Use of the new media to promote and to protect cultural heritage

By: Hatto Fischer, Athens

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In our modern world the media plays an important role in what is defined as news. Three observations can be made as an introduction into a further going reflection about the relationship between the media and culture.

1. In an editorial comment Stamos Zoulas writes for Kathimerini (March 1, 2006) the following: “The media’s selective coverage of news, most recently underscored in the self-imposed gag over revelations that one of the Vodafone communication centers targeted by the spy software was in Intracom’s complex in Peania, has become the rule rather than the exception. This is for three reasons. First, deciding what is publishable and what is not is affected by the owner’s business interests, which are not always legitimate. Second, corrupt politicians and business people avoid hurting each other, simply because they know too much about each other. Third, the smaller media outlets are afraid to turn against their stronger and better-connected competitors while journalists are discouraged from carrying out their duty of unbiased reporting. The bulk of the media generally practice self-censorship, manifested not only in the repression of events but also in their distortions of the truth. Given that the problem is more acute in the electronic media – generally preferred by the Greek public over newspapers – the issue touches at the heart of democratic institutions……”

2. Since my previous speaker from China, Mr. Yinghuang Zhu, Editor-in-Chief of ‘China Daily’ evoked reflections about a real story, I would like to add another one. I grew up with Chinese literature mainly thanks to the translations of my great uncle Franz Kuhn e.g. the Robbers of Liang Shan Moor. These novels were taken from the 15th and 16th century, so it was very surprising to read in the last one he translated under the title ‘Shanghai in Twilight’ the description of two headlights of a car touching the sides of the road to find the way. What an image to describe change between transportation of the 15th century compared to the coming of the car. Nowadays other images are needed to keep up with all the changes in modern China. Anyhow, this novel reflects the times when in the early 1920s the fight between the Communists and Nationalists raged around Shanghai. The Communists followed a very clever strategy. They signaled to the Communist army to retreat as if to feign a defeat. Once they did that, the news spread in Shanghai the Communists had been defeated. Immediately all share prizes climbed up or rather they soared as high as they could. Then the Communist army attacked and the Nationalists suffered a substantial set back. Immediately the share prizes tumbled. The Communists could buy them at the lowest possible prize and thereby seize properties, factories and their assets even before their army had taken over the control of the city. It shows that there are forces behind the scenes which can manipulate ‘news’ in a way that it foreshadows still larger forces determining what is news or more precisely the news content.

3. A friend of mine reporting for the BBC told me the story which involved him in a true ethical conflict. He had to report about a village which had just experienced the tragic death of about two hundred school children due to a mud slide. The mud had been piled up near the old school as part of the extraction from the mines. There had been warnings about the danger and they had even gone ahead to build a new school at a safe distance from those mud hills. But like in many similar tragedies (here one is reminded about the burning down of the Amalia library in Weimar with the new library already built and ready to take the books from the old library, and as a matter of fact the process had already started to move the precious ones into the new setting but it was not enough once the fire raged through the old building) sometimes precautionary measures come too late. The children were still taught in the old school and during a heavy rain the entire hill became a mud slide which buried the entire school. Now the children bodies were found but due to the composition and time needed badly decomposed. It was difficult to identity their bodies. But after some time the public announcement was made to the parents and relatives of the children that all bodies were identified and the funeral could start that afternoon. Now my friend had to report to the BBC news desk at a certain time just before the funeral was about to begin. He started pondering whether in fact that public announcement was true. He decided to investigate and went into the church where all the coffins were lined up and waiting for the funeral to begin. He asked if some coffins could be opened just to see for himself if the bodies could be identified. Once they were opened he knew immediately that any positive identification was impossible. He found himself to be in a dilemma. Five minutes before he was to go into the cabin and file his report, he said to the technician, he would not be sending any message and go instead for a walk. He had decided that the parents should keep their illusion that the bodies had been identified so that the funeral could go ahead. Now this decision contradicts the general impression created by the first observation about the media suppressing news and information. In our Heritage Radio Network comprised of various radio stations to create the internet radio ‘www.heritageradio.net’, online editor Anja Brachwitz, herself student of the media at the Erfurt University in Weimar, stated recently that the problem with the media is that they have become not only complex, but lack transparency.

