The Media and Right-Wing Extremism

On the site of a former concentration camp for Roma in southern Bohemia, which was administrated by the Czechs during Nazi times, an obscure ultra right-wing party has tried to win votes with a dirty campaign over the past few weeks. The campaign has been successful, as Alexandr Budka observes critically. "Over the past two weeks, a total of 366 articles, some of them on the title pages, have appeared in the press. The campaign has also received plenty of TV coverage. Yet not once has there been any attempt to throw light on the party's extremist views. Do our journalists seriously share the National Party's beliefs that the Roma themselves were to blame for their own deaths because they didn't wash themselves often enough? That the Czech nation never did anything wrong or that homosexuality can be cured, as the party claims? The media is only concerned with profit... Xenophobia and hate of foreigners obviously sell just as well as sex in their opinion. Otherwise, 'reports' like those on the National Party wouldn't appear at all."

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