“Our colleagues in journalism, as much as we, are still looking for a way to write about the Roma and about Roma-related issues in a way that is not too ethnic; in a way that is not colored by various prejudices and stereotypes,” says Jarmila Balážová, co-founder and chair of Romea Civic Association, a Romani media and education organization.

“It is not at all easy to do,” she elaborates. “”It has only been since (the Velvet Revolution in) 1989 that Czech journalists have been writing about the minorities. Even we are guilty of stereotyping sometimes, for instance, when we want to balance out a negative image of the Romani minority that continues to prevail in the Czech media. So sometimes we emphasize the ethnicity of a personality when it should not be done. But we do it to spread the word that Roma exist who are not known, and who, for example, represent this country on a national level in sports.”

Jarmila Balážová is a woman in demand; a woman with charisma, vision and an uncanny amount of energy. She is an award-winning journalist and the driving force behind a number of programs and publications, including Czech Radio’s Romani radio broadcast, “O Roma vakeren,” which she founded and the Romani monthlies Amaro Gendalos and Romano voďi, of which she is editor-in-chief. Balážová is also a producer at Czech Radio 6, the former broadcasters of Radio Free Europe in Czech.

[Jarmila Balážová, photo credit: Romea]

Balážová established Romea in 2002, along with a group of others, following a training of young Romani journalists, offered by the Dženo Association. Zdeněk Ryšavý, who is now the executive director, was also one of the co-founders.

Romea’s mission is to “motivate and involve predominantly young Roma in civic life as well as to contribute to better relations between the minorities and the majority population in the Czech Republic.”

Romea runs a press service as well as an internet news server, which reports on events from the world of the Roma, and is, according to Romea’s annual report, currently the country’s most-visited Romani server. The server regularly broadcasts TV news reports on ROMEA.tv in both, Romani and Czech language. The monthly Romano voďi, which Romea publishes, provides coverage of current events from the world of the Roma as well as articles on Romani literature, music, history, language. A portion of the magazine is directed at young Roma, who can find pages that profile active and successful Roma and a two-page section “Through Our Eyes” focusing on “youth” themes. Romea also produces “10 Minutes”, a talk show which profiles interesting Romani guests.

I had the opportunity in late August to talk with Ryšavý and Balážová at their office about their work and Romea’s role in the Czech media landscape.

“I think that the vast majority of the media, in fact nearly all media, continue to reinforce various stereotypes concerning the minorities,” maintains Balážová. “I must say that some media do it less, others more. A huge difference can be seen between those who have been dedicated to these issues long-term, using an analytical lens. The result depends on who is writing and who is in the leadership at the particular media outlet.”

When asked to discuss the mission of Romea, Balážová explains that providing information, but also monitoring the press for factual accuracy are some of the key roles her organization plays.

“We bring information to the Roma themselves,” Balážová says. “Our role rests in that we think that if the Romani community is not well informed, the members will not be very politically engaged; that they will not be able to defend themselves well. That is the reason we provide information. And we write about notable personalities for a more balanced (public image of the Roma).”

“We also try to bring opinions of the Roma on the issues, because white Czech journalists never or seldom ask Roma for their opinions,” continues Balážová. “If it weren’t for us at Romea, who put in the effort and approach a number of Roma to obtain their commentary so that Czech News Agency and others can use them as sources, the angle would never change.”

“I get very upset,” chimes in Ryšavý, “when we have to correct journalists when they write nonsense they don’t doublecheck. They go somewhere where conflict is occurring and usually ask only those from the side of the white Czechs. That has happened to us many times. And the way the articles are framed because only the whites are asked, makes the Roma instantly into the perpetrators. Then when we collect quotes by the Roma and contact newspapers, asking them to include this information, they usually write us back that their organizations are objective, that they could not interview any Roma because they could not find any. That is absolute nonsense.”

When asked what he finds most rewarding about his work in Romani media, Ryšavý says he enjoys introducing successful Roma to the public. “It is interesting,” he reflects, “that these types of articles are not of interest to majority media outlets. In general, the media write about what is wrong, not what is positive. We try to correct that by trying to place articles with a positive spin in mainstream media.”

Balážová says that occasionally positive coverage does appear, especially on Czech Television, and especially about children. She, however, points out that Roma-related topics are often viewed as their own separate domain.

