The poisonous apple

Idealism and sovereignty

Late October that same year, Poland’s Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, picked up the idea of information sovereignty from Snyder, agonising over the disappointing performance of his party in the local elections. He directly referred to the media ownership by German companies in Poland, indicating that they were partly responsible for influencing electoral results – a common argument used by many who do not perform well in an electoral race. To make his case, he discussed the controversies surrounding the attempted purchases of German newspapers by American companies, and indicated that foreign capital withdrew after large scale public protests.

But he missed the point – mostly likely alluding to the 2005 purchase of the left-of-centre Berliner Zeitung by British and American companies. This was the first foreign takeover of a media outlet in post-1945 Germany, but the new owners decided to withdraw from the deal due to economic calculus after the purchase not because of protests. Moreover, since then the newspaper belongs to German businessman, Holger Friedrich (ironically for the Polish anti-communist prime minister), a former Stasi agent as revealed by a story in 2019 by Spiegel.

The trouble with finding a good case for Morawiecki’s version of information sovereignty is perhaps his old-school romantic idealism. The very same principle that conceived the philosophy of nationalism in 18th century Germany; a striking thought-symmetry could be drawn to Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who authored a book with a much telling title, The Closed Commercial State. Such a case for sovereignty – pursued now by many other inward looking politicians – comes with the ambition to limit all interference in the country they manage.

The ironic trouble with this perspective is that, over time, the circle of trusted men shrinks along with their perception, while the world perpetually pursues more and more interconnectedness. The idealism of men and women in power also stops them from referring to practical examples of how it can be implemented in political regimes that the idealism holds in despise. Morawiecki could have used the case of Viktor Orbán and the Hungarian government taking almost full control of the national media space – obviously one other policy blueprint from Budapest that has been studied in Warsaw. But he did not, likely because of rising corruption in contemporary Hungary that comes in package with illiberal policies. 

Briefly after Morawiecki’s speech, I called Timothy Snyder for an interview with Dziennik Gazeta Prawna and Res Publica Nowa to clarify his position on a potentially contagious idea that he happened to inject into Polish political discourse. Snyder spoke about the future challenges to Poland’s sovereignty, as well as to other countries, and that wars today are fought more in the minds than on actual battlefields. This view, drawn from Carl von Clausewitz and others, helped Russia develop active measures, including modern-style propaganda. Meanwhile, resilient democracies have been able to develop critical thinking and media literacy programmes, mainly thanks to a public that values readership. Snyder understands that, in the digital age, the main democratic challenge is in retaining a bottom-up approach to information sovereignty: a framework in which free, independent and pluralistic journalism can flourish.

The importance of local journalism

One of the most serious debates about potential democratic backsliding today is the collapse of local journalism. Local communities, so fundamental to democracy, are the most exposed to misinformation and deception. Back in 2015 the New York Times’s “The Agency” report provided compelling evidence how local America is under attack from Russian disinformation networks. Such disinformation operations were deliberately carried out where the public sphere was the weakest. The digital age and the financial crisis are far too often cited as the reasons for the decline in media and journalism, giving way to a fatalist view of the survival of the fittest. While The Economist and the New York Times thrive with millions of online subscribers, many smaller outlets have been collapsing; and professionals are abandoning the trade.

Fortunately, in Central Europe there is some hope – for instance, with success stories like DennikN in Slovakia. This digital daily was set up by journalists who resented the idea of a big corporate owner. It quickly grew and soon became the country’s top news subscription service, breaking even in just under five years. Similar cases have followed across the region, with a digital transformation allowing some to spring up.

People are hungry for news and analysis on how events of the day can be explained. Even in Hungary, where the government took control of a bulk of outlets, there is a degree of experimentation. In 2018 the HVG weekly – one of the few outlets still independent of government control – started a new online subscription service featuring long-form quality stories, and is now paving the way for quality, independent media in the country. Perhaps more innovation with digital models in Hungary would help the current situation. Current digital tools serve Orbán to not nurture plurality and independent inquiry, but as efficient government mouthpieces. The journalists lose their jobs, while the newspapers they used to work for replicate stories, headlines and even photos ridiculing the notion of citizen’s right to information.

Trends

This comes in parallel with the expansion of the Kremlin’s narrative through more and more information channels, thus exposing Hungary’s information sovereignty. Understandably, in 2019 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) decided to resume its services in Hungarian. RFE/RL was established in 1949 by the US Agency for Global Media to provide objective information to societies subjected to mass propaganda by various communist regimes. It recently re-opened Romanian and Bulgarian branches – all of them as online platforms, rather than radio waves.

