to the roles of the US and the UN. In neither country were there any major structural differences in the way the crisis was covered in right and left newspapers. This can be explained by the fact that the coverage of the events was guided largely by the international position of the countries in the Cold War world, reflecting large-scale national concerns that overrode domestic political divisions. Nevertheless, a certain European dimension appears – most probably unintended – in the discourse on neutrality. Neutrality, a central issue in both the Austrian and Hungarian discourses, added a specific dimension to the whole picture.12 Neutrality was framed as an intermediary status between East and West, between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Its function was obvious: expressing the wish to secede from the zone of Soviet influence while remaining in the field of realpolitik. In this sense the neutrality discourse did not depart from the East–West dimension. But, as we have seen, the idea of Europeanness was somewhat more likely to enter the Austrian conservative press with Austria needing to position itself as a neutral country. Germany, on the other hand, was more focused on the West as an entity under US leadership in accordance with its own position on the political map. Stressing neutrality, however, could latently signal a certain distance from the ‘West’, interpreted strictly in Cold War terms. This connotation of the term became explicit only much later, in the debates of the transition years 1988–91.13

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The comparison of the Austrian and Hungarian approaches shows that a regional contextualization of the crisis took place. In Austria, certain discourses linked the events to the common Austro-Hungarian past in order to construct a historical context for the aid efforts. The neutrality discourse can be seen as a regionalization of the context, too. Finally, in Hungarian media discourse a serious attempt to leave the strictly national perspective and to ‘internationalize’ the crisis can be observed. The obvious purpose of this effort was to create international ‘unity’ and support. Therefore the events of the revolution were positioned and weighted in a more universal context. In order to reposition Hungary on the global political map as a politically prominent/important nation among other nations of the world singularization was used by Hungarian media professionals and the 1956 revolution was presented as unique in world history. Similar tendencies appeared only rarely in the media of the two other countries. Notes 1. Circulation numbers for newspapers and numbers of listeners for radio stations are not available for the media of the 1956 revolution. Television stations did not exist at that time in Hungary and for this reason they do not appear in this analysis. 2. For the analysis of the print media the book titled 1956 in the Mirror of the Printed Press, 22 October–5 November 1956 was used (Izsák and Szabó, 1989). This is considered to be one of the most complete collections of the period’s important centrally published newspapers. 3. Based on Kryzanowski ˙ and Wodak (2006b) and Wodak et al. (1999). 4. Topos (plural topoi) is understood as follows: ‘ “Topoi” or “loci” can be described as parts of argumentation that belong to the obligatory, either explicit or inferable, premises. They are the content-related warrants or “conclusion rules” that connect the argument or arguments with the conclusion, the claim. As such, they justify the transition from the argument or arguments to the conclusion’ (Kienpointner, 1992: 194). (See also Reisigl and Wodak, 2001: 75.) 5. This strategy can be closely linked to the already presented argumentative scheme of political discontinuity. 6. Other regions of the world (India, Cuba, Peru, China, etc.) were mentioned extremely rarely, and only in contexts where these countries expressed their support for and solidarity with Hungary. 7. During the research a quantitative analysis of the four newspapers was also done. Space limitations have prevented us from including these findings here. However, it is important to mention that significant differences were found between daily newspapers in the quantity of the reporting on the Western and the Communist blocs. Conservative newspapers had much higher coverage of the Western and Communist blocs than did the reform Communist or revolutionary newspapers. In contrast, reform Communist dailies had the highest coverage of the United Nations of all six newspapers. One possible explanation for this might be that the UN was mentioned most often in the context of its negotiations with the Hungarian government. The ‘highest authority’ for the reform Communist media (as evidenced by the qualitative analysis) was the government and its politicians. In a similar vein, for the conservative press the ideal political/social set up to be

114 The European Public Sphere and the Media

8.

9.

10.

11.

12. 13.

followed was a Western-modelled pluralistic society. When a further analysis of the topic and page position was made according to the political orientations of newspapers, an interesting detail emerged. While in conservative newspapers the majority of the news reports about foreign entities published on the first page concerned the US, the revolutionary press published most news reports on the UN. This finding correlates with findings of the qualitative research, namely that conservative papers presented the US as the only world power that would be the guarantor and come to the aid of Hungarian revolutionaries, while the other newspapers saw those guarantees in the unified world powers, namely the UN. Arbeiterzeitung. Zentralorgan der Sozialistischen Partei Österreichs. Editor-in-chief: Oskar Pollack. From 1945 to 1955, it was Austria’s largest newspaper with a circulation of 245,000 (http://www.arbeiter-zeitung.at; no data given for 1956). From the late 1950s onwards, it fell victim to the growing independent newspaper market and the boom of the boulevard press. Das Kleine Volksblatt (Organ of the Austrian People’s Party). Editor-in-chief: Franz Gössl. This conservative small format (A4) newspaper was soon to be displaced from the market by the independent conservative organ Die Presse as well as the growing small format boulevard press, the most successful of which is the largest Austrian newspaper of today, the Neue Kronen Zeitung. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Editors-in-chief: Hans Baumgarten, Erich Dombrowski, Karl Korn, Erich Welter. Frankfurt: FAZIT 1956; edition used: D. Ausgabe. This large broadsheet paper had a circulation of 99,000 in the D edition (national) and another 27,000 in the S edition (city edition) in 1954 (Schulz, 2005; no data given for 1956). Süddeutsche Zeitung. Editors-in-chief: W. Friedmann, E. Goldschagg, Dr F. J. Schönigh, A. Schwingenstein. Munich: Süddeutscher Verlag 1956; edition used: Fernausgabe. This large broadsheet paper had a circulation of 187,500 in 1954 (Schulz, 2005; no data given for 1956). See Kovács and Wodak (2003), and in particular Borbála Juhász’s chapter ‘Neutrality in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution’, in that volume, pp. 51–74. See Dákai (2003) and Benke and Wodak (2003).

5 The Berlin Wall Crisis: Global Cold War and the Role of Europe Hagen Schulz-Forberg

Former US Secretary of State Dean Rusk, one of the key actors in the Berlin Wall crisis on the side of the US administration, explained that when he went to sleep he tried not to think of Berlin. He had feared that an escalation of conflict in Berlin would bring global repercussions. The crisis illustrated a profound rift in the international relations system; although it was contained, it would have had devastating consequences should an armed conflict arise. The Berlin Wall crisis was one of the global Cold War crises alongside the Suez crisis, the Budapest upheavals and the Cuban missile crisis – to name only a few of the sources of possible global conflict in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This chapter follows the media discourse on the Berlin Wall crisis in English, French, West and East German newspapers from 11 to 18 August 1961, the week framing the building of the Wall on 13 August 1961.1 The analysis traces first the main topoi emerging from the media analysis of the focus week before showing the role and the use of values within the argumentative settings. Among the values prominent in the media debate, the notion of freedom shows the most diversified argumentative application, while other values – such as peace or law – keep a discrete profile. An in-depth discussion of freedom, therefore, will be carried out in order to grasp the interpretative varieties. Further, the role of Europe in this global Cold War crisis is scrutinized and the question as to the qualities of a European Public Sphere during the Berlin Wall crisis closes the chapter. The crisis that led to the building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961 was mainly a result of the increasing number of refugees from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) who made their way to the Western part of Berlin and on to West Germany. The fear that East German authorities may decide to implement violent measures in order to solve the apparent refugee crisis was fuelled in June 1961 when Walter Ulbricht, secretary general of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei (Socialist Unity Party) ruling the GDR, declared – without any apparent reason for mentioning such a seemingly unimaginable move – that no one intended to put up a wall. When the numbers of 115

116 The European Public Sphere and the Media

refugees continued to increase, the GDR, supported by the Soviet Union, walled in the Western-controlled part of the city and erected what became known as the Berlin Wall on Sunday, 13 August 1961 (Taylor, 2006). However, while the West Berlin population was encircled, the main goal was to keep GDR citizens in. To the GDR authorities, West Berlin resembled an open gate to the West in the heart of the East. Building a wall was an act of desperation and provocation. It was, however, a well-calculated provocation since neither side had any interest in armed conflict. Nevertheless, the US battle groups in Berlin were alerted by former US President John F. Kennedy on 16 August and were equipped with tactical nuclear weapons. Since Berlin was under an Allied rule that included all four powers, the building of the Wall meant a breach of contract as the Allied forces had signed a Four Power Agreement on Berlin in May 1949. By declaring the sector zone to be a border between two countries, the Soviet Union and the GDR provoked a crisis over the amount of self-determination granted to the GDR. Conversely, the GDR and the Soviet Union stressed that the Allied Agreement was no longer binding due to the changed overall setting and the illegal influence exerted by the West German government to motivate flight from the GDR. Openly, the Federal Republic was blamed for human trafficking and for a ‘modern slave trade in the Nazi tradition’, as Erich Glückauf, member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (KPD), wrote on 11 August (Neues Deutschland, 11 August 1961, p. 5). The Berlin Wall crisis was the culmination of failed dialogue between the Warsaw Pact and the Western powers led by the US administration. Berlin had become a matter of debate already in 1959 when the four powers occupying Germany met in Geneva. Consecutive talks in Paris and Vienna in May 1960 and June 1961 failed also (Taylor, 2006). The main issue at the time was the flow of refugees from East to West Berlin. Overall, more than 2.5 million citizens left the GDR in the early years of its existence. In the first week of August alone, over 12,000 people fled to the West. When broken down into time segments, one citizen left the East each minute. Both sides of the Iron Curtain claimed that the other had to take full responsibility for the escalation of the crisis. The political interest of the Soviet Union was to close the open access to the Western part of Germany (Steininger, 2001). The political and legal means by which the Soviet Union and the GDR wanted to reach this goal was the signing of a so-called peace treaty between the two Germanys and the Allied powers in which the GDR was given sovereignty and the sector borders between the Allied controlled areas in Germany became state frontiers. Prior to the erection of the Wall, the US administration had already concluded on a strategy in relation to Berlin that entailed a Western-bound Berlin in a united Germany within a Europe of reduced armaments (Schick, 1971: 143). With rising tensions between Eastern and Western authorities, the political discourse focused on a solution for Berlin that would allow both parties not

Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates 117

to expend all their legal, political – or even military – power since many and much bigger crises were expected in the near future. The Berlin Wall crisis falls into the so-called early Cold War period (Nuenlist, 2005). A global relation between actors, interests and crises was established and the one in Berlin was immediately inserted into the rationales of what has been termed ‘the global Cold War’ (Westad, 2007). Indeed, the Soviet government calculated that to wall in 2.2 million people would not be a good enough reason for a new global war. The French daily Le Monde reported this reasoning by quoting Nikita Khrushchev as saying, ‘For 2.2 million people the Westerners want to declare war and hundreds of million of people perish. Which man with a sane mind wants to believe such an absurdity?’ (Le Monde, 13 August 1961, p. 2). The demands formulated in the peace treaty by the GDR and the Soviet Union were as follows: the recognition of the GDR as a sovereign state; the recognition of the Berlin sector lines as a state frontier; and the alteration of Berlin’s status from a city under Allied rule to a free city. Soviet and GDR authorities defined a free city as one without a military presence and as one that did not belong to any state. For West Berliners and Western political authorities alike, a free city meant something very different: a city in which free circulation of traffic, people, goods and ideas is possible.

National media specificities The Western European media sources that are referred to in this chapter show a remarkable transnational quality in the way the crisis was depicted. The East German newspaper that is analysed certainly differs from Western newspapers in journalistic style and in the interpretations presented. Although dialogue across the Iron Curtain took place quite vividly, the national specificities of the media analysed should not be forgotten despite the transnational qualities of the crisis discourse. While both East and West German press reported intensely on the Berlin Wall crisis, French media devoted ample space to colonial affairs as well. France’s relation with Tunisia and Algeria was marked by tension in August 1961, to which the dailies Le Monde and Le Figaro devoted close attention. The Algerian crisis in particular received dense coverage. While reporting on the Berlin crisis peaked during the days immediately following the building of the Wall, the North African crises received consistent attention throughout. For both newspapers, the national concern with the colonies loomed larger than the Berlin crisis. English media displayed a distribution of attention. The Times and The Guardian had a very international and indeed global perspective. Although the Berlin Wall crisis received intensive coverage, it was put into perspective by being treated as one subject out of many, mentioned alongside crises and events from all over the world. The tensions between France and Algeria and Tunisia, for example, were reported in detail, and the crisis in Kenya, where

118 The European Public Sphere and the Media

Jomo Kenyatta returned to the country after a long period of imprisonment, was followed just as closely. Many other international events were considered, too, placing the Berlin crisis in a global frame of reference. On the other hand, in the German newspapers Süddeutsche Zeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Jomo Kenyatta was merely described as a ‘native leader’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 16 August 1961) and news from Nairobi was generally neglected. The focus remained on the Berlin crisis and on the political debates between the German chancellor and leader of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), Konrad Adenauer, and Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt from the Social-Democratic Party (SPD). In contrast to Western media, East German media were centralized and the ruling state party tied the media threads together. Most importantly, the Soviet-occupied zone started from almost zero in 1945 when it comes to media. The first newspaper, the Tägliche Rundschau, was printed on 15 May 1945. The most important newspapers were founded in 1945 and 1946 respectively, the Berliner Zeitung, edited by the Red Army, and the Neues Deutschland (founded already in 1900), which became the so-called central organ of the ruling socialist party, the SED. The Berliner Zeitung soon shared the role of the Neues Deutschland and, after a short period of control by East Berlin’s magistrate, it was in the hands of the SED from 1947 through 1989. The Neues Deutschland thus represents the official media produced by the party. A second comparative paper as a counter-weight to the Neues Deutschland did not exist and is thus not included in this chapter. The focus of media attention, just as in the case of West German media, was clearly on the Berlin crisis. In addition, the Neues Deutschland was chosen in order to serve as a point of reference in this chapter for the official East German discourse and the role of values in the GDR media. During the crisis, the paper openly blames Western Germany for human trafficking and sabotage, and for corrupting supposedly honest and hard-working East German workers. Generally, it can be observed that the Neues Deutschland shows a much higher percentage of civil society actors as speakers in its articles. This is not surprising, however, because the legitimacy of Eastern German newspapers ideologically rested on the working class. Thus, members of the ‘Brigades of the shift “Clara Zetkin” from the Steel and Rolling Mill Henningsdorf’ were appropriate front-page speakers in the Neues Deutschland. This above-mentioned brigade, for example, is quoted as saying: ‘He who won’t listen will have to feel! Correct. Our government has been patient for long enough. We want the peace treaty!’ (Neues Deutschland, 15 August 1961, p. 1). Media texts constituting the source material for this chapter have been analysed by applying a two-step database generation based on the research question relevant for this book, namely what were the main topoi of the media debate; what were the values used and discussed in the media discourse; and what role did Europe play in the crisis context? Did it indeed

Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates 119 Table 5.1

Main topoi of crisis discourse (%)

Topos/Newspaper

SZ

FAZ

LM

Civil strife Counter-measures East responsible East–West tension German unity Nazi past Political demands West responsible Western unity

18 18 4 28 1 1 26 5 –

11 20 7 35 2 2 20 2 1

19 21 3 29 1 0 21 4 2

Total %

100

100

100

Total N

242

164

224

LF

TT

TG

Total %

Total N

ND

14 14 9 29 – 1 24 1 8

15 22 3 24 2 1 26 5 3

16 17 4 29 4 4 20 3 2

162 176 45 302 43 43 202 31 23

– 33 2 15 5 3 22 18 2

100

100

100

100

162

118

117

1027

175

14 7 2 31 21 202 1 1 2

100

appear as an appellative idea (Requate and Schulze-Wessel, 2002)? In order to avoid a too rigid deduction pattern, an inductive approach is applied. Thus, close reading of the media texts was first carried out. From this close reading, topoi and values as well as the role of Europe are described and put into perspective with the research question. The second step includes the collection of data in a database from which Tables 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3 were generated. Building on the notion of a European communicative network based on national public spheres and transnational networks connecting national actors and discourses (cf. Peters et al., 2005; Risse, 2003; Schulz-Forberg, 2005; Trenz, 2004; Wessler, 2004; Wimmel, 2005), a historical discourse analysis is carried out.

The main topoi of the crisis discourse in the media The media discourse on the Berlin Wall crisis generated a list of topoi employed in the debate The topoi discussed in this section are based on a close reading of the source material from which the argumentative categories have been generated. The main topoi, or arguments, found in Western media discourse are as follows: (1) ‘East–West tension’, (2) ‘political demands’, (3) ‘counter-measures’ and (4) ‘civil strife’. These four topoi illustrate the main settings of the crisis discourse and reflect the political rationales employed. In Neues Deutschland, the topic of ‘civil strife’ cannot be found. The population was depicted as supportive of the government’s actions and West Berliners were portrayed as if they understood that the step of building the Wall was necessary to alleviate the situation. Neues Deutschland amply collected both East and West

120 The European Public Sphere and the Media

German voices to show the population’s concordance with the GDR government. In Neues Deutschland, the topoi ‘counter-measures’ and ‘political demands’ score the highest percentages. This reflects the political position of the GDR and the Soviet Union since Berlin was described as if in need of the Wall, and political demands that Berlin should be a free, neutral city and that the proposed peace treaty must be signed immediately were repeated countless times. The Western Allies, however, did not accept it because of their reluctance to grant the GDR full sovereignty. In the late 1960s, Brandt inaugurated his ‘Ostpolitik’, which was based on the acceptance of the GDR as a state in its own right. As mayor of West Berlin in 1961, however, he was decidedly of another opinion (Prittie, 1974: 137).

(1) East–West tension This was clearly the main topos. Both sides appeared as highly charged concepts in media discourses. British media, however, stressed the East–West division by a use of strong political terminology. Often, especially in The Times, the term ‘Communists’ was used in reference to GDR authorities. ‘Brandenburg Gate Closed. Communists Tighten Grip on Berlin’, was the headline of The Times on 15 August, and later in the article, the term was used pejoratively: ‘At Friedrichstrasse station, one of Berlin’s main line stations, the communists’ laborious new machinery to stop refugees getting through is at its most striking’ (p. 8). In general, it can be said that in French, English and German newspapers the term ‘West’ showed a richer kaleidoscope of associations than the term ‘East’. While ‘East’ and ‘Eastern’ were mainly used in relation to the geographical meaning of the words, and only partly resonated with a pejorative tone, ‘West’ resonated with more than geography. By using ‘the West’ frequently, newspapers constituted this ‘West’ as an actor in the discourse. For example, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote on 14 August: ‘Chancellor announces counter-measures by the West’, as if ‘the West’ was an independent, individual actor. The term ‘the East’, on the other hand, was not used in this way. Rather, phrases such as ‘immediate dismissal of Western protest against Soviet government’ can be found where the West appears as a common actor, while the East is identified with the Soviet government. (Le Figaro, 17 August 1961, p. 1).3 In Neues Deutschland, by rule of thumb, the opposite was found to what could be read in Western media. However, no overly charged semantic usage of ‘East’ appears either. A geographical self-description as being the ‘East’ cannot be identified. The ‘West’, in sharp contrast, was frequently used and discredited as representing capitalism, exploitation, human rights violation, militarism and other condemnable characteristics. Only in relation to self-determination does the notion of Eastern Europe as an individually acting entity surface, albeit strictly in Western media. ‘The demand for self-determination for Eastern Europe is meant to

Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates 121

put pressure on Moscow’, wrote Süddeutsche Zeitung in an article on the propaganda strategies embraced by ‘the West’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 11 August 1961, p. 4).

(2) Political demands This topos overlaps in some instances with that of East–West tensions and contains a plethora of claims that were pitted against one another. The ‘West’ demanded, in varying degrees of intensity, the return to the situation before the crisis; Soviet and GDR compliance with the Four Power Agreement from May 1949; and simply the end of all efforts to transform West Berlin into a free city. Since the ‘East’ had already been bargaining for a change of the Berlin situation for years, however, the political demands of the GDR and Soviet authorities were quite different from Western ones. The topos of political demands, however, cannot be fully subsumed as a secondary topos to the one of East–West division. The political claims were mainly independent from any semantically charged geographic units. The declaration of the Warsaw Pact states from 14 August 1961 reads as follows: ‘The governments of the participating states of the Warsaw Treaty want for some years already to reach a peace agreement with Germany and they are convinced that this question has since long been answered and no more delay can be tolerated’ (printed in the Süddeutsche Zeitung from 14/15 August 1961, p. 4). In Western European media, both sides were represented to a large degree. GDR declarations were often printed without comment, thus providing the opportunity for the reader to understand both camps. In the GDR, ‘Western’ comments were quoted just as frequently, though never without a critical comment. The topos ‘political demands’ ranks second place in terms of frequency within the media discourse, partly because actors constantly referred to each other across national borders and across the Iron Curtain. This is a sign for an issue-related public sphere across the Iron Curtain in the sense of Eder and Kantner, who put emphasis on the originally Habermasian definition ‘same issue, same time, same intensity’ (Eder, 2000; Eder and Kantner, 2000). Furthermore, ‘political demands’ was a prominent topos because inside Western media a string of arguments was debated among Western actors before a common ground, that finally represented a ‘Western’ position, could be found. In the end, the Allied forces spoke with one voice and the West German government complied. Initially, however, the main actors took quite different positions. ‘Political demands’ included very concrete issues from the number of border crossings in Berlin to the general status of Berlin as well as the GDR. They involved, for example, reflections on whether the United Nations – an actor that was completely absent in the GDR media – should be called in as a peacekeeper and which political status Germany would accordingly have.

122 The European Public Sphere and the Media

The relation between the political demands and the historical connections is the following: while the topic of civil strife would lead to the comparison of the August 1961 event with the June 1953 uprising in Berlin, and with the revolt in autumn 1956 in Budapest, the lack of counter-measures made some Western actors feel inclined to compare the passive Allied behaviour to the Munich appeasement policy from 1938. Thus, implicitly a comparison between the GDR and the Hitler regime was introduced into the discourse by the Western media in this way, too. Brandt in particular actively called for Allied action and openly blamed the Western forces for their hesitant behaviour, fearing ‘a second Munich’, as The Guardian reported on 17 August 1961 (p. 1). (3) Counter-measures This heated political debate is captured by the third most mentioned topic, ‘counter-measures’, which reflects the debates on the best possible reaction to the new situation, and thus the crisis solution scenarios. Here, it is obvious that the West German actors, and most of all the mayor of Berlin, called for strict and stern counter-measures against so-defined Eastern aggression. Brandt needed to provide his city with security, and he had to work against the growing desire among Berliners to be left alone by the Western Allies. ‘Counter-measures’ included all the possible answers of the Western Allies to the building of the Wall. Since West Germans were enraged and called for economic sanctions – even against the entire Warsaw Pact – this topic was hotly discussed. Soviet and GDR authorities reacted by demanding countermeasures to the counter-measures. The Allied forces finally wrote a note of protest against the building of the Wall. West German politicians claimed to be satisfied with the wording and intention of the note, and proclaimed that the West was united and protected. For the GDR, this declaration, yet again, merely revealed the disunity of the West since it was a mere note of appeasement that illustrated the rightful character of the GDR’s bold step to self-determination. (4) Civil strife All political actors represented in Western media were very keen on avoiding any form of civil unrest in the GDR or, indeed, in West Berlin. The fear of civil strife constitutes the fourth most prominent topos (16 per cent). The GDR media, on the other hand, depicted Brandt as the major figure to attack. He was the troublemaker in the eyes of Neues Deutschland. Furthermore, GDR media did their best to stress that the population of Berlin was calm and supportive of the measures taken. 14 August is described as a normal, and even enthusiastic, working day: ‘The capital city is a place of powerful work. Berliners say: We have really stepped on the toes of the militarists!’ (Neues Deutschland, 15 August 1961, p. 1).

Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates 123

The Western fear of a growing wave of revolt was related to the topos of political demands and puts those into perspective, especially when the West German government continuously toned down its call for economic sanctions because a worsening of living conditions in the Eastern part of Germany was thought to lead to an aggravation of the GDR citizens’ situation, and would thus incite civil strife. All Western actors were cautious to avoid a situation similar to 1953 when East German workers demonstrated against the government and were crushed by arms and tanks. This discourse, mainly pronounced by West German political actors, was represented in French media also. Le Monde quoted the German interior minister, Franz-Josef Strauss, who addressed GDR citizens during an election campaign in Schleswig-Holstein, as saying: ‘Stay where you are, prove your patience. All explosive reactions could have incalculable consequences. We do not want . . . the citizens of the GDR to take to the street, armed with stones, only to be erased by Soviet tanks or machine guns’ (Le Monde, 15 August 1961, p. 2). ‘Civil strife’ was a very important topic for Western actors and the media since, as mentioned earlier, a repetition of June 1953 had to be avoided at all costs. Historical references made in the entire Western European discourse illustrate the generally very cautious reaction. In the East German newspaper, historical references were sparse. June 1953 was mentioned but it was only connected to a row of examples showing the treacherousness of the West by constructing a long historical perspective including the Third Reich and World War One, because, according to the Neues Deutschland, the event of 1953 had been manipulated by the US and West German secret services. The four topoi described above constituted the main elements of the debate in which arguments were exchanged and weighed against each other. Five more topoi could be generated from the media discourse. However, they can be grouped into two broader categories, namely ‘the blame game’ and ‘appeal speeches’. ‘The blame game’ reflects the mutual accusation of each other (‘East responsible’ (4 per cent), ‘West responsible’ (3 per cent) and the peculiarly German discourse of comparing the respective other part of Germany with National Socialism (4 per cent). Both parts of Germany accused the other of using Nazi politics and methods in order to manipulate people and to reach their goals. Willy Brandt even went so far as to say that the Wall would ‘not only be a sort of state border, but the wall of a concentration camp’ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 14 August 1961, p. 2). The Neues Deutschland did not stand aloof in relation to accusations related to the Nazi past. Indeed, almost every day the West German behaviour was compared to that of the National Socialists. Overall, the GDR media used this comparison much more often than the Western media.

124 The European Public Sphere and the Media

The ‘appeal speeches’ reflect the tendency to call on certain values with a purely rhetorical effect and no political argument. Here, this is connected to ‘German unity’ (4 per cent) and to ‘Western unity’ (2 per cent). The call for German unity accompanied many statements. Consequently, Western unity became an important topic, too. To have remained united despite initial disagreements was seen as one of the main achievements by the Allied forces’ respective governments. To remain united meant something different in the German discourse, however. This topic was mainly referred to by West German actors, even though some East German actors – as represented in the Western media – called for unity and solidarity among Eastern states and citizens, too, who also blamed West Germany by arguing that it wanted to use the unification of Germany in order to introduce the GDR into NATO and become an aggressive military power. Western actors, on the other hand, mainly referred to German unity by adhering to notions of solidarity and national feeling, which served as sub-topoi in the West German discourse on the topos of national unity. For Neues Deutschland, the Western Allies were not united at all. The paper depicted the West as uncoordinated and disparate. Of course, putting aside the constant accusations of West German politicians, the pheasant-hunting holiday taken by former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was a more than easy target for the GDR media. A prime minister who preferred relaxing by shooting birds to working with his Western colleagues was one of the topical images foregrounded in the GDR media in order to show the disunity of the West (Gearson, 1998).

Values and their role during the Berlin Wall crisis Values constitute the building blocks of political legitimacy. In European history, broadly speaking, they are verbally continuous but semantically discontinuous. Values attached to these discourses of legitimacy in Europe mainly cluster around the concepts of freedom, tolerance, self-determination, participation, democracy, equality, human rights and solidarity, and they are often associated with the notions of cultural or religious specificity referring to a broader framework of civilization. Values are highly heterogeneous semantic shifters. They do not assemble to a neatly defined catalogue of moral units with a universally agreed-upon meaning. While they are semantic shifters, however, they also have a normative function. Thus, the dilemma of value analysis is to accept that values must be understood as inherently changing yet that values, simultaneously, due to their normative function, have to be defined by social and political actors during the process of legitimacy negotiation. Thus, an understanding of values in historical discourse rather than a sociological approach to European values has been employed, since the latter is more focused on the value structures of European societies rather than the role of values in discourses of legitimacy (Harding et al., 1986, 2001). In

Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates 125 Table 5.2

Appearance of references to values in the media per country (%)

Value/country Law Freedom Unity among Germans Peace Self-determination Unity with the West Solidarity among Germans Humanity Democracy Security Solidarity with the West Unity in general Solidarity among civil society actors Human rights Solidarity in general

West Germany

France

United Kingdom

20 15 13 13 7 6 5 4 4 4 3 3 1 1

19 10 6 24 5 11 5 5 2 7 4

20 14 6 19 10 5 5

2 1 1

1 1

Total %

100

100

100

Total N

156

133

84

1 14 4

GDR 2 6 3 54 6 1 1 2 1 22 – 1 1 – –

what follows the values used in the debate on the building of the Berlin Wall are scrutinized (see Table 5.2). Like the main topoi, the references to values described here have been generated from an inductive analysis of the media texts from 11–18 August 1961. All statements and arguments containing the explicit mentioning of the value have been collected. The three main values present in the media discourse were freedom, peace and law. In the East German case, security plays a central role, too. These four values have a strong position in the discourse and are continuously employed as constitutive elements to construct legitimacy. Their interpretation by Eastern as well as Western actors varied, however. Both ideological camps continuously stated their own version of each value respectively. Further values appearing regularly, though not as often, were grouped around notions of unity and solidarity, around versions of democracy, conditions for security as well as violation of humanity and the claim for human rights. Each value has more than just one meaning. Nevertheless, even though the interpretation of each value entails contradicting – or at least different – meanings depending on the actor and context, these values provide a framework that helped all actors in structuring their arguments. Law emerges as a value here because of the characteristics of the historical situation studied. The main argument of the Allied forces has been that the building of the Berlin Wall was a blatant breach of the Four Powers Agreement from May 1949 and thus a clearly illegal act. This argument became the lowest standard of common counter-measures from the side of the Allies and was thus

126 The European Public Sphere and the Media

repeated continuously by all Western authorities. The notion of law became morally charged and was used to mark a difference between the Western and the Eastern social and political foundations. The Soviet and GDR authorities had a different understanding of law and ample space was given in the media to argue in favour of the GDR’s position.

The many forms of freedom The value ‘freedom’ is chosen as an exemplary case to show the varieties of interpretation and meanings one value could contain. Each value has the ability to connect to a range of arguments and serves as a provider of legitimacy. ‘Freedom’ shows the broadest connectivity and variety in the case of the Berlin Wall crisis. In the period before the building of the Wall, the refugee crisis was the main cause of debate between the two Germanys. West German media and politicians continuously called for free elections in all of Germany. The hope connected to this call was clear: the GDR government would lose popular support and the assumedly true opinion and will of the GDR citizens – being a manifest opposition to the regime – would be reflected. The GDR, understandably, opposed this move and the Neues Deutschland wrote: Truly free elections only exist in true freedom, in socialism, for example in our GDR on 17 September. A free decision by the people’s masses presupposes the breaking of economic and political power of monopolies, especially the liquidation of militaristic suppression machines and the monopolistic rule over the means of public opinion building. (Neues Deutschland, quoted in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, 10 August 1961, p. 4) The GDR newspaper continues by connecting the notion of freedom with that of democracy. ‘In our country, the highest form of democracy rules, socialist democracy.’ In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Nikita Khrushchev is quoted as saying that he did not believe the Allied forces would fight for the freedom of 2.2 million Berliners (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 12 August 1961, p. 3). While these were the main frames of reference for the notion of freedom before the event of 13 August 1961, the different meanings of freedom gained in variety of interpretation after the building of the Wall. In the evolving crisis, Western authorities criticized GDR authorities. Mainly this was done in a quiet but determined tone. Freedom was connected to the notion of rights in this case. Thus, one of the arguments that legitimized Western protest was the Wall’s infringement of the freedom of movement of East Berlin employees. In an official communication by the Allied Forces, it reads: The East German administration has disallowed the citizens of East Germany and East Berlin the possibility of working in West Berlin. They

Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates 127

have thus taken away the basic right of free choice of the work place from their working population. (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 16 August 1961, p. 1) For the Social-Democrats (SPD), the opposition party in Germany, the situation in Berlin called for direct political responses while SPD leader Erich Ollenhauer claimed that East Germany had to live for sixteen years in a state lacking freedom (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 12 August 1961, p. 3). He continued with his own elaboration of freedom three days after the building of the Wall: The German people cannot tolerate the East German act of violence. Our allies have solemnly declared that unilateral actions that infringe the legal status of Berlin and the freedom of all Germans in Berlin will not be taken silently. The Social-Democratic Party expects, together with [all the] German people that the solidarity of the free people, that is written down in contracts, too, will prevail. (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 16 August 1961, p. 4) The leader of the Social-Democratic Party thus connects the notion of freedom with the unity of Germany and the unity of the Western Allies. He further points to the fact that the solidarity of the free people has been legalized through contracts, thus connecting freedom with law and solidarity in order to coin a West German social-democratic interpretation of the values. Ollenhauer continued by claiming that now was the time for the Western alliance to provide evidence for the will to freedom. Freedom was thus a fundamental value in yet another context: the basic living condition of the Western alliance and the freedom to live an autonomous life. Konrad Adenauer, the German chancellor, referred to freedom too. He connected the notion of freedom to the notion of German unity and solidarity by saying: We still feel closely connected to the Germans in the Soviet zone and in East Berlin; they are and will remain our German brothers and sisters. The federal government stands firm for its goal of uniting Germany in freedom. (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 14 August 1961, p. 1)4 Among the German actors, the civil society spoke out much more directly and in an opposing manner. The Association of Independent Entrepreneurs (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Selbständiger Unternehmer, ASU) used the recurrence to freedom as a means to unite against East German authorities: We call on all entrepreneurs to act with solidarity against the breach of law by the regime in the Eastern zone. The cutting into pieces of Berlin and the imprisonment of 16 million in a concentration camp must oblige all businessmen of the free world to support Western efforts for the defence of freedom. (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 16 August 1961, p. 1)

128 The European Public Sphere and the Media

This was a voice very different to the ones present in East German media. Here, the usual strategy of interviewing a worker and asking his opinion is mainly used to reflect on freedom. The journalists asked, for example, a worker who served with the border police about any events witnessed, and he replied: Yesterday evening, those over there [in West Berlin] let the front city mob yell ‘freedom, freedom!’ The question only is: For whom? If they mean freedom for provocation, for human trafficking and for nuclear war; then they are at the wrong address should they talk to us. We only claim to use any honest state’s right when we protect the true freedom of our citizens against the freedom of the nuclear warriors. (Neues Deutschland, 15 August 1961, p. 3) Another border guard was quoted as saying, ‘I was a boy in 1953, but I know that it all began with the yelling for freedom then, too. What they wanted, however, was the fall of the workers’ and peasants’ power. In Budapest 1956 it was the same’ (Neues Deutschland, 15 August 1961, p. 3). Foreign voices represented in the West German media discourse mainly came from Western countries, but the GDR and Soviet authorities were represented in the media, too. The position of the Soviet and GDR claim was clear in Western newspapers. It was, however, always argued that this position was a provocation. Western media were not impartial. Since mainly US actors are represented in the discourse, two US voices will be presented here. The New York Times was quoted by the SZ on 17 August 1961: One reason for the hesitant position is the tragic dilemma a democratic society faces that fights for moral principles against an amoral dictatorship, which tries to meet its goals by following the laws of the jungle. While the Soviets try to call for revolution and war against us wherever they can, we have to try to avoid anti-communist revolts in order to avoid bloodshed and war. We must live with the evil according to our own principles even if we thus help stabilizing shaking communist regimes like in Eastern Germany and even if we have to put citadels of freedom like West Berlin up against the slow death by strangulation. (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 17 August 1961, p. 4)5 In relation to the refugee crisis, the US government took a position that differed from the West German one, for example by stating that it did not care whether refugees continued to leave the GDR or not: The government of the United States will neither encourage nor discourage the refugee movements of Eastern Germans or Eastern Europeans towards the direction of freedom. These movements, which preoccupy

Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates 129

the United States, are equally disquieting for the communist world. (Le Figaro, 11 August 1961, p. 3) Furthermore, US authorities adhered to freedom when the defence of endangered countries was at stake. Chester Bowles, former US under-secretary of state, proclaimed, ‘We have given the free people of West Berlin our word, and should we not keep it, no endangered people anywhere will trust us’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 17 August 1961, p. 4).6 In Le Monde, former Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker was quoted as saying, ‘The free world, for the first time, is united. This is a direct consequence of Mr Khrushchev’s initiative in Berlin’ (Le Monde, 17 August 1961, p. 3). Here, freedom and ‘the West’ are used interchangeably. In a similar vein, Adenauer is quoted by Le Monde on 18 August 1961 as saying, ‘I guarantee you that the government, in full consciousness of its responsibilities, will do everything that lies in its scope of acting to collaborate with our allies in the free world for the guarantee of the right and the freedom of Berlin’ (Le Monde, 18 August 1961, p. 2). The discourse in French and English newspapers did not differ from the German media discourse. In both cases, the same actors, mainly German and American ones as well as Soviet actors, feature in the press coverage. It should also be stated, however, that the British press used ‘freedom’ in the sense of being synonymous with the ‘West’ more poignantly than other papers. While all other elements of ‘freedom’ – i.e. freedom of movement, freedom of choosing one’s place of work, etc. – are present in the British papers, too, ‘freedom’ also appears in the heading of a section of photographs showing Brandt looking sternly at the Wall at Brandenburg Gate, Soviet tanks on the Warsaw Bridge between the Berlin districts of Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain, an elderly couple being led away from the barbed wire fence by East German soldiers, and West German policemen looking on while the Wall is being built. The headline reads: ‘The way to freedom is barred’ (The Times, 14 August 1961, p. 16). In the GDR, this very border was always and without exception presented as a border of peace and security; and the border was also the border of freedom: ‘In Berlin, freedom begins where the red flag waves’ (Neues Deutschland, 18 August 1961, p. 2). It has been shown that values appear in different argumentative settings. The value freedom overlaps with other values; here, mainly with solidarity. The West German discourse especially was filled with claims to solidarity among Germans and with unity among Germans. Solidarity with the East German workers, soldiers, families, or so-called fellow citizens, as especially Willy Brandt sometimes called them, was more imminent and had more direct meaning (the same argumentation was employed by the East German media, only inversely, of course). In the East German media, solidarity was mainly a subject between the social strata of the GDR. Constantly, artists

130 The European Public Sphere and the Media

declare their solidarity with the workers and soldiers, academics from Humboldt University Berlin do the same and society appears to be mutually supporting each other for a common goal. The claim for German unity and its connection with notions of freedom and national self-determination or self-fulfilment shows the GDR media as very patriotic indeed. The Neues Deutschland is far more nationalist than all the FRG papers. The main headline of 17 August read: ‘We are good Germans, that is why we fortify our Republic with our deeds’. And on 18 August, again on the front page, a formerly Western German academic is quoted as saying that he deliberately left the country of the ‘Bonn ultras’ and that he has ‘left the Germany of lies and turned to the Germany of the truth’. The article was printed under the headline: ‘The GDR – fatherland of all good Germans’.

The role of Europe Where and how does Europe show up in the media discourse on the Wall crisis? In the case of August 1961, European themes should not be expected, since it was clearly a global Cold War crisis between the two main ideological camps represented by the US and the Soviet Union. Did Europe have any weight as a category of appeal in the face of a tense political crisis? One main role of Europe as it emerges in the media discourse was connected to the issue of security. Here, this connection strictly referred to Europe as being a threatened geographical unit. Danish conservative daily Berlingske Tydene, cited by the Süddeutsche Zeitung, connects the event in Berlin with consequences for Europe as a whole: ‘The Russian decision to hit hard in order to avoid further flights through Berlin has created the most dangerous situation in Europe since the war’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 16 August 1961, p. 4). An endangered Europe featured in the crisis discourse. But this endangered Europe was not perceived as representing any larger meaning. It was not perceived as the end of European civilization or a similar dystopian discourse. It was merely a description of possible military tension among European countries in Europe. Already before the building of the Wall, the refugee crisis led to similar scenarios. At a press conference, Kennedy referred to Europe, that here appeared as Central Europe, and thus logically bridged the Iron Curtain by the chosen geographical denominator: The President stuck to his position in relation to all questions concerning Berlin in so far as he preferred the diplomatic over the military. He cut short a question related to the possibility of conventional war in Central Europe with a short remark, saying that he hopes to reach a peaceful solution. (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 11 August 1961, p. 1)

Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates 131

Similarly, Rusk is quoted as saying, ‘Peace in Central Europe . . . must not be obtained by imposing unduly hard conditions that gave an advantage to one party to the detriment of the other’ (The Times, 11 August 1961, p. 6). French Communist paper L’Humanité saw the solution for the threat to Europe in giving in to the demands by the GDR and Soviet authorities: ‘An immediate negotiation is possible. Its success will secure détente in Europe and the GDR could tone down the measurements it had to implement’ (Le Monde, 15 August 1961, p. 2). The Daily Mirror also referred to Europe as a whole when, quoting Le Monde, it stated that: Now, there is but one possibility to avoid the passage from a cold war to a hot war: the great powers must engage themselves in negotiations for an acceptable solution for Berlin, East Germany and maybe all of Europe. (Le Monde, 15 August 1961, p. 2) In the same vein, The New York Times, again quoted by Le Monde, states: ‘The Berlin crisis has reached a state where the destiny of the world is at stake. Lenin said already that who controls Berlin controls Germany, and who controls Germany controls Europe’ (Le Monde, 16 August 1961, p. 2). Reaching a similar conclusion and including a reference to Europe as well, The Guardian writes: ‘While any enforced interruption of the flow of refugees is repugnant, the dangers of instability in central Europe, including the possibility of another East German uprising, are only too apparent’ (The Guardian, 14 August 1961, p. 9). Enlarging the geographical circle, former Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru can be found saying: The measures taken in Europe could have grave consequences. The international situation has become so dangerous that nobody can know what will happen. Nobody can know whether peace can be maintained or whether the world will be thrown into a holocaust. (Le Monde, 16 August 1961, p. 2) The Indian Prime Minister is quoted similarly in the Neues Deutschland, too. His speech, held in Cairo, is given more space than in the West German papers. This is not surprising, since he said that two German states existed. This part of the speech is not printed in the West German papers, since this passage includes the acceptance of the GDR as a sovereign state (Neues Deutschland, 17 August 1961, p. 7). The relation between the crisis, a possible military threat, and a reference to Europe, was thus mainly a geographical one. It referred to Europe as a space of security of importance since continuous insecurity or even war in Europe would have consequences that could be felt as far away as India. One of the major functions of Europe as a point of reference in the discourse was

132 The European Public Sphere and the Media Table 5.3

References to Europe (types/frequencies)

Reference/media

SZ

FAZ

LM

LF

TT

TG

Total N

ND

Economy Security Eastern Europe Central Europe Western Europe Europe

1 2 – – – 2

1 2 1 – – –

– 6 – – – 1

2 – – – – 1

– – – 4 – –

– 1 – – – 1

4 11 1 4 – 5

– – – 1 1 6

Total N

5

4

7

3

4

2

25

8

thus to act as a spatial denominator. Mostly, as can be seen in Table 5.3, Europe was referred to as a space of security. Since references to Eastern, Western or Central Europe appear less often, it is obvious that references to Europe as a space of security referred to the continental entity as a whole and not to partialities as we have already shown above. References to Europe as geographical are in second place in the frequency list, followed by references to Central Europe and to Europe as an economic entity. When referred to as an economic entity, Europe appeared in the form of the European Economic Community – and thus in its Western European institutionalized form – and all statements were made in relation to the decision made by the British government to apply for membership. This discourse on Europe, however, had no relation to the crisis in Berlin. When Kennedy, for example, commented on Europe as an economic entity, it was phrased as follows: The United States are happy about the declaration by the British government to begin negotiations with the aim of joining the common market and about the favorable response by the member states of the European Economic Community. The political and economic integration of Western Europe reinforces the free world. (Le Figaro, 11 August 1961, p. 3) While Europe appeared as a common geographical space at the beginning of this quotation, it was charged ideologically in the second part when it becomes Western Europe and is defined as defending the free world.