“Often both, the public and the journalists, understand Romani-themed issues to be separate from the rest,” Balážová explains. “When the issue is something that has to do with discrimination, exclusion, stealing or looting, Roma will be written about. But when it is something that is unexpected, for instance help is provided to flooded communities by the Roma and not just along ethnic lines, there is not too much interest.”

“I think it is the main weakness of Czech media,” Balážová asserts, “that they perceive the Roma divided from Czech society and not part of it. This idea tends to always be emphasized.”

Regarding dreams for the future, Balážová jokes: “World peace.” But then gets more serious, describing how over the last eight years of its existence, Romea has always struggled with funding and has had to rely on volunteers, in addition to the core paid staff.

Balážová explains that, even at the price of getting funding cut, her organization is critical. Because of that, she says, they have gotten “smacked across the fingers regarding taking on new projects,” as she calls it.

“The nonprofit sector is very much affected by this phenomenon,” Balážová continues. The Romani organizations which are dependent on state funding, she says, “will not do anything that could go against the government or some politicians, who are offensive or anti-Roma. Our experience is that a whole lot of Romani nonprofit organizations, which are effective, which have lots of money, because they know how to apply for it, because they are well-established, will not ever join any demonstration or protest at all, even in support of Natalka (the two-year-old Romani victim of a molotov cocktail attack carried out by neo-Nazis last year).”

“It would be great if we could work in a more or less stable atmosphere,” she says. “It would be great to find partners in the media or other relevant institutions for our educational and media-related projects.”

Ryšavý agrees: “I would like Romea to become more financially stable. Another distant and more difficult-to-achieve goal is that of eventually cutting ourselves off from state finances, to obtain funding from other sources and not be dependent on grants, because that is very binding.”

[Zdeněk Ryšavý]

As a white woman involved in advocating for equal rights for minorities, I was curious about how Ryšavý wrestles with the fact that he is white in an influential role in a minority organization.

“I have an opinion about that,” jumped in Balážová, who is a Roma. “He has been very active working on these issues, so he has already gone through a trial period when some people may have doubted his role here. I have to say that he has never tried to push himself to the foreground, only the last two years he has agreed to appear in the media, but only if I or another Roma from Romea is there.”

“It is exactly the same,” she continues, “as when a Roma has to prove him- or herself in a non-Romani company. In the same manner, a non-Roma must prove himself in a Romani organization. But from the beginning, we have declared, and quite loudly, that we will have non-Roma working here as well. Our mission is to improve mutual relationships, so we have to build on the fact that we can work well together.”

As a white person, closely familiar with issues affecting the Roma, a person like Ryšavý has the unique position of serving as a bridge between the two groups. Ryšavý says he can influence the majority population’s perceptions of the Roma by challenging his white friends when they say prejudicial things and engaging them in a conversation.

“It does work,” Ryšavý explains. “At most you can influence your circle of friends, which is maybe two hundred people. It is possible. But the media influence people’s opinions more.” That is why Romea’s work of bringing information from the perspective of the Roma to the public is so crucial.

“My work has become my hobby,” says Richard Samko, the second ever Romani news anchor on Czech Television. “The work is colorful and diverse. It’s also an adrenaline rush, and I like that.”

[Richard Samko, photo credit Czech Radio]

Samko has worked in the field of journalism for eleven years as a reporter, news anchor and more recently host of Events and Commentary, a nightly program featuring news analysis and political commentary.

In the late 1990s, the Dženo Association introduced Samko to the world of journalism in a training designed to bring up a new generation of Romani reporters.

Samko is a pioneer, with only Ondřej Giňa, Jr., the first news anchor of Romani background in the Czech Republic, having blazed the trail before him. Samko’s drive, energy and passion for his work in the news media underscore our conversation.

“I stuck with it for years, working my way up, because I wanted to make it far,” says Samko. “The opportunity was something a person gets only once in a lifetime. To get to work in Czech Television is huge; it’s power.”

Samko has covered topics as wide-ranging as immigration, problems inside the police force, right-wing extremism, traffic law, housing issues and unemployment. He has also taken part in producing documentaries, an interest he would like to pursue in greater depth.

One documentary on which Samko collaborated was The Saga of the Roma (Sága Romů), a film examining the changes in the Romani community and its relationship to the majority population during the second half of the 20th century. Samko confesses filmmaking is his dream.

