Populist Playbook: Bash News Media Early And Often
Michael Hedges July 9, 2018 - Follow on Twitter
A government investigations agency looking into corruption conducted searches without warrants and compiled files classified secret. An oversight committee requested details and were given redacted files or none at all. The head of the government department to which the agency reports went on television and said it was no big deal, blamed news outlets as fake news and suggested investigating journalists.
 Before jumping to any conclusions; this is Austria. “They are self-proclaimed detectives,” said Interior Minister Herbert Kickl on public TV news program ORF Report (June 26). “Certain media strive every day to bring to public notice things that are classified as secret and give them very, very incomplete representations of the actual facts.” Minister Kickl, former Secretary General of the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPO), was appointed last December on the accession of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz' new government.
Major Austrian media erupted. Leading newspapers, including Kurier, DiePresse and Der Standard, published editorials warning of police searching newsrooms. “With subtle threats Interior Minister Kickl plays with fire,” wrote DiePresse chief editor Rainer Nowak (July 1). Searching editorial offices or investigating journalists are “unacceptable, absurd and unimaginable.” Several asked "whether we are now seriously looking forward to conditions such as in Poland or Hungary.”
"Attacks on journalists are on the rise,” said private sector journalist and press union GPA-djp managing director Barbara Teiber, quoted by DiePresse (July 2), “and are even coming from the Interior Minister himself. I wonder how long leaders will silently accept this kind of government.” The union, she said, stands by all journalists and media “should they continue to be politically pressured.”
Pressure is also on public broadcaster ORF. Since the election, the two-thirds of the ORF Board of Trustees are members of the FPO and OVP, populist party of Chancellor Kurz. ORF journalists and “program-designing staff” have been instructed not to post points of view “even in the private sphere” on social media, said an email to staff from ORF Director General Alexander Wrabetz, reported DiePress (June 27), which quoted the social media guidelines of the New York Times (NYT).
“In social media posts, our journalists must not express partisan opinions, promote political views, endorse candidates, make offensive comments or do anything else that undercuts (our) journalistic reputation,“ said the NYT guidelines noted in the email. The ORF guidelines go further than the NYT, forbidding criticism or evaluation of political institutions. "It may be not the task of the ORF to be the main battle line against a government,” said Herr Dr. Wrabetz, quoted by Weiner Zeitung (June 28).
ORF Board of Trustees chairman Norbert Steger, an FPO political appointee, suggested violators of the new guidelines would be “warned first, then dismissed.” Austrian deputy chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache, also an FPO leader, regularly refers to ORF as fake news and propaganda. In February the ORF filed a lawsuit against Herr Strache - and Facebook, for not removing the offending social media post. Hardly intimidated, Herr Strache called for ORF foreign correspondents to be fired “if they do not behave properly.”
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Populism as a political force is fueled by angst. It’s a simple as that. The dressed up language of freedom, free-markets and free thought is just so much hot air next to good, old fashioned fear and loathing. Sometimes that moves voters; recently, to be sure. But sometimes voters reject the rants and bombast in favor of perspective.
Scratch the surface of any particular debate about public broadcasting and a rash quickly swells up. Private sector broadcasters itch to grab listeners and viewers who would so obviously stream to their channels. Publishers see a fountain of youth, all ready to subscribe. Politicians, splinter and otherwise, are tormented by that "independent" monster waving bad news, robbing them of entitled glory or, usually, shade. It is tempting, then, for public broadcasters to break out in hives.
For every sporting event media coverage starts early in the season. The tempo rises to the pre-game shows; lots of shouting and waving. The event itself is almost parenthetical. It’s the post-game analysis where everybody tries to appear reasoned and sober. So it is, too, with elections.
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