A European Public Sphere in August 1961? Overall, the Berlin Wall crisis of August 1961 did not trigger a debate in which a notion of Europe was connected to certain understandings of values. No European actors and no idea or value was explicitly related to Europe, nor did the existing European institutions appear as actors in the discourse or as possible carriers for a crisis solution scenario. A historical rise of the

Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates 133

European Public Sphere (Kaelble, 2002), independent from European institutions or specific European discourses, cannot be found. The media analysis of German, English and French media showed an intense debate of values independent of a European connection. Values were allocated to notions of ‘West’ and ‘East’, however, and both camps represented in the media claimed to be the society in which values such as freedom could thrive. Europe appeared as a geographical reference. Depending on linguistic idiosyncrasies, it was also referred to as Central Europe, Western Europe or Eastern Europe. Mostly, however, it was simply referred to as Europe. In reference to the Berlin Wall crisis, this implies that the role of Europe clearly lay in bridging the Iron Curtain by acting as a geographical umbrella for a region threatened by military tension. In relation to the existence of a European Public Sphere, it can be concluded that the model of a soft public sphere (Schulz-Forberg, 2005) can be confirmed. The soft public sphere is based on non-institutionalized discourses and refers largely to civil society communication, arenas of debate and the circulation of meaning-making representations, processes of semiosis in cultural systems, identity-based groups and other arenas of communication in society (cf. Kaelble et al., 2002). The strong public sphere is politically institutionalized and has a capacity to absorb social pressures. Questions of power are negotiated in both parts of the public sphere (Schulz-Forberg and Stråth, 2009). What is more, the Berlin crisis clearly shows that a communication between the ‘East’ and the ‘West’ took place. Cross-border and cross-Iron Curtain communication thus took place as well (Rittersporn et al., 2003). The media discourse reflected the need for legitimacy on both sides of the Wall and the discursive negotiation over the meaning of values such as freedom can be followed in the newspapers. The findings clearly show that a strong European Public Sphere can nowhere be found. Neither on the level of actors – transnational actors are mainly representatives of the Allied forces or the Warsaw Pact – nor on the level of values or ideas – mainly values are debated independently of Europe – can Europe be found in the debates. Thus, while a transnational communication takes place, a strong European Public Sphere cannot be detected. As outlined recently (Schulz-Forberg, 2005; Schulz-Forberg and Stråth, 2009; Splichal, 2006), a strong public sphere is here understood as a public sphere with one or many power centres as the main addressees. Thus, while debates on values can be mapped transnationally within Europe and have certainly left their mark in European history, a European Public Sphere only existed in its soft form as a horizontal network of communication across borders (Koopmans and Erbe, 2004). Since this communication was not bound to Europe, it was indeed a global transnational public sphere incorporating actors from Eastern and Western Europe as well as from the Soviet Union, the US, India, Japan, Australia, Yugoslavia and Canada.

134 The European Public Sphere and the Media

Notes 1. The newspapers analysed are The Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Le Figaro, Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) and the Neues Deutschland (ND). 2. This particularly high percentage of the topos of ‘Nazi past’ in Le Figaro calls for an explanation. It is due to a specific choice of wording, since the paper continuously called Berlin not simply by its name but referred to it as the ‘former capital of the Third Reich’, sometimes even adding ‘Hitler’ to this formulation. Otherwise, no reference to the National Socialist past appeared in the French papers. 3. In the French original it reads: ‘Remise imminente d’une protestation occidentale au gouvernement soviétique’. Here, the term ‘occidental’ connotes a similar meaning to the term ‘Western’. It is particular to the French discourse that ‘occidental’ is used more often than ‘Ouest’, carrying more historical and cultural meaning than the geographical expression. 4. Le Monde published the same statement by Adenauer on 15 August: ‘Le gouvernement fédéral reste attaché à l’objectif du rétablissement de l’unité allemande dans la liberté’ (Le Monde, 15 August 1961, p. 2). 5. Le Monde quotes the same passage from the New York Times on 17 August 1961, p. 2. 6. Again, Le Monde quotes the same passage on 17 August 1961, p. 3.

6 Paris in May 1968: Social Conflict, Democracy and the Role of Europe Hagen Schulz-Forberg

When former French President Charles de Gaulle welcomed the year 1968 in his New Year’s speech he proclaimed that it would be the year in which a new social order would be implemented in France. The social order he imagined was very different to the changes France experienced during and following the most deeply cutting crisis of its post-war existence, however. Social unrest exploded in May 1968 in a situation of heightened critical tension inside many Western societies due to anti-war movements and a generally expressed need of the younger generations to break up encrusted social, political, cultural and economic structures. The assassination of Martin Luther King on 4 April and the gunning down of German student protest leader Rudi Dutschke on 11 April were manifestations of deep conflict inside Western societies. The intensity and violence of the Paris crisis was yet more evidence of this deep conflict. In the end, May 1968 caused a fundamental and long-lasting change in French society. The protests of the late 1960s changed the quality of Western democracies and germinated continuous opposition among dissidents and the subversive political culture in Czechoslovakia and to some degree in Poland, too. The opposition to the Vietnam War and the call for peace and for democratic change united most protest movements. Furthermore, many protagonists of the late 1960s and early 1970s were interconnected in a network of personal and media relations. A certain lifestyle expressed a global message beyond the national boundaries. Surely, it can be argued that 1968 was somehow European. But simultaneously this would be a clear overinterpretation and it would also mean a post factum transposition of a certain interpretation of events. Consequently, this chapter looks at the media discourses at the very moment of crisis in mid-May 1968 and analyses the role of values and Europe during the crisis within the mass media. The daily press and its routines of news reporting, actor referencing and discourse construction is a genre that does not cover the public opinion in its total sense; it maps a part of it, which explains why many transnational themes and actors are not present or dominant. Parallel public spheres existed 135

136 The European Public Sphere and the Media Table 6.1

News coverage, number of articles (frequencies) 18 May 19 May 20 May 21 May 22 May 23 May 24 May 25 May Total N

Germany SZ FAZ France LM LF United Kingdom TT TG Total N

11 4 7 31 14 17 3

0 – – 13 13 – 0

21 4 17 25 – 25 6

9 4 5 38 21 17 5

11 2 9 35 18 17 8

10 – 10 42 28 14 7

3 3 – 45 21 24 6

15 7 8 33 16 17 7

80 24 56 262 131 131 42

1 2 45

– – 13

3 3 52

2 3 52

7 1 54

5 2 59

3 3 54

4 3 55

25 17 384

and exist, overlapping only partially. In the news reports of the daily press, however, the day-to-day troubleshooting between French and Parisian actors was by far the most important theme. Discourses or reflections on wider social change and global or European consciousness are rarely found. The questions put to the daily press in this chapter seek to unearth the degree to which Europe as a value-based concept, as referential discourse or indeed as a future scenario features during what is undoubtedly a process of critique and crisis of European scope and perception. In the following, the discourses and value-based statements in the print media in France, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the United Kingdom, are analysed.1 The crisis was intensively covered. The French papers in particular reported on almost nothing else. However, a difference between the German papers and the English ones is just as striking. While German newspapers published 80 articles on the crisis, English papers carried only 42 (see Table 6.1). This may be explained by the fact that Germany had just witnessed the attempt on Rudi Dutschke’s life and experienced student revolts to a much stronger degree than England. Furthermore, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung shows much higher numbers of articles than the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Mainly, this is due to the difference in length. But the less intense coverage of the Paris crisis in the traditionally left-oriented Süddeutsche Zeitung remains remarkable. The goal of the following analysis is to identify the main topoi and the role of values in the political debate and the legitimacy discourses attached to these values. Furthermore, the role of Europe is analysed. A further aim is to assess whether a transnational discursive space emerges from the newspaper coverage on the event, and whether this can be qualified as European and in what way. The media texts constituting the source material for this chapter have been analysed by applying a two-step database generation based on

Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates 137

the research question relevant for this book: which were the main topoi of the media debate, which were the values used and discussed in the media discourse and which role did Europe play in the crisis context? Did it indeed appear as an appellative idea (Requate and Schulze-Wessel, 2002)? In order to avoid a too rigid deduction pattern, an inductive approach was applied. Thus instead of pre-formulating the topoi and values and checking the source material for the appearance and relevance of these pre-formulated items, first a close reading of the media texts was carried out. From this close reading, topoi and values as well as the role of Europe could be described and put into perspective with the research question. The second step included the assembling of data in a database from which Tables 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3 were generated.2 Building on the notion of a European communicative network based on national public spheres and transnational networks connecting national actors and discourses (cf. Peters et al., 2005; Risse, 2003; SchulzForberg, 2005; Trenz, 2004; Wessler, 2004; Wimmel, 2005) a historical discourse analysis was carried out.

The early stages of the crisis It is difficult to say when exactly the crisis that culminated in May 1968 in Paris began. Daniel Cohn-Bendit’s student organization at the Paris University of Nanterre called itself the Movement of 22 March, which did not mean much, but referred to the day it was founded. Norbert Frei claims that the day the protests reached Paris on 13 May was the decisive event triggering the revolt and the massive confrontations between the state and its citizens in the French capital and throughout France. This day was not the first day of demonstrations and revolt in Paris, however (Frei, 2004). Following months of conflicts between students and authorities at the University of Paris at Nanterre, the city administration closed down the university on 2 May 1968. Immediately, student solidarity kicked in. On 3 May students of the Sorbonne gathered to protest against the closure of Nanterre and the threatened expulsion of several students. On Monday, 6 May, the national student union – the UNEF (Union Nationale des Etudiants de France) – and the union of university teachers organized a demonstration against police measures. Well over 20,000 students, teachers and supporters headed to the Sorbonne. The next day, this time accompanied by pupils and young workers, they gathered at the Arc de Triomphe and demanded that all criminal charges against arrested students be dropped, that the police leave the university, and that the authorities reopen Nanterre and the Sorbonne. The student protest was even more troublesome and discomforting for the French authorities because of its unusual character. What did the students want? Were they political? Were they revolutionaries? How to react to this form of protest? And what did it mean when 30,000 students sang

138 The European Public Sphere and the Media

the Marseillaise on 7 May at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier? Students gathered for another demonstration in Paris on 10 May and when the riot police blocked the demonstrators, barricades were built and another violent street fight occurred, which lasted until dawn the following day. After the early days of student demonstrations and violent clashes with the police, oppositional parties as well as workers’ unions joined the students’ cause. The PCF (Parti Communiste Français) supported the students reluctantly, however, since it held the position that they were adventurers rather than a politically motivated force. The biggest trade unions, the CGT (Conféderation Général du Travail) and the FO (Force Ouvrière) called a oneday general strike coupled with a demonstration for Monday, 13 May, and over a million people marched through Paris. The police did not take any steps against them and Prime Minister Georges Pompidou announced the release of the prisoners and the reopening of the Sorbonne. It was too late to stop the strikes, however, which had spilled over from the student movement to a general strike. When the Sorbonne reopened, students immediately occupied it and declared an autonomous people’s university. Furthermore, action committees were set up in Paris and elsewhere, in the weeks that followed, gathering information and demands to be held against the government that saw its policies challenged on all levels. Students, workers and other civil society groups demanded nothing less than a complete change of society and democratic reorganization. Workers’ unions used the momentum and organized the occupation of factories throughout the country. A strike at Renault spread from Rouen through France and reached Paris where workers occupied the factories in the Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt. During one week, workers were able to take over some 50 factories and more than 200,000 were on strike on 17 May.

The focus week of 18–27 May Since the actors during the crisis were manifold, the data abundant, and many discourses entangled, a short summary of the events during the focus week is useful. Between Saturday, 18 August, and Saturday, 25 May, the following two narrative threads help give a better understanding of the overall situation: (1) the workers’ movement and the students’ movement, and (2) the government’s protagonists and main political challenges by the opposition. The workers’ biggest union, the CGT, did not push the events of this week; it was rather trying to gain control over its unbound members. In order to get a grip and to lead instead of following the events, the CGT formulated political demands to hold against the employers and the government. Higher wages, improved social security, a rise in minimum wages, shorter weekly working hours and more were on the list. But even after securing a 35 per cent

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increase in the minimum wage, a 7 per cent increase in the normal wage and half the wage during strike days, workers did not stop their protests. Students mainly demanded participation in the organization of curricula, the university administration and decision-making processes, which meant a radical change in the setup of French universities. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, dubbed Danny the Red, occupied centre-stage and received a large amount of media attention. He was one of the protagonists of the week in focus, too: after a visit to Germany, he was not allowed back into France. The ban on Cohn-Bendit triggered a wave of solidarity and support from student organizations all over Europe. Belgian, German, Dutch and English students declared their solidarity, and when he headed back to France at the border crossing near Saarbrücken, hundreds of French and German policemen, aided by the German border patrol and their dogs, guarded the crossing while Cohn-Bendit made his bid to reach the other side. He did not make it back to France that day. But German students were ready to support his move and prepared his return to France also at Kehl in southwest Germany. De Gaulle was away from Paris on a state visit to Romania and in his speeches in Bucharest he declared European unity beyond the Iron Curtain. Taken by surprise, his government lacked the capacity to gain control at home. Furthermore, workers’ organizations, political parties and government authorities reacted to the student initiatives and demonstrations but de Gaulle chose to stay silent, and after his government survived a censure move by the opposition in parliament he took one decisive step to cut through the Gordian knot and regain legitimacy: he called for a referendum. De Gaulle’s political cunning helped the political institutions of France weather the crisis, but his ignorance of a new, mediated political discourse and a new way of expressing social and political opposition cost him dearly later. He understood the students to be a group of young hotheads that had not had a good enough education, as he remarked in his speech in Romania. One of de Gaulle’s first reactions, which translates into English as ‘Reforms yes, but no shambles’, became a key phrase for the students, who used it against him. The reason was the original meaning of the word he used. He talked about chienlit, which roughly means ‘fouling one’s own nest’. This revealing choice of words can be found in all newspapers analysed including foreign ones. The Guardian from 21 May begins its article on the French crisis by quoting the chienlit remark (The Guardian, 21 May 1968, p. 1). The elected political opposition in the French parliament remained ineffective throughout. François Mitterrand, then leader of the left-wing federation called Fédération de la Gauche Démocrate et Socialiste, could not gather decisive momentum against the government even though he called on the government to resign almost every day. Mitterand’s contributions to the debate were rather limited. He mainly repeated his claim that the government must resign. He also declared solidarity with the workers and the students

140 The European Public Sphere and the Media

and he talked of a new policy combining socialism and freedom; however, he failed to rally enough support and was unable to change the government. Furthermore, the Communist Party (PCF) was strong and hoped to seize power. Other left-wing and socialist parties did not share its demands, however. While the workers’ movement and the students were remarkably well organized, highly disciplined and unforgiving in their political claims, the political opposition failed to unite. It was Prime Minister George Pompidou who managed to begin the social dialogue between the parties and the trade unions. After de Gaulle’s government survived the census move in parliament, the political opposition had lost the chance for a quick change of government. In general, the parties of the political left were not able to play a leading role. The strong and institutionalized public sphere of the French parliament did not connect to the non-parliamentary opposition.

Following the focus week On 27 May, an agreement between the unions, employers’ associations and the government was quickly reached. The minimum wage was raised, working hours cut, earlier retirement was introduced and the right to organize themselves was granted to the workers. Workers at Renault and other big firms refused to return to work, however. The crisis unearthed a fundamental distortion of the internal settings of French society. The following days saw de Gaulle in action: he left Paris for Colombeyles-Deux-Eglises, his resident village, on 29 May, and met with General Jacques Massu who had summoned troops stationed in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. He dissolved his cabinet and announced general elections for late June. With a reshuffled cabinet he organized his political moves in the next weeks, and the French economy and everyday life sputtered back to normality. After some weeks, petrol stations got hold of fuel and cars began running again. In the first round of the elections, the federation of left-wing parties, led by Mitterrand, and the Communists both lost ground. In the second round, one week later, the parties of the right even won an overwhelming majority. Left-wing groups lost 61 seats and the Communists lost 39. Pierre MendésFrance, a former prime minister and a possible candidate for succeeding de Gaulle in May, was not even re-elected in his Grenoble constituency. The French context of May 1968 is decisive for an understanding of the media debates. The topoi generated from the discourse emerged mainly from this political crisis. The crisis of Paris 1968 was a bottom-up process of massive critique that could not be absorbed by the political institutions.

The international context of 1968 The main international context uniting most of the movements from the late 1960s and early 1970s in Europe and the United States was the protest

Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates 141

against the Vietnam War as well as a global peace movement, often combined with a revival of Marxist ideas and the introduction of Maoism to the European left. However, while this was an international commonality, and while all the 1968 movements are marked by generational conflict and shared the values of peace and self-determination, these movements – in their political and social protest – mainly engaged themselves in national political systems. While the movements were thus nationally contained, this cannot be held against them or disqualify them. Furthermore, political structures on a transnational level were non-existent since the European Union was a restricted club of six members then. Patterns of a globally networked communication can be mapped out, however. Icons travelled, as did ideas, music and media. In this respect, 1968 certainly was a European, indeed a global event (Schmidtke, 2002). The year 1968 had thus a certain ‘Europeanness’ in its effect on the way that values were negotiated in the respective countries and their specific contexts all over Europe and subsequently it changed societies profoundly,3 yet actors did not demand any form of European government or governance, at least not to a measurable degree in the mass media discourse analysed here. Thus, while the cultural changes that took place were a transnational phenomenon, and while the younger generation in each country took the older generation to task, the concrete political and cultural conflicts were national. The Provo movement was typically Dutch (Moerings, 2004); the designer Mary Quant, the fashion model Twiggy, and the lifestyle attached were typically English; Rudi Dutschke was very German; and May 1968 was most of all a French affair (Mak, 2005: 703). While Britain suffered least from the generational conflict that spread on the continent and in the US, youth movements mainly did oppose the traditional British way of life, censorship and false morality. In Poland, 1968 saw a small-scale student revolt – and freedom was the main subject. When the Polish national theatre was not allowed to stage a nineteenth-century drama, angry students marched to the censorship office – and 50 of them were immediately arrested. The leaders of the movement, Adam Michnik and Henry Szlajfer, were expelled from the university, and some university lecturers, among them the young Zygmunt Bauman, lost their positions. Bauman was influenced by American sociology, the official version claimed. In reality, the authorities in Poland reacted with an anti-Semitic reflex to the crisis. For a detailed description of 1968 in Czechoslovakia see the chapter by Igor Z. Žagar in this volume (and see Žagar et al., 2006b). In Italy, corruption and political scandals were at the centre of protests, as well as the state of the educational system and violent police interventions. In Belgium and Germany, protests had their own dynamics as well, just as in Prague. While Provo, for example, was mainly a so-called fun-anarchy

142 The European Public Sphere and the Media

project, it nevertheless was highly political and illustrates another common feature of the 1968 protests in many European countries and the US: aesthetics. Media and art, new ways of expressing political and social statements as well as popular music were heavily and successfully used by the young generations. Finally, even though the national discourses and interests may have been decisive in the end when it came to the translation of protest into political crystallizations, and while there was no transnationally organized movement like today’s Attac, for example, a large amount of anger and optimism was shared by all the protest movements. A certain utopian vision about the possibility of and necessity for change was shared in Europe and the US (Carrière, 2003).

Crisis topoi The main topoi emerging from the media during the focus week are shown in Table 6.2. These topoi have been generated from an in-depth first analysis of the media texts as described above examining the question of which topoi frame the discourse of the May crisis. The main topoi negotiated during the focus week were clearly related to the governmental crisis, the protests, and the demands for participation and political change. The governmental crisis was evident and Gaullism as such was put on trial by many voices in the media. This was a general European awareness and the end of Gaullism was debated in both English and West German newspapers. Nesta Roberts, The Guardian’s correspondent in France, reflected on this in her commentary on 21 May 1968 titled: ‘Gaullism of the

Table 6.2

Main topoi (% and frequencies) SZ

Civil society demands participation Civil strife, strike, demonstration Counter-measures Dialogue between actors European institutions French government crisis Political demands Solidarity with students Solidarity with workers Total % Total N

FAZ

LM

LF

TT

6

18

10

17

8

26

17

13

18

4 9 3 35 6 5 6 100 80

8 8 6 28 14 1 1 100 136

4 12 2 25 21 7 8 100 302

3 9 1 24 17 5 5 100 283

TG

Total %

Total N

18

13

130

29

30

19

187

16 4 1 38 1 3 0 100 79

0 8 5 20 11 2 5 100 93

5 9 2 27 15 5 5 100

48 89 24 258 145 44 48 973

Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates 143

old kind has already died’. And the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote in a commentary: The belated homecoming of de Gaulle [from Romania] almost opens up the possibility to take on the role of France’s saviour for a third time. The difference with the previous cases lies in the fact that this time he has to cope with a situation that was created by the Gaullist regime itself. (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 20 May 1968, p. 1) For French newspapers it was not necessary to enumerate statements from the debate on the government’s crisis because it was plainly evident. Le Figaro wrote in big letters on the top of a whole page: ‘The political consequences of the crisis’ (Le Figaro, 20 May 1968, p. 6). Le Monde opens its edition of 21 May with the words ‘The social and political crisis’ as the header of its main article on the front page. This headline continues over the next few days. In Le Monde the political opposition concluded on the end of Gaullism. Waldeck Rochet, a prominent Communist politician, claimed: ‘Gaullist power must finish’ (Le Monde, 20 May 1968, p. 6). In general, the French governmental crisis was perceived in the media on a wider global scale from China to Yugoslavia to the US as is evident from the media quoted in the newspapers analysed here, which map out a global framework of reference. De Gaulle’s system of direct democracy, coupled with authoritarian leadership and a populist stance, waned. It ended only one year later when de Gaulle resigned after having launched yet another referendum for 27 April 1969. This time he lost and resigned the following day. Further topoi emerging from the media debate are captured in the headlines: ‘Civil strife, strike, demonstrations’, ‘Political demands’, and ‘Civil society demands participation’ (see Table 6.2). The fear of an extension of civil strife dominated the thoughts of most politicians. Paris had turned into a scene of open violence too often. All organizations active during the strikes issued statements about strike reasons, about political demands and mainly pronounced a clear goal: participation within the political process. The civil society actors imagined a different form of participation than de Gaulle, however, who had been talking about participation for years already. The papers, especially the French papers, were filled to the brim with claims made from the largest to the smallest civil society organization. As a matter of fact, it is a miracle that both French papers analysed here were published in the first place since many journalists’ and press unions went on strike, too. A listing of all the civil society organizations and lobby groups would take up too much space. The largest – and for this chapter also the most important – were the CGT, the FO, the UNEF, the CFDT, the CFTC, and the FNSEA.4 The topos summarized under ‘civil strife, strike, demonstration’ is characterized by factual news reporting. Strike actions, violent confrontations between the police and the students, and mass as well as smaller

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demonstrations were covered minutely. The discursive character of this topos does not show any more complicated arguments. Thus, values and their different interpretations and applications in the discourse are rare. The topoi ‘political demands’ and ‘civil society demands participation’ show a very different quality. Here, naturally, values are used in order to legitimize claims and demands.

Democracy! What democracy? The main value emerging from those two topoi as well as from the topos of governmental crisis is democracy. According to Hans Joas, values have been appropriated by European societies in complex mutual relationships. They overlap with each other, as was illustrated by the example of freedom discussed in Chapter 5, and they form a cluster around the following main concepts: freedom, inwardness (spiritual), esteem for common life, selffulfilment, rationality and acceptance of plurality (Joas, 2005: 14ff.) However, this broad generalization of European values cannot be convincingly argued for throughout all discursive settings in all of Europe. It remains an ideal-type list that ignores specific discursive settings. Today, the EU is the projection area as well as the self-proclaimed representative of these values. Values change, however. Peter Wagner (2005) argued that values in Europe were shaped in a dialogic process of political and cultural reactions to religious wars, reformation, democratic revolutions and class struggle. Values are of a generally universal nature through their function in discourses of legitimacy; they have been shaped by historical experiences and they change their meanings within social legitimacy discourses continuously. I want to argue here that values need to be performed and that a universally true meaning of so-called European values does not exist. Values are highly heterogeneous semantic shifters (cf. Jameson, 2002). They do not assemble to a neatly defined catalogue of moral units with a universally agreed-upon meaning. However, while they are semantic shifters, they also have a normative function. Thus, the dilemma of value analysis is to accept that values must be understood as inherently changing, yet that values simultaneously, due to their normative function, have to be defined by social and political actors during the process of legitimacy negotiation. Thus, a different understanding and way of analysing values in historical discourse has been employed than in existing sociological research on European values, which is more focused on the value structures of European societies rather than the role of values in discourses of legitimacy (Harding et al., 1986, 2001). The values presented here have been generated from a topos-relation variable. Topoi were filtered out of the media discourse and the values attached to these topoi have been collected. I base my representation of the media debate on the Paris crisis from May 1968, and thus on an inductively gained generalization. As can be seen in Table 6.3, solidarity emerges as an important value beside democracy. However, here the focus is on democracy because it

Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates 145 Table 6.3

List of references to values (%) Germany

Solidarity in general Solidarity among civil society actors Unity in general Law Freedom Peace Democracy Security Humanity Self-determination Total % Total N

France

UK

Total %

3 34

1 35

– 59

2 37

5 4 7 3 36 5 – 3

4 4 6 4 35 5 2 3

– – – – 35 6 – –

4 4 6 4 35 5 1 3

100 110

100 406

100 51

100 567

shows much more interpretative variation. Solidarity as a value, at least in the discourse of the Paris crisis, is rather one-dimensional in its interpretative settings. Democracy is interpreted differently by different actors and for different reasons. It emerges as the key value of legitimacy for the actors involved in the media debate. Democracy itself is contested and a cluster of further values is attached to it depending on the argumentative setting. For example, historical references were evoked in the discourse and often served as an argument for future change in relation to democracy and the way in which French society should develop. The historical references found in the mass media clearly paint a French picture, not a European one. The only two transnational historical events found – the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917 – played a minor role and were not often adhered to. A crucial historical reference was made by allusions to the end of the Fourth French Republic in 1958 when the old constitution, adopted after World War Two, was abandoned and a new one based on a powerful presidency personified by Charles de Gaulle was introduced. The event most often referred to, however, was the general strike of 1936. The mid-1930s saw the beginning of the Popular Front in 1935, the Leon Blum-led government and, in May 1936, a massive strike movement that saw newly confident workers fighting for higher wages and shorter working hours. The Renault plant in Paris was occupied then just as it was in May 1968 and workers negotiated with the government in an open dialogue. During a large strike at the shipyards of St Nazaire on 19 May 1968, trade unionists could be heard comparing the events: This is no ordinary strike for higher wages, shorter hours, improved working conditions, and security of employment, although all these figure on

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the strike committee’s claims. ‘You have to go back to 1936 and the Popular Front for a parallel’, a young trade unionist told me at strike headquarters. (The Times, 20 May 1968, p. 8) Historical comparisons were made in order to give the correct interpretative emphasis to the events of the present day. The comparisons are mainly representative of an inner struggle for a change in society, however, and thus support the main theme of democratic change. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, when asked about the differences between the workers and the students by the correspondent of The Times, made the following connection to a change in the democratic order of France: ‘The question was not one of attacking the trade union movement, M. Cohn-Bendit went on, but to create conditions for a workers democracy, where each, whatever his slogans or his banners, could have his say’ (The Times, 20 May 1968, p. 8). This clearly is a different form of democracy to the one imagined by Charles de Gaulle and his authoritative referendum-based idea of presidential democracy. May 1968 in Paris saw an enormous eruption of dissatisfaction with the way society and democracy were organized. As reflected in the list of topoi presented above, the main concrete political claims of the students as well as the workers were made in relation to democratic participation. The claims by politicians, both oppositional and governing, were framed around democratic legitimacy and the representation of power as well. And finally, de Gaulle himself referred to democracy when he called for a referendum and put his own position into question. The strike spread very quickly through the whole of France soon after the general strike of 13 May. The workers’ unions increasingly raised their voices; this is measurable in the media: ‘After student power, the union power’, wrote Le Figaro on 20 May. The CFDT (Confédération française démocratique du travail) concluded: ‘Democracy wants to affirm itself on all levels’ (Le Figaro, 20 May 1968, p. 4(a)) and furthermore stated: ‘Our action joins the fight of the students who have affirmed their claims for democracy and shown their consciousness of having responsibility’ (Le Figaro, 20 May 1968, p. 4(b)). Similarly, the Fédéchimie FO, the Force Ouvrières section of the chemical industry, joined the call for democratization: On top of demands concerning working hours, salaries, and simple employment itself, this federation has demanded the socialization of all trusts and the democratization of economic and social life on all levels of industrial life. (Le Figaro, 20 May 1968, p. 5) Many voices of this kind could be heard in the early days of the workers’ strikes. The CGT, the largest union in France, for example, supported the ‘democratic reform of school teaching and the University’ (Le Figaro, 20 May 1968, p. 6). The SNES (Syndicat national de l’Enseignement) joined in by

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claiming: ‘Parents understand the decision by the teachers who wait, too, and for a long time already, for the meeting of their demands and the implementation of democratic reforms of teaching. They are sensitive to actions taken by the teachers, [and] proclaim solidarity with the students and the workers’ (Le Figaro, 20 May 1968, p. 7). Clearly, the concept of democracy overlapped with the concept of solidarity in the discourse of the French unions. Participation in processes of democratic deliberation was the aim of all civil society actors, including the students. More radical voices can also be heard, which demanded more than a change of government and called for a reform of democratic life in general. Political actors often connected their demands with concrete political change, even with a change of the whole political system. The Communist Party (CFP), for example, believed that a people’s democracy should grow in France: The conditions are rapidly approaching the point when we can finish off the Gaullist power and promote true modern democracy in accordance with the interests of the people and of France. Only the union of the forces of labour and democracy, the union of the workers in town and country, manual and intellectual, can create the conditions for victory. (The Guardian, 18 May 1968, p. 9) For many politicians, the claim for more participation in democratic deliberation was connected with the end of Charles de Gaulle’s power. Waldeck Rochet said: Everywhere, demands from workers and citizens are rising for more participation, for being the masters of their own destiny, for the elaboration of this country’s politics. In the immediate sense, this means satisfying the workers’ essential demands, in the long run the question of power has to be asked. This is to say that the Gaullist system is called into question. (Le Figaro, 22 May 1968, p. 4) Jacques Duhamel, a member of parliament from the Jura, and members of federations of the political centre such as the Centre Démocratie et Progrès, held against the government that it ‘did not find the balance between state authority and citizen participation’ (Le Figaro, 22 May 1968, p. 4). Pierre Mendes-France reached a similar conclusion: By its comportment over the last ten years, he said, the Government had created a revolutionary situation. It could no longer resort to force without releasing tragic consequences; nor could it begin a useful dialogue with the masses that were rising against its policy. (The Guardian, 20 May 1968, p. 1)

148 The European Public Sphere and the Media

As a final example for the political discourse, François Mitterrand should be mentioned: ‘M. Mitterrand, in top form, attacked the Government’s lack of a permanent dialogue which had helped to widen the gap between it and millions of striking Frenchmen. In the name of socialism, it was necessary to change the policy’ (The Guardian, 23 May 1968, p. 1). During the events, Mitterrand declared solidarity with the workers and students and joined demonstrations and organized marches. On 20 May, he said, already beginning a debate of legitimate representation: I have to simply say that a political formation like ours cannot but declare solidarity with the fight that has led millions of workers to strike. The politics of low salaries cannot be our politics. This great movement should as a first consequence provide the French with civic responsibility. We cannot leave one single man or a political faction of his to decide on the future of this country. France has an immense need for democratic oxygen. (Le Monde, 21 May 1968, p. 2) Politicians thus rose to the occasion to claim the end of Gaullism and to promote their own legitimacy. How did the government react? After all, de Gaulle was in Romania when the strikes began and there he was greeted with cheers and was pleased about his European discourse, promoting his vision of a united Europe of fatherlands in Romania. Back home, his glory had waned. However, his reaction to the demands was framed by his own understanding of democracy and citizen participation. The Guardian wrote: ‘When General de Gaulle addresses the French people on Friday evening he is expected to announce a “new deal” whose main features will be the participation of the people in many departments of social and economic life’ (The Guardian, 22 May 1968, p. 1). Preparing the scene for de Gaulle’s television address to the French nation, George Pompidou had been active in making his arguments heard. Legitimacy and representing the people were highly important for him. Thus, he joined the discourse on democracy, shifting the debate from the form of organization of democratic life to the forms of representing democratic society, and thus posing the question of how power should be distributed in a democracy. Pompidou had been active in propagating a dialogue with civil society organizations. He had done so throughout the crisis, but did not have many listeners in the beginning. Slowly, more and more civil society organizations agreed to the proposed dialogue, however. The question of legitimate representation was a key to Pompidou’s argument: M. Pompidou claimed that the immense mass of the population would give without reserve its support to the President, and all those ready to group themselves under his legitimate authority to undertake the reforms which were indispensable. (The Guardian, 23 May 1968, p. 1)

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Pompidou continued by saying that de Gaulle was the ‘qualified and authentic representative of the nation’. He was the one to promote renewal, ‘because he is Head of State and because he is General de Gaulle’. He himself [Pompidou] was ready to enter into discussions with the unions once they had established that they represented the legitimate claims of the workers. If, on the other hand, the strike was political, the union could not take the place of the sovereign people. (The Guardian, 23 May 1968, p. 1) The question of legitimate representation was discussed in the Süddeutsche Zeitung as well. In a commentary on the events, it said: Thus the French have to ask themselves how far de Gaulle, how far the continuation of his system is identical with the republic. The answer of the opposition is clear: The presidential rule by de Gaulle falsifies the republic. The answer of the Gaullists is not less precise: If there was someone who secured the republican order, this is de Gaulle. (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 20 May 1968, p. 4) Finally, de Gaulle himself added his voice to the discourse on democracy by claiming that a direct vote from the people was the most democratic form of legitimacy. However, in his typical way of mixing the so-called destiny of France with his own, de Gaulle inserted democracy into his personal style of direct democracy. At the long-awaited television address to the French people on Friday 24 May he said: I am ready again this time, but again this time – and above all this time – I need, yes, I need the French people to say what they want. And indeed our Constitution wisely foresees the way in which it can do so. It is the most direct and most democratic way possible – the referendum. (The Guardian, 25 May 1968) De Gaulle succeeded in the end, winning the referendum once more. His regime was finished, however. For de Gaulle, legitimacy was never truly restored after May 1968. Already following his announcement, media reflected the critical reaction to de Gaulle’s understanding of democracy. The parliament has missed its chance to chase away the government and save the institutions. Today’s France is on its way from parliamentary democracy to a ‘direct democracy’. Who is more important, the general elected by the people or the people? The will of the parliamentary majority of doubtful representative quality or the will of today’s millions, the will of the people: That is the question after the unsuccessful bid

150 The European Public Sphere and the Media

by the parliamentary opposition. (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 25 May 1968, p. 2) The Guardian wrote in a similar vein: De Gaulle’s broadcast showed that he still does not seem to understand what his countrymen are trying to tell him. They did not go on strike in order to win the chance to vote in another yes-no referendum. They want much more than that. (The Guardian, 25 May 1968, p. 8) In France, the papers Le Monde and Le Figaro amply reported the parliamentary speeches following the bid for the referendum by de Gaulle. Mainly, the arguments were framed around the same main arguments from before the announcement. The opposition did not accept the government’s legitimacy and the government did not accept the non-elected legitimacy of the strikers, either. Democracy as a concept proved to be highly flexible and framed almost all political claims made. Only rarely did extremist parties call for an end of democracy. In general, democracy connected to the idea of solidarity that was fundamental in the discourse as well, and it connected to the notions of participation in democratic deliberation processes that were called for. Furthermore, democracy as the main value provided legitimacy to political decisions and visions.

The role of Europe during de Gaulle’s Romania visit As for the case study on Berlin, parallel discourses can be found in relation to a European horizon of reference. Synchronically, and coincidentally, to the Paris crisis, Europe was mentioned in all the media during the focus week in connection with de Gaulle’s visit to Romania. His European speech was also widely commented upon in the papers. In Romania, de Gaulle remarked that it was important to ‘strengthen collaboration with all European countries irrespective of their regimes to give additional importance to our continent . . . Our first duty is to work together for the unity of Europe, for its independence, progress, peace and brotherhood’ (The Guardian, 18 May 1968, p. 9). The Romanian president, Nicolae Ceau¸sescu, answered his French counterpart with an equally enthusiastic European speech, stressing the unity of the continent beyond the Iron Curtain as well. In itself, this was a remarkable event in a time of full-blown Cold War. However, it remained completely detached from any other event at that time. There was no connection to the Paris crisis, nor was the statement connected to the other European discourses on the debate on the European Customs Union, Britain’s possible second bid to join the European institutions and the general consequences of the French crisis for European economic stability. Another important event took place at the same time. The American government met with the North Vietnamese to begin peace talks about the

Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates 151

Vietnam War – in Paris! Again, links between the Vietnam peace talks and the French revolt were non-existent in the media. A link to anything remotely European within this context was also missing. While the media discourse on the Paris crisis contained more references of a European scope than the Berlin crisis, this European role remained insignificant in relation to the dominant crisis discourse that characterized French political and civil society actors. Furthermore, while the French debate was dominated by values such as democracy and solidarity among civil society actors, the references to Europe found during the crisis focus week established different connections to values: namely economy and security.

The role of Europe in the crisis of May 1968 It remains to be shown whether and to what extent Europe played a role in the crisis of May 1968. The first question concerns the connection between the main values used within the dominant topoi settings and Europe. Secondly, while a crisis–value relation is no surprise in the general debate, and it has been shown how variations of the concept of democracy dominantly framed the discourse, did a crisis–Europe relation exist, too? The first and obvious result is that, just as in the case of the Berlin Wall debate, Europe played an insignificant role in the debates. Europe – be it as an economic entity, as a value-based community or as a mere geographical area – was of almost no importance in the media. Furthermore, the European Economic Community or the economic space of Europe was only referred to; it did not speak. But which European references, insignificant as they may have been, were made? First, in relation to the second question formulated above, Europe does appear with a clear link to crisis. All references found in the media include a crisis–Europe connection. The main link between the crisis in Paris and a European level were the assumed economic consequences. The fact of the EEC’s existence and the move for a Customs Union in July 1968 motivated these references. The links to Europe were made mainly by state actors or by media actors. Civil society actors in France, West Germany and the UK did not consider the mid-term consequences of a paralysed French economy. Rather, European integration among the workers seems to have been regarded negatively. The Guardian’s correspondent, Nesta Roberts, interviewed workers at the Renault factory and asked them questions that reached beyond their specific political demands. Among the questions was a reference to the EEC. The answer by the workers was discouraging from a European perspective: Workers demand participation in management. And beyond the wider stage? ‘De Gaulle is an antiquity that must go.’ What about the students? ‘Well, up to a certain point we have things in common, but each of us has its own interest that we must defend separately.’ The Common Market?

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No hesitation here. ‘It is dangerous, France will drown in it.’ (The Guardian, 24 May 1968, p. 11) Government actors regarded the European Economic Community as an important factor for growth and stability in Europe. While it was also said that European competition might have harmed French industry (The Guardian, 21 May 1968, p. 9), the main reaction in France as well as in Germany and the UK in relation to Europe was especially concerned with the EEC and not with any values the EEC may represent: The workers are asking for an immense variety of concessions, ranging from a straight wage increase to the lowering of the retirement age to sixty, passing by longer holidays, a universal forty-hour week and repeal of last summer’s cuts in the social services. Any of these would individually be inflationary, and would have to be matched by a relaxation of the present strict control of prices – moving the costs-prices spiral upwards. If the regime survives the political challenge, it may thus have to face an economic crisis of the first order: unfortunately for Europe no financial crisis can be confined to one country. (The Times, 21 May 1968, p. 9) Thus, already in 1968 The Times clearly put Europe on the agenda as a space in which nations’ economies are too closely connected to have a chance of escaping the influence of a French economic slump. And the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote: With sorrow, Brussels awaits the further developments of the events in France, which have become completely unpredictable . . . Should the French industrial businessmen be forced to raise social benefits it cannot be ruled out that the already latent resistance of the French industry against the realization of the customs union on 1 July may come to the fore openly. Chain reactions cannot be excluded after this. One asks oneself whether France – which France? – will appeal to the solidarity of its European partners for the adjournment of the customs union’s implementation. (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 22 May 1968, p. 4) Here, solidarity on a European level comes into play for the first time. It is solidarity among European governments, however, not among protest movements. In the French media, a similar discourse in relation to the Customs Union can be found. ‘With the fulfilment of the common market on 1 July, with the first infringement of the national rights to customs, we cannot organize a contained inflation’ (Le Figaro, 20 May 1968, p. 5). The consequences of the economic crisis could lead to an economic isolation in Europe and devalue the franc (Le Figaro, 24 May 1968, p. 7). Furthermore, the economic dimension of the crisis was translated on to a European level by the agricultural union, the FNSEA. A European agricultural policy should

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be implemented, the union claimed and stated bluntly: ‘What’s important, that’s Europe’ (Le Monde, 19 May 1968, p. 10). British Foreign Secretary Michael Stewart said that the United Kingdom would not be disposed to join the common market if France did not soon put its interior affairs in order (Le Monde, 22 May 1968, p. 7). The European institutions were thus drawn into the crisis scenario, but only as an entity fulfilling national interests. Europe did not occur as representing any values or as a speaker or actor in its own right. The then president of the European Commission, the Belgian liberal federalist Jean Rey, remained silent and unmentioned. Europe, thus, was absent from the relevant crisis discourse. Only one actor actually drew a direct conclusion from the French crisis to explicitly signified European values. And this actor even included President de Gaulle’s discourse on European unity in Romania. It was the Duke of Paris who wrote an open letter to President de Gaulle, which was reproduced in Le Monde and in Le Figaro. The Duke of Paris was, at that time, Henri d’Orléans, the pretender to the French throne belonging to the House of Orléans and a right-wing conservative who favoured a return to monarchy in France. In a statement that has not yet been accurately confirmed by historians, de Gaulle is supposed to have said of the Duke: ‘The Duke of Paris? And why not the Queen of Gypsies?’ However, only Le Figaro cited the Duke’s European references. Le Monde cut them out. It reads: The insurrection of the young, the determination of the workers are an obligation for us to objectively search for the real values that should guide the orientation given to the country. These values are naturally very close to those propositions that you untiringly offer to Europe and to the world and that you have once more pinned down during your journey in Romania. (Le Figaro, 20 May 1968, p. 6) Thus, while a crisis–value connection surely existed, notions of Europe were not necessarily debated during the crisis. The single voice of a right-wing aristocrat does not change that overall finding. It seems to be the case that references to Europe, at least in the 1960s, were either made in relation to the European institutions from a national perspective (cf. Milward et al., 1992) or bound to specific discursive settings and argumentative framings, such as a general utopian discourse on the one hand (Requate and SchulzeWessel, 2002; Schmidt-Gernig, 2002; Schulz-Forberg, 2006a) and fact-based European institution-related discourses on the other.