“When I worked on The Saga, filmmaking really grabbed me. I saw that the work was more creative,” Samko recalls. “I then made a few short documentaries myself.”

“I would like to make a film that is Roma-themed,” Samko continues. “I can see that as the most realistic undertaking for me; a topic which I understand the best and can say the most about.”

One of the most powerful aspects of being so visible in the media is Samko’s ability to inspire Romani children, who look up to him as a role model from their own ranks.

Whenever Samko’s hectic schedule allows it, Samko travels to Romani cultural festivals to act as master of ceremonies and to speak to the children.

“I want the children to see a positive example of what is possible to achieve,” says Samko.

One of his projects is a program called Fledglings (Ptáčata), in which a television crew follows a group of second-graders, many of them Romani, as they learn to become camera operators, reporters and news anchors while documenting their own lives.

Samko is a visionary. He recognizes the potential in his community and advocates for the skills of those newly trained in his field to be harnessed. Once funding for Dženo’s Romani station Radio Rota is renewed and the broadcast expanded via digital satellite technology, Samko, who would work with the station in advisory capacity, sees an enormous opportunity for a new generation of journalists.

“Radio Rota should be funded,” asserts Samko, “because it would serve as a base for those who have started on a path towards a career in journalism. There is a potential here that should be developed further. In mainstream television, where I work, there is no time for on-the-job training or mentoring. New journalists have to be ready to start working at a professional level. That’s where media organizations such as Dženo and Radio Rota come in.”

Another role that Radio Rota could fulfill is that of enabling journalists from the majority population to access experiences of the members of Romani community whose issues would be of interest because they ‘affect the entire country,’ as Samko says.

“Mainstream media could draw on the work of Romani journalists reporting for Radio Rota,” Samko continues, “because they tend to be the ones with access to the Romani community, something the average Czech reporter doesn’t have.”

In addition to providing information mainstream journalists could draw on as well as hands-on experience to young Romani reporters, Radio Rota, because the Czech Republic is in the center of Europe, could serve as the heart of Romani newscasting, says Samko.

“Radio Rota could broadcast news programming from around the world,” Samko envisions. “We know journalists in Bulgaria, Hungary, Russia, Poland, etc. We know people everywhere. In all these places there are journalists who would contribute Romani-themed programs. The station could be a pan-European showcase.”

To close, Samko urges: “I want my fellow Roma to persevere in doing what they enjoy despite obstacles they may encounter. The opportunities are there. It may take a few years. There will be a few years of waiting, but then the chance to get to a better place will arrive and they will be able to fulfill their dreams.”

“And as far as the majority community is concerned,” Samko concludes, “more tolerance is necessary. There needs to be more room and less judgement of people based on their looks or minority status. Minorities must be given a chance.”

“It was when I started here in 2002 that my big love affair with this work began,” says Iveta Demeterová, Director of Programming at Radio Rota, the first Romani internet station in the Czech Republic, founded and operated by the Dženo Association.

“None of us at the station took the work as a mere job; we considered it our life’s mission and our passion,” recalls Demeterová. “For us, it was a matter of the heart. None of us ever looked at the clock; we worked until we were happy with what we produced.”

“
[Iveta Demeterová, photo by Tereza Bottman]

During Radio Rota’s heyday between 2002 and 2006, the station attracted tens of thousands of listeners from the Czech Republic and around the world each month. Radio Rota aired news, public affairs programming, talk shows, and cultural programs in three languages: Czech, English and Romani. The radio presented organizations to which the community could turn for help.

The hope is that if enough funding is raised, the station will soon resume broadcasting, this time in digital satellite format, reaching listeners in more languages, across as much as three quarters of Europe.

“The station served as a a link, connecting Roma who before the year 2000 immigrated to Canada, England, Belgium, Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand,” explains Demeterová. “We provided a way for them to communicate together, obtain information from us, and, in return, pass on information to us about how they were doing abroad; how they were faring in areas of housing, education, work; how they were perceived there and whether they had problems based on the color of their skin.”

The audience also included the majority population.

“Our motto was: ‘Radio about and for, but not only for the Roma,’” says Demeterová, who, as of September, will also be the new Director of Romani programming on Czech Radio, a publicly funded station with a weekly listenership of nearly 3 million.

