How to report on skinheads
Freedom of speech is undergoing a peculiar change in the Czech Republic. The extremists, whose opinions in their full force could only be found on their web pages, suddenly found space in the regular press. What has changed and what does it mean?
Regular news coverage
The first sign of it could be found in Mostecký deník. "How the police beat the pensioners and children, a reportage of a Janov march participant," was printed in the daily's news part last year in October after the first neo-Nazi march in Litvínov Janov. Regional office of the daily decided to print a reportage of a Workers' party (DS) member and a participant of the banned march Jiří Šlégr as a sign of their independence. The text was printed right beside those of professional authors and for a lay person it was not easy to distinguish between them.
Many things have changed since then, extremist marches through Czech towns have become the hit of the spring and the most popular daily Mladá fronta Dnes printed an interview with the founder of the national resistance and one of the main representatives of the neo-Nazi movement Filip Vávra at the beginning of May.
"We wanted to offer space to everybody without making any difference," editor-in-chief of the Mostecký deník Ondřej Hájek said. When asked why, the supposedly reportage text works with unconfirmed information (the information about police beating children, announced in the headline, is not mentioned in the text and no witnesses could confirm it), he is unable to answer. "Of course I do not believe in. It was a hectic time. We did not know…
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