Conclusion: a European Public Sphere during the May 1968 crisis? The Paris crisis of May 1968 did not trigger a debate in which a notion of Europe was connected to certain understandings of values. The analysis of

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German, English and French media shows an intense debate of values independent of a European connection, however. The main values emerging from the media debate were democracy and solidarity and all participants in the conflict and public debate claimed to have the truly legitimate formula for a society in which these values could thrive. Europe appeared only as an economic entity. During the Paris crisis, the idea of European security played a certain role, but this time security did not depend on military power, but on economic stability. Only one actor within the media discourse, a right-wing Europhile aristocrat, connected the European discourse of de Gaulle’s Romanian visit with a possible solution scenario for France. In relation to the existence of a European Public Sphere, it can be concluded that a soft public sphere model (Schulz-Forberg, 2005) that deliberately formulates an approach to the public sphere independent from institutional structures can be confirmed. What is more, the Paris crisis clearly shows that a communication between the national spheres of France, the UK and Germany took place. This public sphere can be found in terms of communication between actors in the papers, i.e. English actors referring to French ones, and vice versa. This is most apparent in the episode of Daniel CohnBendit’s expulsion from France. Secondly, articles and statements were very similar, often identical, and a commonality in reporting can be confirmed despite the national characteristics of the quality newspapers studied here. Many political and civil society actors are represented with identical claims in all the newspapers. Furthermore, the media themselves have been regarded as a sign of the emergence of a European Public Sphere. The very fact of growing mass media consumption and the close attention devoted to the whole process of social change in the late 1960s has created ties between and knowledge about other European countries (Schmidtke, 2002). A strong European Public Sphere is completely absent from the dabates, either on the level of actors or on the level of values or ideas – values are debated independently of Europe. Although there is transnational communication, a strong European Public Sphere that serves as an institutional setting for political debate cannot be detected, either as a desideratum or as a political reality of cooperation between national governments and the EEC acting as important elements within the crisis. As outlined before (Schulz-Forberg, 2005; Splichal 2006), a strong public sphere is here understood as having one or more power centres as the main addressees for the negotiation of conflict and change. Due to the absence of such a strong power centre in European history, Europe was conceived of as an appellation entity (Requate and Schulze Wessel, 2002). Yet, this conception cannot be confirmed by the findings either. Europe as an appellation entity does not occur during the crisis of May 1968. As we said in the previous chapter, although interesting debates on values such as democracy have occurred within Europe and have certainly left

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their mark in its history, sometimes generating profound changes in society, a European Public Sphere only existed in its soft form as a network of communication across borders. This does not imply that this soft public sphere was devoid of power. Both the soft and the strong public spheres are characterized by power relations (Schulz-Forberg and Stråth, 2009). The consequences of the debates and conflicts in the soft public sphere during the 1968 crisis were subsequently negotiated in national strong public spheres that had the means to absorb the social pressure. In the case of Paris 1968, this link between the soft and the strong public sphere was missing during the focus week and this dismemberment of the institutionalized political deliberations and the non-institutionalized ones aggravated the emerging social and political tensions. Thus, while the 1968 movements have been decisive for the implementation of a pluralistic notion and reality of democracy in Europe – and have created a language as well as a reference system for this advanced democracy – they did not embrace Europe as a notion and a cluster of values. Today’s European Union promotes values that have been fought for by the 1968 movement, especially claims for democracy. These values were not identified with Europe in the mass media public spheres of France, the UK and Germany in the first place, however.

Notes 1. The newspapers analysed are The Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Le Figaro, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 2. For more data emerging from this analysis see Schulz-Forberg (2006b). 3. In the sense of Schmale (2003). 4. CGT, FO and UNEF (see above). CFDT is the Confédération française démocratique du travail, CFTC is the Confération française des travailleurs chrétiens and FNSEA is the Fédération National des Syndicats d’Exploitants Agricoles.

7 ‘Progressive’ versus ‘Bureaucratic’ Socialism: the Media Coverage of Prague 1968 in the ‘Other’ Europe Primoz Krasovec and Igor Z. Žagar

On the night of 20 August 1968, the combined armies of the five countries of the Warsaw Pact1 invaded Czechoslovakia. The occupation marked the beginning of the end of a brief period of democratization in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, which began in January 1968 and intensified in April when the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia put forth the ‘Action Programme’. This document harshly criticized the economic and political state of Czechoslovakia and proposed a set of reforms – among them democratization of the political system, pluralization of the public sphere and liberalization of the national economy (Baskovic, 1982: 88–122). The ‘Action Programme’ enjoyed mass popular support and Czechoslovakia was preparing to carry out the intended reforms. Those events were met with little sympathy by other Warsaw Pact countries, especially by the Soviet Union. Following a series of meetings and failed negotiations, the occupation took place (Williams, 1997). The occupation encountered no military resistance. There was, however, massive civil resistance by the people of Czechoslovakia that included, but was not limited to, demonstrations, anti-occupation graffiti, broadcasting from rebel radio stations, publishing of political leaflets, nationwide strikes, the denial of any assistance to the occupying army and public denunciations of suspected collaborators. The occupation was also harshly criticized in the Western European press, where it was univocally condemned. The press of the socialist countries of the European East was, on the contrary, quite divided. Certain national media, particularly those belonging to the countries that assisted the aggression, supported the occupation while others condemned it. 156

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In relation to different media spheres within Europe in 1968, the event caused an additional rift. Prior to the event, the main divide was between liberal media and the public sphere of the European West (based on supposedly ‘impartial’ reporting and public reasoning on common affairs) and the socialist media and the public sphere of the European East (based on political and social engagement of the media and, at least in theory, more direct mass participation in politics). Following the event, the socialist public sphere – if there ever was (just) one – also became divided and we will attempt to shed some light on this divide that was, and very often still is, marginalized in the European West. This will be the main concern of this chapter. It will become clear that the media in the states that assisted in the occupation relied on dogmatism and repetition of a few basic ideological formulas, whereas Czechoslovak, Yugoslav and, to some extent, Romanian media tried to grasp this new historical situation and invent new discourses that would be capable of narrating it in all its novelty. The differences between various ideological perspectives in the press coverage of the Prague Spring, and how those differences were articulated in the Yugoslav press, is of great interest and thus the discrepancy between the two opposing positions from which the occupation could be represented is the focal point of this chapter. The analysis attempts to illustrate how a common (socialist) mythical background, namely that of ‘socialism as the desired and the best social order’, can produce and structure two antagonistic ideological perspectives and two opposite media representations of the same historical event. The chapter concentrates on the Yugoslav press coverage of the occupation during the first week following the occupation – from 21–27 August 1968. Yugoslavia was chosen because of its rather special place among other European socialist countries: it was not a member of the Warsaw Pact, nor was it under the direct political influence of the Soviet Union. In fact, it was just the opposite. After the political break with the Soviet Union in 1948 (Pleterski and Bozic, 1975: 164–9), Yugoslavia developed a branch of socialism that was very different to the Soviet model. If one compares the Czechoslovakian ‘Action Programme’ (Baskovic, 1982: 88–122) to the characteristic features of the Yugoslav type of socialism witnessed in 1968 (Pirjevec, 1995: 275–9), it becomes rather obvious that the latter was the inspiration behind the Czechoslovakian reforms. ‘Workers’ self-management’, as the Yugoslav system was called, resonated in the Action Programme’s demand for the democratization of the economy and the liberalization of the intellectual and cultural domain in Yugoslavia in the 1960s. This model fuelled the Czechoslovakian desire to achieve the same. Yugoslavia was thus both a role model and an important, mainly moral, ally for Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring.

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This chapter focuses on press reports covering the occupation in three Yugoslav federal republics which had the most developed print mass media at the time:2 Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. Reports on the occupation of Czechoslovakia in two newspapers from each of the chosen republics are analysed. The first mentioned papers from each of the republics are considered to be ‘quality’ newspapers while the second are considered ‘popular’ newspapers. The papers are Delo (Labour) and Dnevnik (Daily) from Slovenia; Vjesnik (News) and Slobodna Dalmacija (Free Dalmatia) from Croatia; and Borba (Struggle) and Politika (Politics) from Serbia. The distinction between ‘quality’ and ‘popular’, despite not always being entirely clear-cut, was chosen because the distinction between liberal and conservative press was not pertinent for Yugoslavia in 1968. In terms of their political orientation, newspapers in Yugoslavia differed very little. An analysis of reporting in Yugoslav newspapers facilitates the analysis of how the occupation of Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1968 was discursively constructed as an extraordinary event and how this event was, in turn, represented as a conflict between two opposing value systems. Further, this chapter attempts to uncover the ideological components in each value system and discusses how these systems were discursively constructed and maintained. Throughout this interrogation, the chapter seeks to accentuate the underlying similarities in each system of values and how this common base structured and imposed limits on the two opposing representations of the occupation. The analysis begins with the use of the semiotics of newspaper space, or ‘layout semiotics’, which included comparative quantitative measurements of the actual spaces dedicated to the occupation of Czechoslovakia. An exploration into the use of intertextuality helped shed light on how texts with opposing ideological contents were included and positioned within the discourse of the Yugoslav press, and also the character of their mutual relationship. An investigation into the ideological mechanisms at work is employed in the analysis of discourse, as well as the investigation of different (founding) topoi, and their common mythical background.

How the occupation of Czechoslovakia was made important In all but two analysed newspapers, Dnevnik and Politika, foreign affairs became the largest section after the occupation took place.3 In terms of the thematic section of the paper, the foreign affairs section was, once again, larger than all others except in the case of Dnevnik and Politika.4 It is interesting to note that all foreign affairs sections in ‘quality’ newspapers grew, while the popular papers, with the exception of Slobodna Dalmacija, maintained their emphasis on ‘less serious’ content.5 It can, therefore, easily be concluded that in most cases under investigation, newspapers switched focus from whatever was their primary interest

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before the occupation to foreign affairs and began to increase the space dedicated to the section. Even if we momentarily disregard the content that filled the space, it is the very changes in structure and distribution of the newspaper space that already imply that something was going on – something remarkable, something they considered incredibly newsworthy, something that should be reported thoroughly and in detail. Even more can be learned from the ways in which information was distributed within the foreign affairs sections. The occupation of Czechoslovakia took up an average of 83 per cent of the foreign affairs sections in all newspapers (Žagar et al., 2006b). This increase in space devoted to a single topic within the section is truly remarkable. The use of space is certainly one of the primary ways to highlight a certain topic, and the significant amount of space given to the occupation indicates that it was not only considered extremely important per se, but that it also took primary focus over all other events in international politics. Events such as the Vietnam War, the Middle East crisis and the Nigerian civil war were marginalized and sometimes, during the first three days following the occupation, even totally excluded from the Yugoslav press. Foreign events other than those directly or indirectly connected to the occupation of Czechoslovakia only began to appear again on 24 August. The aforementioned marginalized events were all comparable to the occupation since all of them were military conflicts and included the struggle between competing political visions. However, they were pushed aside so that reports on the occupation could be given more space. In terms of the allocation of physical newspaper space, the occupation was constructed as by far the most important and urgent event in international affairs. Although reports on the occupation dominated in the foreign affairs sections of these newspapers, they were not limited to these spaces. Domestic affairs sections also included many reports on the response of the Yugoslav public and prominent politicians to the occupation, which took up on average 57 per cent of domestic news coverage (Žagar et al., 2006b). Measured against the newspaper space in total, the average space dedicated to the occupation in all of the analysed newspapers was 25 per cent (Žagar et al., 2006b). A surprising one-quarter of the newspaper in its entirety was devoted solely to this issue, distributed mainly among foreign affairs sections, less in domestic news, and only marginally in other thematic sections. Reports about the occupation could be divided into those that dealt with it directly and those only indirectly. All of the editorials in all of the newspapers dealt with the occupation directly and none dealt with any other topic. Of the other media dealing with the occupation, news was the most common, although cartoons also took up this issue, albeit to a lesser extent. Direct news was defined as articles which reported the development of the events in Czechoslovakia in terms of numbers of casualties; political process; negotiations; civil resistance of the Czechoslovakian people; and the manoeuvres of the Warsaw Pact’s troops. Indirect news was considered to be

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that which reported domestic and international responses and protests and political activities triggered by the occupation. Of all the newspaper content dedicated to the occupation, regardless of the thematic section in which it appeared, indirect reports prevailed over direct ones by a ratio of 51 to 49 per cent on average (Žagar et al., 2006b). This data could be interpreted as an indication that public opinion and the political activities surrounding the occupation were considered to be – even if only slightly – more important than the event itself. It is evident, with the help of quantitative data, that the amount of newspaper space the event occupied gave it extra importance. In terms of actual space, the process through which the occupation came to dominate newspapers was simple and straightforward. The thematic sections, which were appropriate for hosting the occupation, were expanded and other sections were given less space. Content that was not related to the occupation was marginalized and in some cases even excluded. Even within the space dedicated to the occupation, changes in the standard layout of the newspapers were made to further emphasize the event. Frontpage headlines were much larger when the occupation started than they had ever been before. The changes were particularly noticeable within the top halves of the front pages, which in the first few days following the occupation contained only one, and in the later days, only one or two, news item(s). Front-page photographs were also enlarged in size and reduced in number. A typical front page of a Yugoslav newspaper featured one or two reports with big headlines in the top half (on the left side), a large photograph on the right, and a few smaller reports and photographs on the bottom half. Thus, during this time the occupation of Czechoslovakia was emphasized and given importance through a manipulation of the distribution of newspaper space, newspaper content and typography.

Two opposing value systems On the first day of the occupation, Delo printed the following front page headline: ‘The troops of the five countries of the Warsaw Pact take over Czechoslovakia’. Two social actors are included: the military force of the Warsaw Pact and Czechoslovakia. The event is thus represented as having two main protagonists set into an antagonistic relation with each other through the use of the verb ‘to take over’, belonging to military jargon. ‘The troops’ are the subject of the sentence and represented as active, while Czechoslovakia is the object and represented as passive. Given that a verb of military origin acts as the link between the two actors, the troops are shown as the aggressor and Czechoslovakia as the victim of military aggression. At first glance, this headline appears to be a modest and ‘objective’ portrayal of the event given that the title merely states what has happened, gives

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some basic facts, and refrains from comments or value-laden expressions. Nevertheless, it is not innocent and is in fact entrenched in a specific political perspective. The title could have been, for instance, phrased to state: ‘The forces of the Warsaw Pact move to Czechoslovakia’. The choice of the words ‘take over’ aims at producing negative sentiments among the readers, since any aggressive military action is inevitably associated with violence, death and suffering. The troops of the Warsaw Pact are represented negatively with the use of activation, while Czechoslovakia is represented positively by passivization (Van Leeuwen, 1996: 42) due to the representation of the event as a military action in a social context, which sees perpetrators of military aggressions as morally contestable. It is worth noting that the main Yugoslav doctrines in international politics at the time were ‘peaceful coexistence’ and ‘the right of each nation to self determination’ (Tripalo, 1989: 97–121). In a different social context and against a different ideological background, the moral value of such a representation of actors would also have been different. To justify the occupation, the governments of the invading countries issued a statement (quoted in Borba, 24 August, p. 3), where they used the verb ‘to help’ instead of ‘to take over’, ‘to invade’, ‘to occupy’ or the like. In the statement the governments claimed they were ‘answering the call for help from the Party and state leadership of Czechoslovakia’. If such a statement is given within the political context of Brezhnev’s political doctrine of ‘limited sovereignty’ (Pirjevec, 1995: 262–81) and within a social context where the dominant values are associated with the protection of socialist orders around the world at any cost and by any means necessary, and if the link between both actors is established with the use of the verb ‘to help’, it follows that the active social actor is represented positively whereas the passive actor is represented negatively. In this context, the passive actor is someone who has done wrong and is in need of correction, and terms such as ‘imperialist’ and ‘counter-revolutionary elements’ are used to describe the ‘wrongdoings’ of a passive actor and to justify the ‘help’ in question. If one compares those two examples, it becomes clear that there are two conflicts going on at two different levels: ‘the real event’, the conflict between the Warsaw Pact and the people of Czechoslovakia (two social actors) and the conflict between the two opposing representations of the event (based on two opposing sets of social values). Yugoslav newspapers represented the occupation in a certain way and, at the same time, challenged the representations given by the national media of the states taking part in the occupation.6 In the second example mentioned above (with regard to ‘helping’ Czechoslovakia), Borba transcribed an entire statement as a direct quote. The statement was cited word for word, without commentary, except for the title. The title is itself a quote, an excerpt from the statement of the governments of the invading countries: ‘Your class brothers have come to help you’. The only additions to the title, and Borba’s only intervention into the original text, were the quotation marks added to the title. While it is generally true

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that quotation marks usually accompany quotes, this is not necessarily the case when quotes are part of newspaper titles. On the following page of the same issue there is another direct quote from an official statement, which is again quoted literally. This title is an excerpt from a declaration issued by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and it appears in the title without quotation marks as ‘We defend the human face of socialism’. The varying presence and absence of such a tiny grammatical tool marks an important difference in the representation of both statements and the values they stand for.7 In the first statement the use of quotation marks is a case of manifest intertextuality, ‘where specific other texts are overtly drawn upon within a text’ (Fairclough, 1992: 117). Specifically, it is an example of embedded intertextuality, ‘where one text is clearly contained within the matrix of another’ (Fairclough, 1992: 118). Borba not only noted carefully that the statement was from ‘(an)other text’ (not written by Borba’s journalists), but through the use of quotation marks in this specific and somewhat uncommon way, created a sort of distance. The text is thus represented as something foreign to the values Borba stands for, and as something with which the newspaper does not necessarily agree. The absence of quotation marks in the case of the second statement signifies the opposite. By not distinctively signifying that the text of the title originates elsewhere, Borba embraces the statement as though it were its own, and thereby recognizes and represents it as true.8 The statement, for example, that Czechoslovakia’s resistance is indeed the defence of the human face of socialism, is represented as absolute truth, while the statement made by the invading government is represented as a relative expression of a particular viewpoint and thus not necessarily true. In cases of intertextuality, where one text forms a part of another, we can distinguish between what Fairclough (1992: 103), following Bakhtin and Kristeva, defines as vertical and horizontal intertextuality. Vertical intertextuality describes a situation in discourse where a basic text is used as context for a quoted text, in contrast to horizontal intertextuality where two texts take their position in turns, as in ordinary conversation. Borba uses vertical intertextuality to include quotes from Pravda, which act, within the discourse of Borba, as main protagonists of the official Soviet value system. Quotes from Pravda, the main Soviet newspaper of the time, are made into articles of their own in Borba. One such article bears the title: ‘ “Pravda”: the action of five countries is “proof” of their great concern for the protection of socialism’ (Borba, 22 August, p. 5). The article is not a full transcript of Pravda’s article; it contains a lot of direct quotes, which are connected together by the writings of Borba’s journalist, whose style is very withdrawn. It does not express its own opinion nor does it criticize Pravda’s claims, it is merely a ‘neutral’ summary of the parts of Pravda’s article that are not quoted directly. Together, these texts form a case of sequential intertextuality, ‘where different

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texts alternate within a text’ (Fairclough, 1992: 118). The quotation marks in the title have the same function as above. To put it mildly, they express doubt concerning Pravda’s claim about the ‘great concern for the protection of socialism’. The article appears on a page dedicated to ‘responses to the occupation of the Czechoslovakian territory in the world’. Other articles on the same page bring reports on protests and criticisms from the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, West Germany, Denmark and Belgium. The inclusion of such an array of critiques and condemnations of the occupation acts as the context for Pravda’s attempts to justify it. Against such a backdrop, the reader cannot help but read Pravda’s claims ironically, as something which evidently contradicts ‘true and objective’ facts (the facts that are represented as such by the context). Irony means, according to Ducrot (1988: 209–12), stating something that is obviously untrue according to what is considered true, without doubt, in a given situation. The success of an ironic statement depends on the readers’ ability to recognize its falsity,9 and this is precisely what the said page achieves by placing many different critical articles next to Pravda’s justification of it. With the help of such juxtaposition, it represents the occupation as a ‘military assault’, a ‘breach of international law’, and the ‘destabilization of international peace’. Against such a background, the directly quoted claim from Pravda’s article that ‘the intervention will be supported by all who hold peace dear’ can only be read as ironic – and ironic in very inappropriate circumstances given that a country has lost its sovereignty and people are being killed. Such use of irony represents the value system from which Pravda draws its justification for the occupation in a very negative light.

Representation of the event as crisis So far in this chapter it has been established that the Yugoslav press represented the occupation as a conflict between two opposing value systems. First, however, it is necessary to elaborate in some detail on what is meant by ‘value system’. A value system is, so far, a descriptive term. It defines a certain set of values with which certain social actors identify, are grouped together and opposed to another set of values. The first set, the one that the Yugoslav press endorses and identifies with, includes freedom, national independence, democracy and social progress. All of them are mentioned repeatedly in various articles reporting on responses from Yugoslavia by either the masses in the streets, workers’ organizations or politicians. The following is an example from an article that appeared in Vjesnik (23 August, p. 3), a report on mass protests against the occupation in Belgrade: ‘The Yugoslav League of Communists and our socialist community have always struggled for the freedom and independence of nations, for equal and democratic cooperation between all countries and all the nations in the world.’

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The second, opposing set of values is also mentioned in the same article: ‘It is evident that what is going on is an attempt to stop the revival of the Czechoslovak socialist society. What is going on thus offers assistance and encouragement to conservative, bureaucratic forces to put a stop to democratic progress in Czechoslovakia and to return to an already bankrupt path’ (emphases added). The situation in Czechoslovakia is thus represented as a battle between conservative and bureaucratic forces on the one side, and progressive and democratic forces on the other. While the Soviet press and political leadership support the former, the Yugoslav press and political leadership support the latter. This example facilitates the move from the initial description of value systems to their explanation. Value systems are organized as different ideological perspectives. The use of the first person plural in ‘our socialist community’ presupposes an imagined ‘we’ (Anderson, 1983), a community that is sustained and reproduced by ideological rituals (Althusser, 2001: 112–15), as evidenced by the ritual evocations of ‘we’ and ‘our’ in media discourse, and within which ideology functions as a social bond (Mocnik, 1999: 5–69). With reference to a certain (fuzzy and amorphous) community to which everyone, supposedly, belongs,10 certain values are attributed to every individual who recognizes themselves a part of this ‘we’, and is, in Althusser’s (2001: 115–20) terms, called out (interpellé) as a member of ‘our socialist community’ in this case. The second part of the example highlights yet another ideologically creative discursive mechanism, the reference to obviousness (Althusser, 2001: 116), without presenting the obvious evidence in question. Statements such as ‘it is evident that’ and ‘we can see clearly that’ forget to mention what exactly it is that makes us so sure of something being evident, certain or true. The very declaration ‘it is evident that’ acts as the evidence itself. In this case, the declaration that something is, or should be, evident precedes the presentation of evidence in statements such as ‘an attempt to stop the revival of Czechoslovakia’. The actors mentioned afterwards are identified by their respective values which are ‘conservative and bureaucratic’. The explanation, therefore, precedes the ‘facts’. The ‘facts’, or ‘evidence’, that there are conservative and bureaucratic forces at work opposing progress and democracy, retroactively confirm the prior explanation. The ideological gesture of affirming a standpoint in the words ‘it is evident that’ and the ulterior affirmation of ‘evident facts’ – which are absent likely because they are evident – provides a specific way of reasoning that allows the members of the ‘we’ community to find and recognize themselves in the spaces of absent ‘evidence’ and to understand what is ‘evidently’ going on. A certain value system becomes, therefore, a part and, at the same time, a precondition for a certain imagined community (Anderson, 1983). The historical event of the occupation served as a starting point for the articulation of two distinct ideological perspectives that, in press discourse,

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manifested themselves as two antagonistic media representations of the same event. Their antagonistic relationship was constructed by the evocation of various values and their distribution between the two value systems. The respective value systems were consolidated by the use of discourse markers that represented certain values as compatible with statements such as ‘no socialism without democracy’ (Vjesnik, 25 August, p. 6). At the same time, different values were pitted against each other through the use of discourse markers that represented values as incompatible, for example in slogans such as ‘progressive forces against any aggression’ (Vjesnik, 25 August, p. 7). The historical event was represented as a struggle between different social actors, as well as a struggle between two value systems. Articles that represented the former were regular news items, bringing information about the movement of military troops, the numbers of casualties, acts of civil resistance, and political interaction between the political leaderships of Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. Articles representing the latter placed more emphasis on interpretation. They were commentaries, editorials or news reports containing interpretations of the event by various social actors, such as prominent intellectuals and politicians. The distinction between the two was at times unclear given that reporting in general was not always just an ‘objective’ description of events. It quickly turned into interpretation through the inclusion of a direct quote containing an opinion or an interpretation of the event. However, a direct quote could also signify a turn from interpretation to a ‘statement of facts’, if the actor in question began referring to the actual events. So far in this chapter the two central questions that have been answered are: ‘The conflict between what?’ and ‘What kind of conflict was the event represented as?’ The questions remaining to be tackled are: ‘What was at stake during the conflict?’ and, to return to a question posed at the very beginning, ‘Why was it made so important?’ The example that facilitates finding an answer for the remaining two questions stems from the same article as the two quotes above: In this case, we are especially horrified, since an assault has been made on a socialist country by another socialist country and, even more, in the name of socialist goals . . . With regard to the territory, and pertaining to the question of Czechoslovakia, in our time the battle is being waged to quicken the further blossoming of socialism in the world. A precondition for accelerated progress, or transformation of the entire world, is the commitment to a democratic path toward the development of socialism . . . Extraordinary tasks have been set upon our nations and upon our socialist community . . . Because of this . . . battle at an internal level has been set as an essential question. (Vjesnik, 25 August, p. 6) In this quote the basic elements of what is at stake in the conflict are laid bare. A socialist country is under attack from another socialist country;

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this attack not only violates socialist values, it also hinders the socialist transformation of the world. Furthermore, a key condition for a socialist transformation of the world is the democratization of socialism itself and the Prague Spring was an attempt at such a transformation. Certain forces opposed to this democratizing process, however, threaten both the internal transformation of socialism and the worldwide spread of socialism through the use of military power against Czechoslovakia. The conflict is, according to such an interpretation of the historical event, internal to socialism. Furthermore, what is at stake is nothing less than the future and survival of socialism.11 If, on the other hand, the democratization of socialism is successfully thwarted, socialism will degenerate into bureaucratism. It will no longer be able to change the world and will eventually die out. The use of the passive voice at the end of the above quote leaves no room for doubt that such an interpretation may be partial; it is history itself that is intended to speak. The word ‘history’ is excluded from the text, but is hinted at by the use of the word ‘task’ which is a part of the classical Marxist topos of ‘history setting tasks upon us’. And the use of topoi (the use of any topos, to be exact) always draws upon what a certain society, social group, culture or sub-culture, already knows and recognizes as ‘true’. Taking certain topoi as reference points thus exerts the ideological effect of recognition (Althusser, 2001: 117) on the reader. The reader is asked to recognize what is being written about not as something based on a specific ideological, political and social background, or something that aims to achieve specific ideological or political goals, but as something that is ‘evidently true’ and, furthermore, as something that conditions any possible political response to the event. At the same time and it sets a ‘general course’ for any political reflection or deliberation on the part of the reader, by limiting the options and possibilities for the understanding of the situation.

Representation of the crisis as decisive for the fate of socialism On 22 August, the statement ‘A hard blow has been inflicted on socialist and progressive forces in the world’, taken from one of Tito’s speeches in response to the occupation, was featured on the front pages of all the newspapers analysed. The statement was abbreviated and repeated numerous times in other articles.12 Soon after its first appearance, the statement was no longer credited to Tito. The metaphor ‘a hard blow to socialism’ became a topos, a ‘commonplace’ in the discourse of the Yugoslav press. It was the most basic and the most condensed interpretation of the event, which served as a starting point for other, more detailed and sophisticated interpretations. It was, for example, used by speakers at the extraordinary meeting of the Central Committee of the Yugoslav League of Communists (CC-YLC), which was called in response to the occupation and reported in all of the analysed newspapers on 25 August.

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The metaphor ‘hard blow’ presupposes that socialism is involved in some kind of battle with an unspecified enemy. In this battle, socialism is, according to the interpretations of Tito and other legitimate speakers, on the brink of defeat. The outcome of the crisis will be decisive for the survival and further progress of socialism. This is what sets the occupation of Czechoslovakia apart from other comparable events that were going on at the same time and which were, in the Yugoslav press, marginalized at the expense of the intensive coverage of the occupation. Vietnam, Biafra and the Palestinian territories were all, as previously mentioned, sites of military and political conflicts. However, in none of these battles was the fate and survival of socialism at stake, nor were the outcomes of more importance to the Yugoslav press and Yugoslav society as a whole. What constitutes socialism, however, was never openly defined in the Yugoslav press. The meaning of the word was not made explicit and clear; it remained implicit and hidden. Socialism was a myth in the sense given to this concept by the Slovenian theorist Rastko Mocnik (1998: 220–55). According to Mocnik, myth is ambivalent and favours no particular self-interpretation. On the contrary, myth is a source for diverging interpretations, and, even when they are antagonistic to one another, it remains the lowest common denominator of any possible interpretation. At the same time myth sets the limits and the basic structure of its own interpretations and it functions as neutral terrain that is a shared base for dialogue between different ideological perspectives. In our case such ideological dialogue was antagonistic and took the form of a struggle between two distinct and opposing perspectives, both speaking in the name of socialism. The dialogue between the two was, in the discourse of the Yugoslav press, one-sided. Texts that voiced approval of the occupation were taken out of their original context13 and used within the context provided by Yugoslav newspapers for the purpose of either direct or indirect criticism. This is evident in the previously mentioned case when Yugoslav newspapers placed text from Pravda into a context in which it appeared ironic. Two examples of direct criticism taken from speeches delivered at the meeting of CC-YLC and reported in Borba (25 August, p. 3) are: ‘What is in danger in Czechoslovakia are the positions of bureaucratism, not socialism’ and ‘The struggle for self-management is the hardest blow to bureaucratism and Stalinism.’ They both rely on the reader’s recognition of the occupation as a battle for socialism and they both maintain a tacit presupposition that socialism is the desired social order worth fighting for. The first example is a direct response to justifications of the occupation in terms of protecting socialism from its enemies. In this instance, the direction of justification is reversed and the occupation is represented not as an attack on the enemies of socialism, but as an attack on socialism itself. The second example is based on Tito’s above-mentioned topos and reveals the second actor in the exchange of blows between bureaucratic socialism and democratic, progressive socialism.

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The occupation may have dealt a hard blow to socialism, but the struggle for self-management14 and the establishment of worker’s control over the means of production (Ziherl, 1980: 13), in both Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia,15 in turn dealt a hard blow to the bureaucratic enemies of socialism. As Borba (24 August, p. 16) states, the use of force in this case only shows the kind of deep crisis that concepts of statist and bureaucratic socialism can fall into. At the same time, it shows how powerless such socialism is in the face of progressive and revolutionary movements in its own bloc. Both sides in this critical dialogue draw their legitimacy from the shared myth of socialism, and both represent their enemies as not belonging to the same ideological universe – as being non-socialist. At the same time, each side wants to exclude the other from participating in the myth of socialism by attacking and discrediting precisely its reference to the myth.16 For the Yugoslav press, the invaders used socialism as a cover for the installation of an authoritarian and bureaucratic social order,17 while for the Soviet press Czechoslovak reforms were nothing but a cover for the counter-revolutionary overthrow of socialism and the installation of capitalist social order.18 Both parties in this ideological conflict thus recognized their opponents as ‘fake socialists’ and represented themselves as true socialists. When they criticized each other their goal was to expose the falsity of the other side’s claims of being faithful to socialism. The ‘grand prize’ in this ‘match’ was awarded to whoever was capable of inaugurating its representation of socialism as the (only) true and correct one (Bourdieu, 1997: 175–80). What was really happening is thus a battle between two ‘regimes of truth’ (Foucault, 1980: 109–34) or two ‘programs of truth’ (Veyne, 1988: 85–7), i.e. two sets of discursive mechanisms aimed at the regulation, organization and distribution of a certain knowledge, and at presenting this knowledge as truth.19 The metaphor of ‘hard blow’ can be contrasted to an opposite metaphor, used to construct the opposite topos expressed in Pravda’s claim that ‘the action of five countries is proof of great concern for the protection of socialism’ (Borba, 22 August, p. 5). The two statements, ‘hard blow’ (to socialism) versus ‘great concern’ (for socialism), are the two basic positions in the ideological struggle over the ‘correct and true’ representation of the occupation of Czechoslovakia. When Yugoslav newspapers portray the invaders as ‘violent’ (Slobodna Dalmacija, 26 August, p. 3 and 22 August, p. 2) and ‘brutal’ (SD, 24 August, p. 3), as ‘aggressors’ (SD, 24 August, p. 1) and ‘a threat to peace’ (SD, 22 August, p. 4), they are bringing into play yet another common Marxist topos: ‘The future of humanity will be either socialism or barbarism’ (Luxemburg, 2004: 350). This topos suggests that socialism and barbarism are mutually exclusive. One has to choose between the two, the first of which is represented as positive or desired, while the second is offered with the use of pejorative attributes (Wodak et al., 1999: 42) and derogatory adjectives such as ‘Stalinist’, ‘violent’ and ‘bureaucratic’. Whatever the choice, by choosing

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one element one necessarily loses the other. In this case, the alternative is between democratic and progressive socialism on the one hand and a bureaucratic and Stalinist variant on the other. Furthermore, there can only be one winner. The topos could thus be (re)formulated as ‘the future of socialism will be either democracy/progress or bureaucratism/Stalinism’.20 But the advocates of each of the two elements also claim that the choice of the opposing element (the element they do not stand for) will destroy socialism itself, while the right choice is the only way to preserve it. So the formula has to be modified slightly from the standard Marxist topos, which is used in the discourse of the Yugoslav press as a hinted reference, but cannot be used to explain the alternative in question in full. If we take into account the threatened destruction of socialism, we can split the formula into two parts and add socialism as one of the choices in both parts. From the Yugoslav perspective, the alternative now reads ‘either socialism or bureaucratism’, while from the Soviet perspective it reads ‘either socialism or freedom and democracy’.21 The second element in both formulas is true socialism as defined by one side in the ideological struggle, and false socialism according to the other. If we join both formulas again, we get ‘either (true/false) socialism or (false/true) socialism’, where the qualifier ‘true’ or ‘false’ is set according to the ideological perspective from which the alternative is being stated, and changes if we shift this perspective. The alternative could be described and represented as a Lacanian one. Lacan (1994: 209–13) defined vel as an alternative where one choice allows one to achieve the desired thing, while the other is impossible and leaves the chooser with nothing. Lacan’s illustration is a robber telling the victim at gunpoint: ‘Your money or your life!’ It is a forced choice because the victim has no choice but to accept the alternative and cannot refuse to choose due to the gun being pointed at him. If he chooses his life he gets it, but loses his money; if he chooses his money, the robber will shoot him and rob him anyway, so he loses both. Our case with socialism is similar in that only one choice allows one to achieve the desired element, while the other choice means losing both. From the Soviet perspective, if Czechoslovakia chooses freedom and democracy (false socialism) it loses true socialism (the Stalinist order Czechoslovakia maintained before the Prague Spring) as well as free and democratic socialism as a result of the takeover of counter-revolutionary elements that will transform Czechoslovakia into a capitalist country under the disguise of democratization. Ideological justification for the occupation in the discourse of the Soviet press plays on the following vel alternative: Czechoslovakia was faced with counter-revolutionary activities; it was left to decide on its own and it made the wrong choice. Military action does not harm freedom and democracy since there is no actual freedom and democracy – only lies and deceptions that provide cover for counter-revolutionary activities. From this perspective, military action does

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indeed express ‘great concern’ for socialism since the misguided choices that were made by Czechoslovakia threaten, according to the logic of the vel alternative, the very existence of socialism. From the Yugoslav perspective, on the contrary, Czechoslovakia made the right choice within the vel. It chose true socialism and in doing so, the ‘democratic and progressive path’. It discarded the wrong choice, and thus saved socialism from its potential demise, which would occur if Czechoslovakia had chosen to remain Stalinist. Therefore the occupation cannot be justified. What’s more, the occupation is an attempt to force Czechoslovakia into making a mistaken choice and to undermine the progress of socialism worldwide. Therefore, in such an instance the occupation must be harshly criticized and the withdrawal of the Warsaw Pact’s military troops must be demanded.

Conclusion In this chapter several different theoretical approaches have been employed, exploring the use of intertextuality, discussing the ideological properties of certain statements and analysing the basic topoi within the discourse of the Yugoslav press in order to shed some light on what could be called a struggle between two distinct ideological perspectives. The ‘raw material’ of this research were journalistic texts that were used as one of the sites of the ‘material existence of ideology’ (Althusser, 2001: 112–15). The intrusion of history into the myth of socialism, which in peaceful times was able to accommodate a multitude of ideological perspectives, threatened to destroy the myth itself. In a period when the official discourses of Communist Parties in socialist countries had already begun to subscribe to the cynical jargon of ‘realpolitik’, and when their plan-based economy was already beyond redemption, the Prague Spring was the last stand of a genuine belief in socialism, and an attempt to preserve its emancipatory and egalitarian political and social potential. Sincere belief in socialism and the resistance of the people of Czechoslovakia once again, and possibly for the last time, detonated the utopian dimension of socialist ideology and politics. The effect of this detonation was that the myth of socialism was split in two. On the one hand, there was a cynical use of revolutionary discourse to justify prosaic geopolitical goals, while on the other, the ideals and values of freedom, emancipation and equality were awakened. For a brief moment in history – to use a famous slogan from the contemporary bearers of the utopian legacy – ‘another world was possible’. The discourse of the Yugoslav press reflected precisely this belief in the possibility of another world – it was neither an attempt to describe the historical situation accurately and objectively (as would be expected from liberal journalism, characteristic of the Western European Public Sphere) nor to force it into the yoke of eternal laws of dialectical materialism (as was done in the Soviet press, where the situation was interpreted as an episode in

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an eternal struggle between forces of revolution and counter-revolution, not allowing any possibility for something new to emerge). Mass resistance to the occupation and the discourses it produced – on the streets of both Prague and Belgrade and through pirate radio stations, protest statements and newspaper articles – had to find a new way of narrating and articulating a new historical situation. It was precisely this historical invention (new forms of mass political resistance against repression together with new discourses of socialist humanism) that temporarily opened up a new public space in between the public spheres of Western and Eastern Europe – a space that is too easily forgotten today, when new divisions (between the EU and non-EU, the developed West and underdeveloped East of Europe) are taking the place of the old ones, and when a new historical invention, capable of breaching that barrier, is yet to take place.

Notes 1. The Soviet Union, East Germany, Poland, Bulgaria and Hungary. 2. There were 1,361 periodical publications in Yugoslavia in 1956 (data for 1968 were not available). Of those, 599 were printed in Serbia, 374 in Croatia and 194 in Slovenia. Only 194 publications were printed in the other three federal republics altogether (Žagar and Pinter, 2005a (Serbia)) 3. On the day before the occupation began the average space dedicated to foreign affairs in the Yugoslav press was 18 per cent. Between 21 and 27 August the average was 28 per cent, an increase of 10 per cent (Žagar et al., 2006b). 4. Even in the case of the two exceptions, the space dedicated to foreign affairs was increased, although not enough to become the largest section in the newspaper. 5. In the third popular newspaper, Slobodna Dalmacija, foreign affairs became the largest section after 21 August, just like all quality newspapers. 6. The Yugoslav press quoted or even reprinted many articles from Soviet newspapers and some from East German, Hungarian, Bulgarian and Polish newspapers. Various justifications for the occupation from the newspapers of the invading countries were given a lot of attention. 7. Two further examples of such a discursive strategy are two headlines from Slobodna Dalmacija (25 August, p. 6): ‘ “Troublesome” stance of Romanian officials’ (where the article comments on the Hungarian press representation of Romanian criticism of the occupation) and ‘Counter-revolutionary outbursts’ (where the article deals with the East German press representation of the popular resistance in Czechoslovakia). On the same page of Slobodna Dalmacija there is a title that reads ‘Malicious misrepresentation of facts’ (without any quotation marks), where the article in questions summarizes free Radio Prague’s response to Pravda’s representation of the occupation. 8. The strategy employed here is similar to that employed by historians in ancient Greece, who did not quote their sources when they believed that what they were saying was true and only quoted sources as a means of polemical engagement with descriptions and theories they deemed false (Veyne, 1988: 5–7). 9. In an article from Slobodna Dalmacija (25 August, p. 6), the word ‘pravda’ (Russian for ‘truth’) is itself a target of very direct and explicit ironization. The title of the

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10. 11.