“I was most thrilled by the fact that there was such great cooperation between the station and its listeners,” beams Demeterová. “The telephone rang off the hook. We received so many emails, it was a challenge to respond to all of them.“

One of the regular programs was a show called Voicemail. “The messages that people sent to each other through us were incredible,“ remembers Demeterová. “People called in to confess their love for each other, to make birthday wishes, to express regrets that they cannot be there to celebrate their grandparents‘ anniversaries.“

Radio Rota even brought people together; not only couples, but friends or relatives who had not been able to find each other for years.

“I did not live my own life doing this work,“ Demeterová confesses. “I lived the lives of the others; the listeners, because I was their fan. I provided advice and contacts for organizations that could help them.“

During the time of campaigns, politicians were regularly invited to the Radio Rota studio to be interviewed and to discuss their platforms. Informally, many of them expressed their support for the station, but in the end, their words were mostly empty promises, says Demeterová.

“Funding was always an issue,” she explains. “The station was built for money from abroad. We asked the Ministry of Culture for funding, and we received it twice. We were glad we received the support, even though it was less than the amount we had requested.“

“We had to prioritize,“ says Demeterová. “There were times when we were only able to pay the bills and the contractors, still we continued working. We weren’t thinking about ourselves; we were thinking about the listeners who were waiting for the services the station provides.“

The importance of independent, minority-run media such as Radio Rota cannot be overstated. Demeterová says the station played a unique role in Czech society in that it emphasized a positive image of the Romani community.

“If the majority population truly wants to have a multicultural society and to be a lawful member of the European Union,“ Demeterová asserts, “if they want tolerance to preside over this land, one way to achieve this is [for the majority and the Roma] to continue getting to know each other. Radio Rota could be a vehicle to open the way for that process.“

Several years later, fans are still writing in, wondering what is happening with the radio station.

“People are still waiting for something to happen, hoping that the radio will continue,” says Demeterová.

The station provided not only information and entertainment, but also a sense of community as well as pride.

“When the radio was created, the community felt part of the experience,” Demeterová explains. “The people felt that they belonged there: ‘We, too, have our own radio station now.’”

“When the listeners wrote in, they did not call it ‘your radio;’” she concludes.“They called it ‘our radio.’ We gave them something to feel proud of.”

On Tuesday, Czech President Václav Klaus swore in the new conservative government, formed following the May Parliamentary elections, in which the left-wing Social Democrats won by a narrow margin, but center-right parties captured more votes overall. The right-wing coalition secured 118 of the Parliament’s 200 lower-chamber seats. All fifteen Minister posts will be held by men, a choice which has been criticized by political analysts and women’s rights groups alike. However, the Parliament now houses a record number of women, 22% of the MPs, and will be led by women. Ethnic minorities, who make up no more than 3 percent of the total population, on the other hand, have no representation in Parliament.

Those on the margins of Czech society have a reason to worry. One of the right-leaning government’s highest priorities is placing limits on government spending, namely by cutting government jobs and salaries as well as slashing social expenditures and overhauling (read eventually privatizing) the pension and health care systems. The trend of reducing government spending, especially child and maternity benefits as well as support for the unemployed, is troubling for those already struggling to survive.

[photo credit: backspace.com's Social Designs]

“The new right-wing government will cause more intense isolation of the Roma on the margins of society,” constituted Romani activist Štefan Gorol, one of the respondents to a post-election survey carried out by Romano hangos, a Romani monthly. “We will be denied access to resources which are available to other members of the society. These resources include employment, housing, social protection, health care, and education.”

Mr. Gorol is not alone. Ivan Veselý, chairman of the Romani advocacy and media group Dženo Association, is one of many who are concerned.

“The times are getting tough. There are going to be serious ramifications,” says Veselý.

Respekt weekly editor-in-chief Erik Tabery in his political commentary on the new government agrees that slashing social benefits is a terrible idea: “It’s difficult to understand that the administration is apparently preparing to cut social benefits for poor families with children or support for people with a lighter form of disabilities. However much it may be necessary to prevent the abuse of various benefits, this type of support should not be abolished. A state that is not able to take care of the most vulnerable is worthless.”

Something important to remember is that not all people living in poverty in the Czech Republic are Roma, as the mainstream press would have the public believe.

“Only about one-fifth of those on social welfare benefits are Roma,” Veselý points out. This is still a disproportionately high number, considering the Roma make up around 2% of the total population (the number of Roma living in the Czech Republic is estimated to be somewhere between 150,000 and 300,000.)

