To a very considerable extent, the UK’s national daily press is dominated by rightwing owners for whom “public interest” simply means “if we can sell it, we’ll tell it”. Can the the British press continue to be dignified with the epithet “Fourth Estate”, traditional watchdog on power and guardian of the people?
Judgmental journalism directed at members of parliament is an orchestrated form of “mob-justice” in the Netherlands today. Self-appointed media watchdogs present a bigger danger to society than the persons they pursue, writes Tjebbe van Tijen.
It has been five years since the spectacle of violent confrontation in the French banlieues. But despite promises made at the time, little seems to have changed either in government attitudes to migration or the media’s coverage of migrant issues. This time round, writes Mogniss H. Abdallah, it is the Roma who are in the firing line.
Despite the Internet’s growing significance as vehicle of freedom of expression, public service broadcasting and the printed press will remain for some time the visible face of the watchdog on power. In western Europe, the traditional media need to prove they are still capable of performing this role, writes Judith Vidal-Hall.
Europe’s collective memory is as diverse as its nations and cultures and cannot be regulated by official acts of state or commemorative rituals, writes Claus Leggewie. The most significant challenge for a European memory is to reconcile “competing” memories of the Holocaust and the Gulag. Yet other historical experiences must also be integrated: memories of wartime and expulsion, of colonialism and immigration, and not least of the “success” of the European Union.
Vindictive, politicized, conspiratorial, reckless: one need not agree with WikiLeaks’ modus operandi to acknowledge its service to democracy. Geert Lovink and Patrice Riemens see in WikiLeaks indications of a new culture of exposure beyond the traditional politics of openness and transparency.
Attempts to prevent the shooting of a film about mass rape in Bosnia equalled an attempt at censorship, argues Slavenka Drakulic: this kind of response perpetuates misunderstandings about war crimes and overlooks the real problems facing Bosnian victims of mass rape today.
Depression, revolution and the threat of fascism provided the impetus for Bertolt Brecht’s and Walter Benjamin’s magazine “Krise und Kritik” in the 1930s; thirty years later, in a world shaped by decolonization and bloc confrontation, Maurice Blanchot’s “Revue Internationale” was a similar attempt at an engaged form of publishing. Yet its internationalist ambitions ultimately proved to be its downfall, writes Roman Schmidt.
Lithuania and Bulgaria: two nations on the peripheries of central Europe, both bearing strong traces of former Empires. Subjected to neoliberal forces of disintegration, historical identities re-pattern along new lines of conflict, the politics of ’89 now redundant in the regulated zone of market democracy that is new Europe. Ivaylo Ditchev and Tomas Kavaliauskas share Baltic-Balkan perspectives on the present.
What distinguishes Semih Poroy among his peers is the prevalence of humour in his drawings, writes Tan Oral. Poroy’s special connection with the literary world adds another dimension to his work and is depicted through critical, humorous and ironic observations by a cartoonist truly enjoying the world of letters.
Faith in the “efficient markets hypothesis” is largely to blame for the massive deregulation of the late 1990s and early 2000s that made the crisis more likely, if not inevitable. Two economists excoriate the ideology of self-regulating markets and its pseudo-scientific foundations.
WikiLeaks’ series of exposés is causing a very different news and informational landscape to emerge. Whilst acknowledging the structural leakiness of networked organisations, Felix Stalder finds deeper reasons for the crisis of information security and the new distribution of investigative journalism.
The pragmatist renunciation of sociology’s critical exclusivity is reversed in the recent thought of Luc Boltanski, as capitalist “displacements” to the world of work together with new and complex forms of domination demand the return to a critical methodology. Unlike others of his generation, however, Boltanski’s arguments for change do not extend to democracy itself, writes Boyan Znepolski.
Once wildly popular, President Obama is now under fire from all directions. Is it because his thinking is too complicated for an age of sound bites, asks George Blecher, or does he lack the kind of passion that the American electorate thrives on?
Following the political logic of pop-cultural palaeontology, Hungary’s resurgent far-Right excavates archaic cultural identities for the youth of today, writes Zsófia Bán. Mythical symbols of national strength fill the historical void felt by post-’89 generations, whom even the cathartic moment of regime change fails to unite.
Stuttgart’s residents are furious over plans to convert the city’s existing rail terminus into an underground through-station. In October, 150 000 demonstrators gathered in the city’s central park, which will disappear if building goes ahead. Supporters of the prestige project argue that the conversion of the station, together with the construction of a new high-speed stretch, is essential if Stuttgart is to become a stopping point on the new “magistrale” between Paris and Budapest. Yet critics point to exorbitant costs, misguided rail policy and misuse of public funds.