12.

13. 14.

15. 16.

17.

18.

19.

article is ‘ “Pravda” versus the truth’, implying that the name of the newspaper does not correspond to its content. This belonging can take many different forms, with different social roles, and with different degrees of intensity. The effect that such claims may have had on the reader was further amplified with the use of the signifier ‘history’ – a particularly strong term in the ideological horizon of socialism, of which Marxism was an integral part – such as the one in the following example: ‘. . . the whole world has found itself on the turning point of history’ (Vjesnik, 25 August, p. 8). In abbreviated form this statement appears as: ‘a blow to the international workers’ movement’ (Vjesnik, 23 August, p. 5); ‘a hard blow to causes of the struggle of the workers’; and ‘anti-imperialists’ movements of the world’ (Vjesnik, 26 August, p. 6). In this context, Pravda or other newspapers from the invading countries. Self-management was the name for a specific economic policy employed in Yugoslavia that was in many respects different to the ‘classical’ plan-based economy of other socialist countries. The ‘Action Programme’ involved the reform of the Czechoslovak economy based on the Yugoslav model (Baskovic, 1982: 106–14). ‘The occupation is in direct opposition to the essence and causes of socialism’ (Vjesnik, 26 August, p. 2). ‘The governments of the five countries . . . want to strangle the democratic and humane progress of socialism in Czechoslovakia and any other country’ (Slobodna Dalmacija, 26 August, p. 4). ‘The progress of socialism is being confronted with the forces of bureaucratic statism that hinder the liberation of work and human personality’ (Borba, 27 August, p. 2). ‘. . . such procedures are deeply antisocialist’ (Slobodna Dalmacija, 23 August, p. 3). ‘It is obvious that the claim regarding the endangered socialist order in Czechoslovakia rests on very shaky ground. We need to ask ourselves a very logical question about whether the leaders of the five countries, themselves . . . believe in that claim’ (Vjesnik, 22 August, p. 2). In this citation, even the invaders’ belief in their own justifications for the invasion is questioned, which is an accusation of twofacedness and hypocrisy, based on the large discrepancy between ‘factual truth’ and the claims of the invaders. In an article in Vjesnik (25 August, p. 6) the official Soviet stance on the situation in Czechoslovakia prior to the occupation is summarized as: ‘socialism is being threatened by the activities of imperialists and internal counter-revolutionary forces’. A longer quote from Delo (21 August, second special edition, p. 1) is a good example of such a struggle between two regimes of truth: ‘The phrase that is being used by the attackers – “fear for socialism in CSSR” – contains a lot of truth, but this truth is different from the one they represent. The truth is that they have been worried about the internal development of CSSR since January of this year, when the Czechoslovakian party had, with full public support, taken the path of building a more efficient, more humane, and more democratic kind of socialism. Fear of “infection” by the CSSR is the main cause of this intervention, since those that are usurping a monopoly over socialism cannot and will not allow the possibility of socialism showing a different, better face from the one they are putting on.’ In this example, an explicit claim to truth is being made in opposition to the truth of the other perspective, denounced as false. Interestingly, in an article from Slobodna Dalmacija (24 August, p. 5), the justifications for the occupation by the

Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates 173 Soviet press and political leadership are described as ‘ideological’ (as opposed to factual). 20. Such a position is present in a quote from Tito’s speech at the assembly of the Central Committee of the Yugoslav League of Communists in Vjesnik (24 August, p. 3): ‘the desire of Czechoslovakians to democratize their social system and set upon a new path . . . is, at the same time, a negation of a system that clings to the old positions and which uses the old methods.’ The same position is articulated from another perspective in the title of an article which brings the summaries of all the speeches from the assembly together: ‘The goal of military intervention is to prevent social progress in socialist countries.’ The first statement explains the ‘necessity’ of sublation (aufhebung) of the old model of socialism by the new, while the second describes the ‘necessity’ of the violent reaction of the old model. 21. An additional study of the Soviet press would be needed to thoroughly explain the status and functioning of the signifiers ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ in the ideological perspective of those justifying the occupation of Czechoslovakia. But, from what we can gather from our secondary sources (quotes from the Soviet press, translations and reprints of Pravda’s articles in the Yugoslav press), freedom and democracy do not represent something positive, something of value. In the Western and also the Yugoslav press, freedom and democracy function as both values and descriptions of then current socio-political orders. In the Soviet press, however, freedom and democracy have no ‘positive substance’ and are represented as some kind of ‘smoke screen’ set up by Western governments to cover up counter-revolution in Czechoslovakia. Thus the Soviet press and the press of other countries participating in the occupation do not criticize freedom and democracy as such (as a set of rights and liberties, people’s participation in political process etc.) but their use (or to be more precise, their misuse and abuse) in concrete historical circumstances.

8 The Discursive Construction of Europe and Values in the Coverage of the Polish 1981 ‘State of War’ in the European Press Michał Krzyzanowski ˙

This chapter presents an in-depth analysis of the press coverage of the ‘State of War’ (henceforth ‘SW’)1 imposed in Poland by its Communist authorities on 13 December 1981. Through the following analysis, an examination of a corpus of Polish and Western European ‘media reactions’ to the Polish 1981 crisis is provided in order to show the qualitative features of the media coverage. The analysis covers Poland on the one hand and Austria, West Germany, Switzerland and the UK on the other. The analysis follows the so-called ‘one-week rule’, encompassing the press coverage of the ‘Polish crisis’ during the week starting from the date of the imposition of the SW (13/14–20 December). While at the macro level the analysis depicts a vast array of topics and arguments deployed in the country-specific reporting of the ‘Polish 1981 crisis’, its particular aim is to show how, on the one hand, the ‘European dimension’ was added to the media coverage of the Polish SW, and, on the other, how media-based debates on different sets of ‘values’ were initiated ‘on the back of’ the reporting on Polish 1981 occurrences. Accordingly, the key aims of the analysis are first to highlight the varied scope of the ‘European’ and the ‘value-oriented’ dimensions of discourse of the press reporting of the Polish crisis in 1981, and second to draw a comparison between the key qualitative features of those discourse dimensions in the Polish (regimeobedient) and in the ‘foreign’ (namely Western European) press. By analysing diverse discursive dimensions of the ‘foreign perceptions’ of the SW crisis reported in the Polish regime-obedient press, an attempt is made to show how the specifically ‘Polish problem’ became internationalized in the media discourse to seek international legitimacy for the violent actions undertaken by Poland’s Communist regime. Here, particular emphasis will be placed on showing how ‘Europe’ was added as a significant element of internationalization of the Polish crisis to emphasize the correctness and 174

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inevitability of the imposition of the SW. On the other hand, in the ‘European’ corpus encompassing press reporting of the SW in several Western European states, the analysis shows how arguments related to ‘Europe’ and to the expression/defence of different ‘values’ were accommodated and possibly linked in the foreign coverage of the Polish SW.

The socio-historical context The imposition of the SW in Poland was a direct response of the Polish Communist authorities to the growing power and social support for the ‘free’ (i.e. regime-disobedient) social movements led by the Solidarity2 trade union and its associate organizations.3 The SW aimed at bringing a rapid and radical crush to the growing powers of Solidarity that was increasingly feared within the circles of both Polish as well as Soviet authorities – all of whom were worried that the ‘Polish Revolution’ (Garton-Ash, 1985, 1999) would soon spread to other Eastern European Communist states. The SW was imposed in Poland at midnight on Sunday, 13 December 1981, through a Constitutional Decree issued by the Polish Council of State. According to the decree, power in the country was to be taken over by the Military Council of National Salvation (WRON) headed by General Wojciech Jaruzelski, who was the Polish prime minister at the time as well as defence minister and the first secretary of the Polish Communist Party (PZPR). While officially, according to the decree, the SW was introduced ‘to secure the basic interests of the state and of the citizens’ and ‘to create the conditions for effective protection of sovereignty and independence of the People’s Republic of Poland’,4 its obvious aim was to crush the Polish independent trade unions and many associated movements whose leaders were subsequently arrested and incarcerated for an unspecified period of time. The imposition of the SW marked the beginning of military rule in Poland which lasted for more than a year, that is until the SW was suspended on 31 December 1982 and officially ended with the dissolution of the WRON on 22 July 1983 (see also Sanford, 1986). Throughout its duration, the SW ‘permitted the authorities to impose a night-time curfew, to curtail all transport and travel, to record all telephone conversations, [and] to ban all social gatherings’ (Davies, 1984: 24). The SW also aimed at handing over all power and control to WRON and the military forces obedient to its rule, while it subsequently delegalized all organizations that were ‘unfaithful’ to the regime. As a result, ‘thousands of innocent citizens were arrested without charge’ (ibid.), while ‘some 10,000 were detained in forty-nine internment camps’ (ibid.) created by the military in the first few days following 13 December. Furthermore, ‘all official institutions, from the ministries to the railway stations or public libraries, were subject to the orders of a military commissar and were purged of unreliable elements’ (ibid.), while, by the same token, all of ‘the principal industrial enterprises were militarised’(ibid.) as well.

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In the first and the most radical period of the SW (around the new year 1981/2), several strikes and demonstrations were organized to oppose the newly imposed military rule, mostly in Warsaw but also on the Baltic coast and in the Silesia region. All of the strikes and protests were radically crushed by the military; several of them ended in bloodshed and casualties, such as during the widely reported ‘pacification’ of the Wujek coal mine in Katowice on 16 December (where nine miners were killed and twenty-one severely injured), and the protests in Gdansk on 17 December where two protesters were killed. While ‘by the end of [1981], the armed forces were incontestably in control of the country’ (Davies, 1984: 23), some strikes and protests occasionally persisted into 1982 but they were very quickly overwhelmed by ‘the logistics of oppression, treachery and misinformation’ of the military rule (ibid.: 25).

Description of the corpus material The structural aspects of the analysed empirical material are described below. Due to limitations of space, the key themes (topics) of the discourse about the Polish 1981 crisis are only summarized in Table 8.2 (see Krzyzanowski, ˙ 2006, for further details).

The Polish corpus Allowing for the fact that most of the published and broadcast media were halted during the first period of the SW in December 1981 (only selected newspapers were published), the analysed Polish corpus is limited to the only two nationwide daily newspapers available at that time. The two newspapers were Trybuna Ludu (TL), the main propaganda outlet of the Polish ˙ Communist Party (PZPR), and Zołnierz Wolno´sci (ZW), the main newspaper of the Polish military. Both newspapers were widely known as the two key press propaganda tools of the Polish Communist regime: the TL, founded in late 1940s, was targeted at the wider public, while the ZW, founded in 1950, was the key periodical of the Polish military and army veterans. In the period of investigation (14–20 December 1981), both of the analysed newspapers reported almost solely on the issues pertaining to the SW (by publishing official documents including decrees, government directives, speeches of party leaders and so on) and focused only intermittently on other domestic and international issues. The analysis was undertaken on a selected strand of the reporting – on the articles which presented ‘foreign’ and ‘international’ reactions to the Polish SW events. Those articles (see Table 8.1) were usually titled ‘Foreign echoes of Polish events’ and presented different international reactions (of both Communist and other countries, including non-European ones) to the violent occurrences in Poland.

Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates 177 Table 8.1 Press reporting of the Polish State of War, 1981: analysed countries, newspapers and articles Total Country

Poland

Austria

Newspapers Articles Articles/ country

TL 9 15

WZ 10 106

ZW 6

NZZ 38

KR 29

W. Germany

Switzerland

UK

SZ 36 131

NZZ 38 38

GU-OBS 65 181

FAZ 95

5 TEL 96

MR 20

11 471 471

The (Western) ‘European’ corpus The analysis of the ‘European’ corpus from Austria, West Germany, Switzerland and the UK entailed identifying all reports and commentaries pertaining thematically to Poland and the SW in the period of investigation. Allowing for the different publishing patterns, the analysis spanned 13/14 to 19/20 December 1981. Within the Austrian corpus, two quality daily newspapers and one tabloid newspaper were analysed: Wiener Zeitung (WZ), the main Austrian ‘liberal’ national newspaper published at the time; Die Presse (PR), a traditionally conservative Austrian daily; and the tabloid Neue Kronen Zeitung (KR). The reporting of the Polish SW in Austria was fairly broad and resulted in more than 100 articles identified in the period of investigation (see Table 8.1): PR led the way with 67 articles in total, followed by the tabloid KR (29 articles) and the liberal WZ (10 articles). As, unlike in Austria, the West German newspaper landscape did not contain any national tabloid newspaper interested in political and/or international issues in the period of investigation, the examination of German newspapers was limited to two quality dailies: the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) and the liberal Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ). It is worth noting that the German reporting on the SW was extensive (see Table 8.1). Specifically, the large corpus of the conservative FAZ (95 articles in total, on average 14 reports per day and always one or two sizeable commentaries on the Polish situation) was particularly impressive. The FAZ corpus constituted almost 75 per cent of the entire German corpus. Since the examined Swiss corpus was limited to the exploration of the German-language dailies, only the conservative Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) was analysed.5 The NZZ produced a rather modest corpus of 38 articles (see Table 8.1). The NZZ corpus was the smallest from all of the quality conservative newspapers under investigation and amounted only to around one-third of the largest ‘conservative’ corpus (on the British TEL, see below). The NZZ focused almost exclusively on reporting ‘Polish’ and related events/issues without actually commenting on them (only one large commentary was

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produced throughout the entire period of investigation encompassing five editions). Finally, the British reaction to the 1981 Polish crisis was investigated by examining two quality newspapers and one tabloid. Within the former category, liberal daily The Guardian (GU ) was analysed (together with its Sunday edition of The Observer (OBS)) as well as the conservative The Telegraph (TEL) with its Sunday edition (The Sunday Telegraph). Nationwide British tabloid The Daily Mirror (MR) was examined together with its Sunday edition The Sunday Mirror. With 181 articles in total, the British corpus was the largest of all analysed national corpora (see Table 8.1). The large number of articles in the British press, reinforced by the fact that the examined newspapers were issued throughout all seven days of the period of investigation, was primarily fuelled by the very sizeable reporting identified in the conservative TEL (96 articles, the largest corpus of all examined ‘single’ newspapers and of all conservative dailies). The number of articles in GU/OBS was also significant (65 articles in total, the largest ‘quality liberal’ corpus), while MR also yielded a sizeable corpus of articles (20 in total). In the period of investigation, GU/OBS yielded 10 commentaries in total, a number matched only by the 11 commentaries placed in the same period in the German FAZ. It must, however, be noted that the degree of commenting on Polish issues in GU/OBS was very significant given the UK’s geographical distance from Poland and the fact that, unlike in Germany or in Austria (compare, for example, the commenting in FAZ and KR), Poland has usually played a rather marginal role in British politics and the British press.

Analysis6 The Polish coverage It should be noted that the analysed TL and ZW discourse about the ‘foreign echoes’ of Polish events at the time of the SW is characteristically directed at portraying the Polish crisis in international and/or European dimensions. Thus, it seems that the intentional reintroduction of Europe as a key dimension of discourse was set up by the authors of the Polish press texts. That happened with a view to legitimizing the actions of the Polish Communist regime which wanted to present Europe (as well as the broader world ‘out there’) as clearly endangered by the threats that were eventually avoided through the imposition of the SW in Poland. In the analysed corpus of Polish articles, ‘Europe’ is introduced in one of the front-page editorials as follows: Example 1 In the East and the West there are hopes that Polish events will not additionally disturb the anyway complex international situation. The world

Table 8.2

Key topics of the press reporting of the Polish State of War, 1981

Country

Poland

Austria

W. Germany

Switzerland

UK

Key topics

(1) Reactions of foreign politicians, political parties and state officials to the Polish crisis (2) Reactions of foreign media (mainly press) to the developments in Poland

(1) Internal situation in Poland

(1) Internal situation in Poland

(1) Internal situation in Poland under SW

(2) Austrian reactions to the imposition of the SW in Poland

(1) Poland and Polish internal situation before and under the SW (2) West German reactions to the SW in Poland

(2) British reactions to the Polish crisis

(3) International reactions and significance of the Polish crisis

(3) International reactions to and implications of the Polish crisis

(2) Foreign and international reactions to the Polish crisis (3) Swiss reactions to the situation in Poland

(3) Foreign and international reactions and implications of the Polish crisis

(4) Swiss and international economic aspects of Polish events

179

10.1057/9780230271722 - The European Public Sphere and the Media, Edited by Anna Triandafyllidou, Ruth Wodak and Michał Krzyżanowski

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waits to see whether Poland will cease to be, as some suggest, ‘the sick man of Europe’. The treatment is thus necessary, also to heal the international situation. (TL, 16 December 1981, p. 1) While the statement attempts to express the ‘international’ fears that Polish events bring a large degree of disturbance to the complex and tense ‘Cold War’ situation, it argues (through the allegedly quoted statement of the unspecified ‘some’) that the imposition of the SW in Poland may be crucial in Poland’s ceasing to be ‘the sick man of Europe’.7 Additionally, still within the metaphor of sickness/treatment, it is argued that the imposition of the SW (the ‘treatment’ itself) was not only necessary ‘to heal’ the internal situation of Poland but also to improve the ‘anyway complex’ international situation. The argument on ‘healing the international situation’ (a specific form of metaphor of sickness/disease) becomes the key element of the European dimensions within the (alleged) international reactions to the Polish crisis. In the reporting of the following days, the argument is further developed and encompassed by the basic topos of the European dimension of Polish press discourse – that of stabilization. Within that topos, ‘European’ and ‘valueoriented’ dimensions of discourse (see Example 2) are linked to argue that the imposition of the SW was crucial for the ‘stabilization of Europe’ (one of the key values described in the Polish press in conjunction with the SW). A statement quoted from the report of the Hungarian press agency MTI suggests that: Example 2 Those actions [of the Polish authorities] contribute to a socialist solution of a complex situation as well as to social and national development of the country; they contribute to the fact that Poland, a requisite member state of the Warsaw Pact, could also become a stabilizing factor of Europe in the future. (TL, 16 December 1981, p. 7) Here it is suggested that only through the imposition of the SW (described as a ‘socialist solution’) can the complex situation of Poland be improved internally. It is also argued that, in the future, through the actions of the SW, Poland will be able to become a ‘stabilizing factor of Europe’. The stabilization of Europe is thus perceived as a distant goal (it is the dynamic and process-like stabilization – not a static stability – that is actually aimed at) which must be achieved through actions such as the SW that has indirectly saved Europe from the destabilization produced by Polish protests and other anti-Communist forces. The topos of stabilization of Europe also seems to be paramount in the presentation of the Polish crisis in the later stages of the analysed reporting. For example, it constitutes a vital part of a TL article of 18 December (describing the East German support for the SW) where a whole section

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is entitled and devoted to ‘the issue of the stabilization of Europe’. In the article, it is explicitly argued when reporting the views of the East-German politicians, that Example 3 The events in [Poland] directly concern the stabilization of this part of Europe. (TL, 18 December 1981, p. 6) The topos of stabilization in Europe is further supported by another topos of danger/threat 8 which is used by the authors of the texts to argue that the imposition of the SW in Poland helped to avoid several dangers and thus contributed to the stabilization of Europe. Among the dangers that threaten stabilization, i.e. within specific sets of anti-values eradicated through the SW-based actions, are ‘chaos’ and ‘anarchy’: Example 4 Through calming down chaos and anarchy [the actions of Polish authorities] can immensely contribute to stabilizing the situation not only in Poland but also in Europe. (TL, 19–20 December 1981, p. 3) In this quoted statement, it is argued that the positive value of ‘stabilization’ has been defended (in Poland and in Europe) through the imposition of the SW. It is also suggested that the ‘negative’ aspects of ‘chaos and anarchy’ (i.e. values implicitly ascribed to the Polish ‘Solidarity’ protest) have been avoided. Also, it is suggested in a later part of the article that the specifically Polish defence of ‘stabilization’ contributed to avoiding ‘catastrophe’ and ‘outbreak’ (very strong metaphors), though it is never clarified ‘what’ was supposed to ‘break out’ and which ‘catastrophe’ was in fact ‘avoided’. However, when describing reactions to the Polish SW actions, it is implied that: Example 5 All traditionally Poland-friendly and realist forces in Europe and the world attempt to understand the exceptional conditions of our country in December of this year. (TL, 19–20 December 1981, p. 3) Thus, the existence of a certain ‘Europe-wide’ coalition of those who endorse Polish actions is implied, while it is also – albeit implicitly – argued that all those who are predicated as ‘realist’ in Europe must have seen the danger which was eventually avoided when the SW was imposed. The topos of stabilization in Europe is frequently tied to nominal explications of other values which, along with the claimed stabilization, have been saved or achieved through the imposition of the SW in Poland. As argued in

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a statement from the Yugoslavian press agency Tanjug, the introduction of the SW has brought about: Example 6 Normalization of life and the further democratic and socialist development of the Polish society. That is also in the interest of stabilization, security, relief and peace in Europe and the world. (TL, 17 December 1981, p. 7) In this statement, the stabilization (again of Europe and the world) is accompanied by its other semi-synonymous values, such as ‘security’, ‘relief’ and ‘peace’ which have clearly been defended through the radical actions of the Polish Communist authorities. The last of those values, peace, constitutes a very crucial element of the European and international dimension of discourse and gradually, while still being linked with other previously described topoi, becomes a basis for the introduction of the topos of peace. That topos serves in constructing arguments that present Polish actions as those which saved Europe’s (as well as the world’s) peace, one of the basic values of Communist ideology, by helping to eradicate the previously described dangers. In a commentary on an article published in the Hungarian daily Népszabadság: Example 7 It has been assessed that the radical action [MK: of the SW] is indispensable for the return of the Polish People’s Republic9 onto the road of socialist development; the latter is in the basic interest of Polish labour as well as in the interest of all forces who cherish peace in Europe and the world. (TL, 17 December 1981, p. 7) Here again certain unspecified ‘forces’ are talked about, while a specific ellipsis is also constructed by the author: The ‘road of socialist development’ (a specific path metaphor) is defended in the Polish internal dimension and juxtaposed with the ‘peace’ achieved in the pan-European (in ‘Europe’) as well as in the global dimensions (in ‘the world’). The Western European coverage Austria While neglecting the ‘European dimension’ of discourse, the Austrian press clearly focused on debating Polish events in terms of different values. The main value favoured by the Austrian public sphere in relation to Poland is that of solidarity (expressed by the then-popular slogan of ‘solidarity with Solidarity’) whose prominent place in the discourse helps in constructing the arguments on the basis of a corresponding topos of solidarity. Within that

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topos, arguments for a better understanding (or compassion) for the Polish troubled situation are suggested, as are different ways of showing solidarity – for example through humanitarian aid to Poland or to Polish refugees arriving in Austria. The topos is also used strongly to criticize those reactions which are not characterized by such ‘solidarity’. As suggested in the liberal WZ: Example 8 The chauvinism is dominating and the humane approach is non-existent. He who has more information also has more heart for the Poles. (WZ, 16 December 1981, p. 3) The refugee-alienating reactions of the Austrian state and society are thus criticized within the topos of solidarity. The value of humanity is also clearly favoured (the ‘humane approach’) as likely to be fostered through a better information policy which would cause the Austrians to have ‘more heart for the Poles’ (a metaphorical substitute for ‘compassion for Poles’). The latter could take place through, inter alia, informing the Austrian public that Polish refugees are not in fact ‘economic refugees’ who are traditional scapegoats in the Austrian media.10 It is exactly the problem of Polish refugees which constitutes the basic element of the further realizations of the topos of solidarity: the change of attitudes towards Poland and Polish refugees is supposed to become the key expression of such solidarity of Austrians. As argued in one PR commentary: Example 9 The attitudes towards Polish refugees have changed and [Austrian] society has clearly showed a change in its way of thinking. Those who only recently were still disqualified as economic refugees, that is, such people who went abroad to make their stomachs full at others’ expense, are now seen through different eyes. (PR, 19–20 December 1981, p. 1) Thus it is argued that, while the Austrian-wide perception of refugees as ‘economic parasites’ (as those who ‘make their stomachs full at others’ expense’)11 may not have fully vanished, the expression of Austrians’ solidarity towards Poles is now clearly visible through their change of attitudes towards Polish refugees coming to Austria. The change of Austrian perceptions of Poles is also visible at the ‘official’ level, as one can read from a quote from a statement of the Austrian chancellor Bruno Kreisky: Example 10 We will let in all of those who are coming at our border from countries which are not free. (WZ, 19 December 1981, p. 3)

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While the change in attitudes towards Polish refugees is perceived as one of the key expressions of solidarity with Poles and Poland, another aspect of the Austrian reporting also highlights different ways in which such solidarity can be expressed. The topos of help in the Austrian press discourse is a recurring theme; helping Poland (for example through humanitarian aid and other means) would be a primary expression of humanity and solidarity (as the key values): Example 11 It remains to be hoped that the sympathy of the public for the Polish tragedy, which was announced almost worldwide and throughout Europe, can soon be channelled in the widespread humanitarian actions. The aidtransports are necessary here as much as the multi-meaningful impact of the influential actors on the restoration of basic rights and the release of the interned. (PR, 15 December 1981, p. 1) Within the topos of help, the Austrian reporting pleads for a variety of actions and argues that they should not only be limited to organizing humanitarian transports for Poles (as a result of pleas to the broad public) but should also include help from the ‘influential actors’ who should increase pressure (a ‘multi-meaningful impact’) for the restoration of ‘basic’ (human) rights in Poland. While those who help and are willing to do so are overtly praised in the Austrian reporting as those who defend the values of solidarity and the restoration of basic human rights in Poland, the topos of help is also used to criticize those who are reluctant to help Poland in need. The United States, whose reactions to the Polish crisis were very moderate and restrained, is one of the key actors criticized by the Austrian press: Example 12 The [US] is not ready to help the People’s Republic of Poland emerge from its economic problems and to continue supplies of food aid, while the State of War is still in force and Solidarity is still repressed. (WZ, 18 December 1981, p. 1) A clearly critical tone can be found in the descriptions of the US actions and its temporary halt to its Poland-oriented aid. Further in the text, the topos of history is also used (tied to the topos of help) when it is suggested that the US is not willing to help Poland as it once – even if only symbolically – helped Hungary in 1956. The ambivalent realism and restraint of the US are perceived as inappropriate considering the extent of the Polish tragedy (see Example 15) which is witnessed clearly by those who are nearer to Poland (e.g. Austria) than those ‘from afar’ (that is the US). That argument is also

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expressed elsewhere when it is argued, again through the use of the topos of history, that: Example 13 The Austrians, who lived through the Hungarian tragedy and who still remember the [Soviet] invasion of the CSSR and the crying people on the streets of Prague, know from their instinct that the developments in Poland directly influence their own fate. (PR, 14 December 1981, p. 1) In this example, Polish SW events are historically contextualized in the series of anti-Communist protests such as those in Budapest in 1956 and in Prague in 1968. That contextualization is used to show the primordial (instinctbased) solidarity of Austrians with other suffering nations in their vicinity. The argument also adds the European dimension to the solidarity-based links by (explicitly) pointing to the common ‘instincts’ of those in Mitteleuropa. A similar argument is expressed in a strictly Europe-oriented commentary in the tabloid KR: Example 14 As long as there is a widespread conviction that what happened in Poland is an internal and/or a patriotic issue that does not result from the Soviet strategy, so long will be valid the lie of the Soviet love of peace which is also endorsed by many politicians and peace-activists in Europe. (KR, 19 December 1981, p. 6) West Germany While definitely not as strong or as ‘biologically founded’ as in the Austrian conception of Mitteleuropa, the topos of solidarity remains basic in the West German reporting of the Polish SW. However, unlike in Austria, solidarity is perceived as a core element of international (mainly European) reactions to the SW and therefore it is also argued that German reactions of a similar kind should follow suit. Example 15 In the majority of Western cities, thousands of people protested against the imposition of the state of war in Poland. Announcements [of such protests] have come from Rome, Berlin, Paris, Vienna, Madrid, Copenhagen, and even from Reykjavik. (SZ, 16 December 1981, p. 2) Apart from the demonstrations and other expressions of solidarity, the latter is also sought through the humanitarian aid for Poland. Within the topos of help (similar to the argument seen in the Austrian reporting above) it is argued that all strands of German society (referred to as ‘organizations’ and ‘individuals’) are called upon to ‘help’.

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The topos of solidarity is also used in the German reporting to criticize the (at least initial) lack of reaction of many Western states to the imposition of the SW in Poland. Here, the European dimension of discourse is clearly added to show (similarly to Austria, see above) that Europe is not helping Poland and that, unlike in previous situations, only ‘silence’ accompanies the Polish events: Example 16 When one and a half centuries ago Poland stood against its Russian repressors, a trail of sympathy for those uprising spread through Europe. In these days, as the army represses its nation upon Soviet orders, nothing happens in Western Europe . . . When thousands are incarcerated, Europe is only watching in silence . . . Poland will soon find itself forever within the Soviet order: one part of Europe is hanging on to its lifelong lie that this is a ‘normalization’ in Europe. (FAZ, 18 December 1981, p. 1) In this commentary, one can see that the topos of history is used to make a larger criticism of the lack of Western European reaction. Instead of acting against the repression in Poland in an active and vivid way, Western Europe is endorsing the Soviet ‘lie’ of ‘normalization’ – a term first used in Soviet propaganda to legitimize its invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and later widely used by the Polish authorities upon the introduction of the SW. Thus, instead of challenging the ‘repression’ and thus showing solidarity with Poland, Western Europe is choosing to implicitly endorse a comfortable mirage (a ‘lifelong lie’) of peace and stability, as is expressed, for example, in the ‘objective’ reactions to the Polish problems which work for Soviet (and not Polish) good. Unlike other countries which have apparently adjusted to the Soviet lies of ‘normalization’, West Germany clearly and officially condemns the repression in Poland in the ‘Resolution of the German Bundestag on the Situation in Poland’ (reprinted in full in the SZ).12 The resolution claims that: Example 17 Pt. 3: The Polish reform and renewal movement active since 1980 for human dignity, labour rights and national sovereignty13 is currently repressed. The situation since 13 December 1981, of a violently broken dialogue with Polish patriots, in breach of the international guarantees of human rights endorsed by the Helsinki declaration, should be restored and cannot be allowed to fail. (SZ, 19–20 December 1981, p. 2) In this example, the repression is overtly criticized and described as a ‘violent break’ in the ‘dialogue’ with Poland. The repression is also perceived in wider terms as the act of suppressing key values such as those of ‘human’ and ‘labour rights’, while it is implied that international treaties regulating those rights (e.g. the Helsinki declaration) have also been violated through actions against ‘Solidarity’, a trade union defending such rights.

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Apart from condemning the repression of the freedom movement in Poland and using the topos of rights, the resolution of the German Bundestag also calls for other expressions of solidarity: Example 18 Pt. 6: The German Bundestag appeals to all citizens of our country, to the trade unions and political parties, to the churches, to the charity and humanitarian organizations and to the youth, to communicate all types of moral solidarity and to provide material help to the Polish people who are currently in need and suffering from hunger and cold: [Polish] neighbouring society needs and deserves that help urgently. (SZ, 19–20 December 1981, p. 2) Within the acts of solidarity overtly referred to, crucial ‘moral’ and ‘material’ support is demanded. By the same token (just as in the Austrian topos of solidarity), it is suggested that Polish society is particularly close to that of West Germany. Despite the fact that Poland did not actually border with West Germany, the former is predicated as West Germany’s ‘neighbouring society’. While the expression of solidarity and condemnation of suppression in Poland was emphasized as the key element of the German reaction to Polish events (through the Bundestag Resolution), it must be noted that reactions of ‘others’ are further embedded within the topos of rights described above. For example, the reaction of the French president described elsewhere is embedded in the topos of rights through the reference to ‘the loss of freedom’ which was allegedly caused by the imposition of the SW in Poland. Lionel Jospin, the leader of the French socialists, is quoted as claiming that Example 19 The democratic renewal cannot be taken into consideration in Poland anymore. (SZ, 19–20 December, p. 2) Thus, from the French perspective, the SW is also perceived as a violation of democracy and, accordingly, the nature of the Polish regime’s actions appears to be inherently undemocratic. Finally, the topos of rights is also deployed to describe the situation in Poland as violating freedom of expression and freedom of the media. As stated in a press report from Warsaw (with the subheading ‘Censorship apparatus in reconstruction’): Example 20 Foreign journalists are not allowed to leave Warsaw . . . They cannot verify any hearsay. But they can see a lot when they walk and drive through the streets of Warsaw where they ever-more frequently witness demonstrations of power by the military. The main sources of news obviously

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remain Polish radio and television as well as the only two newspapers still allowed: the central party-organ Trybuna Ludu and the army-newspaper ˙ Zołnierz Wolno´sci. (FAZ, 19 December 1981, p. 3) Switzerland Similarly to the German reporting, the discourse of the Swiss coverage of the Polish crisis in the NZZ centres on diverse realizations of the topos of rights. This topos mainly refers to the different forms of violations of rights and freedoms in Poland. As in the German reporting, but on a broader scale, the NZZ quotes from a statement of the French president to claim that: Example 21 The loss of freedom rights, whether taking place under external or internal pressure, must in any case be assessed. The freedom of speech and of the trade unions, which have been restored in Poland only recently, are questioned today through the actions of the military; several people are incarcerated or their activity is impeded in different ways. (NZZ, 18 December 1981, p. 3) Within this statement, one can observe the rather cautious tone which was characteristic of the French diplomatic reactions to the Polish crisis. Apparently, the French president does not want to assess whether the imposition of the SW took place under ‘internal’ (Polish) or ‘external’ (Soviet) pressures. However, while still retaining that diplomatic rhetoric, the French leader criticizes – albeit moderately – the Polish actions as those that work to the detriment of specifically ‘French 1968’ values.14 Among those values, apparently endangered and/or eradicated by the SW are: freedom of speech and the freedom of trade unions (referred to explicitly) as well as freedom of movement and activity (an implicit reference by referring to ‘incarcerations’ or ‘impeding people’s activity’). The development of those values goes further in the NZZ reporting when, through the newspaper’s own correspondent, the limitations imposed by the state on the three Polish main Catholic organizations are described as follows: Example 22 All three organizations cannot now undertake any political or publicist activity. Their newspapers and periodicals have been confiscated. (NZZ, 18 December 1981, p. 1) Here again the topos of rights is invoked to portray the severe restriction on freedom of expression resulting from the introduction of SW. That impediment not only encompasses limitations to the freedom of expression through the media (‘publicist activity’), but also entails limitations to freedom of political expression (‘political activity’). In the second sentence, the verb

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‘confiscated’ also refers to the coercive actions of those in power vis-à-vis the Polish Catholic intelligentsia and its freedoms. The topos of rights is also used in a description of the ‘Szczecin Appeal’ (an appeal to the world from the group of shipyard workers and Solidarity trade unionists striking in Szczecin, Poland) which is quoted in full in the NZZ. The appeal calls for: Example 23 The termination of the state of war and the release of all the incarcerated as well as restoration of . . . the rights of trade unionism and democracy which have been fought for by the nation since the 1980s. (NZZ, 18 December 1981, p. 2) In the appeal, several ‘general’ values such as democracy and freedom are referred to. In the second part of the statement, those values (by the use of an ellipsis) are particularized through specifically Polish values (‘fought for by the nation’) such as those of the freedom of trade unions (that is, the ‘rights of trade unionism’) and, again, of democracy. The value of democracy – previously accommodated within several instances of the topos of rights (see above) – is tied here to the European dimension of discourse which involves a very particular realization of the topos of solidarity (otherwise not prevalent in the Swiss corpus).15 Quite specifically for the Swiss reporting, the European dimension is added again through quoting the statements of others (and not through the NZZ’s ‘own’ reports). The perception of democracy, as well as the challenge to it as a result of the SW, in pan-European terms is unique to the Swiss case (it was not encountered in any of the previously described Western European newspaper reports and commentaries). Having quoted the statement of the leader of the Italian Communist Party, the NZZ claims that: Example 24 The example of Poland leads us to the conclusion that the renewed force of the European society has been, at least partially, exhausted. It is thus vital, in the capitalist West, to open a new phase and help the Eastern regimes to make a renewal in the direction of effective democratization of their political lives. (NZZ, 18 December 1981, p. 4) That very specific realization of the topos of solidarity sees the latter as a way for the West to help the East in its ‘democratic renewal’ of political life. While the value of democracy thus (nominally) stands out, through the use of the process-related noun of ‘democratization’, the European aspect is recalled in discourse to criticize the pan-European model of democracy in its current state (in both East and West). It is suggested that what is currently witnessed is the ‘exhaustion’ of the recently pursued democratic models: here,

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the Polish example of wrongful regime actions is quasi-generalized to subsequently criticize the ‘capitalist’ model of democracy of the ‘West’ and to portray the pan-European form of democracy as undergoing an evident crisis.

United Kingdom Focusing predominantly on reactions of different states to the occurrences in Poland, the British reporting of the SW (with the exception of the tabloid MR) perceives ‘the Polish problem’ in terms of international and East–West relations. Both historical and political contextualization of the Polish events is frequently sought in such terms, while, as a result, the European (and international) dimension of discourse clearly precedes the elaboration and/or negotiation of different values. The topos of history is used as one of the basic dimensions of arguing for/against different national and international reactions to Polish events described by the British press. It is, for example, argued in one of the commentaries of the liberal press that Example 25 It is equally important that Polish people hear yet again (thank heaven for the BBC’s external service, Radio Free Europe and the rest) that there is not the slightest chance of any form of military aid for them from NATO if they do decide to take to the streets. There must be no repetition of the misunderstandings and the romantic rumours which encouraged doomed resistance in Hungary a quarter of a century ago. (GU/OBS, 15 December 1981, p. 10) In the example, the topos of history is invoked in the recognition of the currently troubled Polish situation which must clearly learn from the international (European) and historical lessons such as those in Hungary in 1956 (see also Example 17, above). It is implied, in this expression of peculiarly British pragmatism,16 that ‘romantic rumours’ should be avoided in order to prevent the ‘repetition’ of the outbreak of real catastrophe described as ‘taking to the streets’ (metaphor). Through the historical ellipsis and cross-reference to the Hungarian past events in 1956 (taking place ‘a quarter of a century ago’), the current international reactions are legitimized. Hence, the cool stance – of the international media received in Poland (the BBC and Radio Free Europe) as well as of the international organizations (notably, NATO) – is explained and its seemingly realist and anti-romantic plausibility is emphasized.17 While the topos of history prevails in the British reporting to provide a broader spatio-temporal contextualization of the Polish SW, another topos of ‘East and West’ 18 is frequently invoked to elaborate on the current and future geopolitical implications of the Polish occurrences. It is particularly

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in the conservative press that this topos is expressed, as in the following example: Example 26 What is happening in Poland obviously poses problems for the West. It is not clear that Western governments are showing sufficient vigour in thinking them through. Non-intervention should not mean indifference. (TEL, 17 December 1981, p. 14) In this statement it is argued that pan-European and even broader dimensions (invoking the incorporation of the US into the British definition of the ‘West’) appear in the varied reactions to the Polish problem. It is claimed that Western government reactions are not showing ‘sufficient vigour’. However, as one can see from the statement, the West does not in fact know how to react to the Polish problem. A better knowledge of the West’s reaction should thus be achieved through answering the question asked in the next part of the commentary, namely ‘What does the West want in Poland?’: Example 27 In the first place, [the West] wants to see Poland’s ruined economy revived and placed on a sound footing. This will only be achieved if the utterly discredited Communist system, which has brought it to its present plight, is completely scrapped and replaced by what in effect would amount to a Western-style free-market system. (TEL, 17 December 1981, p. 14) The reactions of the West to the occurrences in Poland should be rooted in its even-stronger critique of the ‘Communist system’ (the value which clearly appears here is that of anti-Communism) which has brought the Polish economy to a state of ‘plight’ or ‘ruin’ (both metaphors). Accordingly, the West should strive, as is implied in a particularly modernization-specific rhetoric, to spread the ‘Western-style free-market system’ into Eastern Europe in general, and into Poland in particular. It is that promotion of Western models that should underlie the motivations and reactions of the ‘West’ to the current situation of the Polish crisis. However, while some pan-European and other importance is ascribed to the Polish events, the British press also frequently argues that the large-scale international-political processes should not be put on hold in the aftermath of the SW in Poland. Here, the topos of East and West is used again to emphasize the correct stance of the West and to show its goals as clearly superior to the small-scale occurrences in Poland. For example: Example 28 NATO’s concern is the defence of Western Europe, and whatever bridgebuilding exercises may be open to the Warsaw Pact in the future years,

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the internal structure of that Pact’s components is not its direct concern. It follows that, however the West chooses to respond to events in Poland and keep General Jaruzelski to his promises of renewal, there are no grounds at present for interrupting the arms control process started two weeks ago in Geneva. (GU/OBS, 18 December 1981, p. 12) Through the statement, the East–West ‘arms control process’ appears as a value which is actually cherished more than Poland’s internal problems. The latter are downgraded to the level of ‘internal structure of the components’ of the Warsaw Pact, whose internal elements (such as Poland) should not become an obstacle to the large-scale deals between East and West (such as those in ‘Geneva’ which took place ‘two weeks ago’). The indifference to the Polish crisis is rooted in a motivation not to ‘interrupt’ the geopolitical processes which lie beyond a single state’s (for example Poland’s) capacity to change and are described as those involving the ‘West’ on the one hand and ‘the Warsaw Pact’ on the other. Although different to the quality press, the tabloid MR also refers to the European dimensions of the SW events. The newspaper clearly alludes to Polish actions as standing in defence of several key European values which must be defended for the good of Europe as a whole: Example 29 Solidarity was the most exciting, the most daring movement seen in Eastern Europe since the war . . . For 16 months it challenged everything communism stood for. It wanted free elections, a free press and TV. Even freedom to decide whether to remain inside the Russian camp. . . . It is impossible to guess the end of the crisis. The Soviets don’t want to intervene if they can help it . . . But if they do, the chill that will settle over Europe will be colder than the Polish winter. (MR, 14 December 1981, p. 7) Through the very positive predications ascribed to Solidarity (‘daring’ and ‘exciting’) the image of the latter is painted as a quasi-hero in the Eastern European dimension. The ‘Solidarity’ movement, it is suggested, defended in the East all the values which are typical for the West, and, through the act of ‘challenging everything communism stood for’ struggled to introduce freedom of political expression (‘free elections’, ‘freedom to decide whether to remain inside the Russian camp’) and freedom of expression through the media (‘free press and TV’). Freedom of public opinion is also described in one of the commentaries as the main tool which helped Poles and other Eastern Europeans to ‘force changes’ in their Communist systems.