It may sound like a paradox, but multinational stakeholders in the region guaranteed more information sovereignty than do the national governments now. Although the nationalisation of the press is not the answer, neither is complete privatisation. The changes in the media landscape that we see in Central Europe may soon be a trend that we witness happening across the rest of continental European journalism.

Levels of trust in Central Europeans in established (paid) media brands are very low and there is a preference towards alternative (free) sources instead. This is striking when compared to public attitudes towards the media in Germany. Trust in journalism in Central Europe is undermined from several different angles; though the same can be said about politicians, who have a lower level of public trust. President Miloš Zeman of Czechia and the former prime minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico, even competed to discredit the profession of journalism. The former showed a fake Kalashnikov gun tagged “for the press”, while the latter called journalists prostitutes not long before one was murdered (Ján Kuciak, in Slovakia). It is hard to imagine that quality driven subscription models (based on trust) will quickly develop when those outlets are fighting against a very strong current.

Yet the press is just one flip of the coin in the battle for information sovereignty. In Slovakia cultural archetypes and cultural diplomacy led by Russia may be one of the reasons for the country’s inability to set itself apart from post-imperial dependency on Moscow. Aliaksei Kazharski, a researcher at Comenius University in Bratislava, recently explained that “pro-Kremlin narratives and their promoters are also sometimes legitimised by established cultural and educational institutions that are anchored in a reputable tradition. Thus, for instance, the Slovak Matica (Matica Slovenská) is one of the oldest Slovak cultural institutions which played a key role in the 19th-century national revival movement and continues to receive subsidies from the Slovak state budget. In recent years, Matica’s close ties with pro-Russian radicals in Slovakia as well as its controversial interpretations of the Holocaust aroused public suspicion … Similarly, the Slovak Union of Anti-Fascist Fighters, established in 1969 as a veteran organisation, has published a magazine which, as Slovak journalists put it, became a tool of ‘Russian propaganda’. The magazine did indeed actively republish dubious material, containing anti-western conspiracy theories and Russian-inspired disinformation tropes…”

State of mind

In a contemporary democracy there is an understandable reluctance to make use of the term sovereignty. Its poisonous legacy draws from pre-democratic sources of power and the mystical authority derived from the powerful and the divine. No wonder that Hobbes puts a monster – the Leviathan – as the archetype of the liberal sovereign power that emerges from the contractual concessions of individual freedom. 

It is also little surprising that contemporary authoritarian regimes are so attracted to the concept of sovereignty. By claiming the term, autocrats like Vladimir Putin suppress voices of dissent that call for democratic accountability and limited government. Russia, too large territorially to act as a functional political space, is more like a state of mind, so in order to control the physical space Moscow believes it needs to control the mindset and the information that make it up. 

By declaring sovereignty over a geographic territory, the economy and even the internet, Putin has tried to claim the high ground in the struggle for the hearts and minds of his fellow citizens. In reality, he has pushed the fight back to the West. Unable to defend itself from the democratic narrative, Russia went on the offensive and today it may infest the democratic mindset if it is not properly recognised or addressed.

Democratic sovereignty in general, and information sovereignty in particular, must be the opposite. By advocating democratic information sovereignty Central Europeans should fight for the ability to defend themselves against domestic and foreign propaganda. And it should be recognised that governments that knowingly restrict their citizens’ access to information, properly help hostile countries. Central Europe, even with its contemporary autocratic sentiments, will never be as good in exercising such control as the Russians or Chinese. Instead by trying to imitate them, Central Europeans should understand that their citizens will become more susceptible to the influence of foreign powers.

The Chinese style of information sovereignty is incompatible with the democratic legacy and will ultimately fail in Hungary, Poland or other countries of Europe. But since the Chinese and Russian information sovereignty models are more offensive in nature, they need to be taken into account. If so then the task for our governments is to educate the public so they will be able to resist authoritarian influences, especially in the information space.

The still young Central European democracies have been reluctant to address the idea of ​​information sovereignty. Yet, the idea is infectious and spreads regardless. Ultimately, it will take a collective effort to take back control of the media.

Wojciech Przybylski is the editor in chief of Visegrad Insight and chairman of the Res Publica Foundation in Warsaw.

disinformation, information policy, Information Sovereignty, journalism, media