At least half the Romani population do not live below the poverty level in socially excluded locations (sociologist Ivan Gabal estimates the number of Roma in socially excluded locations to be just over 85 thousand of the total of 150,000 to 200,000 Roma in the country) and many are college-educated professionals. Karel Holomek, long-time Romani activist and current president of the international Decade for Roma Inclusion 2005-2015, stresses just that in his latest blog post entitled “Absence of Rationality in Discussions about the Peaceful Co-existence of the Roma in Our Society“:

Such discussions point at a deficiency of the members of the Romani community, which they inaccurately call inadaptibility. What is talked about is careless attitude toward housing (on the part of the Roma), non-payment of rent, aggressive behavior of Romani children, unwillingness to learn or work, abuse of social benefits and other such matters. . . An unfortunate consequence is that the nature of this type of a discussion and, in general, such commonly and almost uniformly held societal views have a negative effect not only on a relatively small group of Roma, but on the entire society. . . The public’s hatred expressed quite clearly in statistical data is aimed against the entire Romani community, even though it is clear that it should only concern the part which is discreditable, if we at all accept such discredibility exists. And this group is much smaller than the entire Romani community.

The government’s focus on cutting spending is driven by the Maastricht Treaty, which mandates all EU member states to cut their state spending to a threshold of 3%. Currently the public deficit for the Czech Republic is projected to be 5.6% of GDP for 2010. Of course, the recession is another reason for the cuts, the public is told.

While the media work the public opinion by highlighting random Romani families who find loopholes in the social benefit system to “take advantage of,” and airing heated debates with guests who spout racist stereotypes and point fingers at the Roma as the “culprits for all the social ills,” the government wheels and deals, bringing in record profits despite the recession, yet warning of drastic cuts to social spending.

Some questions have recently been raised about the Czech government’s finance priorities in the form of backroom deals from which the country’s largest energy provider, the state-run energy company and highest grossing Czech company ČEZ, stands to profit.

In 2009, ČEZ, the largest Czech corporation, earned a record profit of 196 billion crowns marking a growth in earnings despite the recession. The company, of which 69.4% is owned by the Czech government with the rest in private hands, is being questioned about its role in influencing policy as well as the outcome of the elections by placing its key allies and board members in ministry positions. It is also under pressure to explain its inflated expenditure (paid for by taxpayer money) for the construction of new power plants. The Ecological Law Service puts the excess at 30 billion crowns above market value.

In contrast, the latest estimate is that cuts in social benefit spending could save the Czech government about 11 billion crowns.

Jaroslav Spurný, assistant editor of the weekly Respekt pertinently writes:

“The amount at which the Ecological Law Service arrived showed that the three Czech brown coal power plants are overpriced by 30 billion crowns. We are witnessing either enormous waste or enormous theft. If it is true and the government doesn’t respond, we can forget about the reforms. They will be good for nothing, because what the state shaves off from social benefits, will be easily spent by ČEZ.“

Journalists throughout Europe have been sounding an alarm about the trends of increasing conglomeration, censorship and diminishing freedom of the press. Where does the Czech Republic stand in terms of media freedom? How do independent vs. corporate media outlets fare? Is there room for human rights journalism in the current media environment? These are some questions I am seeking to answer, seeing them as relevant to my fellowship with the Dženo Association, which is partly a media organization with a history of magazine publishing, broadcasting and training journalists.

In its 2007 report surveying media freedom in the European Union, the Association of European Journalists found that freedom of the press is relatively unrestrained in the Czech Republic:

The Czech media enjoy a comparatively high level of media freedom and independence, reflected in the relatively mature media scene and the lack of high-profile violations of the media’s ability to report on events in public life. Reporters Sans Frontieres, in its Press Freedom Index for 2006, ranked the Czech Republic in 5th place out of 168 countries assessed.

However, the Czech Republic’s press freedom rating has since plummeted to the 24th place. Also, the report raises several concerns, among them subtle pressure sometimes exerted by business and political interests to influence reporters. Also among the report’s criticisms is the problem that “Czech journalists sometimes fail to demonstrate the independence of mind and professional rigour needed to report adequately on sensitive issues,” and that they “have shown a lack of independence and determination in questioning politicians and their decisions.”