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Finally, while still partially embedded within the topos of East and West which strongly characterizes the British reporting, the topos of help (similar to that identified in the Austrian coverage, see above) is also crucial when describing varied reactions of different countries and organizations. The use of that topos has a partly strategic meaning and aims at toning down the strong political indifference to Polish events showed, for example, by the British quality press.

Summary of findings Summarizing the results of analysis, Table 8.3 provides the outline of key topoi identified in respective countries. It also shows which values were referred to within arguments embraced by the topoi. The outline of the topoi points explicitly to the fact that key differences occurred in the analysed material between the argumentation of Polish and Western European discourses on the SW. The argumentation of the Polish reporting was framed by specifically Communist propaganda topoi of stabilization of Europe, danger/threat and peace. On the other hand, the majority of Western media clearly shared their set of topoi which – albeit in different constellations – nearly always used topoi of solidarity and rights (all Western countries except for the UK) as well as of help – all of which helped emphasize the compassion for the Polish situation expressed in the media. Although in different contexts, discourses in the UK and Austria were both also founded on the topos of history through an explicit history-related legitimization of the reported events or of the different state reactions towards those events. The set of references to values identified in the analysed media discourse also emphasizes the aforementioned East–West discrepancy between Polish and the Western European coverage. The Polish press referred to values such as security, relief or peace or anti-values such as chaos and anarchy (clearly omnipresent in this and other Cold War discourses), none of which could be found in the Western European discourses. Within the latter, the only exception was the discourse of the coverage in the British quality press which viewed Polish SW events from the point of view of value-like geo-political processes of East–West nuclear arms-control, or of the Western-like freemarket system (although it is notable that British tabloids used very similar topoi and references to values to those of the quality press in other Western European countries). Apart from the UK, the analysed Western European countries based their coverage on references to such values as diverse freedoms (of speech, expression, media, public opinion, etc.), rights (including human and labour ones) as well as of help and solidarity – all of which were usually embedded within the corresponding topoi (of rights, help, solidarity, etc.).

194 Table 8.3 Key arguments (topoi) and corresponding values/anti-values in the press reporting of the Polish state of war, 1981 Country

Topoi

Reference to or construction of values and anti-values

Poland

• Topos of stabilization in Europe • Topos of danger/threat

• • • • •

Stabilization in Europe Security, relief, peace Stabilization Chaos, anarchy Peace (in Europe/world)

Austria

• Topos of solidarity

• • • • • •

Solidarity Humanity Solidarity Humanity ‘Basic’ human rights Help

• • • • • • • • •

Solidarity Humanitarian help Denying repression Human and labour rights Help Freedom (loss or violation) Democracy (loss or violation) Freedom of expression Freedom of the media

• Topos of peace

• Topos of help • Topos of history West Germany

• Topos of solidarity

• Topos of help • Topos of rights

Switzerland

• Topos of rights

• Topos of solidarity UK

• Topos of history • Topos of East and West

• Topos of help

• • • •

Freedom of speech Freedom of trade unions Freedom of movement/activity Freedom of expression (in media and politics) • Democracy • Solidarity • Democracy • International/European historical lessons • Anti-Communism (quality press) • Western-like free-market system (quality press) • East–West nuclear arms-control process (quality press) • Freedom of political expression (tabloid) • Freedom of expression through the media (tabloid) • Freedom of public opinion (tabloid) • Help

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Conclusion The analysis of the coverage of the Polish 1981 State of War shows that it was embedded within both ‘European’ and ‘value-oriented’ dimensions of discourse. With regard to the European dimension of discourse, we witnessed a set of three distinct processes of spatio-temporal accommodation of Europe. Within those processes, Europe was invoked in discourse to portray different (spatial and temporal) entities which it was allegedly supposed to embody or be a part of. It is within the spatio-temporal accommodation of Europe that the latter, whenever appropriate, was linked with various ‘values’ in the analysed press reporting. Within the first process of spatio-temporal accommodation, the globalizing of Europe was crucial for the accommodation of Europe in the Polish press discourse about the SW. It was frequently argued that the imposition of the SW in Poland was crucial for keeping peace in ‘Europe and the world’, thus suggesting that both the former and the latter constituted a homogeneous space which was saved by the strictly national actions of the Polish authorities. Second, within the process of the regionalization of Europe (characteristic of Austrian and West German press reporting), one could see Europe as an element of discourse which described (national) actions that were apparently motivated by the will to express regional (or locally European) ties. Those ties, such as those embodied by the Austrian Mitteleuropa-based19 compassion for Poland, or the West German will to help its suffering Polish neighbour, also helped link ‘Europe’ and ‘values’. Finally, within the third of the described processes, the placement of Europe as an intermediary between the East and the West was very salient in, for example, the British quality press. Here, despite its objectively possible placement in both of the strands, Europe was mainly perceived as a synonym of the ‘West’, including both the US and specifically Western European organizations (NATO or the then EEC) or activities (Conference for the Security and Cooperation in Europe). Interestingly, the British tabloid discourse of the MR also placed Europe within the East–West context, yet, unlike its counterparts from the quality press, it overtly focused on accommodating Europe within the description of the ‘East’. On the other hand, there were also several regularities which, according to the analysis presented earlier on, governed the expressions and negotiations of different values in the analysed discourse. For example, one could witness a transnational elaboration of several values. The latter included mainly the specific Western ‘1968 values’ such as different freedoms of, inter alia, speech, trade unions, or political/media expression. Those values were central to the reporting in Austria, West Germany, Switzerland and the UK where they were elaborated and to large extent interpreted in a similar way. By the same token, several anti-values (such as opposing repression or defending the capitalist/free-market system) were explicitly portrayed in the discourses

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of the Western European states to emphasize the plausibility of defence of the ‘positive’ values mentioned before. Second, one must notice that the values of solidarity and help, as well as that of humanitarianism (the latter expressed through, for example, different forms of humanitarian help or aid for Poland), were also debated in the majority of Western European countries. However, while Austrian solidarity and help were perceived mainly as the means of an Austrian-specific national self-expression (in line with the socialdemocratic principles underlying the Austrian state), in West Germany, as well as partially in Switzerland, those values were perceived as crucial for any reaction to the country in need. Hence, those, as well as other local/national interpretations of values, emphasize that, although in a state of media-based co-occurrence in different countries, some values were not evidence of a shared European ethical catalogue. Finally, the specifically ‘Eastern European’ values were put to the fore of the Polish reporting on the reactions to the SW. Those values included peace, stabilization and security, all of which can be defined as embedded within particularly ambivalent elements of the axiology of the Soviet-led Communist bloc and of its propaganda discourse.20 Thus, through the comparison presented above, one is able to observe that, in their reporting of the ‘Polish crisis’, both ‘free’ (‘Western’) and ‘regime-obedient’ (‘Eastern’ or ‘Communist propaganda’) media promulgate expressions and negotiations of different values and of Europe, albeit within different and strategically defined aims. As shown before, ‘values’ and ‘Europe’ are frequently linked in media discourse to underlie the stances defended by particular media (in our case, different nationally specific newspapers) and to provide a crucial legitimizing force for the ideas presented and endorsed by those media. In most cases, those ideas can be identified with the character of the press in question (quality vs. tabloid) or with its ‘allegiance’ to other, large-scale socio-political views (liberal vs. conservative). Notes 1. The term ‘State of War’ is used here as a direct translation of the Polish stan wojenny, which must be distinguished from ‘martial law’ (stan wyja˛tkowy). The differentiation in the Polish language creates an impression that a state of war is ‘more severe’ than martial law. 2. For a further description and interpretation of the period 1980–2 in Poland and of the development of the ‘Solidarity’ movement, see Ascherson (1981), De Weydenthal et al. (1983), Garton-Ash (1999), Lipski (1985), Pumberger (1989), Raina (1981), and Touraine et al. (1983). For a recent reflection on the role of the Solidarity movement in Poland before and after 1989, see Kurczewska (2006). 3. See Lipski (1985) for a closer description of KOR. 4. Dekret o Stanie Wojennym, published in Trybuna Ludu, 14 December 1981, p. 3. 5. The key liberal quality dailies were published only in French at the time. In the analysis, the so-called ‘international edition’ (or Fernausgabe) of the NZZ was analysed since it was assumed that this edition would include more references to international issues in general, and to the Polish occurrences in particular.

Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates 197 6. For a description of methodology and categories of analysis, see the Introduction to this volume. 7. The metaphor of ‘a sick man of Europe’ is, to this day, a recurrent feature of European national discourses on international relations and European politics (see Musolff, 2004). 8. See also Reisigl and Wodak (2001). 9. In the Polish original the abbreviation PRL denotes Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa (EN: ‘Polish People’s Republic’). 10. See also the arguments in KR of 14 December 1981, p. 5. 11. Even if implicit, the reference to foreigners/refugees as ‘parasites’ is one of the key (recurrent) features and elements of racist discourse widely present in Austrian public debates (see Matouschek et al., 1995; Reisigl and Wodak, 2001; Wodak, 2001). 12. See also commentaries on the Bundestag Resolution in FAZ of 19 December 1981. 13. In the German original: Nationale Selbstbestimmung. 14. For a closer definition of the ‘French 1968 values’, see Krzyzanowski ˙ and Wodak (2006a). See also Chapters 5 and 6. 15. In the Swiss reporting, the topos of solidarity does not find any other expressions than those found in other German-speaking countries and described before. 16. A term coined by Mautner (2000) to denote one of the most exceptional features of British media discourses on Europe and institutions of European integration. 17. Other descriptions of the ‘indifferent reactions’ to the Polish crisis (by the EEC, NATO and others) are to be found, for example, in GU/OBS (15 December 1981, p. 5 and 18 December 1981, p. 5). 18. See also Krzyzanowski ˙ (forthcoming) for other expressions and realizations of this particular ‘Cold War’ topos. 19. For a recent discussion of the concept of Mitteleuropa, see Chiantera-Stutte and Stråth (2008). 20. See Chilton (1996) for a detailed analysis of typical ‘Cold War’ discourses.

9 The Fall of the Berlin Wall: European and Value-Oriented Dimensions in the News Discourse Jessika ter Wal, Anna Triandafyllidou, Chiara Steindler and Maria Kontochristou

The construction of the Berlin Wall on Sunday, 13 August 1961, and its dismantling that started on 9 November 1989, mark two turning points in the history of Europe. During its existence, the division of Germany and Berlin by the Wall was a symbol of the Cold War and, therefore, also of the division between world powers (Gearson and Schoke, 2003; Taylor, 2007). After World War Two, Germany had been divided into four occupation zones, overseen by the four main Allied powers (France, Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States). Berlin was likewise divided into four sectors which actually left the city isolated in the zone of the Soviet Union, about 180 kilometres from the border with Western European countries. The Soviet Union blocked the land access of the other three powers to West Berlin for over a year, from 1948–9. As of 1949 the city was divided into a Communist East Berlin and a democratic West Berlin. The geopolitical situation and dispute of the Allied powers over control of German territory deteriorated in the 1950s. Tensions in and around Berlin increased, refugees from East Germany continued to escape to the West (about 2.5 million left East Germany heading west in the period from 1948 to 1961) and eventually the Communist leaders in East Germany and the Soviet Union agreed to erect a hard border enclosing West Berlin and separating it from Eastern Germany. In August 1961, East German troops surrounded West Berlin with barbed wire and weeks later the concrete wall between East and West was built.1 The erection of the Wall and the overall border control system around it reduced emigration from East Germany to the West to a trickle in the course of a few weeks as the Berlin Wall and the border control system around it solidified. In December 1963 the German federal government came to an agreement with East German authorities enabling West Berliners to visit family and friends in East Berlin to celebrate Christmas festivities. This agreement was renewed until 1966. After that, special permits were issued for family occasions (birth, marriage, illness or death). In the East, as from November 1964, 198

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retired persons were allowed to visit relatives in West Germany. From 1961 to 1988, 383,181 East Germans were allowed out of East Germany in this form, but in the same period, 171 people were killed or died at the Wall attempting to escape. The Wall constituted a domestic border, preventing people from getting out rather than preventing foreigners from entering the Eastern side of the city. The events of November 1989 developed against the background of the process of political transformation in the former Communist bloc, in particular in Poland and Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev. The exodus of Eastern Europeans and East Germans to the West had started prior to November 1989, via the border with Czechoslovakia and also via Hungary, Poland and Austria (Gilbert and Clay Large, 2002). During November 1989 this mass flight had reached such high numbers that West German and Czech authorities were struggling to ‘manage’ it. In the same period, public rallies and mass demonstrations against the Communist leadership and for democratic and free elections were held daily in many East German cities. On 8 November 1989, the Politburo, the leadership of both the East German Communist Party and the GDR government, resigned. In the following days demonstrations for free elections continued. On 9 November 1989, East German authorities announced that the crossing of the border between West and East Berlin was permitted. The political motivation behind the opening of all East German borders was that if people felt free to travel, they would not feel the pressure to leave the country for good: ‘Amidst all the euphoria, it was easy to miss the irony that the East German government had built the wall in 1961 to keep its people from fleeing to the West, and was now punching holes in it for exactly the same reason’ (Gilbert and Clay Large, 2002: 544). Thousands of East Berliners crossed the Wall, although most of them not in order to emigrate, and were joined by crowds of West Germans in a celebratory atmosphere. This dramatic shift in policy came to symbolize the implosion of the Communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe, the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the reunification of Europe. The fall of the Berlin Wall was the first step towards German reunification, which was formally concluded on 3 October 1990. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the socio-political changes in Eastern Germany drew the attention of the media in all Western European countries. Through the following analysis, we examine the qualitative features of news coverage of the events of November 1989. Our aim is, first, to identify the extent to which – and the ways in which – notions of Europe were articulated, negotiated and reproduced in the news discourse. Second, we aim to assess whether and what kind of ethically charged notions of Europe and the EU, as well as references to ‘European values’, have been expressed in national public spheres in the context of the historic events. A further aim is to assess whether a transnational discursive space emerged from the

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newspaper coverage on the event, and whether this could be qualified as ‘European’, and in what way. In order to do this, the analysis of the news reports is focused on whether any specific European dimension was attributed to the events, and whether this included ethically charged representations of Europe and European values in the coverage. Attention is paid to whether the fall of the Wall was presented as a German, European or international event. Also, we examine representations of Western and Eastern economic and political systems, and implications in the discourse about the values these systems were believed to represent. Our analysis is placed in the tradition of critical discourse analysis (Fairclough and Wodak, 1997) with a particular emphasis on discourses about ‘Europe’ (e.g. Musolff, 2004). Discourse analysis is employed here in order to analyse strategies of representation and argumentation, i.e. the various ways in which events were given meaning and contextualized, and how events, developments and positions were presented and defended in the press, i.e. how were the events and the main actors represented, from which perspective, and which strategies were used? Following Van Dijk’s (1988) approach to news discourse, we first analysed the thematic structure of the news text. This part included an analysis of headlines, of the frequency with which specific themes and actor categories appeared, and of how often the latter were quoted in the news. Subsequently, we examined the main strategies of representation and argumentation and how these were articulated, at the local semantic level, for example, through the use of metaphor and implicature. Given the huge historical impact of the events, we paid particular attention to historical contextualization and intertextuality in relation to social and political values (cf. Heer et al., 2008; Wodak, 2006; Wodak et al., 1990). We have identified such strategies and features in headlines and news texts, as well as in statements or quotes by central news actors.

Corpus The corpus is based on a week’s coverage, starting two days before the fall of the Wall, between 7 and 13 November 1989. The sample thus includes coverage of the political crisis in Eastern Germany and the exodus of refugees from the country leading up to the opening of the border between East and West Berlin by GDR authorities. The selected week included another important international event: The US–Soviet summit in Malta where the gradual ending of the two Cold War alliances was discussed. Our analysis covers two North European countries, the Netherlands and Britain, and two South European countries, Italy and Greece. The sample comprises both left-wing newspapers and conservative dailies. For the British case we examined coverage in The Times and The Guardian/Observer. The Times is a national daily newspaper; for much of its history it has been regarded

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as Britain’s newspaper of record and is seen as being on the centre-right of the political spectrum. On the other hand, The Guardian, and its Sunday newspaper partner The Observer, is in sympathy with left-wing politics. The coverage in these dailies was considerable, reaching a minimum of 4 and a maximum of 20 news stories per day. In The Times, we traced 28 stories pertinent to the matter and in The Guardian/Observer, 32, so that a total of 60 articles could be analysed. For the Dutch case, we studied reporting in two quality newspapers: De Volkskrant (VK) and the NRC Handelsblad (NRC). The former is the second most-read newspaper in the Netherlands and of more popular left-wing political orientation. The latter has a slightly smaller, more elitist, readership and is more moderate in its political orientation. Whereas VK tends to have a greater focus on domestic affairs and events, NRC is more internationally oriented and tends to be more attentive to European issues. Together the two dailies paid considerable attention to the events, and published a total of 70 main news reports, the largest national sample among the four countries analysed. The attention given by the two newspapers was in almost equal proportion: 36 articles for VK and 34 reports for NRC.2 The two newspapers selected for Italy were two dailies with nationwide circulation, Il Corriere della Sera (CS), usually considered conservative, and L’Unità (UN), official paper of the then Italian Communist Party. The latter was a less widely read newspaper than, for example, the national La Repubblica, but the fall of the Berlin Wall had quite immediate and important consequences for the Italian Communist Party, so we wanted to see whether this was emerging from the coverage. A total of 55 stories were published with a similar number in the two newspapers analysed, but slightly higher in CS (30) than in UN (25). The coverage showed a steady rise in interest for the event, and peaked on 11 November, coinciding with the second day after the fall of the Wall, the pacific invasion of West Berlin by East Germans and the debate in the GDR Communist Party over the reforms. The somewhat more limited attention provided by UN, and its decreasing attention after 11 November, can be explained by its political affiliation. The will of the official journal of the Italian Communist Party may have been not to emphasize an event that had deep consequences for the Party itself, once the importance of the event had become clear.3 The Greek corpus is limited compared to that in the other countries: the three newspapers analysed published a total of only 34 stories, an average of less than 12 stories per daily for the entire week – which is less than was published in other countries on one peak day. The centre-left daily Eleftherotypia (EL) had the highest amount of stories within the Greek sample (16), followed by the centre-right quality newspaper Kathimerini (K), with 12 stories. The centre-right popular daily Eleftheros Typos (ET ), the newspaper with the highest circulation at the time, and much higher than K, published 6 stories only. Hence, the news value of the events was not felt as acutely by the

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right-wing newspapers in the sample, and more, but not as much as in other countries, by the centre-left daily EL.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in the British press The actors The three most frequently cited actors in the British press coverage were the East German political leadership, West German leaders and East German citizens. East German authorities, including both Communist and opposition leaders, were the most frequently cited actors followed closely in second place by ‘West German authorities’ (notably West German political leaders like Helmut Kohl and/or Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher). The liberal press paid more attention to East German leaders while the conservative press reported more on West German politicians. By contrast The Times reported slightly more on East German citizens as actors in the events (16 per cent) compared to The Guardian (14 per cent). But The Guardian paid more attention to West German citizens as actors while The Times paid less attention to them. UK and USSR governments and leaders were also reported relatively frequently in the British press coverage while international actors such as the European Community and NATO received only marginal attention. East vs. West: freedom at last In the British coverage, binary oppositions were created between West and East using a Cold War schema. West Germany, the European Community, NATO, Europe and the West were contrasted to East Germany, the Warsaw Pact, the USSR and Communism. An example from the coverage of the main event is the headline describing the ‘East’ through use of the metaphor ‘the Wall = Communism’. By conveying the message that the fall of the Wall implied the end of an ideology it reinforced the schema of East vs. West: ‘ “Communism ends here” is the message to Krenz’ (The Times, 11 November 1989). British newspapers emphasized the value concept of freedom in their interpretative repertoires of the events in East Germany and beyond. Again, there is a clear dichotomy between the West and Europe or the EU which represent the world of freedom, and the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet Union and Communist East Germany which represent the world of authoritarianism and oppression. Consequently, and similar to the Greek press coverage, British newspapers presented the crossing of borders by the East Berliners as a historical and irreversible step towards freedom (‘crossroads’). In particular in The Times headlines, numbers were used stylistically to underscore the greatness of the events (‘thousands’). These numbers increased by the day: ‘A million march: Berliners cross the Wall to freedom’ (The Times, 10 November 1989); ‘Day trip to freedom for thousands’ (The Times, 11 November 1989); ‘A million

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march to freedom’ (The Times, 12 November 1989); ‘Cheers as the freedom crossroads open’ (The Times, 13 November 1989). In the discourse of the British press based on the dichotomies outlined here, East Germany holds an ambivalent position of insider-outsider. East German citizens are represented more as insiders, as the victims of their Communist regime. The political developments in East Germany are described with reference to the refugee phenomenon, which is represented as a struggle for freedom. The East German leadership is represented as part of the ‘other’, as addressee of the message of the popular protest movement. In The Observer, the coverage concentrating on citizens fleeing East Germany is characterized by sensational headlines (‘floods’; ‘flush’) and reports about the hardship of East German refugees: ‘A nation floods West’ (The Observer, 13 November 1989); ‘Refugees’ first flush of freedom dies in a school dormitory’ (The Observer, 12 November 1989). Germany vs. ‘Europe’ Several articles linked the developments in East Germany and the relationship between East and West Germany to the European integration process and to the future of Europe in general. The news reports addressed the delicate balance between the three forces, and the confusion and ambivalence of several national political leaders as well as EU commissioners over the quick and radical developments in East Germany and their consequences for the future of the ‘two Germanys’. The British press coverage that touches upon the role and relevance of Europe and the European Community during and after the fall of the Berlin Wall adopted three main discourses: a value discourse related to freedom, an international relations discourse related to security, and an economic discourse related to growth, (un)employment and economic prosperity. In the example below, the words from a speech by Chancellor Kohl refer implicitly to the wish that the changes ahead will support freedom and unity in Europe; presupposing thereby that the Wall did not just divide Germany, but also Europe. Kohl avoids the explicit reference to division and instead uses the presupposition that Germany is a ‘free fatherland’ and ‘one nation’. ‘Kohl: We are one nation.’ The West German Chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, declared in Berlin yesterday: ‘Long live a free German fatherland, a free united Europe.’ (The Guardian, 11 November 1989) The discourse about international relations which concentrated on security, the role of NATO and the evolution of the Warsaw Pact and the (new) West– East military balance, tended to continue the terms of the Cold War. The economic consequences of the events were addressed through the question of economic aid towards East Germany in exchange for continuation of political reforms, and an overall assessment of the impact of the

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massive outflow of East Germans on the West and East German labour markets and economies. This discourse also had security ramifications to the extent that massive emigration from East Germany was seen as a destabilizing factor not only for growth but also for security and political stability in the region. In the British press the European Community is thus represented as both an economic and a political entity and an internally diversified one. The values referred to are those of freedom and democracy, but it is not clear to what extent these are presented as specifically European. There is no reference to an ethically charged notion of Europe but there is an indirect sense of ethical and political responsibility in view of the changes ahead: ‘the beginning of a new era in Europe’ (The Guardian, 10 November 1989).

The fall of the Berlin Wall in the Dutch press In the Dutch press coverage, fact-based reports prevailed. The headlines of the main reports analysed for the two newspapers were neutral and did not build on any value references or schemata. We did not find any reference to values of freedom or democracy in the headlines. The Dutch newspapers did not present the event either in terms of freedom or in terms of an end to Communism. Only one headline in the days preceding the main event used the active verb ‘to democratize’ in an indirect quotation from a statement by Chancellor Kohl, as a precondition for aid to East Germany (‘Kohl promises aid if GDR democratizes’, De Volkskrant, 9 November). Whereas De Volkskrant presented the fall of the Berlin Wall mostly as a German event, with primarily effects for the East and West German populations, NRC depicted a European event with global ramifications. This editorial difference can be traced back partly to the different political position and histories of the two dailies, and partly to different styles in news-making and editorial agendas which are Europe-oriented in different degrees. Thematically, the discourses about the events focused, firstly, on international relations and security aspects: mainly the official reactions from the USSR, which accepted the reforms and opening borders but focused on geopolitical strategies and defence issues. The second discourse focused on economic issues and trade agreements, in particular on reactions from the European Community and national political actors. In this discourse, supportive arguments were found not only for political and economic reform, but also in favour of economic assistance to Germany. The third discourse emphasized values of freedom and was found in statements by the US mostly and in those by Chancellor Kohl who phrased the civic movement’s demands and aspirations from a German national perspective (‘It is about one struggle for justice and freedom. It is about one Germany’, NRC, 11 November 1989). In the days preceding the main event in particular, De Volkskrant paid attention to issues of unemployment and housing shortages in West Germany in

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relation to the refugee movements, and not just to the political developments in the GDR Communist Party hierarchy. Regarding the actors quoted, an interesting difference between the Greek and British press coverage is that East German citizens/refugees were the most frequently quoted/reported news actors. De Volkskrant, which has a greater tendency to voice citizens’ reactions, paid most attention to East German citizens, including spokespeople of opposition movements, rather than just street interviews with East Germans going West. De Volkskrant also paid more attention to Soviet authorities than to European actors (European Community and heads of state), confirming the interest in the relations of East Germany with the USSR. However, for NRC European actors were more important. European Community and European governments together accounted for the highest frequency of quoted actors in the news (nearly onefifth of all quotes), which is a little more than the frequency with which East German citizens were quoted. This difference in focus between the two newspapers reflects not only a more populist (VK) vs. a more elitist (NRC) style of news-making but also a different political ancestry, with VK being originally a trade union and Dutch Labour Party affiliate. In the following sections we present the main forms in which notions of Europe and European values emerged from the coverage. We also examine what these notions implied in terms of interpretations of the news from a European perspective, or the lack thereof. In the Dutch press, but most manifestly in NRC, a European dimension was attributed to the events by German, European, national and international actors alike. Ethically charged representations of Europe were marginal. When the events were placed in their historical perspective, the value of peace was invoked as belonging to Europe’s identity, and this was done through intertextuality and the topos of an antagonism between forces of war and peace. However, the official quotes about Europe focused on economic support and cooperation, whereas the international relations discourse concentrated on geopolitical stability. Within the European dimension created by official quotes, potential problems of integrity arising from the new situation created by the fall of the Wall were highlighted: from maintaining the delicate power balance inside the European Community, to affirming Europe’s place in the world, to managing Eastern Europe’s refugee problem and preventing risks of separatism. Finally, the Dutch press discourse contained some isolated hints at moral implications in the views it voiced about German and European history and about the future of Eastern Europe in relation to Germany and Western Europe.

European and German history: intertextuality The NRC’s Berlin correspondent defined the European dimension of the events from a historical perspective. In a front-page article, he used the

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metaphorical representation of Europe and European history as a movement for peace: Berlin is once more the capital of Germany. Berlin is once more the place where European history is written. In fifteen years the Olympic Peace Games will be held here! Here in East Berlin the party starts rewriting history, identifying scapegoats for the bankruptcy of today and struggling over the question what the party should do to regain control, yes, in order not to be swept away by that European history. (NRC, 11 November 1989) The personification of European history as a force that can ‘sweep away’ the GDR regime was opposed to that of ‘the party’ to whom the role of ‘rewriting history’ was attributed. The prospect of ‘the Olympic Peace Games’ referred to the history of Berlin, the German capital under Nazi rule, and the 1936 Olympic Games that had been handed to Berlin before the Nazis came to power. Using this metaphor of antagonism and the ‘writing’ or ‘making’ of history, the events are thus presented as a historic victory of peace over conflict and oppression – not in terms of the Cold War schema adopted in the British press, but in a broader historical perspective, and more in relation to Germany’s Nazi past (cf. Wodak, 2006). The historical contextualization through the intertextual reference to these events is built on the binary opposition of war (Berlin and Nazi Germany) vs. peace, where the value of peace and its victory over the remnants of World War Two is embodied in the personification of ‘European history’. Overall, the topos of German history and its relation with Europe was present in both newspapers intertextually. Several Volkskrant reports contained a historical reference to the Holocaust and the way in which the memory of Nazi fascism was elaborated in East Germany (in a statement issued by the Israeli government). In a report about the opening of the border, one East Berlin citizen compared the fall of the Wall with the knee fall of Willy Brandt in Warsaw. European unity: a metaphor for the European body The European dimension of the events emerged from the main coverage of the NRC and the quoting of individual heads of state. This discourse concentrated on the relevance of the events for Europe’s future, and defined the events in terms of their importance for Europe and European unity. The official statements subscribed to the idea of European unity, but in rather abstract terms, unrelated to common values or ethically charged notions. NRC published front page the speech given by Berlin mayor Willy Brandt, where he affirmed that the fall of the Wall was the beginning of German and European unity. This was not uttered as a wish but as a statement of fact. German and European unity were here presented as equivalent; the division of Germany equated to the division of the continent. Hence, Europe was

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represented metaphorically as a body or physical entity that was missing a vital part and therefore required unification into one Germany. This process is – as in the metaphor of the body – presented as a process of growth, and thereby implicitly the Wall is represented as a ‘rupture’ that needs to ‘heal’, a process that needs to come from within the body itself: ‘The two parts of Europe grow together again’ . . . Germany is in the situation ‘where together grows what needs to be together’. (NRC, 11 November 1989) The translation of this unity into a political European unity is expressed in another NRC article. Here, the European Community’s approach to transformations in Eastern Europe is described in the context of its policy of proximity: [w]hich inevitably presents itself to the European Community to the extent that the EC in preparation of 1993 will start to form an ever stronger and formidable political unity. (NRC, 11 November 1989) The Dutch government’s position to the events also stressed the importance of European unity: ‘Eastern Europe is most helped by a solid European Community. We should hold on to this now more than ever.’ This was the reaction to the opening of the Wall in the GDR by [foreign affairs] minister van den Broek on Friday afternoon after the first regular council of the newly installed government. (NRC, 11 November 1989) In quotations by other heads of state, the European dimension of the events is also emphasized. Former French president Jacques Chirac defined the events as ‘the start of a new Europe’ (NRC, 13 November 1989).

Lacking European unity and a delicate power balance The newspapers published reactions to the fall of the Berlin Wall by representatives of European institutions. Although calls for European unity prevailed here, these did not emphasize common values or ethically charged notions of Europe. Instead, attention was paid to the position of Europe because of the delicate power balance inside the European Community, and because of a risk of lacking European unity in light of the events. Former President of the Commission Jacques Delors quoted Jean Monnet about Eastern Germany’s ‘place in Europe’ and this quote was reprinted by De Volkskrant to explain the wish for Eastern Germany to be part of the European Community. Unity was here expressed in terms of a balance between member states’, including West

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Germany’s, commitment to the European project without any reference to its values. President Delors of the EC grasped attention before with his remark that ‘the place of the GDR is within the European Community’. With this he approvingly cited a report from 1964 by one of the founders of the European Community, Jean Monnet. Just like the French government, Delors is worried about the position of West Germany in the European Community. By quoting Monnet he suggested intentionally that an EC membership by the GDR could prevent a slackening of the attention and commitment by West Germany. (VK, 11 November 1989) On the other hand, Europe’s position on the events in the context of its external relations with the superpowers was also a reason for concern. In this context, MEP Giscard d’Estaing called for a common position by European heads of state in the global power setting: Giscard d’Estaing calls for a European Council meeting of all heads of state to take a stand: ‘It is unacceptable that the Americans and Russians speak about Europe without the Europeans.’ (NRC, 13 November 1989) In fact, individual European heads of state were represented as divided. France was concerned with the European power equilibrium given the prospect of a unified Germany, and the difficult socio-economic situation in France. The British prime minister (Margaret Thatcher) was attributed with a negative position on further European integration: It is expected that she will use the opening of the border between the two Germanys to campaign against further European integration in the short term. (NRC, 13 November 1989) On the other hand, in the same article NRC also reported that the British press called for the need for European unity in the face of developments in Eastern Europe. Significantly, it was a non-European Community actor – Gerasimov, the main Soviet spokesperson of President Gorbachev – who invoked notions of Europe in terms of unity and a common project. He used the metaphor of the ‘common European home’ (VK, 10 November 1989). Seen from the perspective of the ties between Eastern Germany and the Soviet Union, the notion of Europe was defined here primarily from a geopolitical and strategic perspective. Concerning the possibility of German unification, most actors, in particular the European Community and the US, adopted a wait-and-see approach and avoided any explicit statements. They did, however, make explicit statements against the increasing influx of refugees into West Germany from the East, as this was felt to bring economic instability. The US and European

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Community authorities, together with the West German government, discouraged East Germans from moving to the West. This implied that they also feared that the opening of the border could create a new refugee problem within Europe, but this was not stated explicitly. Concerns about the ongoing exodus from East Germany introduced ‘Europe’ in topoi of economic stability, global security and the power equilibrium within the continent. Most importantly, the refugee issue did not give way to a value topos. Cooperation and risk management were the key concerns. The consequences of the exodus were primarily presented from a West German perspective. Eastern Europe and human rights Several Volkskrant reports addressed the issue of ethnic and religious diversity in Eastern Europe, in the context of Kohl’s visit to Poland. In an NRC report about a summit for regional cooperation, the Italian foreign minister spoke about wider Eastern European developments, and the need for the European Community to encourage regional cooperation in order to avoid nationalism and related tensions that could negatively impact Europe: Although no one knows what Europe will look like twenty years from now, said minister de Michelis, the European Community should help the Eastern European countries now that the effects of the official ideology are weakening. ‘It needs to be prevented that this development ends in a catastrophe and that nationalism deteriorates into separatism’, de Michelis said in an article in the West German daily Die Zeit. (NRC, 13 November 1989) This discourse about ideologies was isolated in the overall discourse about Europe and the fall of the Berlin Wall in the Dutch press.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in the Italian press The actors The Italian newspapers quoted most frequently the two German state authorities: East German leaders (in particular Egon Krenz, the East German Communist Party Central Committee member Hans Modrow, and the mayor of East Berlin) and the West German government (Helmut Kohl, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Willy Brandt and the mayor of West Berlin). The third and fourth most mentioned actors were the East German refugees in West Germany and the East German population. However, there is a difference in the presence of the two categories of actors in the two newspapers. The Corriere della Sera mentions East German refugees and population 17 times altogether, which is more than the GDR authorities (15). L’Unità mentions them only 6 times (GDR authorities were mentioned 16 times), thus showing, as seen above, more interest in the political debate within the GDR establishment than in the consequences of the event for the rest of the population. On the whole

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the Corriere della Sera shows a more balanced choice of actors, and reports the reactions of different public figures, such as the international ones, more accurately than L’Unità. The same holds for Europe or its representatives, which appear three times in the Corriere della Sera, and only once in L’Unità. Themes and topoi in the Italian press The headlines in which Europe, or the European Community, appeared explicitly in the Italian sample are five in number. Most headlines highlight the positive meaning of the events for Europe, intended either as a geographical-historical or as an institutional entity. The headlines are: ‘Earthquake in the heart of Europe’ (CS, 10 November 1989); ‘Bonn the rich, can now dream of an empire in the heart of Europe’ (CS, 11 November 1989); ‘The brightest day for Europe’ (UN, 11 November 1989); ‘The EU-twelve: triumph for Europe’ (UN, 11 November 1989); ‘The President of the European Commission “Let’s open our arms to all of Europe” ’ (CS, 13 November 1989). The two meanings of Europe are systematically mixed in the articles, and the emerging picture is that of a Europe rooted in history that precedes the founding of the institutional Community. While someone waves the blue flag with the stars, symbol of European unity, the mayor of West Berlin, Walter Momper, and the mayor of East Berlin, Erhard Krack, meet and shake hands right in the place where the flag was flying. (CS, 13 November 1989) The biggest urgency for Europe is to decide what to do with the EC. The alternative, faded in the past, during the last days has reached a clearer outline: Do we have to reinforce the unity of the Community, also on the political ground, so as to be able to stop the possible German ‘drift’. Or do we have to loosen it, to avoid discouraging the Eastern countries, and let them be part one day of a big economic space, reaching from the Atlantic to the Urals? (‘The President of the European Commission “Let’s open our arms to all of Europe” ’, CS, 13 November 1989) In the second example, European political and institutional unity is represented as a possible antidote to German expansion. This topos of the new great Germany that may arise was also found in the headline about the ‘dream of an empire’ (see above). It is part of a larger discourse found also in newspapers in the other countries studied, about the risks posed by the opening of the borders between East and West Germany. Following the unfolding of the events in the two newspapers, it is possible to recognize three different discourse dimensions. First, there is an inter-German dimension that includes the action and reaction of the East German population and the possible consequences for East and West Germany – the need for economic support, transition to democracy and reunification. Second, there

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is a European dimension that includes the reactions of the West German, Soviet and American leaders and the discussion of the meaning of the event against a European background. Finally, an international dimension in the news was mainly represented by the reactions of US and USSR leaders and the development of their respective strategies. The headlines dealing with the reaction of the East German population describe the elation and bewilderment of a people finally experiencing freedom (‘Weekend of freedom in Berlin’, CS, 11 November 1989; ‘A city gone mad “give me your word that this is true” ’, UN, 10 November 1989). Moreover, in the Corriere della Sera there is ample use of terms referring to physical expressions of joy, thus giving a picture of exceptional happiness, as when East and West Germans are represented as hugging each other or dancing: ‘A divided people can now hug each other again’ (CS, 12 November 1989); ‘Come, I take you to dance in the West’ (CS, 11 November 1989). On the other hand, the headlines announcing the debates and events taking place in the GDR Communist Party are characterized differently in the two newspapers. The Corriere della Sera uses terms suggesting a violent conflict: ‘Siege to the red fortress of Krenz’ (CS, 8 November 1989); ‘Confrontation in the German CP’ (CS, 13 November 1989); ‘East Germany, it is the time of the long knives’ (CS, 13 November 1989). By contrast, the tone of L’Unità suggests a human tragedy: ‘Krenz is left alone’ (UN, 8 November 1989); ‘Exit East Berlin government’ (UN, 8 November 1989). The Italian media analysed present the events mainly in their inter-German dimension. Nevertheless, this dimension is partially intertwined with the European one. This happens primarily in the articles dealing with the possible transition to democracy, and with the possible reunification, where the European Community or Europe, as a geographical entity, is set as a constant background. The following excerpts illustrate this point. Brandt declared that the people’s movement in East Germany will find its full realization only with free elections. The world is assisting in a great event, the intertwining of the two parts of Europe that from now on will grow together. (‘Come, I take you to dance in the West’, CS, 11 November 1989) In this discourse, both newspapers refer to the European Community as a supportive resource. East and West Germany face a sudden and complex change; the future is uncertain, but what is certain is that East Germany has always somehow been part of the European Community: [B]etween the two areas there have always been favourable economic agreements, thanks to which the GDR is a de facto hidden member of the EEC. (‘Bonn the rich, may now dream of an empire in the heart of Europe’, CS, 11 November 1989)

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In the EEC, the GDR has always had a privileged statute: the Treaty of Rome, the EEC constitution, decides that the exchanges between the two Germanys are to be considered intra-communitarian exchanges, and not exchanges with a third country. (‘The EU-twelve: triumph for Europe’, UN, 11 November 1989) However, in linking the events to a European dimension, the two newspapers choose different approaches. While the Corriere della Sera covers economic and geostrategic issues in the same way, presenting the story in an overall problematic light, L’Unità systematically links the issue of the possible access of East Germany to the ‘European sphere’ with the concern for its borders. In the first excerpt below, the Corriere della Sera reports on the issue of the geostrategic readjustment in a neutral way. In the convoluted prose of the second excerpt, L’Unità expresses the idea that peace and safety can be maintained only if East Germany keeps its geographical integrity. That idea is repeated in the third passage. Europe now faces a ‘New German constellation’. And against the background of the ‘New German constellation’ yesterday Chancellor Kohl had a series of phone calls with George Bush, François Mitterand, Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev and Egon Krenz. (‘SPD’s polemical opposition “Kohl didn’t understand anything”’, CS, 12 November 1989) [T]he crowd applauded Brandt and then Genscher, when they recalled that if Europe, divided right here, in the city that paid the highest price for every laceration, ‘will once again grow united’, the merit is to be ascribed to the distension, to the Ostpolitik, to the evidence the Federal Republic has been able to offer with its will to look for an European order able to reassure – as Brandt said – that it does not, and it will not, look for a solution of its problems, beginning with the problem of German division, ‘against the interest of peace and safety of other countries’. (‘The most beautiful day for Europe’, UN, 11 November 1989) Shevardnadze himself yesterday, during a meeting with the Swedish foreign minister Andersson, repeated that what’s happening is a ‘domestic GDR affair’, but he also reaffirmed the inviolability of the borders. (UN, 11 November 1989) The international dimension of the events is mainly represented by the positions expressed by US and USSR leaders. Both newspapers cover the declarations of Gorbachev and the cautious reaction of George Bush. But L’Unità tends to picture the fall of the Berlin Wall and the process of European integration as consequences of the – positive – Soviet influence and of the negative American indecision. In the following extract L’Unità reports on

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the positioning that the Soviet and American leaders will take, against the background of the planned meeting in Malta: From the Kremlin offices, in the fifth year of perestroika, that carries the weight and honour of the upheaval in which all of Western Europe is engaged, flows an optimistic air, because what’s happening in East Germany is ‘in the interest of that people, but also in the interest of the Soviet Union’ . . . ‘the Soviet leaders will ask the president of the United States to make a clear political statement, as he is accused in his country of being late on the timing of the Eastern change’ . . . ‘nevertheless it is also possible that from the waters of Malta will emerge some concrete project about the “Common European Home” ’. And this, as paradoxical as it might seem, will be a new positive page for Gorbachev. (UN, 11 November 1989) To sum up, in the two Italian newspapers analysed, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the connected events are mainly reported as close-up pictures of the East German authorities and the East German population. However, they are constantly presented in a European dimension. Europe is the broader space in which the events take place and, as such, it represents an issue discussed by the leaders of the superpowers who influence it from outside. But Europe is also an independent unit, with a recognizable identity that precedes the institution of its economic community. This unit, and not Germany alone, was wrecked by the building of the Wall, and after the fall of the Wall it can be rebuilt. The European Community is represented mainly by its economic rules, which are portrayed as a reassuring factor.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in the Greek press The actors The Greek press portrayed as the main actor of coverage the East German authorities (the East German Communist Party Central Committee, Egon Krentz, the East German leader and his government, and other party rank and file) which accounted for about one-third of the items mentioned in the news. The second most important actors mentioned were the East German citizens and the third most frequently mentioned actors were the West German state authorities (about one-fifth of the coverage each). However, there are important discrepancies between the newspapers as regards their reporting on East German citizens as relevant actors. While all newspapers paid roughly the same attention to West German authorities, East German citizens accounted of about one-third of the sensational right-wing Eleftheros Typos coverage, for only 14 per cent of the centre-left Eleftherotypia coverage and just under 10 per cent of the conservative Kathimerini reports. Eleftheros Typos’s and Elefthherotypia’s more sensational reporting found fertile ground in documenting the flight of East German citizens to the West and

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hence in a more popular and populist version of the facts, paying attention to the ordinary people on the streets rather than to governments and international organizations. Kathimerini by contrast covered more extensively the actions and discourses of the governments of other European countries (e.g. French President François Mitterrand and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher) as well as other actors such as the USSR authorities, the European Community and NATO. Themes and topoi in the Greek press The wall of shame and disgrace vs. the gates to freedom In the representation of the Berlin Wall, both Eleftheros Typos and Eleftherotypia reports used the expression ‘Wall of disgrace’. Kathimerini used the epithet ‘Wall of shame’, a historical expression that came into use in the years following the Wall’s erection and which has continued to be used in official discourse to refer to its fall.4 The Greek headlines did not refer to oppression but they did refer to positive values that were now to be welcomed in East Germany, namely, freedom and democracy. Overall, the headlines show that the Greek press represented the Berlin Wall as a symbol of authoritarian rule, by means of reference to the values the East Germans were given access to with its fall: democracy and freedom, thus reiterating a Cold War schema. Moreover, one headline presented the Wall as the symbol of the Cold War: ‘200 dead in the symbol of the “Cold War” ’ (EL, 11 November 1989). That headline’s focus on the number of casualties of the events underlines the more sensationalist tone of the coverage in the dailies Eleftherotypia and Eleftheros Typos. The coverage of Kathimerini was much more factual and less sensationalist in terms of pictures and headlines. Although a conservative newspaper, Kathimerini did not refer to Cold War schemata, and only marginally used the term ‘Wall of disgrace’. The latter expression implied a negative for the East (disgrace), as opposed to the ‘Wall of shame’ that rather implied a negative for Europe. Shame is a feeling attributed to ‘Europe’ over what is felt as a division of a continent, i.e. the whole of Europe, not just of one country. East vs. West In both EL and ET, national governments were the main actors. The fall of the Wall and the democratic transition in East Germany were represented mainly as a German national event. They concerned the reunification of a nation. Little attention was paid to the wider international repercussions of these changes and the other national and international actors indirectly involved in the developments in East and West Germany. The few exceptions, where international implications became the main focus of the report, are analysed here. In the following example, the use of the metaphor ‘German Gorbachev’ highlights that the developments in Eastern Germany form part of wider

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international changes starting from the USSR, in line with the emphasis in EL and other left-wing dailies analysed to present the events more often from the position of the old relations with the Eastern bloc: ‘The “German Gorbachev” has been appointed at the Politbureau’ (EL, 9 November 1989). In contrast, the following headline appeared in tune with ET ’s greater openness to European involvement in a new phase of history. This forms part of a thematic structure found also in conservative dailies elsewhere that highlighted the possibility for future change rather than the links of East Germany with its past and with the Eastern bloc: Probable integration of East Germany to the European Community. Declarations by Delors. A new page for Europe. (ET, 13 November 1989) Europe and the Wall: freedom, peace, unity and geopolitical stability The main coverage of K and also a few news stories from EL and ET concentrate on the relevance of the event for Europe’s future and its freedom and unity. Even in the news reports of 11 November 1989 that focus on the fall of the Wall, coverage is mixed with quotes from other European leaders as well as US and USSR authorities. These reports refer to the value of ‘freedom’ and present the changes brought about as a new ‘historical phase for Europe’ (K, 11 November 1989, p. 8). The reports focus on the reactions and comments by European country leaders about the future of the European Community and the imminent transition in Central and Eastern Europe: ‘EC and NATO reflect on Eastern Europe’ (K, 10 November 1989); ‘The Soviet empire is crumbling’ (K, 11 November 1989); ‘The train of the East. Europe watches breathless’ (K, 14 November 1989); ‘For a united and free Europe’ (K, 14 November 1989). The Greek press reported on the one hand about positions of the European Community, and on the other hand about reactions from representatives of European nations. First, in response to the questions about East Germany’s future institutional relationship with the European Community, French Prime Minister Michel Rocard was quoted. This quote made use of a definitional phrase, defining the economic character of the European Community, but in the same article Rocard notes that a reunited Germany would contribute to the establishment of long-standing peace in Europe. What is presented is thus, on the one hand, an economic community, and, on the other hand, a collection of nations that commit at transnational level to notions of peace and stability. Most European leaders greeted the developments as a ‘big day for freedom’ (Margaret Thatcher, quoted in K, 11 November 1989) and ‘a new phase in European history’ (François Mitterand, quoted in the same article). Mitterand in particular is quoted as saying: ‘The EEC will become a pole concentrating all the people who are thirsty for freedom.’ However, the newspaper notes that the European partners of West Germany are worried about the German

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reunification. The reason for this ‘uneasiness’ is implicit, as if it were obvious or too big a taboo to refer to, namely the Nazi legacy: As has often been noted, the West German steam engine is heading East. For the West Germans the reunification of the two Germanys is no longer treated as an unattainable dream, rather the question that concerns them is when the ‘new great’ Germany will happen. If, however, for Bonn the fulfilment of this dream is only a matter of time, this is not so for her partners in NATO and the EC who look at this prospect with some uneasiness. (K, 14 November 1989, p. 17) In conclusion, there was an implicit assumption that democracy and freedom have always been upheld in Europe and by the European Community. This value reference to the European Community and (Western) Europe was mostly made implicitly through the emphasis on the authoritarian rule of the Communist regime in East Germany. The Kathimerini coverage emphasized the role that Europe and the European Community are to play in the new geopolitical environment. This notwithstanding the fact that at the time of the reporting there was a lot of uncertainty about the political developments in the Warsaw Pact countries and fear that the situation might destabilize the entire continent.

