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News server Romea.cz. Everything about Roma in one place

Slovak media closing online discussions due to hatred and racism

13 August 2014
5 minute read

The Slovak media are starting to run out of patience with readers who inundate the discussion boards beneath their online articles with hatred, lies and racism. Two popular news servers, Aktuality.sk and SME.sk, have changed the format of their discussion boards in recent days.  

The main tool is not to post open discussions beneath articles on specific topics, but moderated discussions where every contribution is checked by a moderator before being published. Sme.sk started its changes at the start of August and Aktuality.sk began turning off its discussion boards yesterday; both servers had already instituted the requirement that discussants register to participate.

No more aggressive, lying, racist contributions

The editors of SME.sk say their reason for the move is simple. "If we can’t manage to control the discussion, if we don’t know how to ensure that aggressive, lying, racist or vulgar contributions are not posted to our website, then we are forced not to open some discussion boards," news server SME.sk writes on its editorial blog.  

The editors also point out that the most frequent complaints received by SME.sk are about the level of the discussions posted beneath the articles. Aktuality.sk gave a similar justification for its own decision:  "As of today we are closing the discussion boards on several types of articles. The reason is the growing hatred and deteriorating communications and vocabulary of the discussants. This has primarily to do with the topics of Islam, Romani people, Russia and Ukraine. The hateful discussions conducted among themselves by several people depreciate the articles, these topics, the events reported on and the people we are writing about."  

Not censorship

Both editorial boards say the move is under no circumstances about censorship, but about taking responsibility. "No, this is not censorship. This is a responsible decision. At the end of the day, it’s not just the authors of these discussion posts who are responsible for their content – we are too," write the editors of SME.sk.

As Aktuality.sk points out, administering discussion boards is an extraordinarly demanding, sensitive matter, because "many discussants consider the removal of their contributions to be interference with their freedom of speech. That is not the case. Aktuality.sk has always approached discussion boards with maximum openness, but it is unacceptable for our discussion boards to become a place for communications by extremists (of any kind) or for individuals who intentionally unleash hatred… We are making this move for our readers who want to join responsibly join discussions that stay on topic."

Czech media not much bothered by hatred

It seems that for the time being calls for hatred, the dissemination of lies, racism don’t much bother the Czech media. While discussion board formats have changed in the Czech media more than once, many hateful, racist contributions are left untouched by the administrators of the discussions posted beneath articles online.  

In the Czech Republic the news server that is probably most hospitable to aggressive discussants is Novinky.cz, where discussants must register under their own name, and iDNES.cz, where the discussions are supervised by several moderators led by Jan Dvořák. Differences of perception as to what constitutes hatred have been well-mapped by the magazine RESPEKT in an article entitled "If Hitler had only known" (Kdyby to Hitler tušil), which investigates hatred on the Czech internet.

"They’ve had hundreds of years and they still live on the outskirts of society. However, it’s not because of racism, it’s only because of their approach to education, life and work," one discussant posts beneath an article about Romani integration on iDNES.cz.

According to Dvořák such a posting may remain online because "while it is a bit of a generalization, it is nonetheless a legitimate, rather sober way of expressing a critical opinion of Romani people." Representatives of news server Romea.cz and SME.sk take a different view of the matter.  

"That’s an ordinary generalization unsupported by any arguments. Our image isn’t made just by the quality of our articles, but by what kind of discussions we allow under our brand," Filip Struhárik, one of the designers of the current form of online debating at SME.sk, told RESPEKT.  

Zdeněk Ryšavý, director of the ROMEA organization, agrees, saying he believes the contribution made above by a reader of iDNES.cz is hate speech and should be removed. "This is a classic example of a generalization that tars an entire group of people with the same brush," he says.  

Ryšavý believes everything should be removed that offends either specific individuals or any group of people, from Romani people to wheelchair users to Czech soldiers. "Naturally I am under no illusions that such hatred would completely disappear, I don’t believe it would. However, at least the followers of such hatred would not have acccess to the biggest websites and to wide-ranging discussions. They should be somewhere in the background, tucked away on their own websites, and as long as they don’t break the law, let them discuss all they want there,"  he said.    

Improvement in the justice system and police

We can see a slight change for the better, of course, in the work of the justice system and police in the Czech Republic. As RESPEKT reports, a contribution posted to a discussion on Facebook calling for death to Czech soldiers participating in foreign missions was found by police to be a misdemeanor against civil coexistence warranting a CZK 5 000 fine.

The author of the hateful commentary, Jiří Pohl, ultimately did not have to pay the fine, as he apologized. Recently former Czech MP Otto Chaloupka (Public Affairs) received a first-instance verdict for his own anti-Romani statements on Facebook.

News server Romea.cz reported that Chaloupka was sentenced to six months’ probation by the District court for Prague 1. The court made its ruling without holding a hearing or asking for additional evidence.  

The former MP, according to the court, incited hatred against an ethnic group. Chaloupka appealed the April verdict and a hearing will be held in his case this September.

Last year Chaloupka posted a message to his Facebook profile on the events in Duchcov (Teplice district), where a small group of Romani people attacked and beat up a non-Romani married couple. "Decent people have put up with your aggresion, your thievery and your unjustified demands for more and more advantages for long enough," he wrote.

During the subsequent discussion he added that "people are on edge – a few more gypsy provocations like this and the slaughter will begin. Then even the riot police won’t save them."

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