The concerns above are echoed by media expert and Czech journalism professor Jaromír Volek, who writes:

The continuing influence of the state on the public service sector is an. . . issue. This has been de facto “privatized” by the parliamentary parties and used as a megaphone for their own political ambitions; in effect they use the media to shut off individuals not affiliated to a political party from the public debate.

Regarding the rigor needed for reporters to question authority and provide alternative angles, Volek asserts that Czech journalism exhibits “a surprising degree of conformity in approaches, which, in turn, results in the campaign-style promotion of social agendas and collective media interpretations.”

This reality is compounded by the fact that three of the four largest-circulation dailies “pursue a center-right political agenda,” while the vast majority of journalists themselves subscribe to center-right political views and reject the Left. In fact, a study by the media monitoring group Hermes of the most widely read daily, MF Dnes, showed that left-wing political parties were presented less favorably than the right. Mainstream Czech press is thus clearly slanted ideologically, which has an impact on minority rights and social issue coverage. Pertinent to my fellowship is the fact that although a formal survey of the political preferences of the Roma community has not been carried out, the general assumption in and outside the Roma community is that the Roma are overall a left-leaning voter constituency.

The Association of European Journalists shares Volek’s view about the declining journalistic standards, which “tend to encourage passivity and acceptance of the status quo instead of vigilance.” The level of political debate and focus in reporting, says the AEJ analysis, is often “characterised by populism and an excessive focus on personality” and dominated by “dumbed-down” content.

But why this substandard quality of journalism in the Czech Republic? Both Volek and the Institute of Democracy for All, a media monitoring group, have argued that this deficiency is caused by the consolidation of ownership and commercialization, even “tabloidization“of the media.

After the fall of communism in 1989, a rush to privatize all state assets ensued. The Czech media were no exception.

“The Czech Republic,“ writes Milan Šmíd in “Media Ownership and Its Impact on Media Independence and Pluralism.”, a 2004 Peace Institute report, “was the first country in Central and Eastern Europe to award a nation-wide broadcasting license to a private person, and to allocate a complete network of frequencies formerly used by public television to private television. . . (By 1993), there were no state media in the country. Three former state media outlets, i.e. Czech Television, Czech Radio and the Czech Press Agency (CTK) already operated as independent public service companies. . . All other media companies were in private hands.“

Now with more than eighty percent of all state-run enterprises privatized, the Czech Republic, with a population of just over 10 million, has the highest concentration of foreign-owned press in Central and Eastern Europe after Poland.

Although 87 percent of Czech print media outlets are foreign-owned, with German and Swiss companies owning 80 percent of Czech newspapers and magazines, the media monitoring group Institute of Democracy for All asserts that commercialization, homogenization and a trend toward infotainment have much more of an impact on today’s journalism than the nationality of the media owners.

Volek expresses a similar analysis:

Unable to reconcile their former role with the demands of the new technology and economic pressures, journalists have gradually been “de-intellectualized” and reduced to administering the machinery of communication. The “new type of journalist” as a “media employee”, whose existence depends on respecting the dominant logic of infotainment has, for now, won out over the traditional role of the journalist as reporter and interpreter of events.

He continues: “Most of the Czech media have adapted to the economic realities of the market: the media is just one more commodity forced to adapt to market imperatives as it comes ever closer to being little more than infotainment.”

If mainstream journalists are so beholden to economic, and sometimes political pressures that content starts to become uncritical and tabloid-like, the role of independent media is even more important in terms of investigative reporting and of presenting of stories which may not have commercial appeal or mainstream political endorsement, but may be crucial to the understanding and reforming of the current political and social landscape in the Czech Republic. Such is the role media organizations like Romea, a Prague-based Roma news service, and my host organization Dženo which plans to launch an international, multilingual satellite broadcast on Roma issues and culture. The question is always that of funding and funding priorities.

“Media publishers and broadcasters support investigative journalism only exceptionally,” writes media analyst Milan Šmíd in the Peace Institute media study,” not because of its contentious nature, but because it is an expensive, time consuming and costly affair.”

The current economic crisis is creating yet another excuse for those with the purse strings to divest from social services and causes. Perhaps there are still those funders who see the value of independent media and are willing to support the voices of the underrepresented for the long haul. Media freedom and diversity as well as independent and probing journalism are signs of a healthy democracy.