Conclusions The coverage of the fall of the Berlin Wall in the British, Dutch, Italian and Greek press presented the events in a European dimension. The fall of the Wall was not only a German event; it was an event for Europe historically and in terms of the current and future European Community. The notions of Europe used in the news discourse were also ethically charged: values of freedom and democracy, peace and stability, both as universal value concepts and specifically European ones, were found in most of the national coverage. Two positions about the prospect of a unified Germany and a unified Europe emerged. One stressed the solidification of positive values, namely, peace and stability, while the other focused on containment of economic and geopolitical instability. Today we know what followed the fall of the Wall and how this event may be seen as marking the end of the post-war era and the Cold War in Europe and the beginning of a speedy and rather unexpected (at the time) reunification not only of Germany but of the entire European continent and the reappropriation by Central Eastern European countries of their ‘Europeanness’. It is thus interesting to note how cautious the press coverage at the time was in representing and interpreting the fall of the Wall as a historical event for the future of Europe. The reunification of Germany and the end of the Cold War were apparently seen as both imminent and difficult to believe, hence much of the discourse is put in a Cold War frame. In the first days following the

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fall of the Wall more emphasis was put on Germany’s past and its gravity in the ‘making’ of European history. Here intertextuality played an important role in the discourse of the press and political leaders alike. The intertextual references, both implicit and explicit, highlighted the historical weight of the events, in the context of European history, the position of Germany in this history, as well as the importance of the events for historical strategies of European political unity. At the same time, the topos of freedom was voiced through quotation of ordinary people in the streets, East German citizens in particular. Indeed, one common feature of the actor coverage is the important position given to East German citizens fleeing to the West, interviewed in West Berlin or gathering in public rallies in East Berlin. In De Volkskrant in the Netherlands and in Corriere della Sera in Italy, citizens were the actors most frequently cited in the coverage. Only British newspapers focused on national institutional actors (state authorities, West and East Germany) more than on East German citizens, and the Dutch NRC paid more attention to European and international institutional actors. In all other newspapers except for The Guardian and The Times, they were the second most frequently cited actors. Indeed, the lesser/greater importance accorded to international and European actors and the rather low amount of coverage about ‘Europe’ reflected the more Eurosceptic (Britain) vs. pro-European stances in national public spheres (Greece, Italy, the Netherlands). In light of the events, the official European institutional discourse defended the idea of a stronger European Community, in both its internal and external relations. On the other hand, news reports also mentioned the fear of a great Germany (also from a historical perspective) and concerns about (economic and geopolitical) instability being intensified by the events. Discourse about economic assistance appeared next to concerns about the European economy and political integration. In this context, the frequent coverage of individual national leaders emphasized political differences among European Community countries rather than unity. Most national discourses coincided in their attention to security, economy and values as the three most important themes. Most newspapers constructed the topos of freedom as a headline or front-page issue, though most prominently in the British and Greek press. In the latter two this resulted in an explicit value dichotomy in terms of ‘Us’/‘Them’, such as communism vs. capitalism, oppression vs. freedom, totalitarianism vs. democracy. This was absent in the Dutch coverage, which appeared more moralizing in its reference to values of humanitarianism and how these should be revitalized in the light of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the wider political developments in Eastern Europe. In the Italian press the discourse about Europe was not imbued with value dichotomies. However, the Communist newspaper included in the Italian sample did employ a US–Soviet dichotomy in its evaluation of the positions uttered at the Malta summit, where the Soviet position was presented more positively.

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The transnational dimension was most clear from the discourse about geopolitical transformations and the future of Europe, a new undivided Europe that should avoid tendencies towards nationalism in Eastern Europe. This was counter-balanced, in part of the coverage, by a more traditional schema that maintained East and West as two opposed entities. In other words, two positions were found in the press discourse, one presenting the fall of the Berlin Wall as the occasion for a ‘new Europe’ to arise, uniting and promoting peace, freedom and stability, and one still reproducing the terms of the ‘Cold War’, where freedom was a value of the West only. In most of the newspapers analysed this two-fold representation reflected a distinction between left-wing and conservative political orientations. The left-wing dailies in all countries except Britain tended to represent the news more as a German event. Conservative dailies in the other three countries stressed the European dimension. In the case of Greece this choice in coverage was not only influenced by political orientation but also by greater sensationalism (orientation on Germany) vs. neutrality (orientation on Europe) in the different newspapers.

Notes 1. For a case study of newspaper coverage about the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, see Schulz-Forberg in Chapter 5 of this volume. 2. In addition, the dailies published editorials and commentaries, as well as several features, e.g. in the economy section, but – following the guidelines of the research project – these were not included in the sample. Also, strictly factual chronologies (mere lists of events) reconstructing the history of the Wall or the process of transformation in Eastern Europe were omitted. Articles starting on the front page and continuing inside the newspaper were coded as one front-page story, except when the content of the story was clearly cut into two parts with different actors and types of information. 3. The issue of the fall of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and its meaning for the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) had been thoroughly discussed in its Central Committee during the previous months. On 12 November, three days after the fall of the Wall, Achille Ochetto, Secretary of the PCI, decided to call for a Congress to discuss the repositioning of the Party and, above all, the change of the Party’s name. On 24 November, the Central Committee approved the Secretary’s project, and in 1991 the name was changed to Party of the Left-wing Democrats, therefore dropping the reference to Communist ideology (Barca, 2005). 4. Intertextually, the ‘wall of shame’ expression has been used in a discourse about European values and ambitions, as in a speech by EU President Romano Prodi of 9 October 2002: ‘Less than thirteen years ago Berlin was still divided by the wall of shame. The wall has fallen, Germany has been reunified. Thanks to this newfound freedom we have restored the historical unity of the peoples of Europe. Our common destiny is once again to build a common future. A future built on shared fundamental values: those of peace, democracy, the rule of law, human rights and the protection of minorities.’

10 Europe’s Role in the World: the Invasion of Iraq and the Outbreak of the Second Gulf War Jessika ter Wal, Anna Triandafyllidou, Chiara Steindler and Maria Kontochristou

This chapter aims to provide an overview of the press coverage of the outbreak of the Second Gulf War in March 2003. More specifically, it looks at the newspaper coverage of the attack by the United States and its allies on Iraq and the beginning of the war in selected press samples in the UK, Greece, the Netherlands and Italy. The analysis focuses on whether and how the relevant coverage proposed ideas and definitions of Europe and the European Union as ethically charged notions. Specifically, we shall assess whether and what kind of ethically charged ideas and definitions of Europe and the EU, as well as references to European values, have been developed within national public spheres in light of these events. In our conclusion we will address whether and to what extent a transnational discursive space existed in the news discourse about the war. This chapter is organized into five sections. We shall first present the events that are the object of the media coverage analysed. In the third section we outline our data set. We shall then proceed with a qualitative analysis of the newspaper coverage in the four countries. We conclude with comparative remarks about European, transnational and value-oriented dimensions in the press coverage of the events.

The invasion of Iraq and the outbreak of the Second Gulf War The 2003 invasion of Iraq, termed ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ by the US administration, began on 20 March 2003. The United States and the United Kingdom supplied 98 per cent of the invading forces while Australia, Poland, Spain and Japan joined their forces under the command of Tommy Francs by providing equipment, services and security as well as Special Forces. The Bush administration did not attempt to get a UN Security Council resolution authorizing military force, as France, Russia and later China all signalled that they would use their Security Council veto power against any resolution that 219

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would include an ultimatum allowing the use of force against Iraq. The invasion was seen by many as a violation of international law, since it broke the UN Charter, while it was perceived by the vast majority of people around the world as a violent and self-interested action on behalf of the US and its allies. On 9 April 2003, the Iraqi military was defeated and Baghdad fell.1 The Chinese, French, German and Russian governments took the lead in opposing war in Iraq, while Spain, Portugal, Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands and all East European countries backed Britain and the US in what was coined a ‘coalition of the willing’. For the war in Iraq, US and UK troops used tactics and weapons that had only been tested in exercises. The so-called ‘shock and awe’ attacks on Baghdad were a modern-day Blitzkrieg, targeting the enemy’s mind, soul and physical being through overwhelming ‘precision’ bombing. US President George W. Bush, along with 45 nations worldwide that supported his planned military campaign, signalled the beginning of the war on 20 March 2003, saying to the media that his aim was ‘to disarm Iraq, to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger’. The war suddenly became ‘real’ when the Al Jazeera television channel started broadcasting pictures of Iraqi and American corpses and of American prisoners of war. Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein had ordered the Iraqi military to ‘destroy’ the invaders and had offered an Iraqi fortune of 50,000 Iraqi dinars (about £10,000) for each American soldier. The crisis affected European countries and highlighted the gap between different policies and interests. Britain was pitted against France and Germany, the latter two countries fervently opposing the war and blocking the UN 1441 resolution that the US and the UK pressed to pass in the Security Council as a means of legitimizing their invasion of Iraq. People in Europe and around the world participated in anti-war protest marches, demanding peace and calling for help to civilian victims.2 Naturally the war in Iraq, or the ‘Second Gulf War’ as it is also known, is inscribed in a wider context framed by the Gulf War in the early 1990s, the bombing of Kosovo by NATO forces in 1999, the 9/11 events, the war in Afghanistan in 2001 and finally the war in Iraq in 2003 (see also Griffin, 2004). This was an escalation of conflict that took place largely outside Europe or at the fringes of Europe (Kosovo) with a military role played by NATO forces, where European countries found themselves divided and where the EU’s role was questioned. We are, in other words, looking at one event that is a concentrated crisis period, inscribed in a larger crisis period that has lasted – if not for 15 years – then at least since 2001. Moreover, the Iraq War came at a crucial and very problematic time for Europe. It was midway through the constitutional process, during the European Convention, which among other things was trying to decide on a balance of powers between Brussels and national governments. The war also came immediately before the enlargement of the EU with eight Eastern

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European countries alongside Cyprus and Malta in 2004. Hence, with the discourse on the Iraq War, Atlantic (US) dimensions came into play in the European interpretation of the events. The Second Gulf War clearly divided Europe into those countries supporting the war and those that did not. The harshest opponents of the war, France and Germany, were represented by then US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as the ‘old’ Europe. This was different to a vague concept of the ‘new’ Europe-building with enlargement and the planned expansion of NATO with nations that were supposedly supporting the war – although in fact in several cases the old–new division presented these states with a dilemma (Roter and Sabic, 2004). Rumsfeld also defined France and Germany as a ‘problem’ in the war, much to the outrage of the French and German governments (BBC, 23 January 2003). Subsequently, however, the term ‘old’ Europe was used in European, in particular German, public discourse, as a way to represent Europe positively as having greater moral integrity.

Data The analysis covers the period spanning 18–24 March 2003, starting two days prior to the invasion and following one week of coverage from that date. This sample period included a prior scheduled EU summit held in Brussels on 20–21 March. For the Greek case, we selected the two daily and Sunday newspapers Eleftherotypia (EL) and Kathimerini (K). These national newspapers represent the mainstream public discourse, cover the major political orientations and trends in Greece, and are leaders in their category. In terms of political orientation, Eleftherotypia is generally considered to be liberal (centre-left), while Kathimerini is considered conservative since it has a centre-right wing orientation. In total, we found 174 stories related to the event during the seven-day period examined: 84 in Eleftherotypia and 90 in Kathimerini. Using the same criteria for the UK case we examined The Daily Telegraph (DT ) and The Guardian/Observer (GU/OBS). The Telegraph and its sister paper, The Sunday Telegraph (ST ), is a broadsheet newspaper and is traditionally seen as being on the right of the political spectrum. In November 2005, The Telegraph was the highest selling British broadsheet. On the other hand, The Guardian, and its Sunday newspaper partner, The Observer, is generally in sympathy with left-wing politics. The Telegraph published 75 news reports relevant to the war in Iraq, while in The Guardian/Observer there were 92 such reports in the seven-day period examined. In total there were 167 news stories. For the Netherlands, the two dailies De Volkskrant (VK) and NRC Handelsblad (NRC) were selected. The former is a left-wing newspaper, the second most-read newspaper in the country, while the latter, with a slightly smaller circulation, is ‘modern-liberal’ which in the Dutch context means moderately

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conservative, rather elite-oriented but relatively open. During the week of analysis in the two selected newspapers, 296 main reports appeared in the two newspapers (142 in VK and 154 in NRC). This is almost twice as many as in the British and Greek press. The two Italian newspapers selected for this study are the two mostread dailies with national distribution, Il Corriere della Sera (CS) and La Repubblica (R). The former is more conservative and the latter is left-wing. The total sample consisted of 250 articles, 127 in CS and 123 in R. The following qualitative analysis concentrates on the articles that refer to Europe and/or the EU. It is based on the analysis of discursive strategies of group representation and an examination of the use of metaphors and other lexical and syntactic devices and their functioning in discursive strategies of legitimization, e.g. through depersonalization, personification, comparison, and attribution of responsibility and/or blame (Lorda and Miche, 2006; Martín Rojo, 1995; Wodak et al., 1990).

The coverage of the invasion in Iraq by the Greek press In the Greek newspaper coverage European governments and leaders prevailed in the news: they were quoted more frequently than the US government, the main actor of the invasion. In addition, the event was presented as a military and political crisis between countries. European countries were seen as very important actors but they were not represented as part of one common European position. They were rather quoted as individual sovereign governments. The European authorities’ political and diplomatic actions and the acrimonious rift between Britain and the ‘inner core’ built around France, Germany and Belgium at the summit of EU leaders on 20 March in Brussels monopolized the Greek press agenda to a large extent. This also had national facets since, at that time, Greece held the Presidency of the EU and former Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis, along with other EU leaders, made remarkable efforts to bridge Europe’s deep and bitter divisions over the crisis. Finally, the Greek press did pay attention to a ‘European demos’ that participated in public rallies across Europe. Kathimerini adopted a discourse that emphasized the opposition between diplomacy and war. European countries, the EU and the UN were represented as agents of diplomacy, the US as an agent of war. This discourse was particularly emphasized in some headlines before the outbreak of the war but also afterwards: e.g. ‘Diplomacy end[s], the war begins’ (K, 18 March 2003, p. 3). In this discourse, the EU, several European countries (albeit not all) and the UN were implicitly related to the value of peace. Contrary to the passive role reserved to Middle Eastern and Arab countries, Greece’s neighbour and most important ‘significant other’ (Triandafyllidou and Paraskevopoulou, 2002), Turkey, was given an active role in the media as a regional power.

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War vs. peace: US vs. Europe A direct reference to Europe or the EU was found in 17 news stories (7 from Eleftherotypia and 10 from Kathimerini). However, no important ethical or political role was assigned to the EU or to Europe in these stories. The coverage of the EU summit by the two newspapers varied. While both newspapers paid attention to the national leaders and their voices expressed within or outside EU institutions, Kathimerini emphasized the topos of external constraints expressing sympathy for the efforts of the EU representatives to retain a European unity in light of the Iraq invasion dilemma (‘Disillusionment of Simitis, Prodi’; ‘Everything difficult in the summit of the Europeans’, K, 21 March 2003). As regards the EU as an international actor, Kathimerini adopts the strategy of comparison and positive self- vs. negative other-representation: the EU is represented as an agent of peace and an important actor in humanitarian action. As such it is represented in binary opposition to the US, the country that ‘destroys with bombs’ and ‘demolishes’. The ethically charged notion of the EU as a humanitarian aid agent was emphasized. In addition, some stories are reported about plans for an EU defence policy (K, 22 March 2003). Eleftherotypia adopted a more critical approach, and emphasized the fundamental disagreements that were represented as crippling the EU. This is reflected in the perspective and lexical choice of its headlines, which favoured negative connotations. Metaphors representing the division in Europe as a natural disaster depersonalized the situation in Europe while omitting at the same time a specific agency causing the division, thereby avoiding the conclusion that anyone could be blamed for the disunity, and also stressing the legitimacy and inevitability of the disunity: ‘The storm of Europe’ (EL, 19 March 2003); ‘The heavy weather of an unable Europe’ (EL, 19 March 2003). The newspaper adopted the topos of forced facts as if disunity was unavoidable within the EU. Moreover, Eleftherotypia also adopted the strategy of comparison and positive self-representation vs. negative other-representation, combined, however, with the use of style and rhetoric that added – more than in Kathimerini – some irony to its headlines: ‘Americans will demolish, Europeans will pay’ (EL, 20 March 2003). Indeed Eleftherotypia adopted a strategy of trivialization towards the EU summit’s commitment to provide humanitarian aid in Iraq, arguing that it was a ‘manoeuvre’ – a last resort – to reassert EU unity and to carve out a political role for the EU in an international context. By attributing responsibility to the US, the internal European disunity and its position in the crisis, i.e. its focus on reconstruction, was legitimized. Americans destroy with bombs and Europeans will take up the reconstruction. In the last days, however, the [European] Commission as well as some member states, especially those that have economic interests, speak increasingly of the question of Iraq’s reconstruction, after its destruction.

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And this is the only way out for the 15, to say something [in common] . . . Even if with gritted teeth. (EL, 20 March 2003) Furthermore, the newspaper noted that the disagreement over Iraq also had repercussions for internal issues such as EU policies on unemployment, growth and competitiveness (EL, 20 March 2003). The use of the strategy of comparison and positive self-representation vs. negative otherrepresentation was dominant in the Eleftherotypia coverage: the role of the EU was mainly represented in opposition to the US. The invasion in Iraq was thus set out as a landmark, the start of a new era in international politics: It is obvious that the EU tries, uneasily and divided by the events in Iraq, to mend its unity for the future, to adapt with the fewest possible losses to the new international environment that is now forming after the US has deliberately marginalized international organizations, but also so that [the EU] is able to complete the institutional challenges that it has planned. (EL, 21 March 2003) Other representations of Europe defied the image of the EU as a victim of the war, claiming the need to take a self-assertive stand and not to dwell on the conflict: ‘If we deal [in the summit] only with the Iraq questions this would show that the EU is pushed back and forth by the events. That our attitude is defined by others. That the EU itself is not able to define its own policy. In that respect I would say that such an attitude would add the EU to the victims of the war,’ emphasized Mr Simitis yesterday afternoon. (EL, 21 March 2003) In this strategy of positive self- vs. negative other-representation, a positive difference is implicitly attributed to Europe, and moral superiority is accorded to the EU rather than to the US. In this context, the discourse called for the emancipation of the EU from the US and its political and symbolic dominance in the world scene, while the news stories emphasized the lack of a common vision in the EU. In the end, however, the argumentation was more centred on autonomy of Europe than on any moral values. Last but not least, the absence of the EU in some news stories is worth noting. A report published on 18 March 2003 by Kathimerini argues about the dismantling of a presumably united and cohesive Western camp. The author wonders about the relevant developments and the taking of sides by different countries. However, the report mentions the EU and its relevance neither in the construction nor in the dissolution of this presumed ‘Western camp’. The absence of references to the EU is notable also in another Kathimerini

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article, which talks about the divisions within the ‘international community’ (19 March 2003). In another report the EU is lined up with the UN and NATO: [I]t is a fact that this is the first time that the Americans confront a major military conflict without the approval either of the UN or of a representative body of the Western world like NATO or the EU. (K, 19 March 2003) In this report, the EU’s status is paralleled to that of NATO, thereby implying that the EU is little more than a strategic alliance of independent countries. In conclusion, the EU and Europe are a point of reference in the news stories about the Iraq invasion, albeit only mildly an ethically charged one. There is little – if any – reference to values and only indirectly through pointing out the role of the EU and its partner countries as humanitarian agents. There is no reference to values when the EU is represented as clashing with the US. In the news reports this conflict takes rather the tone of a political and economic interest confrontation – the strategy of comparison and positive self-representations of Europe vs. negative other-representation of the US is dominant in the coverage alongside a topos of forced facts – as if the disunity of the EU was forced upon it by the US (Europe as victim of the war), and no European government could be blamed. Indeed, their position was legitimized through strategies of blaming and attributing responsibility to the belligerent US. This was actually a way to avoid further internal divisions.

The coverage of the invasion in Iraq by the British press In the British press coverage of the invasion in Iraq, events of national interest – especially when of a particularly dramatic nature – gripped the attention. There were seven news stories that referred to Europe or the EU in The Guardian and three in The Telegraph. Overall, the EU and Europe played little if any part in the coverage of the war events and the related political and diplomatic actions. The news coverage was not generally couched in value terms and values were only indirectly referred to. There was, however, negotiation of ethically charged notions of the EU related to UN resolution 1441 that was not signed by France, Russia and other countries. In The Telegraph, the European institutional framework was put forward as a practical issue, i.e. Blair and Chirac meeting at the EU summit. Only in one story is the relevance of the EU outlined by noting the tensions at the EU summit and the efforts of the Greek Presidency to overcome such tensions by emphasizing the role of the EU in post-conflict Iraq. Within this framework, present also in The Guardian coverage, the EU appears as an ethically charged entity, presenting itself as a primary agent for humanitarian aid and development aid (strategy of comparison articulated in the topos: ‘We

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are better than they are’, functioning as a self-representation of moral superiority). However, this comes at the expense of the EU playing any political or military role on the international scene: Costas Simitis, the Greek prime minister, admitted that there had been ‘serious differences of view’ that ‘can’t disappear by magic’. He added: ‘We didn’t dwell on the differences. We turned towards the future.’ (TT, 21 March 2003) The coverage of The Guardian differs in many ways from that of the conservative Telegraph. In all the varied and rich coverage there was little mention of the EU and Europe as a relevant political or ethical framework for the UK–France tensions and the overall issue of the war. Still there were a few more articles related to Europe and the EU compared to the Telegraph. Of the selected seven news stories, two had a European dimension, mostly in the context of the French position in the UN Security Council and the relative tension with the UK, whereby the EU was presented in textual cooccurrence with the UN (18 March 2003). This implied that the EU was seen as another international political entity, semantically interdependent. The emphasis in these news stories and the rest of the coverage was on inter-state relations, national governments and their own political and ethical responsibilities towards their constituencies and/or towards Iraq, the Arab world and others. In other words, the strategy of comparison and positive self- vs. negative other-representation was applied to individual states rather than to the EU as a whole. In three stories, however, the strategy of comparison and difference was also applied to Europe (treated as synonymous with the EU). In the statement by former French President Jacques Chirac, Europe is represented as a victim of the US’s misleading politics: Jacques Chirac, the leading anti-war voice in the West, yesterday denounced the US ultimatum to Iraq as unilateral, unjustified and dangerous, warning that Washington was taking on Europe. (GU, 19 March 2003) The news stories published by The Guardian about the EU summit are the first to represent the EU as a relevant political actor, albeit against the background of the Anglo-French and Anglo-German disagreement. The stances of other countries are noted and EU institutions are also given an active role in the debate. A strategy of personification is used to highlight and represent the EU as a whole metaphorically via the chairpeople of European institutions: the rotating EU President, Simitis, is cited in the article and so is the former President of the European Commission Romano Prodi and the EU’s external

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relations Commissioner Chris Patten. Both Prodi and Simitis were ‘urging EU members to close ranks’ (GU, 21 March 2003) and recognized disagreements, but also represented a strong EU that should defend peace values and be self-reliant in this stance. Here again the strategy of comparison and positive self-representation over negative other-representation is used to promote a view of Europe as peace loving in opposition to the war-mongering US. ‘Europe can make an effective contribution to peace in the world only if its nations pull together,’ Mr Prodi said. ‘It is not in our interest to continue relying on others when it comes to defending our values militarily.’ (GU, 21 March 2003) This was the first time that the ethical role of Europe in the world was mentioned in the British reports. In the remaining stories about the summit published on 21 and 22 March, the EU was again represented as humanitarian aid provider. Implied in this discourse is the EU as a community of values, even though these values agree only as regards non-conflictual issues such as providing the means for facing a humanitarian crisis in Iraq. When issues and values were more conflictual, that situation was related to the participation of the invasion forces, and the EU was not presented as a relevant actor in the British liberal press coverage. Finally, while moral considerations about Europe were virtually absent, in parliamentary debates the moral implications of participating or not in the war were voiced strongly. Moral considerations about international intervention were here at the heart of debates about supporting or opposing Britain’s participation in the Iraq invasion, but these considerations were probably part of specific argumentation strategies and dynamics in the British House of Commons. ‘We are talking about the morality of war and I do not believe that what is going on in Iraq is a sufficient moral basis for war. I cannot find a sufficient moral case for condemning thousands or tens of thousands of people to death and injury.’ (Mr Hogg, a former Conservative cabinet minister and Foreign Office minister in the 1991 Gulf War, GU, 19 March 2003) In sum, the British press, like Greek newspapers, adopted the strategies of comparison and positive self-representation vs. negative otherrepresentation to emphasize the difference between Europe/the EU and the US. This strategy is used to raise the ethical profile of the EU in the face of disunity and inability to act jointly. However, although overall the invasion of Iraq by US and UK forces and their allies to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime was framed as a moral issue and the parliamentary debates reported in the British news coverage focused on the moral basis of pro- and anti-war arguments, the EU and Europe were only marginally reported as

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actors or ethically charged notions in the media discourse. European institutions were also overshadowed by fierce inter-governmental disagreements (of member state governments) and ultimately their political and value-laden role was relegated to providing humanitarian assistance only once the military conflict was over – although EU member state governments disagreed even on this issue. The strategy of personification, i.e. representing the EU position through institutional chairholders such as the Commission’s President, was the only means to attract attention to the EU institutions and their effort to carve a common policy.

The coverage of the invasion in Iraq by the Dutch press The attention paid to European actors and themes was very modest in the Dutch coverage. This reflects the division within the EU that characterized the positioning on the war. Articles did quote national European states quite frequently, along with the UN and non-EU countries, but this happened without reference to the notion of Europe. Among the individual EU countries, the UK was quoted most frequently. When reporting on European affairs, the Dutch press first treated internal European relations and US–EU relations. The institutional union of European countries was referred to only in seven articles covering the EU summit. In addition, humanitarian issues were raised about the consequences of the war for the Iraqi population, and accusations against the US of violating human rights (the Geneva Convention) or international law (the UN Charter in particular) were reported, along with two similar instances against Iraq. In the following paragraphs we present a qualitative analysis concentrating on the representation of Europe and the very limited value-oriented dimension in the European discourse. The European dimension: internal EU relations and divisions The notion of Europe was hardly used in the positioning over the war in Iraq. A European dimension was found in the Dutch press coverage of statements about security, peacekeeping and humanitarian aid. More specifically, reference to a common European project was found in the idea of a European defence or peace force presented by France and Germany: ‘German–French summit about European army’ (VK, 22 March 2003). The wish for a common European foreign policy was also expressed by the Dutch prime minister. The latter was the only official statement by the Dutch government in terms of a contribution to the notion of a common EU in the context of the Second Gulf War. National parliamentary debates about the war in different European countries, as well as meetings at the UN, formed the centre of the reporting about positioning on the Iraq war. The coverage focused on the divisions within the

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EU and the difficult US–UK relations as well as those European governments opposing the war. Thus, ‘Europe’ primarily appeared in the context of articles about the positioning of single European countries in the UN and at UN meetings. The coverage revealed the division within the Commission and the EU, as well as within national parliaments and governments. Reports about France, Belgium and Germany opposing the conflict quoted their different reasons for opposing the war. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair mentioned the division in the EU in speeches; the division inside the British government was discussed in reports about former Cabinet minister Robin Cook’s resignation. The Dutch parliamentary debate and political party negotiations were influenced by coalition negotiations in the Netherlands and concerned the nature of the support that the Netherlands would give to the US: whether immediate military or only political support, or only military support in the reconstruction phase.3 Also in domestic news about the war there was no mention of a common (institutional) European position or value focus. The reports about the EU summit that was held during this week focused on divisions created by the war. The only definition of a common position was issued on 20 March 2003, with difficulty, at the EU summit in Brussels, when it was planned to discuss common socio-economic policies. The summit reportedly removed from its agenda the issue of Europe’s future, because of the division over the war in Iraq. The following headlines highlighted the paralysis of European common positioning, as heads of state actually refused to speak about their differences of opinion. The metaphor used here is that of Europe as a ‘body’, which had sustained an injury because of the Iraq crisis, is now speechless, and has put its own relations and plans on ice in the shadow of the war. Iraq crisis brings EU confusion. (NRC, 19 March 2003) EU tries to heal fracture over Iraq; heads of government change their agendas. (VK, 19 March 2003) European summit in Brussels in shadow of Iraq war. Heads of government prefer watching CNN rather than discussing internal market strategies. (VK, 20 March 2003). Heads of government remain silent about war. ‘Icy’ EU summit about Iraq. (NRC, 21 March 2003) The existing divisions led to vagueness in the definition of a common ground uniting all European states. However, unlike the Greek and British press, the Dutch press discourse did not use any topoi to underscore the positions and divisions about the conflict. This may be due to the ambivalent position of

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the Netherlands on supporting the war, as well as a general attitude of cooperation with both the EU and the US maintained by the Dutch government. In the following quote the Dutch prime minister is speaking on behalf of the other heads of state, underlining cooperation and their wish for unity, rather than presenting the Dutch position at the summit: Prime Minister Balkenende said that the heads of state had ‘tried to work towards greater unity’ in foreign policy. But the German Chancellor Schröder doubts whether a common EU policy can soon be effective. (NRC, 21 March 2003) The strategy of personalization, found in Greece and Britain, whereby institutional leaders of the European Commission stress the importance of the ‘European project’ is also found in the Dutch press. ‘I am convinced that, whatever happens, the European leaders will not only overcome their personal differences, but also build up the common project again.’ (Javier Solana, VK, 19 March 2003) On the other hand, other common positions in foreign policy and concerning fundamental values, such as the EU Convention, were temporarily put on hold. The reference to inappropriateness of talks about a convention in time of war implicitly functions as a strategy whereby Europe presents its distance and differentiation from the war. The European heads of state have put off a meeting with President Giscard of the European Convention about the future of the EU that would be taking place Thursday evening. According to a spokesperson it would be inappropriate ‘to talk about this while the first missiles are being shot’. (VK, 19 March 2003) President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing fears more time is needed for presenting the European Convention, mainly as a result of the European division about foreign policy and the internal power equilibrium. (NRC, 22 March 2003) Finally, the war affected the discourse on European enlargement. On 24 March, the Belgian foreign minister said he considered it ‘impossible’ for Turkey to become a member of the EU if the country were to dispatch military troops into northern Iraq. Value-oriented dimensions In main news reports the negotiation about Europe as an ethically charged concept was not prominent at all.4 Reports about protest demonstrations did

Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates 231

not discuss the underlying value positions moving the opponents either,5 except for the position of extreme movements such as the Arab European League. The main reference to values, expressed in the official European Council statement, concerned the wish for humanitarian aid and freedom, dignity and prosperity to the Iraqi population. Otherwise, statements about humanitarian values were restricted to interviews with NGOs and aid organizations. In statements about the legitimacy of the war, or the lack thereof, in relation to the UN resolutions, international actors as well as Dutch politicians and interviewees referred to the international rule of law, the UN Charter and international human rights. They did not refer to this as a European value frame. In reports about the UN Security Council meeting, positions of those European countries opposing the war referred to the need to keep seeking peaceful means to resolve the conflict (‘Not all peaceful means are exhausted’, Joschka Fischer, VK, 20 March 2003). Two reports discussed the common European Council statement issued at the end of the Brussels summit. NRC’s reproduction of the official statement issued by the European Council on 20 March 2003 quoted the common European Council statement, which contained a call for international (i.e. not specifically European) humanitarian aid. NRC reported the Council statement not only verbatim, but also showed that it was the result of the compromise between opposing internal positions. The EU was in fact reiterating a reference to humanitarian aid contained in UN positions and programmes, as the original press release stated: ‘We support the UN secretary general’s proposal that the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people can continue to be met through the “Oil for Food” program’. The EU is committed to the territorial integrity [and] the sovereignty of Iraq. The Security Council should give a mandate to the UN to play a central role in the coordination of assistance to Iraq after the war. The EU wants the profits from Iraqi oil to be used for food and humanitarian aid to the country . . . The EU wants to ‘intensify work for a comprehensive, coherent and effective multilateral policy of the international community to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction’.6 (NRC, 21 March 2003) In the statement issued, the EU thus subscribed to peace and humanitarian values but these were not identified as fundamental European values but rather as international human rights. Moreover, the value statement above was not central to the message contained in the summit’s text. After this, the summit accepted within half an hour the text of a statement. Chirac pleaded that it be removed from the draft statement that European government leaders regret that Iraq has not taken the chance

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to resolve the crisis peacefully. The final text of the EU summit statement just starts with the observation: ‘With the beginning of the military conflict, we are faced with a new situation.’ Opponents of the war refused Blair’s proposal to insert a statement about the ‘reconstruction’ of Iraq after the war. ‘We have to wait until some countries have destroyed Iraq before we can talk about reconstruction’, was the message of Chirac and his colleague-government leaders. The statement does include that the EU intends to ‘contribute to the conditions allowing all Iraqis to live in freedom, dignity and prosperity’. (NRC, 21 March 2003) The official statement is presented as a struggle over meaning between opposing parties – the Blair and the Chirac camps – so that personification of conflict and unity are two strategies that both appear in the Dutch press.

The coverage of the invasion in Iraq by the Italian press In the coverage analysed, the EU and its member states appear quite frequently. However, the EU institutions appear only marginally, since most of the articles focus on the reactions of individual member state governments, mostly France and the UK. Indeed, the newspapers’ attention was polarized by the rift that opened between Tony Blair and French President Chirac at the EU summit held in Brussels on 20 March 2003 (‘Europe, a quarrelling loser’). The low frequency of mentions of the European Commission is unexpected, since at the time its President was Romano Prodi, former Italian prime minister and leader in pectore of the Italian opposition. On the whole, the position that opposed the armed intervention is the most frequently represented in both newspapers but the difference between the reactions for and against the intervention is higher in La Repubblica. This may be due to the latter siding with the left-wing opposition, which openly opposed the war, but also relevant is the influence of the Catholic Church. The Italian social and political scene was, in fact, unevenly split: while the right-wing prime minister explicitly supported the US, and the left-wing opposition did not, part of the conservative majority proved to be sympathetic to the Pope’s appeal to stop the war (‘Italy, bases [are conceded] to the US, [their] heart [is]with the Pope, but [they are trying to] mediate in Europe’). The issues related to the EU have a relatively high frequency. However, Europe is referred to more frequently when dealing with its internal, tense relations and with its confrontation with the US. The EU summit was covered in only one article in each newspaper and focused on internal tensions. The articles show two very different types of language: on the one hand, both newspapers give a great deal of technical information with long and detailed articles about new warfare technologies and military strategies, and

Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates 233

furthermore illustrate the articles with big drawings showing troop movements and the weapons used. On the other hand, there is an intensive use of evocative images, of Hell or the end of humanity, and a recurrent use of terms referring to natural catastrophes, such as storms and fires. The latter can be found both in the reports of military operations and in the representation of domestic reactions to the events. In the following analysis section we outline a qualitative analysis of the representation of Europe, and its values and policies as they emerge in Italy’s relations with the EU. Europe, the quarrelsome loser Europe appears mainly through the leaders of its national governments. Some of them are portrayed individually, and as having a good understanding of a difficult situation. But in a number of articles the EU is represented directly, as a fractured and powerless entity. The use of the metaphor of struggle, of winning or losing, though rejected, functioned here as a way to represent the division and oppositions between the US and the EU (‘Prodi: A sad day, there are only losers’, R, 21 March 2003). Rather than presenting an autonomous EU position, the need to keep seeking support from the UN was emphasized. In addition, the two newspapers report the internal splits in the EU with the suggestion that Europe possesses shared values and interests that might and should, in the future, constitute a common base. The fractures in the bloc are amply covered in the reports of the individual governments’ positioning and of the developing coalitions. On the whole, the analysis of the reasons for opposing the war is the amplest, and France is represented as leading the opposition to the conflict, both as a government and as a nation. The tension between the two positions is embodied in the Blair/Chirac falling out. The conflict between the British and French leaders is followed and presented in a personalized way. The personalization of the conflict is not limited to the British/French divergence, however. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi accuses French President Jacques Chirac of having prevented diplomacy with his veto at the UN, leading to the anger of French diplomats (CS, 24 March 2003). Europe–US relations are at the centre of some articles, but on the whole they are concealed behind the debate on Europe’s internal disagreement and the Italian political cleavages. The coverage adds to the discourse about oppositions between the US and its opponents, with reports about hidden spy cameras found in a building of the European Council, which extensively detail the supposed American origin of these spying tools (CS, 20 March 2003). Rather than a single institution, Europe is pictured as a collection of states with different views on what is just or unjust behaviour in international politics, and, as a result, different relations with the US. The Italian political debate on the war is heavily conditioned by long-established pro- vs. anti-US sentiment. The President of the parliament is forced to ask public protesters

234 The European Public Sphere and the Media

to avoid aggressive anti-American reactions, such as burning American flags during the protest demonstrations (‘Respect for those demanding peace. Anti-Americanism is a mistake’, CS, 22 March 2003). Italy concedes its bases to the US, gives its heart to the Pope, and tries to mediate in Europe Italy, busy with its internal cleavages, appears as mediating on all fronts. Berlusconi sides with the US, but the parliamentary debate that concedes the military bases to the US troops is summarized by the following declaration: ‘Legitimate attack, Italy non-belligerent’ (CS, 20 March 2003). While the left-wing coalition firmly condemns the war, and the protesters receive ample coverage (Italian protesters appear 22 times, out of 26 in the general category), the majority coalition is portrayed as uncertain whether to follow its political leader or its religious one (see for instance: ‘Tormented pacifists in the majority: heart with the Pope, ballot with Berlusconi’, R, 20 March 2003). In the following passage, Il Corriere della Sera illustrates the parliament President’s torment: During the second day of war Pier Ferdinando Casini goes to Saint Benedict Abbey. He does so bringing about all the torments of the Catholics in the majority, facing a unilateral conflict, clearly condemned by the Pope. But also with a duty to respect his role of president of the parliament. No judgement, then, on the government, while he takes part in the celebrations for the patron saint of Europe. (‘Respect for those demanding peace. Anti-Americanism is a mistake’, CS, 22 March 2003) In reports dealing with Europe’s internal divisions, Italy’s mediating expertise is presented as a possible way out. While it becomes clear that the European summit will not result in a common position, the Italian delegation finds a ‘third way’: At one point during the discussion, a squad of ‘bridge builders’ snapped into action, among these, PM Silvio Berlusconi. The Italian group, as suggested by the minister for foreign affairs, Franco Frattini, invited the audience to focus less on divisions and more on the ‘opportunities for cohesion’ in the aftermath of the war. (CS, 21 March 2003) Neither this article, nor others, specifies what is meant by ‘opportunity for cohesion’. But, scanning the headlines, the overall impression is that the post-war reconstruction of Iraq and its economic opportunities play an important role in intra-European relations. Even before the beginning of the war, that is, when Iraq did not yet need to be reconstructed, Il Corriere della Sera had introduced the issue (‘Europe is out of the reconstruction’, 19 March 2003). In the days following the EU summit,

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both La Repubblica and Il Corriere return to the subject: ‘EU, agreement only on the post-war’ (R, 21 March 2003); ‘The Union must plan the reconstruction’ (CS, 21 March 2003). In reports about the EU summit common interests rather than common values emerge. Economic issues and, secondarily, security and humanitarian concerns are quoted as a possible common ground for the European partners. In an attempt to find the unity lost on the Iraqi event, the 15 EU countries are forced to be silent on the war, and talk about the ‘after’, about the reconstruction of Iraq, hoping that the conflict will be brief and will involve as few civilians as possible. (R, 21 March 2003) Romano Prodi presents this view in various articles: ‘I don’t have any illusion that unity will be found tomorrow’, says [Romano Prodi] in a press conference. ‘But the only possible thing we can do is to think of the future and make a deeper analysis. We must avoid putting our purse in the EU and our security in US hands. We have to share our security, our future.’ (R, 21 March 2003) The Commission’s president invited the ‘European partners’ to ‘learn the lesson’ from the Iraqi crisis: ‘the values at play are u-ne-qui-vo-cal. We cannot entrust others with our wealth and safety.’ (CS, 21 March 2003) In the articles analysed, Europe was loosely defined as possessing or representing specific values. The internal rift that opened between the member states that supported the invasion and those that opposed it prevented the very recognition of Europe as a unified actor. Furthermore, in the specific Italian case, the discourse on values was monopolized by the strongly felt moral authority of the Pope. However, when reporting about the EU summit of 20 March 2003, both newspapers demonstrated the assumption that unity was better than disarray, and that this positive unity could be based in the first place on shared economic interests, and subsequently on security and humanitarian concerns.

