Opinion:

Amid Prague’s Beauty,

Only ‘Beasts’ Were News

By Kristina Soukupova

It is Tuesday morning, Sept. 26. Beautiful Prague begins another day filled with soft fall sunshine sun that gives an unforgettable atmosphere to this central European city.  It makes you stand in astonishment and watch the Vltava and its waves in a cheerful game with the sunshine. The trees on Kampa are beginning to dress in their autumn colors competing with the pallet of a painter on Charles Bridge. Saint Nicholas’ cathedral guards all that is happening below it with its monumentally charming authority. This is the time each day when Praguers and tourists like begin appearing on the streets, heading for work or to see the sights.

Not today. Czechs and tourists are not to be found. Yet Prague has even more visitors than usual today. But, unlike the tourists, they have come to create the atmosphere, not to absorb it. There is tension and fear in the air. Why? This is the day thousands of protesters have chosen to demonstrate in full force against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund conference. Journalists have been competing with one another to create the most catastrophic scenario for this day, and Praguers have got the message. They’ve left.

Unless you really searched for it in the media, it would be easy to miss what the main theme for this year’s conference was--global poverty. Instead, the Czech media has focused their attention on INPEG, the umbrella organization for protests in Prague, and its  actions. Questions such as ‘How well are the police prepared for the riots?’ seem to be more frequent--and to reporters, more important--than those designed to get delegates, including Czechs, to discuss the crucial issues raised by the conference. Shall we never find out from the news media what Vaclav Klaus, for example, thinks about those important issues? The Czech press has headquarters in the Congress Palace, but there seems to be few news broadcasts being done there.

On this Tuesday, when the biggest problems are expected, the reporters are outside. One can spot them easily, in their red “press” vests, running through groups of demonstrators and taking pictures of the cordons of nervous policemen. Most of the Czech radio and TV stations have their reporters on Namesti Miru in the early morning in desperate searches for sensations that can be delivered to their audiences in live reports every 20 minutes. Foreign journalists are in evidence, too, going “on air” or reporting into their cell phones about the “war city,” as some of them will describe it later.

When demonstrators’ plans to block delegates’ hotels don’t pan out, it looks like there isn’t going to be much to report about. By noon the only hot news that could have been sent to the outer world is a naked protester dancing on Nuselsky Bridge, backed by his fellows dressed in white overalls and wearing gas masks in front of the police cordons. Some journalists do not bother to accompany the anarchists from Namesti Miru to Nuselsky Bridge, preferring to wait on the bridge, looking bored, till the colorfully dressed demonstrators come to them.

But their boredom is swept away when the first conflicts under the bridge, between the police and the anarchists, take place. At that moment, the remaining red of the vests among the crowd disappears. The bored journalists are off  toward a more promising venue--Lumirova Street, where real violence is breaking out. Apparently, most of the reporters concentrate on this battlefield area below the Congress Center, leaving the rest of the city--including masses of peaceful demonstrators--with no coverage. The result, of course, is that the only picture the world will see of Prague is the Lumirova Street war zone.

While most of the journalists are risking life and limb on Lumirova Street, the majority of the protesters in the rest of the city are left to themselves. They wander around the city, unnoticed by the news media, blocking traffic at Muzeum, dancing on the stairs of the State Opera, and perpetrating other mischief to peacefully call attention to their political and social views. It is true, as INPEG claimed later, that these demonstrators were not violent. Sadly, that is precisely the reason that the news media paid them no attention. If there had been no McDonald's windows broken during the evening demonstration, the public would have learned almost nothing about the march of a large number of anarchists. When the glass began breaking, many journalists were already back at home or in their hotels for dinner, assuming that there would be no more news--that is, trouble.

Prague's IMF meeting was a special test for Czech journalists to demonstrate their reporting skills, their impartiality and their ability to cover complex events dispassionately. How did they do? It was a mixed performance. They certainly covered the Tuesday battle thoroughly, covering the violence from the perspective of both police and demonstrators. But what of the rest of the story? What of the issues that brought the IMF, the World Bank and thousands of protesters to this city? What of the press’s responsibility to educate its readers about some of the most worrisome social concerns of our time? Of educating Czechs about how importance of dissent in a Democratic society, and that it be covered fairly? Of reporting what really happened inside the conference as well as in the streets around it? Of analyzing the conference’s conclusions about Third World debt, and putting the entire experiment in democracy in some sort of perspective?

It is morning Oct. 1, 2000; Prague is being woken up by the soft fall sun. The Vltava’s waves are again flirting with the sunshine; trees are still choosing their fall clothes. Charles Bridge is crowded with people, so it is almost impossible to cross it. The IMF talks are over; everybody is back to their normal lives. You are faced with the beauty and its very presence; the beasts are gone…or are they really…?