Indeed, people are nowadays most confused by what information they receive from the media. There are so many varied sources of information, the newspaper at the stand but one even though a most daily visible one. There is television, but again choices vary here once cable and satellite dishes are included as options. And there is the internet. Google.news provides a powerful search engine scanning every possible web publication and so picks up the headlines. All media, including CNN and other online services offer access to news via extension of telephone, television, computer with wireless transmissions possible in so called ‘hot spots’. Information can vary news into entertainment and culture at choice. Most of the ‘news’ communicated follows what people buy and therefore what is deemed to be a success. All that does leave the old editor wondering what story will sell, what not, but lets leave him scratch a bit his head while we turn our attention to the question as to why people are confused? The point is that the media despite all these varied ways to convey the news still follow simple aims, if not commercial, then propaganda ones. Since 9/11 the United States government has initiated its own program called ‘public diplomacy’ – an apt way to describe what effort shall be undertaken to persuade the public that the US is not really following negative purposes in Iraq and that ‘human rights’ abuses are really not exactly that in a global war against terrorism.

There is a simple saying that people are not merely confused; they are over bombarded with all sorts of i-bites from sounds to video images about new fashions, cars or other sellable commodities. Their reaction is understandable. They respond as if wishing to put themselves into a trace, for all these sounds and i-bites seem to serve but one single purpose, namely to drown out the real messages coming from the world.

All these messages are not good. Breaking news on CNN means really repeating that another car bomb has exploded and so many people have died. Certainly the extension of Kant’s old definition of news being about the expected colliding with the unexpected as in a collision between two cars, this is extended in today’s modern media by blowing up catastrophic scenarios of first the invasion into Iraq with journalists embedded to give an extra touch of authenticity to still an one sided story from the war front and then on victims of natural catastrophes such as the Tsunami or Hurricane Katrina. How then to sell the story? CNN does so by claiming to come closer to the people, to the ground, when in fact the star correspondents have just been parachuted into the crisis region to report from there while they will do so tomorrow from another hot spot. Despite the claim to know the local story, there was no time to make any real contact on the ground. This is then the global fiction in the making. The only network still having local correspondent, the BBC, is unfortunately slowly receding and in so doing is leaving behind a desert of true journalism. One could go on reflecting in what is amiss but let us turn our attention to what is needed if one is still to think of the media having a positive role to play in shaping public opinion and therefore the future of society. Here the link between media and culture becomes most vital. And by this is not meant the ‘media culture’ nor the ‘culture of the Information Society’, but what culture as an active media itself is indicative of, namely people in dialogue with one another while probing the future.

When Germany was defeated in 1945, one of the most basic reforms for the media was the introduction of the editorial principle that would allow any reader or viewer to distinguish between facts and opinion. Like public perception requiring daily schooling, it is but a part of political culture when people’s minds are sharpened by good and further going arguments, and especially when they are not at all afraid to hear different opinions, but on the contrary find their own opinion in realizing that there is no single valid one which someone is able to impose upon reality. That is, by the way, a far cry from contemporary situations in which any sign of different opinions is already taken by the media to be a sign of ‘crisis’, and this, oddly enough, while claiming to uphold cultural diversity. Some problem with ‘unity of apperception’, as formulated by Kant, may loom there in the background, but for the moment it suffices to say the media can only be an active carrier of opinion in a culture if based on pluralism to give to ‘freedom of expression’ its substance. For culture is about articulation through the art of living: both as a concept and as a basic right. This has not yet been understood as such and is, therefore, hardly recognized as making a difference in the creation of public opinion not by the media, but by people.