This week, the Czech Republic is officially taking over the rotating presidency of the Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-2015, an international initiative whose goal is to improve the living conditions of the Roma across Europe.

The initiative brings together the governments of twelve European countries along with intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations “to accelerate progress toward improving the welfare of Roma.“ The parnter organizations include the World Bank, the Open Society Institute, the United Nations Development Program, the the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Council of Europe, European Roma Information Office, and the European Roma Rights Centre.

According to the Decade of Roma Inclusion website, “the Decade focuses on the priority areas of education, employment, health, and housing, and commits governments to take into account the other core issues of poverty, discrimination, and gender mainstreaming.“

Now midway through the project, the reactions among Roma activists and community members vary, but veer on the side of skepticism.

Today I spoke to Ivan Veselý, head of the Dženo Association and member of the Decade of Roma Inclusion steering committee. Mr. Veselý has been with the intiative since its planning phase and has been so invested in the Decade that he calls the initiative “his child.“

“The initial aim of the Decade was two-fold,“ says Mr. Veselý. “One goal was to demand that member governments change their policies toward the Roma minority. The second major goal was to jumpstart a Roma rights movement across Europe.“

When asked about the effectiveness of the the Decade, he curses, expressing deep disappointment. He feels that the intiative was implemented without the necessary preliminary capacity building and that the efforts towards Roma inclusion are mostly conferences, declarations, reports, and more words; not enough action.

The goals for each country that is part of the Decade have been outlined, measurable indicators set, but, so far, there are few results.

“The main problem,“ says Mr. Veselý, “ is that no money has been allocated by the Czech government to achieve the Decade’s aims.“

During Czech Republic’s presidency, the priorities are: inclusive education (contrary to the current practice of unjustly segragating large numbers of Romany children in schools for the mentally handicapped); children’s living situations and their rights; the empowerment of Romany women; the implementation of local-level integration policies; and improving the image of Roma in the media.

The action plan for the Czech Republic comprises objectives such as providing Romany students equal access to pre-school as well as higher education; training educators in multicultural teaching methods; preventing residential segregation; increasing access of low-income Roma families to affordable housing; and boosting the employability and employment rates of the Roma through training, incentives and investment aimed at the creation of Roma-run small business enterprises.

What many, including Mr. Veselý, would like to see and have been advocating is a systemic change which begins with a firm, sustained, long-term committment on the part of the government. Such committment must take the form of allocation of a sufficient amount of money, so that the carefully crafted action plan can be implemented in all key sectors and throughout all regions.

I just came across a fascinating blog post by award-winning reporter and journalism professor Michael J. Jordan, currently based in Slovakia. His lengthy list of accomplishments includes developing trainings for European Roma journalists.

From his long-term experience in journalism and his discussions with reporters in Central and Eastern Europe, Jordan concludes that the need for human rights journalism is pressing. In his recent meeting with the representatives from Slovak media, Jordan observed:

The assembled reporters… described how tough it can be to make the case to editors for why to approach stories with greater sensitivity, or also pursue positive Roma stories, or report more critically about far-right demonstrations. Or even why the majority should care about the state of its Roma minority – as a “litmus test” for Slovak democracy, values and respect for human rights.

Jordan wonders “out loud” what “fair and balanced” reporting on the Roma issues should look like. The local human rights journalists present explain:

The hatred has been planted so deep, there’s no space for high-minded, Western-liberal, even-handedness in broadcasting. The Roma are so beaten down by society’s perception of them, many have themselves developed low esteem for their own identity and peoplehood.

The information that follows is golden for me and others working with community-based Roma media advocacy groups. Jordan explains that human rights journalism is needed primarily for “the Roma themselves: to remind them of their humanity.”

Additionally, he explains, “the second target audience was equally striking: the ordinary (majority citizens) genuinely curious about Roma culture, and those who in fact have some warm feelings for the Roma – or, at least for their Roma neighbor or colleague, past or present.”

My AP fellowship’s goals match just that. In my work I aim to deliver positive portrayals of the Roma to correct the deeply entrenched, damaging stereotypes so prevalent in European societies. Jordan’s piece helps shed more light on yet another aspect of why this type of reporting is needed. This work is needed to boost the Roma community’s self-image and morale, which will in turn strengthen the Roma emancipation movement. Pro-Roma press coverage may also help attract more allies from the majority community to advocate for social change. Profound stuff.