Conclusion The invasion of Iraq and the outbreak of the Second Gulf War were extensively covered in the four countries, although more so in the Netherlands and Italy than in Greece and Britain. The differing importance of various themes and actors was influenced by the specific political and cultural situation in the countries analysed. In Greece, it was the issue of Cyprus and relations with Turkey; in Britain Euroscepticism and the support for the war by the British government; in the Netherlands the negotiations over the formation

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of a new government coalition; and in Italy the influence of the Catholic Church. The general pattern emerging from the coverage about the Second Gulf War is that EU institutions appeared only marginally, since most of the articles focused on the reactions of individual member states’ government reactions. This may be explained by the fact that national governments had clearly recognizable positions during this period, whereas the European institutions did not. A further explanation is the degree to which the press used a strategy of personification in the representation of disagreements – Blair vs. Chirac, Blair vs. Cook – conflicts that are easily understood by the readership. In contrast, it is more difficult to represent a story about abstract institutions, as the European Commission still is (cf. De Vreese and Claes, 2005), even though occasionally the strategy of personification was adopted to speak of the European institutions, such as the President of the Commission. With Greece having the Presidency of the EU at the time, EU positions could be presented in the Greek press through statements by national leaders, who at that time were also European leaders. Despite the differences in the degree to which a European dimension emerged from the coverage, a number of common positions in thematic patterns and actor representations were found. A first commonality was the disagreements and divided coalitions within Europe over participation in the war and its legitimacy, which explains the high frequency of statements by single governments rather than a united EU. This representation dominated the coverage about the EU summit in Greece and, to a lesser extent, also in the other countries’ news about reactions to the war. Dutch and Italian data showed that although the war caused profound internal European disagreement, and Europe’s socio-economic and Convention agenda was temporarily put aside, the European project could not be cancelled. Overall, the press did not frame the events from the European perspective as a moral crisis but as a political one; the EU did not mobilize values in its discourse about the war – in positions against the war reference was made to international law. Moreover, the EU was represented as an inter-state or intergovernmental body, or even, in the Italian press, as a set of personifications of conflict, with each state having its own responsibilities. In this context, the EU was also represented as needing a position independent from the US, but close to the UN and/or NATO. Several quotes highlight this need for the EU to speak and present a position on its own behalf and not be told by others what the European position should be. In this news context (but not throughout the whole sample) the EU was represented as opposed to the US. The EU emphasized diplomacy and humanitarian values; the US aimed at war and domination. In the British and Greek press, strategies of comparison and positive self- vs. negative other-representation were used to represent Europe’s greater moral integrity. In addition, in the Greek press metaphors of natural disaster and a topos of forced facts were used to depersonalize the

Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates 237

division within the EU and justify it by representing Europe as a victim of war, thereby attributing blame and responsibility to the US and its supporters. In the Italian and Dutch press, i.e. countries that were part of the ‘coalition of the willing’, the emphasis was more on common goals and less on divisions inside the EU. Second, Europe also appropriated one particular value position in its common Council statement issued at the EU summit, which was a compromise of the diverging positions over Iraq within Europe. All national newspapers selected news reports to present Europe as a humanitarian agent and its call for humanitarian aid for Iraq (in a reconstruction phase). The Dutch press clarified that this commitment was made under the umbrella of the UN (such as through the Food for Oil programme). However, France was reluctant to admit to a reconstruction phase if that meant allowing the US to first bomb (‘destroy’) Iraq. More indirectly and marginally, Europe was also represented, in this and other examples, as an agent of peace (as opposed to the US). The proposal for independent European peace/security forces came up in this context too. Finally, a reference to the wish to establish freedom for the Iraqi population contained in the summit statement showed the ambivalence of any reference to such a value, as the same value was also used by the US to flag its ‘operation’ in Iraq. These results indicate that a common transnational discursive space was indeed created with the coverage of the war in Iraq and that international European and EU actors and actions played a considerable role in forging a position which was separate from other international actors. Although the actors in this space were primarily based in national political spheres, they did appeal to other international bodies and laws to validate their positions and make allegiance with ‘other’ inter-state bodies such as the UN. Their position was often not presented as typically European, but mostly international in a broader sense. On the other hand, in statements of principle, European leaders did appropriate the need for a specific own position and future but this lacked a profound ethical reference. It is worth noting that in a recent study of the news coverage of the Intergovernmental Conference on 12–13 December 2003 related to the European Convention (Oberhuber et al., 2005), a representation of the EU as a power struggle between member states prevailed. The question that arises of course is whether the EU is doomed to struggling to reconcile diverse political forces and views precisely because it is not a sovereign state, and also whether, as Oberhuber et al. (2005: 263) note, this internal power game among member states helps to avoid the creation of scapegoats. On the other hand, Demesmay (2006) argues that the war in Iraq fuelled Europe-wide demonstrations that contributed towards creating a common European Public Sphere and a sense of common European identity. In a future study we need to check the difference between the mass media representations of Europe and the EU and ordinary people’s protest actions and discourse that may present a different view of social reality.

238 The European Public Sphere and the Media

Notes 1. For more information on related events, see http://www.historyguy.com/ GulfWar2.html 2. British newspapers The Guardian/Observer and The Telegraph, 18–24 March 2003. 3. During the outbreak of the war in Iraq, negotiations had just started for the formation of a new government with Labour and Christian Democrats. The exiting Christian Democratic-led government declared political but not military support for the war, and this position was negotiated with its coalition candidate, the Labour Party. The US list of countries for a ‘coalition of the willing’ included the Netherlands, and at a US press conference, a member of the Dutch military stood next to the American commander in Iraq (together with a member of the Danish military). After this, the coalition negotiations failed. 4. In interviews with people in the Arab world and with Muslim community representatives we did find definitions of Europe as the ‘other’, attributing to ‘Europe’ certain common values or beliefs that they did not share. 5. Such value positions were found, however, in comments and letters that were excluded from the sample following the project guidelines. 6. Original text: ‘We urgently need to address the major humanitarian needs that will arise from the conflict. The EU is committed to be actively involved in this field, in accordance with established principles. We will also intensify work for a comprehensive, coherent and effective multilateral policy of the international community to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.’

11 The Mohammed Cartoons Crisis 2006: the Role of Islam in the European Public Sphere Jessika ter Wal, Anna Triandafyllidou, Chiara Steindler and Maria Kontochristou The construction of a crisis Twelve caricatures of the prophet Mohammed published in 2005 in a Danish newspaper led to an international crisis in early 2006. The caricatures originally appeared in the mass-circulation tabloid Jyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005, accompanying an editorial criticizing self-censorship in the Danish media.1 The published cartoons showed Mohammed in a variety of supposedly humorous or satirical situations. The most controversial image depicted him as a terrorist, donning a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse. Islamic tradition considers any depiction of the prophet as blasphemy. In order to prevent idolatry, it explicitly prohibits images of God, Mohammed and the major prophets of the Christian and Jewish traditions.2 Following the publication of the cartoons the editors received a number of angry letters and the artists were reportedly sent death threats. The threats were widely reported in Denmark and prompted anti-Muslim comments and protests. The cartoons crisis, though it received widespread media coverage, was not an event, but a constructed crisis. Central to the crisis was a debate over the controversial limits of freedom of expression and over the issue of self-censorship, initiated by Jyllands-Posten, strengthened by other Danish newspapers and their own tradition of political agenda-setting (Hervik and Berg, 2007), and reiterated by the other European newspapers that republished the cartoons, either in support, or to join the discussion, or merely in order to provide information about this ‘event’. In turn, the protesters and opponents of the cartoons used the media to draw attention. These events were highlighted by the media, as might be expected given the high news value of negativity (violence), authority and controversy involved in some of the protests and debates.3 On 14 October, two weeks after the first publication, a demonstration was held in Copenhagen to protest against the cartoons. Five days later, ambassadors from eleven Muslim countries filed complaints with Danish Prime 239

240 The European Public Sphere and the Media

Minister Andres Fogh Rasmussen, asking him to intervene and to take a stance against Jyllands-Posten. The prime minister’s initial reaction was that it was inappropriate for the government to get involved in an issue pertaining to press freedom. In order to end the dispute, Danish diplomats presented an ‘explanation’ to the head of the Arab League and on 30 January Rasmussen made an official statement. Although he conceded the row had gone beyond a merely theoretical debate about the rights of the press, and expressed his regrets at the offence caused to millions of Muslims, he continued to defend press freedom. So did the editorship of Jyllands-Posten. Their account was accepted by the Islamic Society in Denmark. Ironically, however, the move which aimed at ending the dispute propelled it to an entirely different level. A number of European newspapers and media professionals in various European countries considered that this entailed an offence to freedom of expression and reacted by republishing the contested caricatures. That decision enraged millions of Muslims around the world (BBC News, 2 February 2006; The Guardian, 7 February 2006). In early February 2006, while provoking statements and actions on a global scale, the crisis also acquired a European dimension. Libya and Saudi Arabia imposed diplomatic sanctions recalling their diplomats from Copenhagen and calling for a boycott of Danish goods. In response to Saudi authorities, European Foreign Trade Commissioner Mandelson declared that a boycott of Danish products was seen as a boycott against the entire European Union. The events thus sparked immediate solidarity among European partners at the level of foreign trade. The position of ‘Europe’ on the issue of press freedom and freedom of opinion was a little more complex and diversified. The dispute attracted wide international coverage in European and Arab media (Soage, 2006). A number of European newspapers reprinted all or some of the cartoons with a view to asserting their belief in the (absolute) freedom of the press, while some refrained from doing so and others even went as far as sacking the editors who printed them in a show of respect for other people’s religious beliefs or sensitivities. Still others, in particular in the British press, claimed that since the cartoons were easily accessible anyhow via Web links, they need not be reprinted. The controversy fuelled public protests in several Muslim countries around the world. During the week of 2–8 February, some of the most violent events related to the crisis occurred, notably the burning of the Danish Embassy in Syria on 4 February. In Lebanon and Indonesia, public rallies turned violent and Danish embassies were attacked by mobs. EU offices in the Gaza Strip were surrounded by Palestinian gunmen demanding an apology over the cartoons. In the same week there were also protests in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Iran as well as in Britain and other EU countries. The dimensions that the Mohammed cartoons issue had acquired by February 2006 would have been difficult to predict. Why did the crisis assume

Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates 241

a symbolic, even emblematic, value for Muslims and non-Muslims in Europe and elsewhere? Why were religious and political leaders and opinion-makers across Europe drawn into what was initially a controversy in a small country with a limited Muslim population (cf. Oleson, 2007)? In analysing how this debate was presented by the press and how key actors in the news, including the European actors, articulated their argumentation over the cartoons affair this chapter seeks to highlight the European embeddedness of the issue and its symbolic importance, while taking into account the context of different conceptions and realities of multiculturalism in the countries that were analysed.

Analysing the crisis in relation to the European Public Sphere The cartoons story triggered public statements by many, among them the European Commission, individual MEPs, the leadership of different European countries and the European press. It produced representations of Europe and European ethics in the discourse of both the press and several key news actors. Moreover, the value positions and arguments sparked by the crisis are of direct relevance for questions raised about ethics in the context of a European Public Sphere. In this chapter we seek to answer how the relevant press coverage in four European countries proposed ideas and definitions of Europe and the EU as ethically charged notions. To achieve this aim, we investigate whether and what kind of representations or definitions of Europe, the EU, European identity or European values have developed within national public spheres on the occasion of the Mohammed cartoons issue. We seek to assess to what extent the press discourse on this issue in different countries either converged or diverged, and whether these discourses had a common transnational, European outlook. For this purpose, we have analysed the coverage by British, Dutch, Greek and Italian newspapers. The selection of the four countries allowed us to analyse the positions in both Eurosceptic and pro-European political and editorial cultures, as well as in societies with differing degrees of and responses to religious ethnic and cultural diversity brought by immigration. We were interested to see whether and how, in the face of a crisis such as this one, the media contributed to the construction of a transnational discursive space. For each country, two quality newspapers were selected that represent the mainstream public discourse and different political orientations and/or background, published during the week of 2–8 February (see Table 11.1). Factual news reports are the object of analysis. Argumentation about values has been mostly analysed through reported statements, i.e. direct or indirect quotations, of news actors, or the presentation of such positions in the metadiscourse of the newspaper. Table 11.1 shows that the cartoons crisis attracted the attention of newspapers across Europe – of both conservative and liberal

242 The European Public Sphere and the Media Table 11.1 Newspapers selected and number of reports published during 2–8 February 2006, by country Left-wing/ liberal

Number of Right-wing/ news reports conservative

No. reports Total amount reports

Britain

The Guardian and The Observer

18

The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph

14

32

Greece

Eleftherotypia and Eleftherotypia tis Kyriakis (Sunday edition)

15

Kathimerini and Kathimerini tis Kyriakis (Sunday edition)

10

25

Italy

La Repubblica

44

Corriere della Sera

42

86

Netherlands

De Volkskrant

21

NRC Handelsblad

9

30

75

173

Total reports

78

orientation. Although the incident was reported in all four countries studied, in the Italian press it had a higher impact, and here the majority of stories were either published or announced on the front page.4 Table 11.2 indicates, by newspaper, how many of the original cartoons were reprinted. It shows that the Dutch newspapers were the only ones to reprint all twelve cartoons during the time of the crisis, while Volkskrant was the only one to reprint three of them in an earlier stage, shortly after the initial publication in Jyllands-Posten in autumn 2005. This indicates that the issues raised by the cartoons, and the decision to reprint them, had high salience in the Dutch press and also that the threshold to reprint them was low and that it was considered important to adhere to the ‘freedom of expression’ position. Indeed, already in the Netherlands there had been prior murder incidents and debates about the limits of freedom of expression where critique of the religious identity of Muslim minorities was concerned.5 In contrast, in the British press the cartoons were not reprinted at all, either in the newspapers included in this study or in any other mainstream press outlets. This choice does not indicate a lesser importance attributed to the cartoons affair. Among other factors at play are different editorial cultures, journalistic ethics, the position of the press vis-à-vis European affairs, and the different approach to religious, ethnic and cultural diversity within British society. Extracted from the sample were sub-samples, where the focus was on those articles that included a European dimension. Articles were selected that had in their headline or main text the word ‘Europe’ or the ‘EU’, or that contained representations or arguments that referred to Europe and/or the EU either explicitly or implicitly. For the Greek sample this produced a subsample of six stories: three news stories from Kathimerini and three from

Crisis Events and the Idea of Europe in Post-War Media Debates 243 Table 11.2

Reprints of the cartoons, chronologically, by newspaper6 Number of cartoons published

Volkskrant Volkskrant NRC Handelsblad Corriere della Sera Eleftherotypia La Repubblica Kathimerini The Guardian The Daily Telegraph

3 12 12 2 1 2 0 0 0

Date of publication 29 October 2005 1 February 2006 1 February 2006 30 January 2006 31 January 2006 2 February 2006 – – –

Eleftherotypia. For the British press it has been impossible to make a selection of news stories for qualitative analysis from The Telegraph as there were no articles referring in any systematic or substantial way to Europe, the EU, European actors or values. A total of six articles were selected from The Guardian. The Italian analysis concentrated on the representation of and argumentation about ‘Europe’, ‘Islam’, ‘the West’ and ‘Christianity’ in a selection of over 20 newspaper articles. The Dutch sub-sample consisted of 18 stories that contained value statements and arguments about the crisis, from an either explicitly European or national/international perspective, both by key news actors and by – as far as this was possible in factual news reports – the newspapers themselves.

Analytical approach We have followed the method of pragmatics and discourse analysis to identify the prevalent themes and actors in the debate, as well as the main categorizations, topoi and arguments, and discourses of justification and legitimization adopted by those presenting and commenting on the crisis. The qualitative discourse analysis is focused on strategies of both actor representation (categorization and evaluation, attribution of characteristics) and argumentation as well as the realization of these strategies at the local text level through stylistic and rhetorical devices and intertextuality (Fairclough, 1992; Fairclough and Wodak, 1997; Fowler, 1991; Van Dijk, 1993; Wodak and Van Dijk, 2000). At the level of semantic structures, we have analysed the main themes and topics in the debate. Next, we identified strategies of group representation (self vs. other), and strategies of argumentation, such as mitigation, blaming and scapegoating. Such strategies function through the use of semantic, syntactic, stylistic and rhetorical devices – such as foregrounding of information, vagueness or over lexicalization (semantics), lexical choice (style), ‘us’/‘we’ pronouns, nominalization and agency (syntax), metaphor

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(semantics/style), understatement and ridicule (rhetoric) (see Wodak and Van Dijk, 2000). This analysis is thus placed in the tradition of critical discourse analyses of debates on ethnic issues, racism and anti-Semitism, which shows how language and text in context fulfil important social and political functions of negotiation, legitimization and justification (cf. Wodak, 2006; Wodak and Van Dijk, 2000), and rests on the theoretical assumption that media and political discourses play an important role in the reproduction or challenge of beliefs and opinions about cultural, ethnic and religious diversity and thereby contribute to maintaining or opposing ethnic inequality (Van Dijk, 1993).

Greek press reports on the cartoons crisis Europe was in the headlines of both Kathimerini (K) and Eleftherotypia (EL), to attract attention, especially in the front-page lead to an article featured inside the newspaper. The content of the news stories, however, said little about Europe and the EU. In its representation of the main actors involved in the news, Greek conservative daily Kathimerini used opposition, effected through the use of generalization, personification and agency. In the headlines, the ‘Muslim world’ was presented as the agent, while ‘Europe’ or the ‘European press’, on the other hand, were presented as the object of a Muslim ‘scare’ and ‘rage’ (‘Mohammed scares Europe’, Kathimerini, 3 February 2006; ‘Rage of Islam against Europe’, Kathimerini, 4 February 2006). The following excerpt from the latter article, a front-page lead, shows how ‘European governments’ were represented positively and with active verb phrases (‘Looking for ways to bridge the differences’). Opposed to the active role attributed to the ‘European governments’ is Kathimerini’s attribution of characteristics of emotion to the ‘Muslim world’. This is realized through nominalization (‘sensitivity’) and passivization (‘offended by the cartoons’), thus giving emphasis to the feelings of the Muslim world and de-emphasizing the act of offence of the cartoons. Opposed to the ‘Muslim sensitivity’ is the difficulty of ‘Europe’ to understand this. In this context ‘Europe’ was presented as a European ‘public sphere’, i.e. not so much as the European institutions, but rather the whole public debate and reaction to the issue, within and outside of the media. Interestingly, European governments were represented in this phrase as aiming to resolve the difficulties faced by Europe as a whole, thus revealing the responsibility felt by these governments to act on behalf of ‘Europe’: Example 1 Several European governments are looking for ways to bridge the differences between the Muslim world that has been offended by the cartoons of Mohammed, and Europe, that finds it difficult to understand the Muslim sensitivity [on the issue]. (K, 4 February 2006)

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Overall, the detailed news reporting concentrated on specific countries rather than on Europe as a group, or on the EU. The only instance in which the EU was referred to as a cohesive actor or political unit was with regard to the Muslim countries’ boycott of Danish products. The EU here took sides with Denmark and addressed the issue of relations with the EU (Kathimerini, 8 February 2006). This news story featured categorization and generalization strategies whereby the West, the EU and specific countries were by juxtaposition represented as the in-group, and the Muslim world, Iran and its leader Ali Hamenei and the Palestinian territories were presented as the out-group. Overall, the quality conservative press in Greece was careful to keep the tone moderate but organized the news reports clearly around strategies of positive representations of Europe vs. problematic representation of the Muslim world. An omission in this discourse was the reference to European Muslims, as found in the reports in the other three countries. Vagueness and negative representation were other features of the actor representations found in the newspaper. The Muslim world was loosely associated with Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan and, indirectly, through intertextuality, with the negative characteristics that these countries evoked because of highly visible coverage about terrorism, war, destruction, poverty and Islamic fanaticism in the period immediately preceding the crisis. In contrast, in the coverage of the ‘we’-group the emphasis was on values of press freedom and respect for Muslim spiritual or religious values (Kathimerini, 4 February 2006). Hence, what emerges from this coverage is a binary opposition of negative values associated with ‘them’ and positive values and intentions associated with the wider ‘we’-group. This representation strategy was not enacted directly by the editing of the newspaper but rather reported through direct and indirect quotation of arguments reflecting different sides in the controversy (e.g. the Danish, British and Turkish prime ministers and the US secretary of state, among others). The Eleftherotypia coverage was more explicitly value-oriented and ideological than that of Kathimerini. The stories were clearly ‘European’ in their focus. The statements and arguments of European political leaders were presented as belonging to a European whole that: Example 2 [c]ondemns the violent events with which Muslims have reacted to the publication of cartoons of Mohammed and makes pleas for moderateness and respect of religious sentiments so that the world will not reach a clash of civilizations (‘Europe makes pleas and condemns . . .’, EL, 6 February 2006). The Eleftherotypia news reports overall paid more attention to the EU as a political actor. The newspaper devoted one large article to the possible

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development of a code of practice for the European media and the related reluctance of the International Federation of Journalists towards the creation of such a code (8 February 2006). The EU’s justice commissioner was quoted in some length, as was the Austrian foreign minister (Austria held the rotating EU Presidency during the reporting period) (8 February 2006). In both stories the EU was presented as a cohesive entity whose members were politically, culturally and economically interdependent. Reference was made to EU citizens as a whole alongside quotes and references to individual EU countries. Quite interestingly, both Greek newspapers used the topos of the ‘clash of civilizations’ without explaining what this slogan entailed, suggesting that everybody understood its meaning. The clash of civilizations was presented as a concrete and possible political development rather than as a reason for analysis and debate.

Journalistic balance, condemnation, Muslims at home: the British news reports about the cartoons issue In The Daily Telegraph (DT ), the notion of Europe was not elaborated or paraphrased; the news reporting clearly followed a national imprint. Moreover, foreign news events were reported from countries, or capitals of countries, without distinction between Europe and other parts of the world. At the same time, Europe was mentioned adversarily in quotations of slogans and/or statements at British Muslim protest marches in London and other parts of the world (‘Europe, your 9/11 will come’ and ‘Europe will pay, fantastic 4 are on their way’, DT, 6 February 2006; ‘Europe you’ll come crawling when Mujahedeen come roaring’, DT, 5 February 2006). But the newspaper did not engage in any sort of commentary on why the slogans referred to Europe and not Denmark specifically, nor the West or Britain. Also some news stories referred to British and once to European Muslims. The identification with Europe by those opposing the publication of the cartoons is interesting in that it shows how even when the controversy did not have a precise and univocal ‘European’ response, the Muslim part of the population did voice their protest in response to ‘Europe’. The same is partly true for the coverage of The Guardian (GU ); Europe was found only once in the headlines. References to Europeans and the EU were more frequent in the texts. Europe was not a prominent actor nor a relevant entity as regards values and/or the arguments related to the freedom of the press and the publication of the cartoons. In Example 3 below, The Guardian headline focused on the ‘European elite’, describing its role as one of panic mediation in the conflict between the press and Muslims (‘scramble to defuse’). In the text the focus was on the EU as an authority figure that was opposed to the press actions (‘step in to berate’) and concerned with Muslim reactions (‘try to calm’). The representation of the debate as a

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‘furore’ that had to be ‘defused’ by the European leadership and the characterization of the controversy as a ‘fray’ (alliteration), reinforced the idea of a panic while the focus on EU condemnation of that part of the press that was reprinting the cartoons is in line with the UK’s position not to reprint. Example 3 ‘European elite scrambles to defuse furore over caricatures of Muhammad’7 . . . With newspaper editors in half a dozen countries unrepentant at the decision to republish cartoons depicting the prophet, EU commissioners stepped in to berate the press and try to calm Muslim anger . . . The EU also entered the fray. (GU, 3 February 2006) Following The Guardian’s quotations in the same article, the European Commission’s discourse initially did not centre on the topos of press freedom. Instead in the statements reported, in the example below, commissioners classified the decision by newspapers to reprint the cartoons as ‘imprudent’ and ‘deliberately provocative’, and overtly disapproved of this decision (‘publication was wrong’). The implication of these selected statements was that the press could have expected the Muslim reactions. The quote by EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini is based on unstated intertextuality: first, he offered a description of the contents and implications of one of the cartoons, and secondly, he implicitly referred to the political agenda, i.e. a proposal launched during the same week about the need to assess the role of media in the recruitment of young people for terrorist causes. Example 4 Peter Mandelson, the trade commissioner, said that newspapers had been deliberately provocative in republishing the drawings. Franco Frattini, the EU justice commissioner, said that the Danish newspaper JyllandsPosten had been ‘imprudent’ to publish the 12 cartoons on September 30. Publication was wrong, he said, ‘even if the satire used was aimed at a distorted interpretation of religion, such as that used by terrorists to recruit young people, sometimes to the point of sending them into action as suicide bombers’. (GU, 3 February 2006) Instead, a representative of British Muslim protesters was quoted as introducing his argument with a reference to freedom of speech in Europe, defined as ‘indisputable’. Hereby it was implied that these values were indeed European, and were valued by all citizens alike, as in the following example: Example 5 ‘Of course no one disputes the freedom of speech in Europe,’ Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain said. (GU, 3 February 2006)

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It is remarkable that the one quote in which reference to such ‘European’ values was found comes from a Muslim representative. The Guardian did not present these values as European in its reports, nor did it focus on the reaction of the EU as a whole. On the contrary, the newspaper offered detailed accounts of different countries’ reactions, putting together EU countries, other European states, and African or Asian countries and the US, thus emphasizing the global scale of the crisis (‘Protests and calls for vengeance spread across globe’, The Guardian, 4 February 2006). An article published in the foreign affairs section focused on the global repercussions of the crisis (‘How cartoons fanned flames of Muslim rage’, The Guardian, 4 February 2006). Direct quotes from European newspaper editors divided about the issue of press freedom were followed by reactions in the Palestinian territories and elsewhere in the ‘Muslim world’, and by a discussion of issues facing Muslim communities in European countries and the leadership of those countries. The general thrust of the report was to show the divisions and differences of opinion on a number of implications of the crisis. In other words, The Guardian emphasized that many voices existed within Europe, over an issue that was highly contentious and contested. It did not present itself as part of the debate either as a newspaper or as part of the European response. This position seems in line with the attempt at balanced and impartial reporting. Similarly, although some Muslim actors were reported to use the word ‘we’ as in ‘we Muslims’, The Guardian took no position on that nor did it generalize the Muslim position as monolithic. On the contrary, divergence and dissonance within the Muslim world were emphasized. Interestingly, on 7 February 2006, The Guardian ran two stories (‘Cartoons “part of Zionist plot” ’ and ‘Scotland Yard sets up squad to track protesters’) that referred to the reaction of the Austrian EU Presidency and that of EU authorities, who warned that boycotting Danish goods meant boycotting European goods and would endanger relations with the whole of the EU. Although these statements implied an opposition between the EU and Islamic states and in particular Iran, most news reporting was focused not on trade issues, but on principles, respect of the rule of law and mutual compromise. There was clearly no reference to a ‘clash of civilizations’ in the British news stories.8 A lengthy quote from the British prime minister’s spokesperson was provided by The Guardian’s political correspondent: Example 6 ‘We understand the offence caused by the cartoons depicting the Prophet and of course regret that this has happened. Such things help no one. But nothing can justify the violence aimed at European embassies or at the country of Denmark. We and our EU partners stand in full solidarity with them in resisting this violence and believe the Danish government

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has done everything it reasonably can to handle a very difficult situation.’ (GU, 7 February 2006) Tony Blair’s statement was addressed primarily at Denmark and Muslims, and on behalf of the EU (‘we and our EU partners’). The introductory sentences present a hedged remark, paying attention to the feelings of Muslims, without mentioning the addressed group of Muslims explicitly. This remark is followed by ‘But’ followed by the statement that such feelings do not justify violence. The fact that the Danish government was said to ‘have done everything it can’ suggests on the other hand that the official Danish position of regret without backing down on the freedom of opinion issue was shared by the British government. The firmness of the prime minister’s position was underlined with rhetorical devices presenting absoluteness and strength of opinion (‘help no one’, ‘nothing can justify’, ‘full solidarity’ and ‘everything it can’). Overall the British press coverage avoided binary oppositions of Europeans and Muslims, thus implicitly acknowledging the fact that there are many British and other European Muslims. Also the news reporting strived for balance and impartiality by reporting from different countries and quoting directly from different sources.

‘Our’ freedom divides and the ‘other’ Europe: Dutch news reports about the cartoons issue Actor representations: ‘the West’ vs. ‘global Islam’ The first focus of the Dutch press reports was on national official reactions to the crisis. These did not contain any direct or explicit identification with Europe. Instead, reference was made to a ‘we’-group through predicates such as ‘in our world’ and ‘in the free world’ and ‘the West’. This use of personal pronouns and attributes was part of a strategy of boundary-marking between ‘us’ and ‘them’, where ‘us’ was valued positively and ‘them’ negatively. Indeed, positive characteristics – in particular, the respect for fundamental values of separation of powers, rule of law and freedom of opinion – were attributed to the ‘we’-group. Through implicature, this triggered a negative image of the out-group, i.e. it stated that in ‘their world’ such values and practices were absent. This group representation strategy of positive self- vs. negative other was used to support the position, uttered by key actors directly quoted in the coverage, that ‘we’ should take sides and defend ‘our’ position collectively. Unlike the reported EC statements in the British press, which were directed at newspaper editors, the projected addressees of the statements by Dutch national leaders were the Islamic countries. Also, the Dutch prime minister’s reaction used a different perspective to that of his British counterpart.

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It focused on the ‘regrettable Islamic threats’ and uttered a somewhat patronizing ‘we go to the judge’ (De Volkskrant, 4 February 2006). Instead, the British prime minister stated, ‘we regret the offence caused by the cartoons’ (see above). Also, while the British government included the EU in its position, the Dutch official position did not. The second focus of the Dutch news reports was on violent protest events and conflicting international reactions emerging from the crisis. In these reports, actor representations were again based on oppositions between ‘us’ and ‘them’. Through the use of generalization strategies and metaphor the cartoonists were juxtaposed to a larger set of actors that were taken as a symbol of the norms and values expressed via the publication of the cartoons: cartoonist = Danish newspaper = Denmark. On the other hand, Muslim opponents were also represented by juxtaposition as an ever larger collective of protesters, Islamic countries and ‘global Islam’ (De Volkskrant, 3 February 2006). The rhetoric devices used in the Dutch press emphasized the representation of the actors as opposed groups with negative attributions to the out-group of Muslim protesters. The protests, so the news stories and their main actors argued, were not just directed against Denmark, but also against what Denmark represented – ‘the West’ – because other European media published the cartoons and because it was assumed that the West stood as a symbol for the freedom to print such cartoons. The object of protest and disapproval was extended to a binary opposition between ‘the West’ and ‘global Islam’ and the regimes and populations which took sides in the debate. Not only the news about protest events, but also military interventions by NATO against protests in Afghanistan, and statements by heads of state reinforced this opposition. These group representation strategies were, however, typical of the positioning of the Dutch leadership and press, and were not found in the discourse of EU official actors.

Muslims ‘within’ represent Europe as the ‘other’ De Volkskrant covered several reactions by Muslims in Europe and the Netherlands. Similar to the findings for the British sample, this quotation of the ‘Muslim voice’ was the only context in which we found an explicit reference to ‘Europe’ as a collective actor. In the Dutch context this reference was rather negative and hinted at a potential for conflict within Dutch society. The Muslims voiced in the reports were critical of Europe’s treatment of fundamental values in the cartoons affair. They argued that Europe had two measures for freedom of opinion and suggested Muslims were being discriminated against, because where offences against Jews were not tolerated, those against Muslims were. According to this argumentation strategy, if the expression of anti-Islamic opinions is allowed then it should also be allowed to express negative opinions about Jews.

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The opponents quoted above explicitly identified the values underlying the pro-cartoon position as European. This identification with Europe was made through accusation or rejection of Europe. It was based on the opposition between Europe and the Muslim world, but more specifically the Muslim community in Europe. The actors implicitly defined themselves as ‘European Muslims’ or ‘Muslims in Europe’. In their view there was a common European way of dealing with Muslims and Muslim faith in general, and the cartoons affair in particular. On the other hand, the newspaper, and by extension Europe and the West, believed that in the Muslim world anti-Semitism was unjustly tolerated. These strategies of ‘attack and counter-attack’ that attributed and accused the other party of intolerance and discrimination indicate a less detached attitude towards coverage of the cartoons issue when compared with the treatment in the British press analysed above. Arguments about fundamental values The controversy around the cartoons affair was intensified in the Dutch press by focusing on opposing views and differences between the United States and the European Commission on the one hand, and the European Commission and Dutch politicians, on the other. Contrary to the rather firm position of the US, that had classified the cartoons as hate speech, the European Commission presented a cautious position. EU Commissioner for Human Rights Alvaro Gil-Robles, and others, emphasized the need to respect other religions. But European Commission representatives also defended the freedom of opinion as in the following quote: Example 7 Meanwhile the European Commissioner for Integration Frattini declared yesterday to understand ‘the feelings of indignation, frustration and sadness within the Muslim community’. But he also said that the freedom of opinion, including the right to criticize, is one of the fundamental rights of Europe. (NRC, 3 February 2006). Dutch politicians uncompromisingly defended freedom of the press and explicitly supported the publication of the cartoons. Dutch MPs expressed support for and solidarity with Denmark and those who published the cartoons. They defended an unconditional protection of freedom of opinion and rejected any self-censorship. This differentiation in the Dutch position suggests that, notwithstanding the identification with Denmark and the taking sides in favour of Denmark on the diplomatic level, there was no real homologation of discourses about values towards the European level. Indeed, the Dutch official actors did not position themselves in the debate on behalf of Europe. On the contrary, from the discourse used and the news selection made, it emerges that the relation with Europe was one of disagreement – even if this was mostly triggered by a misunderstanding over

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a press code that the EU was reportedly initiating. The Netherlands opposed this initiative firmly as curtailing the freedom of the press (De Volkskrant, 7 February 2006). Similarly, in the headlines, disagreement between the European Commission and Dutch MEPs was emphasized. The Commission’s attempt to find a middle ground in a common position was presented through the metaphors ‘walking on eggshells’ and ‘without stepping on European toes’, suggesting that these efforts were largely inefficient in an attempt to ‘defuse the holy war’. Example 8 BARROSO IS WALKING ON EGGS IN THE CARTOONS AFFAIR. CAUTIOUS POSITION EC MEETS CRITICISM OF MEPS. The European Commission operates with socks on its feet [with extreme caution] in the cartoons affair surrounding the Prophet Mohammed. Day after day the daily executive of the EU tries to defuse the holy war that has broken out about the Mohammed cartoons without stepping on European toes. (VK, 8 February 2006) The above criticism of the official European position did not stand alone. Several Dutch politicians criticized the position of the European Commission and other EU institutions for being too moderate. In the following statement by a Dutch MP, a Somali refugee of Muslim origins,9 freedom of opinion was defended at the expense of the respect for religious difference. The modality of the quotation is that of an imperative (‘has to be’; ‘have to get used’), realized also through the repeated use of the collective ‘we’ by the individual speaker. The rhetoric of ‘we’ vs. ‘them’ draws an opposition between in-group and out-group. Example 9 MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali (liberal-right VVD), who is herself threatened with death from the Islamic side, expresses her surprise about the moderate reactions of European politicians to the cartoon incident. She would prefer that European countries withdraw together their ambassadors from SaudiArabia and compensate Denmark for the financial losses resulting from the sanctions. ‘The signal has to be univocal,’ Hirsi Ali said. ‘We do not bend. To the Islamic countries I say: prepare yourself. We will draw the prophet, make films about him, and what not. Because that is what we do here. They will have to get used to that.’ (VK, 2 March 2006, emphasis added) A similar position, though expressed more diplomatically, was found in a statement about freedom of opinion and religion by the Dutch government representative for European affairs, published by NRC Handelsblad on 6 February 2006. Here again the issue of self-censorship was addressed and freedom

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of the press and opinion were defended. Such defence of fundamental values was inspired by the preoccupation with national issues. The main issues here were limits to self-censorship provoked by Muslim intimidation, debated heavily in the Netherlands, among other things as a result of the success of taboo-breaking populist politician Pim Fortuyn in spring 2002 and after the murder of film director Theo van Gogh in November 2004.