There is another way of making this point. Culture is ‘memory’. We cannot know everything in one day, a child needs many years before having grown up. So what decides then about the truth content of any expression, if not its relation to the memory base or more precisely what memories are activated when something is said? Crucial for judging any information, news or statement is on what experiences, or rather ‘lived through experiences’ (Sartre called it ‘le vecu’) it is based on! Here practical judgment and articulation come together, but not in just any way or manner of speaking. For it requires that news is expressed by a human voice in the most authentic way. Indeed a lot depends on whether or not we stay differentiated in our judgment of things and thereby remember things of the past while being confronted by a still not fully articulated present. Again Kant stated that we stay consciously close to our memory track through sound as the most differentiated expression thereof. Certainly we remember the voice of our mother when calling us to come up for dinner, as we assume our own voices to be the true signatures of our personal identities, hence we sometimes speak to others on the phone without introducing ourselves since we assume the others can recognize us through our voice.

But what differences prevail to such personal voices? There are the voices of the men at the market when selling fish or vegetables, and then there is the voice of excitement when a sport commentator describes how the last goal was shot! But never mind the voice of a propaganda sharp-maker or even dictator! In Germany during National Socialism all news was read by a special voice. It can still be found in some modern news casts. Somehow all these examples indicate already that something very precarious is being touched upon when we reflect in what voices we speak up e.g. nervous, even to the point of stuttering especially when coming close to challenging power or how we respond when we are not spoken to in a friendly but impolite, even commanding way. Here it is important to remind what Marx said in his Ph.D. thesis, namely that ‘human consciousness’ exists only once people are spoken to in a language containing categories of both productivity and creativity; if the language used excludes the cultural and creative side and is reduced to mere military commands, then with time such a person addressed as a dumb soldier who supposed to follow only orders will be dehumanized. He will forget about his self and therefore start to ignore that human dignity does matter in terms of both consciousness and how we relate to the outer world.

After all it does matter that we speak and are addressed in a humane way. This reflects itself in what memory base is activated as it is decisive what people do to preserve for themselves, their children and future generations and for others their ‘cultural heritages’. This reveals itself through what stories are told and which information is passed on, in order to keep own identities and practical judgments of reality alive. There can be made some further going conclusions about people, or as Kapuscinski, the Polish journalist who wrote about the collapse of the Soviet Union, would put it, what they need, namely cultural tools so that they can cope with all the changes going on. This is indicated by the degree of cultural reflections by which the incoming news and information is received and made to be understand in own terms as to what is happening in the world. The ability of people to respond in the present to ongoing news depends, among other factors, on what discussions they have been having in the past and therefore very often lack of response reflects what discussions have been avoided as if that would make the problems disappear. People have to face reality even if there are no immediate solutions at hand but this is the hardest. Marx said people are only ready to accept the existence of problems if there is already a solution in sight for them. Still, if facing reality in open terms, then news must be direct and not manipulated in terms of what is the reference to the past and therefore to the memories to be activated in order to transcend the past by allowing further going thoughts to anticipate future developments.

Hence culture and media reflect the way people prepare themselves for the future by trying to examine ways and proposals all made in a common effort to find solutions. They know that if they cannot handle incoming news, they shall be overwhelmed by deeper problems these news indicate. Consequently most important is that all problems are discussed openly and in time. Indeed it is never good if people are not free to discuss openly the problems they face in society. Unfortunately not only totalitarian regimes, but our modern society with all its pretense of having an open media risks in suppressing many problems and in avoiding such open discussions. This happens by setting only such agenda that proves that the current interest coalitions are successful, even if there is an utmost failure when share values and profits of companies go up but people remain unemployed and many more ending up living near or below poverty line.

If set agendas prevent people from expressing themselves freely, then it becomes crucial to know how agendas are set. This is why there is this cultural difference between mere cultural expressions and articulation, the latter the philosophical understanding of how agendas are set as it reflects what a society recognizes in terms of what problems exist and what needs to be done to make living and working together possible. However, articulation is not possible without people having certain cultural tools to cope with change. It means people cannot attain such degree of articulation by which their cultural expressions become critical reference points, if society is itself not creative and innovative when it comes to understanding this relationship between news creation by the media and people’s responses. Any culture left out by the media and therefore unable to support people’s quest for articulation will leave them passive and resigned i.e. unresponsive.

To repeat, cultural expressions like a poem are in their core differentiated and complex. They do not lend themselves easily to ready-use formula or key words as often used by a media demanding over simplification rather than a just relationship to reality. For instance, the media in the European debate about the ratification of the Constitutional Treaty reduced everything to ‘constitution’ and propagated a certain stereotypical judgment as if a constitution has to be short, in order to be readable. Left out was the fact that the involvement of not just citizens with Europe, but 25 member states having to come into agreement with one another would mean a treaty aspect had to be taken into consideration, so that at best it was about a ‘constitutional treaty’ prescribing how Europe should govern itself.

How then to remain ‘just’ in terms of the complexity of reality, that seems almost impossible since nowadays the media has to convey not just exaggerated, one sided viewpoints, but transmit ‘energy loaded images’ like the planes crashing into the Twin Towers that say it all. This compressed form of telling a story, enriched further by the new media, transmits the illusion that a single message at an instance is the only feasible way to communicate. It follows the technique which is already an integral part of the communication strategy of advertisement. Because of this image dominance and belief ‘less is more’, almost all editorial boards have been gripped by this kind of self censorship. When cutting everything down to fit the image, they have mind but a viewer or listener whose attentive span may not go beyond one minute of text. It is said then that news at best has to be mixed with entertainment or underlined by entertainment like sensational effects starting with musical undertones and not ending with images being transmitted from every corner of the world into the high tech studio and from there into the living room. No wonder that news have become but clippings and the information provided not really sufficient for the viewer or listener to judge the practical situation.

To give but one example of news manipulation, it is always telling if a sequence of events is described or just the result presented as if speaking for everything else. Just before there was a change of government in Berlin 1981, that is at the height of tensions between squatters occupying empty houses and their owners getting worried about their status quo being undermined, the police started to conduct seminars with journalists and editors with the aim to convince them that the media was in fact creating violence by giving full coverage to all these events happening in the streets of Berlin. Once the government did change and the new line of approach was adopted, they showed no longer sequences leading up to further escalations but they brought across the television screen only static images of stone throwing demonstrators as if these images of violence would speak by themselves. According to the assumption that these pictures of violence convey already strong enough messages, no further explanation was needed why the police acted in a certain, even brutal way. It was a clever manipulation to turn slowly the population away from the grievance over all these houses standing empty due to speculative reasons (the owners wanted their decay in order to be able to tear them down and then rebuild) and against those who had taken advantage of these state of affairs and made housing into a social initiative with people reclaiming the right to live in the city.

No wonder then that people succumb to propaganda – a mix of factual news and advertisement on behalf of the government – if these selective viewpoints by editors can continue unabated. The impact of censorship is immediate insofar people feel that they are unable to discuss in depth the events since they only know that they are not really informed. They do not realize that this systematic ‘incompetence’ is reproduced by them have become cut off from their own memory base and therefore no longer reflective enough since without any further going cultural expressions transcending the present they are unable to put the present event into such a context that allows them to anticipate the future by probing different alternatives to how the government is handling the situation. That then explains why the severed link between media and culture leaves people stranded, i.e. without a reflective political discourse needed if public opinion is to be both informative and of high qualitative insights into political consequences of actions.

Here then ‘use of new media to promote and to protect cultural heritage’ is both a media policy concept and a conscious effort to use modern media to off-set such a negative trend. It should be clear by now that the memories of people is cultural heritage. It can obviously only be protected by giving people access to their own cultural heritage and thereby by protecting ‘cultural heritage’ make them actively use their memory bases. This activation process happens best through creative acts already noticeable once people tell their stories with an authentic voice. They remember most when they feel to be alive, to live in full consciousness of what they are doing and seeing as to what is happening around them. For once they become clear in terms of both memory and vision they can give feed-backs to what is happening. This gives everyone further going orientation.