Islam and Christianity at war: the Italian press coverage of the cartoons issue ‘Europe at odds’ and ‘war between Islam and Europe’ In the Italian reporting, Europe received relevant coverage in the context of the violent incidents and protests against the reprinting of the cartoons. Two headlines referred to the EU: ‘Gaza, armed man demand to shut down the EU office’ (Il Corriere della Sera, 2 February 2006), and, at the occasion of an EU summit: ‘EU: “unacceptable aggressions”. Ciampi: “Let’s respond together” ’ (La Repubblica, 6 February 2006). In the following headlines, Europe was depicted as an almost defenceless object of a threat and pressure from outside caused by the cartoons and the related protests: ‘Islam, the cartoons are setting Europe on fire’ (CS, 3 February 2006), ‘Cartoons: Europe at odds’ (R, 4 February 2006) and ‘If Europe subsides’ (CS, 7 February 2006). The tone of the headlines is sensationalist and the lexical choice (‘fire’ ‘danger’, ‘subsides’) equates the situation to that of threat and war. However, the content is quite different, because it refers only briefly to the aggressions, and rather concentrates on the different positions towards the events inside and among the European countries. Therefore, Islam is waging war against Europe, the headlines tell us, but the confrontation is probably inside and among its divided partner states, the content explains. At the same time, the language conveys that Europe is ‘at odds’ when the EU is divided, i.e. underlining the desirability of a common position. The representations of Europe in the Italian news discourse reveal that the main concern is about the division of the continent. In this context, Europe and the US are seen as opposite poles. Europe is divided on the cartoons affair, the US is not: ‘America condemns the “hate caricatures” ’ (CS, 4 February 2006). Moreover, the choice of siding with or condemning the (publication of) the cartoons is represented as a struggle. In the following excerpt where the issue is presented as a ‘war between Islam and Europe’, the decision not to apologize for the cartoons is presented as residual and almost whimsical: Example 10 So, if many capital cities have taken distance from the 12 cartoons, published in quasi indifference last September by a small Danish paper and today at the centre of an unforeseeable political, cultural and commercial war between Islam and Europe, others have nevertheless repeated their

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will not to apologize. (‘America condemns the “hate caricatures”’, CS, 4 February 2006) The article ‘If Europe subsides’ is interesting in another way. The piece was published on 7 February when the commotion over the killing of Catholic priest Don Andrea Santoro in Turkey – allegedly sparked by the cartoons – was higher. The article reports a number of possible positions of Italian political actors regarding Turkey’s accession to the EU. The Vatican’s attitude is depicted as decisive, the best based and the most influential in an otherwise confused landscape. The centrality of Catholic authorities and Catholic values returns in the discourse on Europe. ‘Pera: “The religious identity of Europe is weak” ’ (CS, 8 February 2006). This speech act performs indirectly the invitation – or even moral obligation – for Europe to strengthen its religious identity, which is seen as a means to respond to issues like this. In the article, Marcello Pera, chairman of the Italian Senate, analyses the different reactions of the US and European governments towards the affair. Weak and divided Europe is compared with the self-confident US, and European weakness is ascribed to a lack of religious identity, as underlined by the Pope. Islam vs. martyrs and crusaders: topos of clash of civilization The topos or disaster scenario of a ‘clash of civilizations’ or of a ‘war between cultures’ recurs in the newspapers analysed. To this end, discursive devices of generalization, shift in meanings and opposition are used in the representation of actors in both newspapers. Representations of ‘Europe’ and ‘Islam’ are opposed to ‘the West’ and ‘Christianity’. The protesters are denoted in the headlines simply as ‘Islam’: ‘Cartoons and Islam, violence’ (CS, 5 February 2006), ‘Islamic rage on Western embassies’ (CS, 5 February 2006), ‘Islam, revolt against the cartoons spreads out’ (R, 4 April 2006), and ‘Islam, embassies assaulted’ (R, 5 February 2006). On the other hand, only the Lebanese government distinguishes the religion from the protesters (‘The rage of the Copenhagen government’, R, 6 February 2006). The protesters assail symbols, first Danish, then European and Western, and from the beginning the actors explicitly identify themselves collectively. Here the topos of clash of civilizations is introduced – although in an indirect quotation of the Dutch foreign minister: Example 11 And behind the Islamic lunatics he [the Dutch foreign minister] adds, we can guess a large operation that points at a ‘clash of civilizations’. ‘The issue is not about the cartoons anymore,’ now there are forces that want a ‘confrontation between the Arabic world and the Christian and European world’. (‘The Arabic world should stop the fanatics. The rage of the Copenhagen government’, R, 6 February 2006)

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Opposed to the images of a war between clashing civilizations is the image of Italy as the undeserving victim of retaliation. Example 12 But what has Italy to do with this? Stones, gunshots against the troops in Afghanistan, a priest killed – according to a hypothesis – in retaliation for the blasphemous caricatures, and even the Iranian press agency Fars, linked to the Guardians of the Revolution, defines our country ‘the major upholder of the Zionists’, and calls for the boycott of Fiat, ‘ “Zionist business”, since the Stampa published the cartoons too’. (‘Woe betide a clash of civilizations!’ R, 8 February 2006) Finally, the confrontation raises the question of defining what features are typical of the West. Some news stories, in particular those focusing on the role of the media, refer to freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Other news stories point to the identification of the West with Christian values. In an interview, a Catholic leader clarified this point (journalist in italic): Example 13 Let’s start with the murder of Father Santoro. In your opinion is it possible to see there a link with the cartoon published in Europe? ‘Obviously yes, and it has an inference that the authors of the cartoons are probably very far from Christianity. For a minority of more intransigent Muslims, the West means Christianity because the world is conceived in terms of confrontation between religions.’ (‘Fanaticism is growing, more Christians will die. But courage is better than false dialogue’, CS, 7 February 2006) Indeed, the Catholic Church is well represented in interviews or direct quotations of its authorities and sympathetic politicians. This presence can be partly explained as a reaction to the killing of a Catholic priest. But in the representation of the conflict between Islam and the West we detected a keen awareness of the theme of Christianity and an intensive use of concepts, terms and stories referring to a clash of religions. Hence the protesters assaulting European embassies are depicted as fighting the ‘crusader countries’ (La Repubblica, 5 February 2006). In the following interview excerpt, a member of government from the populist Northern League is quoted to launch the idea of a ‘crusade’ against Islam led by the Pope: Example 14 ‘The Islamics have changed strategy: at the beginning they used only terrorists, now they move the masses. They assault embassies. We are now at a stage of collective fanaticism. The Pope must intervene, as Pius V and Innocent XI did before, in the 16th and 17th century’ . . . ‘At the times

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of the Vienna war and of the war of Lepanto the Popes replaced the governments: [T]hey created big coalitions to defeat the Islamic rising.’ (‘Ratzinger must intervene. We need a new crusade’, R, 8 February 2006) When the Danish embassy in Beirut was attacked, Il Corriere della Sera emphasized that the violent episode took place in the Christian quarter (‘Beirut, Danish people assaulted in the Christian quarter’, CS, 6 February 2006) and, reporting on the same event La Repubblica focuses on the stoning of a church, recalling a past of religious conflict (‘Cartoons, violence spreads out. Fighting in the heart of Beirut’, R, 6 February 2006). On the whole, the confrontation is described with the language of a holy war, on both sides. But while Muslim authorities and protesters are described or express themselves in aggressive terms, the Catholic Church and its followers, on the other hand, are depicted as heroes and martyrs. Following the death of Don Andrea Santoro, both La Repubblica and Il Corriere della Sera insist on the terms ‘heroes’ and ‘martyrs’, and publish more than one dossier on the persecutions suffered by the Catholic Church since its origin. Il Corriere della Sera on 7 February published 40 passport-size pictures of Catholic religious people killed since 1980 under the headline ‘Church under attack’. This presentation, even though including events and places that had nothing to do with Islam, contributed to produce the image of a massive martyrdom related to Muslim fanaticism. To summarize, the theme of Europe is recurrent in the Italian press coverage, but the EU institutions are present only when EU offices are attacked and when the heads of state meet officially. More frequently, Europe is evoked as a group of divided countries that are unable to produce a common position. However, this group of countries has two common denominators, the Italian press tells the readers: a belief in the freedom of the press and a common Christian identity. The same duality can be found in the representation of the confrontation with the Muslim world. The ‘clash of civilizations’ is evoked, but then heavily qualified as a ‘clash of religions’ or as a ‘holy war’.

Conclusion The press coverage in the four countries is characterized by the national social and political landscape. In each country the coverage pays special attention to the national political elites and the national constituency and its reactions. Also national sensitivities are prominent, e.g. worries that the issue may lead to alienation of a part of the national population that is Muslim (in Britain) but also concerns that an excessive sensitivity towards religious specificities is leading to self-censorship (in the Netherlands). The language used and the formatting of the news is also special to each national editorial culture. In both the Greek and Italian press the words ‘Europe’ and the ‘EU’ are often used in the headlines as catchwords but the

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content of the news stories that follow and the interpretation of what Europe means differ. They may refer to Europe as a whole, the EU as a particular political entity, or to European countries and their governments’ or publics’ reaction to the cartoons incident and the protests that followed. The almost complete absence of Europe in the British headlines may be an indication of a less positive news value attributed to ‘Europe’ in Britain compared to the Southern European countries. However, while in the Greek reports the topos of European unity prevailed, the Italian press used the topos of ‘Europe at odds’. The more critical and content-oriented attention to Europe in the British press was evident from both headlines and coverage, although an official statement by the prime minister did express unity on the diplomatic level. The Dutch press did mention European actors quite frequently, though the EU appeared only twice in the headlines, where the affair was presented more often as ‘Danish’. The Dutch coverage emphasized critique of the caution of the European Commission, and championed the national political elite that was very firm in defending freedom of opinion. There are a few important resemblances among the four countries and a few substantial differences. All newspaper accounts refer to the freedom of the press and the need to respect religions and religious differences. However, the interpretations voiced in the press of this indeed subtle distinction are different and there is tension between respecting freedoms and using freedom with responsibility. In the Dutch news reports the value issue is more developed. The discourse analysed reveals an agreement (either with or without referring to Europe explicitly) that European countries share in common a set of principles among which the freedom of the press and freedom of expression occupy a prominent role. Respect for other religions is also an important principle in European societies, but to a lesser extent than freedom of expression, the newspaper coverage across countries agrees. Referring to the above, Europe is seen as a value-charged notion. However, no special ethical responsibility is foreseen for Europe or the EU. As regards the ethically charged role of Europe, the press coverage in each country is different. In Greece and the UK, Europe and the EU are characterized by solidarity and interdependence. The Italian press, in contrast, points more to the internal fragmentation of the EU on this matter. Also different to the newspaper coverage in the other two countries, the Italian press pays attention to the stance of the US on the issue and uses the US as a mirror of Europe. The Dutch press in particular emphasizes the divergent view on the value issue between Europe and the US (the US had condemned the cartoons as blasphemy and incitement to hatred), revealing the fact that there are no common ‘Western’ values, at least on this particular issue. Greece and Italy share their reference to the clash of civilizations. This topos reinforced a Manichaeistic view of the world as divided into two

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camps: the West or Europe and Islam. The representation of a division between Europeanness and non-Europeans may be one of the reasons why the crisis acquired such proportions in the European media. An argument maintained by Sayyid (2006) is that this is related to a Euro-centrist tendency and a crisis in European identity, unable to face the transnational political subjectivity of Muslim protesters. Sayyid argues that implicit in this reaction was the wish to keep viewing Muslims as minorities in a national setting, while searching to maintain a superior view of European culture, and denying multiculturalism. However, the British press avoided such dichotomies and references and rather privileged the expression of different views including those of British Muslims in its news stories. The Dutch press contained no references to the clash of civilizations either, but did oppose the West to the ‘rest’. Reactions of Dutch Muslims to the cartoons incident were also presented in a binary opposition of Muslims vs. Europe. Such oppositional representations of Muslims and Europe have been documented by Van Dijk too, in his analysis of the Spanish press (2006). Although recent studies suggest that the British media promote exclusionary and radicalized views of British Muslims (Cottle, 2000; Poole, 2002; Saeed, 2007) our own research shows that compared to the Dutch, Italian or Greek press, the British newspapers show respect for the religious sensitivities of British Muslims and emphasize the fact that these last are part of the ingroup. Phillips and Lee (2007: 65) suggest that the moderate tone of the British press coverage has to be seen not only within its European and international but also within its specific national context that included not only 9/11 and the London bombings of July 2005 but also the trials of famous extreme right-wing and Islamic leaders and the overall discussion of multiculturalism, diversity and the limits to the freedom of speech. Europe and the EU as a whole appear mainly in opposition to countries or collectivities outside the European continent such as ‘the Arab world’, ‘the Muslim world’, ‘the US’ and so on. There is a certain level of solidarity and common ethics shared within Europe although the importance of this may vary again between countries and newspapers. Last but not least, there is little reference to any ethical responsibility of Europe or the EU. Responsibility falls primarily on national governments. These are responsible for adopting an ethically informed position (an obvious example in this case is the Danish government) and also for deciding whether they want to stand together as a European entity or act separately and/or in intergovernmental solidarity with one another. Finally, the identification by Muslim speakers – even literally – of Europe with freedom of speech, as well as the categorization of ‘European Muslims’, indicates an interesting paradox. This paradox reveals that the recurrence to Europe as a category for grassroots protests, i.e. either banners or self-presentations used by religious minorities, is considered by these groups as part of a viable discursive strategy.

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In the cartoons affair, a common transnational discursive space existed in that the European press largely agreed on the need to defend press freedom and freedom of opinion. It was also in the context of press initiatives that the adjective ‘European’ became visible in the cartoons affair reports. Moreover, the news discourse showed great similarities among the countries analysed. However, they also converged in their high attention to their domestic political sphere, reporting as actors largely on both their governments and their constituencies. Given these findings there are two research questions to be explored further. First, if we accept that this transnational discursive space exists, is this a European space or is it an international space that includes also other Western countries? Second, how important is this space for the reporting on international crises? This case study presents ambivalent results as to whether the transnational discursive space is European or Western and to what extent the two overlap. In the cartoons issue, the US position was at least clearly different from that of the European actors. Also, the structure and content of the discourse show that the transnational discursive space exists mostly as regards media networks and exchange of information about the events, while national actors have a leading role in the coverage of reactions to the crisis.

Notes 1. The issue arose after Danish writer Kare Bluitgen complained he was unable to find an illustrator for his children’s book about the prophet because he said no one dared to break an Islamic tenet banning the portrayal of Mohammed’s image. JyllandsPosten asked cartoonists to ‘draw the prophet as they saw him’, as an assertion of free speech and to reject pressure by Muslim groups to respect their sensitivities. 2. More widely, most Islamic schools of thought have discouraged the figurative depiction of living creatures, especially human beings and religious figures. In particular, depicting religious figures, and in Islamic faith, Mohammed, is considered blasphemic. Islamic art has therefore tended to be abstract or decorative. This is shared with other practitioners of Abrahamic religions reacting to the biblical prohibition of images, such as the iconoclasts. 3. In some instances, this coverage included a rather forceful and misleading representation of the crisis’ most violent repercussions (Luyendijk, 2006). 4. The explanations for the high number of articles are two-fold. First, the crude domestic impact of the killing of a Catholic priest: this particular event amounted to 19 per cent of the themes covered. Second, the political climate in Italy: the Berlusconi government was heavily challenged because of, among other things, the economic situation, and the government coalition was split on economic measures and views on the EU. A cultural campaign on Catholic martyrdom, heroism and values could be useful to compact the right-wing coalition and electorate, while the left-wing coalition strived to keep some of the public legitimacy that Catholic values represent in Italy. 5. The most clamorous cases are the murder of Theo van Gogh in 2004 and the success of populist politician Pim Fortuyn who used a bold anti-Islamist rhetoric in the 2002 national elections.

260 The European Public Sphere and the Media 6. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_that_reprinted_Jyllands-Posten %27s_Muhammad_cartoons#Ordered_chronologically, based on a study by the Danish School of Journalism. 7. The quotation marks indicate a headline. 8. In commentaries and editorials, however, there was some discussion as to whether what is happening is a ‘clash of civilizations’, mainly rejecting the idea and the term too. 9. The murder by a Muslim radical, in November 2004, of film director and editorialist Theo van Gogh was related to a film van Gogh made together with MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The film depicts the women-unfriendly practices legitimated by the Koran and Muslim belief, in an attempt to stir up the debate about the degrading position and treatment of women in Islam. The murder of Theo van Gogh polarized the debate about Islam in the Netherlands, and the debate about the way to handle constitutional principles of freedom of speech and of religion. Hirshi Ali herself was the object of numerous death threats.

Conclusions: Europe, Media, Crisis and the European Public Sphere Michał Krzyzanowski, ˙ Anna Triandafyllidou and Ruth Wodak

Constructions of ‘Europe’ in the analysed media discourse In contrast to our expectations and hypotheses, the analysed textual material, derived from the national and international media coverage of our crisis events, provides a highly diversified set of ‘national’ conceptualizations of Europe. Europe never comes to the foreground of the analysed media discourses and it is debated only ‘as a whole’ in the reporting of the Mohammed cartoons in the European media in early 2006. Only within that most recent event is Europe additionally strongly linked to its ethical conceptualization (portrayed as a community of common values) and is perceived as a more or less congruent entity whose features differ from non-European ones such as ‘the Arab world, the Muslim states, the United States and so on’ (see Chapter 11). On the other hand, in most of the events prior to 2006 (in particular: the revolution in Budapest in 1956; the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961; May 1968 in Paris; the reforms in Prague and the invasion of the Soviet army in August 1968; the declaration of a ‘State of War’ in Poland in 1981; and the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and opening up of the borders between Western and Eastern Europe in 1956 and 1989), Europe is portrayed as a synonym for other geopolitical conceptualizations. It is defined geographically, as a territory, and it is mainly perceived as an intermediary space somewhere between the ‘East’ and the ‘West’. Hence, the East–West divide of Europe which lasted until 1989 and the fall of the Iron Curtain may be defined as an overarching conceptualization of the entire global space. It must be noted that both the ‘East’ and the ‘West’ frequently also included non-European actors such as, in particular, the US in the ‘West’. Moreover, the East–West logic seems far more appealing to the media than any attempt to conceptualize Europe in times of crisis. It was obviously easier for the media to perceive most of the crisis events as rooted in the East–West struggle in the Cold War rather than to construct Europe as not divided or conflicted. Therefore, in several crisis events – in 1956 in Budapest, 261

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1961 in Berlin, 1968 in Prague, 1981 in Poland and 1989 in Germany – we encounter very elaborate definitions of the East–West struggle (still located and taking place in Europe) rather than any other philosophical or ethical perceptions of Europe. It is only the student and workers protest in Paris in May 1968 (Chapter 6) that does not draw on the described processes of spatializing Europe and perceiving it in terms of the East–West divide (viz. Europe as a locus of that struggle). Within that event, Europe is mostly defined as an economic space and the pan-European economic repercussions of the French crisis are debated. In all the pre-1989 crises analysed in this book, we note the crucial role of a national filter of perception of Europe (see also Krzyzanowski ˙ and Wodak, 2006a). Hence, while in most countries Europe is (if at all) congruently accommodated in discourse through the ‘spatial’ and ‘East–West’ lens described above, it is always defined in ways which help defend and legitimize the different national perceptions of Europe (see also Malmborg and Stråth, 2002; Stråth and Triandafyllidou, 2003) and of the crises in question. Interestingly, those national filters of perceiving Europe remain more or less stable over time, as we established throughout several crisis events where the media of similar countries were investigated. In the British press, for example, whose coverage is analysed for Berlin 1961, Paris 1968, Prague 1968, Poland 1981 and Berlin 1989 (Chapters 5–9), the perception of Europe and of events occurring in foreign (European) countries remains the same and is rooted in Britain’s specifically ‘Eurosceptic’ or ‘British pragmatic’ (Mautner, 2000) perception of the European space. It is also notable that, in the British case, the Eurosceptic perception persists even further in the coverage of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the Mohammed cartoons in 2006 (Chapters 10–11). In a similar vein, West German media (whose coverage is analysed for the crises of Berlin in 1961, Paris 1968 and Poland 1981) also display very similar characteristics of a ‘bilateral perception’ which is typical of the postwar German will to restore stability in the European space. Additionally, those national perceptions found further diversification according to the intra-national views on Europe which differed according to the liberal or conservative character of the investigated media. For example, whenever investigated, the British press remained successively divided into ‘more’ and ‘less’ Eurosceptic (in the conservative and the liberal strand respectively). On the other hand, the existence of the national filter is also persistent in the interpretation of the crisis events by diverse national media which attempt to mirror their own countries’ relation with or to Europe. For example, during the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 (Chapter 9), the British media postulated that, just like those of the UK government, the relations between Europe and East Germany should remain ‘realistic’ or even ‘Eurosceptic’ (Europe was thus almost totally omitted as an element of the British media discourse during that crisis event in 1989).

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Finally, looking at the presence of Europe in the media discourse over time, the lack of a significant change in the media coverage in the first post-1989 event, i.e. the Second Gulf War in 2003 (Chapter 10), is indeed surprising. Even though the 1990s had witnessed the dismantling of the Communist regimes, the progressive ‘reconnection’ of Europe (Triandafyllidou and Spohn, 2003) and the process of redefinition of the EU as a clearly defined European-political actor (Krzyzanowski ˙ and Oberhuber, 2007), we did not, as expected, find any salient changes to the previously described nationally triggered and (at the most) bilateral perceptions of Europe that had characterized the pre-1989 coverage of the crises. In contrast, the media coverage of Europe’s reaction to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 by the US and the Allied forces brought a strong revival of the national perceptions of Europe since different European countries positioned themselves differently vis-à-vis the Iraq crisis (some supported it and joined the Allied forces, some clearly condemned the invasion). Accordingly, Europe was portrayed as an arena of various agonistic struggles and was frequently metonymically condensed in media discourse to the very personal level of the key (national) actors representing differing national perceptions of, and positions to, the Iraq crisis (e.g. Blair vs. Chirac as representing the different stances of the UK and France, etc.). Importantly, the EU as a transnational European actor also did not play any salient role in unifying the European space. Its disunity and inability to act unanimously was criticized in the national media while its secondary role in only providing humanitarian aid for rebuilding what ‘the US troops were destroying’ in Iraq was also noted in a bitter and cynical tone by most national newspapers.

The role of ‘values’ in the analysed media discourse While our findings with regard to the constructions of Europe in the analysed discourses remain highly diversified and fairly inconsistent over time (see above), it must be emphasized that values and other ethically charged notions were indeed key features of the analysed textual material. The negotiation of ‘crisis’ in the media constitutes at once an almost automatic elaboration of, and reference to, values. That claim can additionally be illustrated by the fact that, in all of our crisis events, values are embedded in the media perception of crisis in a dual way. On the one hand, in all cases, values are referred to in the media descriptions of the ontology of the crises in question. For example, the 1956 crisis in Budapest is perceived as stemming from the will of the Hungarian reformist government to retain Hungary’s independence from the Soviet Union and thus to restore/defend the country’s freedom of self-expression on the international scene. On the other hand, however, the subsequent Soviet army curb to the Hungarian protest was perceived as a violation of all those values. Then, the 1961 crisis in Berlin was perceived as a violation of Berlin’s

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symbolic will to remain free and independent of the macro-political division of the city into different zones of influence and the subsequent creation of the city’s Eastern and Western parts. Similarly, the 1981 crisis in Poland was almost unanimously defined as stemming from the Polish trade unions’ attempts to restore or keep freedom of political self-expression and demonstrations while the imposition of martial law in the country was criticized as the state regime’s clear violation of those values. Moreover, in the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall coverage the developments were embedded in a more general discourse on the values of freedom, democracy and peace that Western Europe upheld and that East Germany was ‘returning to’. In all those and other events, the roots of the crises were based in a strictly value-laden rhetoric and it was not only the description but also the actual nature and character of the described social and political processes that were perceived strictly in terms of differing values. The reaction of different countries to the crisis events was also perceived as inherently legitimized by certain values. Here, countries aligned themselves differently in order to show their relation to the crises explicitly in terms of different values. For example, in the case of the Polish 1981 crisis (Chapter 8), Western European countries almost unanimously defined themselves as standing for the values of Western-like democracy (also evident, for example, in the media discourses on the 1961 and 1989 crises in Germany) and therefore condemned the actions of the Polish regime as opposing those values and halting the freedom of political expression. Various Communist countries (extensively quoted in the coverage of the Polish crisis in the Polish regime- and Soviet-obedient media), however, were portrayed as showing allegiance to the values cherished by the Polish regime – such as peace and stability – which were apparently defended by the actions of the Polish Communist rulers. Secondly, the varied reactions of different countries were almost always evidently legitimized by different values. In most cases (e.g. 1956, 1961, 1981 and 2003) manifold humanitarian values (e.g. humanitarian aid, protection of human rights) were used to legitimize different countries’ reactions to the critical occurrences elsewhere. In a similar vein, the value of solidarity with the country in crisis (evident particularly in 1961 and 1981) was also salient in legitimizing foreign reactions to the turbulent situations in the countries where the radical events took place. Analysed values can be grouped together under several different headings, or within several clusters of values which remained stable over time. Firstly, several ‘freedoms’ are defined as the key elements of discourse in most of our crisis events. Those freedoms (of political expression, of demonstration, of the press, of elections, of trade unions, etc.) could be seen as the specific ‘1968 values’ because the 1968 events in Paris proved crucial for their fundamental meaning. However, it is worth noting that those values are also pivotal for the crisis events which took place before

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1968: ‘freedom of speech and action’ is a salient value in the media reporting on the 1956 occurrences in Budapest, while ‘freedom of elections’ appears to be one of the values underlying media perceptions of the 1961 crisis in Berlin. Secondly, values which clearly stand out in our analyses of media reporting are those which can be defined as humanitarian. These include ‘humanism’, ‘humanitarian efforts’ and ‘humanitarian aid’ which were all crucial for the international media perceptions of the crisis events of 1956, 1961, 1981 and 2003. Finally, within the third cluster which can be labelled democratic, we mainly encounter inter alia various expressions and meanings of ‘democracy’ and ‘peace’. Those values were highly relevant in the crisis events of 1956, 1968 (Paris and Prague), 1981, 2003 and 2006. Interestingly, the existence of the national filter was also pivotal for the varied understandings of the three basic clusters of identified values. Thus, in almost all of our cases, most of the aforementioned values were defined differently depending on the country of the media reporting. For example, in 1956 in Budapest, ‘democracy’ was perceived in the Hungarian media as a specifically ‘socialist democracy’ which, in turn, emphasized a Hungarian national Sonderweg postulated at the time of crisis. By the same token, the Austrian and West German reporting also saw ‘democracy’ as a crucial aspect of the 1956 Hungarian revolution. However, they defined it differently, i.e. as the chance to introduce ‘Western democracy’ into Hungary. Similarly, values like ‘democracy’ and ‘peace’ (as well as the additional value of ‘progress’) were defined significantly differently in the Yugoslavian (Slovenian, Croatian and Serbian) and in the British media reporting on the 1968 crisis in Prague. Here, a unique ‘Yugoslavian form of democracy’ which could be found in Czechoslovakia was advocated for Yugoslav countries while the British media clearly favoured a Western-style democracy as the model to be implemented.

Linking Europe and values in media discourse The national filter in the specific interpretation of values clearly acted in favour of perceiving most values as predominantly ‘national’ or as wider ‘Western’ or ‘universal’ values and resulted in the lack of any overt constructions of ‘European values’ or of defining Europe holistically in ethical- and value-oriented terms. However, two of the crisis events (Poland in 1981 and the Mohammed cartoons in 2006; Chapters 8 and 11 respectively) are exceptions from this general rule and provide us with interesting links between ‘Europe’ and ‘values’ in the press reporting. There we witness the discursive link between Europe and values being constructed for significantly different aims which include legitimation of the respective crises or of the varied reactions to the latter.

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In the case of the 1981 ‘state of war’ in Poland, we witness a very specific set of processes of spatio-temporal accommodation of Europe in discourse (see above) which also allows the linking of ‘Europe’ and ‘values’ in the analysed media reporting. Within that spatio-temporal accommodation, Europe was invoked to portray different (spatial and temporal) entities which it was allegedly supposed to embody or be a part of and which were all affected through the activities described (i.e. reported) and legitimized in the analysed texts. The three identified processes were: (a) globalizing Europe, (b) regionalizing Europe as well as (c) making Europe an intermediary between East and West. The first process was supposed to denote the extra-national spaces that it corepresented (such as, for example, ‘Europe and the world’), while the process also allowed the linking of Europe and values (as was frequently argued in the Polish media at the time, the imposition of the ‘state of war’ in Poland was crucial for keeping the values of peace in ‘Europe and the world’). The second process, the regionalization of Europe, described (still, strictly national) actions that were apparently motivated by the will to express some regional (therefore locally European) ties. Those ties, such as those embodied by the Austrian Mitteleuropa-based compassion for Poland or the West German will to help its suffering Polish neighbour, also helped to link ‘Europe’ and ‘values’. For example, the Austrian attempt to show solidarity with Poland was rooted in its geographical (i.e. spatial) proximity with Poland, while it was also crucially embedded within Austrian history (i.e. in the temporal aspect). Notably, Austria was willing to help Poland just as it had Hungary (also a member of Mitteleuropa) in 1956. Finally, the third process was constructed by referring to the geopolitical struggle between East and West. Here, despite its objectively possible placement in both of the strands, Europe was perceived as a synonym for the ‘West’ (in the British quality press) or for the ‘East’ (in the British tabloid press) and helped to defend values such as the ‘East– West arms control process’ (in the Western-specific definition) or ‘freedoms’ (e.g. of political expression or of expression through the media – the Eastern definition focused on the Polish ‘Solidarity’ as a unique Eastern European movement). On the other hand, in 2006 (the crisis event of the Mohammed cartoons in European media) we witness a link between ‘Europe’ and ‘values’ through the introduction of value-based and ethically charged conceptions of Europe in the media reporting of several countries. While the understanding of values in the national media (in Italy, Greece, the Netherlands and the UK) still varied along nationally specific lines and different ‘European interests’ of the countries in question, the analysis of the press in the four countries shows that ‘a common set of European values exists within media discourses’ and ‘there is also a certain representation of Europe and the EU as one whole if compared with countries and social or cultural units outside the European continent’ (see Chapter 11). The key value which was used to bring ‘Europe’ together in this context is that of ‘solidarity and common ethics’ (ibid.) which are all

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apparently ‘shared within Europe’ (ibid.). Crucially, in the media reporting on the 2006 case, we also find (albeit less prominently) the ‘reference to an ethical responsibility of Europe or the EU’ (ibid.) which remains unprecedented when comparing 2006 with earlier crisis events.

The (European) Public Sphere revisited Due to the fact that we studied crisis events and related media reporting of a significantly different character (‘national events in Europe’ from 1956 to 1989, ‘an event taking place outside Europe’ in 2003 and ‘a transnational event taking place subsequently in several national loci in Europe’ in 2006) we are of course aware of some limitations of the case study approach to investigate transformation via national and transnational media reporting over time. However, despite those limitations, we arrived at several conclusions which support the interpretation of our findings from the point of view of the ‘creation of a European Public Sphere’. Those conclusions, however, differ depending on the approach taken with regard to the public sphere in general and to the EPS in particular. Since in all crisis events different national media focused on a similar set of events in a largely similar way (by focusing on the same occurrences, similar actors, similar issues and ontologies of the crises, and so on), we might consider that the media reporting of all events constitutes a proof of the existence of a specific form of an EPS. Within the latter, the topical interest of the media in various countries would remain the same (to be specifically issue- or actor-oriented, as in all of our crisis events) and the degree of interest (assessed by, for example, the roughly equal number of published items on the particular event) would constitute evidence for the subsequent debate of similar topics with comparable strength. In this case, however, the constructed public sphere could only be termed European in a restricted sense because its Europeanness is defined by the mere fact that the reporting national media originated and were located in Europe (in all cases). This understanding of the EPS cannot – and does not – hold entirely true for our findings: despite focusing on similar events topically and with a similar degree of interest, the actual interpretation of the events in question in or through the media differed significantly in the examined countries (treated as speaking with roughly unified voices, though frequently diversified even further according to their conservative/liberal and/or quality/tabloid character). Hence, while we could claim that the national media provide evidence for the existence of a certain form of EPS, this public sphere is actually ‘international’ rather than ‘transnational’ in character. The choice of the former is dictated by the fact that in none of our cases was there a significantly equal (social, political, economic, synchronic or diachronic) interpretation of the reported events. Only in isolated cases (e.g. 1968 in Prague or in 1956 and in 1981 in the Austrian and West German media, etc.) could we observe various groups

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of (maximally two) countries interpreting the foreign (national) events or the international reactions in a fairly comparable way (while still retaining several strictly national features in their interpretation). Thus, due to the international character of the European Public Sphere (see also Chapters 9–11) we witness: (a) a very diversified set of conceptions of ‘Europe’ and ‘values’ in all cases (despite some diachronic regularities outlined above), and (b) the importance of the national filter in defining ‘Europe’ and ‘values’ (and the eventual lack of any constructions of ‘European values’) in the analysed media. Accordingly, we claim that the international character of the European Public Sphere does not support the conception of Europe as an ethically charged notion in pan-European public discourses.

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Index Adenauer, Konrad 61, 118, 127, 129, 134 Allied Forces 116, 121–2, 124–6, 133, 263 anti-values 181, 193–5 Attac 142

Cuban Missile Crisis 16, 60, 115 cultural capital (see also Bourdieu) 15–17, 19, 29–32 Czechoslovakia 7, 8, 11, 16, 54, 62, 63, 70, 97, 98, 135, 141, 156–73, 186, 199, 265

Bauman, Zygmunt 141 Berlin Wall 7–8, 11, 54, 60, 64, 68, 115–17, 119, 124–6, 132–3, 151, 198–9, 201–4, 209, 212–14, 216, 218, 261–2, 264 Blum, Leon 145 Bourdieu, Pierre 10, 12, 15–17, 19, 30–2, 168 Brandt, Willy 62, 64–5, 118, 120, 122–3, 129, 206, 209, 211–12 Budapest 7–8, 10–12, 54, 56–8, 83, 86, 104, 106, 108, 115, 122, 128, 185, 261–3, 265 bureaucratism 166–7, 169

D’Orléans, Henri 153 Das Kleine Volksblatt 101, 114 de Gaulle, Charles 60–1, 64–5, 139–40, 143, 145–51, 153–4 democratic deficit 42–3 Die Arbeiterzeitung 101–2, 114 Diefenbaker, John 129 Discourse-Historical Approach 6, 12, 27 Duhamel, Jacques 147 Dutschke, Rudi 135–6, 141 East 84, 98–9, 104, 106, 108–9, 111–12 East Berlin 58, 118, 126–7, 198–9, 206, 209–11, 217 Euro 56, 72, 74–5, 77 European Customs Union 150–2 European Economic Community (EEC) 57, 59–62, 64–7, 151–2, 154, 195, 197, 211–12, 215 European Union establishment 62, 74 expansion 55–7, 66 integration 44, 55, 57, 62, 66–7, 80 European values 4, 7–8, 10–11, 25, 64, 80, 84–5, 88–9, 94, 100, 105, 124, 144, 153, 192, 196, 199–200, 205, 218–19, 231, 241, 248, 265–8 Europhrenia 56

Ceau¸sescu, Nicolae 150 Cohn-Bendit, Daniel 137, 139, 146, 154 Cold War 38, 53–4, 57, 67, 81, 84, 99, 106, 110–12, 115, 117, 131, 150, 180, 193, 197, 200, 202–3, 206, 214, 216 Common Market 132, 151–3 Communism 27, 66, 68, 70, 191–2, 194, 202, 204, 217 conceptual history 6, 21–2 Confédération Française Démocratic du Travail (CFDT) 143, 146, 155 Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétiens (CFTC) 143, 155 Confédération Général du Travail (CGT) 138, 143, 146, 155 corpus/corpora 8, 9, 39, 42–3, 45, 174–8, 189, 200–1 critique 22, 27, 33, 79–80, 136, 140, 163, 191, 242, 257 critique and crisis, World War Two (see also Koselleck) 79–80

Fédération National des Syndicats d’Expoitants Agricoles (FNSEA) 143, 152, 155 Force Ouvrière (FO) 138, 146 Four Power Agreement 116, 121 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 102, 114, 118, 120, 123, 126–7, 130, 134, 136, 143, 150, 152, 155, 177 283

284 Index freedom of expression 58, 81, 100, 187–8, 192–5, 239–40, 242, 257, 263–4, 266 of the media 58, 78, 90, 92, 100, 106, 187, 192–5, 240, 245–8, 250–3, 255–7, 259, 264 of movement 81, 126, 129, 188, 194 of speech 68, 78, 81, 90, 92, 100, 188, 193–5, 247, 255, 258, 260, 265

global Cold War 115, 117 globalization 32, 42–3, 45–6, 75–6 Great Powers 83–5, 96, 109, 131 Habermas, Jürgen 1, 24, 34–6, 39, 42, 82 history 15–27, 30–3, 45–6, 53, 56, 62, 66–7, 69, 80–1, 87, 91, 93–4, 98, 101, 105, 107–8, 110, 112–13, 124, 133, 154–5, 166, 170, 172, 184–6, 190, 193–4 humane socialism (see also progressive socialism) 162, 168–9 Hungarian nation 85, 87, 89–90, 94, 96–8 Hungarian revolution 81, 83, 85, 88–9, 91–2, 94–9, 103, 105–6, 108, 114, 265 Hungary 7, 11–12, 55, 58, 68, 83–113, 171, 184, 190, 199, 263, 265–6 icon 16, 141 ideology 23, 164, 170, 182, 202, 209, 218 Igazság 86, 88–91, 95, 97–8 image 9, 16, 18, 20, 26, 32, 41–2, 78–80, 82, 87, 95–6, 101, 104, 108, 124, 192, 224, 233, 239, 249, 255–6, 259 interdisciplinarity 4, 10, 19 international crises 10, 53–5, 259 Irodalmi Újság 85 Iron Curtain 55, 60, 68, 101, 109, 111, 116–17, 121, 130, 133, 139, 150, 261 Joas, Hans 144 journalistic field

10, 17–19, 29–32

Kadar, Janos 68, 84 Kennedy, John F. 56, 60–2, 64, 116, 130, 132 Kenyatta, Jomo 118 Khrushchev, Nikita 117, 126, 129 King, Martin Luther 135 Kis Újság 86, 88–90, 93 Koselleck, Reinhart 6, 18, 20–3, 27, 79–80, 82 language 11, 17, 21, 24, 26, 28, 37, 40, 55–6, 98, 155, 177, 196, 232, 244, 253, 256 legitimacy 2, 31, 41, 43, 68, 73, 96, 118, 124–6, 133, 136, 139, 144–6, 148–50, 168, 174, 223, 231, 236, 259 Macmillan, Harold 61, 124 Magyar Függetlenség 86, 88–92, 94–9 Magyar Nemzet 85–6, 88–91, 94–7, 99 Maoism 141 Massu, Jacques 140 McLuhan, Marshall 44–5 media event 54–5, 69, 77 mediatization 39–44, 46, 48–9 Mendés–France, Pierre 140, 147 Michnik, Adam 141 Mitterand, François 139, 212, 215 myth 16, 18–19, 24, 33, 43, 156, 167–8, 170 1968 7–8, 10–11, 16, 24, 37, 54, 56–7, 62–5, 68, 71, 81, 151–8, 171, 185–6, 188, 195, 197, 261–2, 264–5, 268 Nagy, Imre 58, 83, 85, 94, 108 Nehru, Jawaharlal 131 Népszava 86 neutrality 83, 87, 92, 94, 98, 101, 103, 107–8, 112–14, 218 new technologies (ICTs) 42, 44–7 occupation 57, 91, 101, 104, 138, 156–61, 163, 165–73, 198 Ollenhauer, Erich 127 Ostpolitik 62, 65, 120, 212 Parti Communiste Français (PCF) Peace Treaty 116–18, 120

138

Index 285 Poland 7–8, 10–11, 54, 56, 58, 63–4, 66–8, 97–8, 100, 110, 135, 141, 171, 174–92, 194–6, 199, 209, 219, 261–2, 264–6 political communication 34, 39–44, 46–9 political crisis 22, 37–8, 80, 130, 140, 143, 200, 222 political field 17, 31–2 Pompidou, Georges 64–5, 138, 140, 148–9 popular resistance 58, 171 press 8–9, 27, 34, 58, 64, 69, 78, 84, 88, 90, 92–4, 100–1, 103–6, 112–14, 117, 129–30, 135–6, 143, 156–9, 163–71, 173–80, 182, 184, 187, 190–6, 200, 202–6, 208–10, 213–18, 219, 222, 225, 227–32, 235–8, 240–53, 255–9, 262, 264–6 process 2–3, 7, 10, 16–20, 22–4, 26, 28, 31, 36–7, 39, 41–3, 49, 55, 75, 80, 84, 124, 133, 136, 139–40, 143–4, 147, 150, 154, 159–60, 166, 173, 180, 189, 191–5, 199, 203, 207, 212, 218, 220, 262–4, 266 progress 3, 25, 59, 71, 150, 163–5, 167, 169–70, 172–3, 265 progressive socialism (see also humane socialism) 156, 168–9 propaganda 60, 64, 108, 121, 176, 186, 193, 196 protest 7, 54, 57, 62–3, 66, 70–2, 76–8, 81, 102, 120, 122, 126, 135, 137, 139–42, 152, 160, 163, 171, 176, 180–1, 185, 203, 220, 230, 233–4, 237, 239–40, 246, 248, 250, 253, 257–8, 262, 264 Provo movement 141 public service broadcasting 36–7 Radio Budapest 104 Radio Free Kossuth 86, 88–9, 91–2, 94–5 Radio Kossuth 86 reform 2, 7, 22, 55, 58, 62–4, 69–70, 75, 83, 85–8, 93, 112–13, 139, 146–8, 156–7, 168, 172, 186, 201, 203–4, 261 revolt 8, 11, 16, 24, 55–6, 58, 106, 122–3, 128, 136–7, 141, 151, 254

Rey, Jean 153 rhetoric 22, 32–3, 36, 44, 55, 188, 191, 223, 244, 250, 252, 259 Rochet, Waldeck 143, 147 Rusk, Dean 115, 131 Sattelzeit (see also Koselleck) 79–80, 82 self-determination 116, 120, 122, 124, 125, 130, 141, 145 self-management 157, 167–8, 172 semantic field 6, 21–2 social capital (see also Bourdieu) 15–17, 19, 29–32 Solidarity Movement (Poland) 192, 196 Soviet Union 56, 58–61, 63, 65, 67, 71, 84–5, 89, 96, 98, 100, 108, 116–17, 120, 130, 133, 156–7, 165, 171, 198–9, 202, 208, 213, 263 ‘State of War’ (in Poland) 8, 11, 66, 174, 177, 179, 184–5, 189, 194–6, 261, 266 Strauss, Franz-Josef 123 Süddeutsche Zeitung 102, 114, 177 Suez 58–9, 97–8, 103 Suez Crisis 16, 56–7, 97–8, 100, 103, 109, 115 symbol 16, 60, 63, 74, 81, 91, 93, 95, 106–7, 198, 210, 214, 250, 254 Syndicat National de l’Enseignement (SNES) 146 Szabad Nép 85, 88–91 Szlaifer, Henry 141 topics 8–9, 12, 19, 29, 97, 100, 102, 174, 176, 179, 243, 267 topos/topoi 9, 12, 89–91, 93–6, 101, 103–10, 113, 115, 118–25, 134, 136–7, 140, 142–4, 146, 151, 158, 166, 168–70, 180–91, 193–4, 197, 205–6, 209–10, 214, 217, 223, 225, 229, 236, 243, 246–7, 254, 257 Ulbricht, Walter 57, 60, 115 Union Nationale des Etudiants de France (UNEF) 137 United Nations (UN) 59, 71, 83, 113, 121 USSR 87–90, 95–8, 103, 106, 108–9, 111, 202, 204–5, 211–12, 214–15

286 Index values 4–11, 16–17, 21–3, 25–7, 29, 31, 33, 40–1, 44–5, 53–4, 59–60, 62–4, 73, 79–81, 84–5, 87–9, 92, 94–5, 100, 103, 105–8, 110–12, 115, 118–19, 124–5, 127, 129, 132–3, 135–7, 141, 144–5, 151–5, 158, 161–6, 170, 173–5, 180–2, 184, 186, 188–90, 192–7, 199–200, 204–8, 214, 216–19, 224–5, 227, 230–1, 233, 235–6, 238, 241, 243, 245–51, 253–5, 257, 259, 261, 263–6, 268 Vietnam War 37, 62, 135, 141

Warsaw Pact 7, 54, 57–8, 61, 63, 68, 83–4, 105, 112, 116, 121–2, 133, 156–7, 159–61, 170, 180, 191–2, 202–3, 216 West 84, 93, 95, 98–9, 104, 106–12 West Berlin 7, 60, 69, 116, 120–2, 126, 128–9, 198, 200–1, 209–10, 217 Yugoslavia 73, 94, 97–8, 133, 143, 157–8, 163, 168, 171–2