By retaining things of the past in the present, and may that be poems by Heinrich Heine, such use of the media to remind of cultural things that have existed already become cultural evocations. They will allow something the German philosopher Ernst Bloch acclaimed to be ‘lessons of matter’. It activates, if handled properly not mere associations, but a sense perception which gives quality to ‘certainty’ (by not excluding doubt and different opinions) in terms of knowing what is being referred to and talked about. By touching upon a real sense for the world, the perception will be based on ‘cultural heritage’ and thus be a part of a humane way to perceive this world. It will require ‘work of memory’ and ‘interpretation’ to phantom the depths of meanings people give to their lives in such a world. Once that is perceived as being not merely a description of what was the past, but reveals what ‘memories of the future’ that past present contains still today, a yet to be lived potential of people will articulate itself as measure to face an uncertain future in certain terms. As Sartre would say, once people know the goals for the future, they can live fully in the present.

Such link between media and culture is a way to handle complexity differently. Certainly the experiences within Heritage Radio Network substantiate this point. When, for instance, we did our magazine about ‘museums’, it was interesting what the director of the Socialist sculpture museum in Budapest said, namely thanks to democracy there exists now in Hungary another dignity to deal with the past. It means that evidences of the Stalinist past need not to be eradicated out of revenge but can be used to display what would happen if society gives in once again to dictatorship. This ‘dignity of democracy’ shows itself in how things are handled, including how the media does not descend to gossip and upholds the dignity of people by avoiding stereotypical and other forms of incriminations. Human dignity is indeed something worthwhile to uphold and if we are to remember this source of inspiration, news cannot be one sided, but the media as part of an ongoing reflective process in the process must do justice to history in both a political and humane way.

Heritage Radio Network was created within the framework of the INTERREG III B – CADSES project HERMES. Comprised of a partnership bringing together Radio Krakow, National Radio of Bulgaria, National Radio of Hungary, of Croatia, Municipal Radio Network of Volos, its core is the coordination unit located at Radio Lotte in Weimar: a small alternative city radio station. The original idea for this project came from a study I made for the Greens in the European Parliament about the potential use of an Internet Radio to further the European debate. Of interest and relevant to seeking a link between the new media and the European Parliament is what Heritage Radio Network has made possible: by opening windows and doors so that the cultural heritage of the new member states can be seen and recognized, it has become possible to research by means of ‘cultural journalism’ further into the question whether or not Europe’s common cultural heritage can become the basis for a future European identity. Moreover by linking cultural news to such political reflections that show the limits of the world in which we live, a potential has been created to serve in future as memory base for Europeans seeking to link their cultural heritages with the Europe in the making.

Something else is in need of being pointed out. Internet radio means a combination of text + audio: text and voice. This is a novel experience: to be able to read the text while listening to how the speaker articulates it. Also here the time sense differs. The broadcast is not in real time but real stories are told and can be listened to anytime. Internet means 24 hours online.

No one should be surprised if people demand in future that the media orientates itself not so much in terms of economic success but attempts to meet the cultural demand to stay differentiated and to serve the memory base of people. This cultural affinity to democracy and therefore human dignity will become stronger especially once people gain access to their own and therefore to Europe’s cultural heritage. That then may distinguish the present from the past with regards to how we re-interpret Ancient Greek plays. We always do it without ever knowing how the texts were articulated then. That missing piece – the articulation – is an answer to also some of the problems hinted at as being incurred in a time of misuse of media once governments launch campaigns for regime changes and public diplomacy purposes. But the intentions of anti democratic developments by powers are always easy to see through. Despite all the rhetoric giving reason why Iraq was invaded, there is no real wish by the US foreign policy that people emancipate themselves. Rather it merely covers up the wish to exploit the resources of that land even if it means destroying the cultural heritage and therefore all the memories of the people. In that sense Iraq is experiencing some of its worst destructions.

Given the state of affairs in connection with world heritage, including also natural heritage sites like the Brazilian rain forest being destroyed more and more daily, we know that we face difficult times ahead. The tension in the forehead tells me it shall not be easy to keep actively alive man’s memory of human dignity.