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  • Young German Aspiring to Develop Belarusian Media

    For one year already, Sabrina Bobowski has been the head of the School of Journalism at the IBB center organizing dozens of events, meetings and educational trips for journalists. Press service of BAJ talked to Sabrina about how she works to develop journalism in Belarus and to change people’s mentality.

    Сабрына Бабоўскі. Як маладая дзяўчына з Берліна спрабуе развіваць беларускую журналістыку

    I spent my child­hood in the for­mer indus­tri­al heart of Ger­many – the Ruhr region. In the first half of the 20th cen­tu­ry, it was in fact the cen­ter of the Euro­pean coal min­ing indus­try.

    How­ev­er, nowa­days the rem­nants of heavy indus­try have been aban­doned, and many indus­tri­al build­ings and even whole quar­ters have stayed desert­ed. I grew up there, went to school, and then decid­ed to study cul­ture sci­ences, but in some oth­er place – in Frank­furt (Oder), a town with the pop­u­la­tion of 60 thou­sand bor­der­ing with Poland. Our Viad­ri­na Euro­pean Uni­ver­si­ty focus­es on East­ern Euro­pean stud­ies. There I start­ed learn­ing Russ­ian, although my par­ents took it neg­a­tive­ly, and gen­er­al­ly dis­liked all of post-Sovi­et. Per­haps, my inter­est arose from the sit­u­a­tion when the Euro­pean Human­i­ties Uni­ver­si­ty was closed, and our uni­ver­si­ty received a lot of stu­dents form Min­sk. That’s how I opened con­tacts with Belarus, I start­ed to take part in exchange pro­grams, those sup­port­ing the civ­il com­mu­ni­ty. I saw that there was some­thing of inter­est for me in it. I had worked in dif­fer­ent projects deal­ing with the sup­port of the media and civ­il soci­ety in East­ern Europe. And at the end of 2014, I decid­ed to apply for work at the IBB in Min­sk, and I got hired.

    Сабрына Бабоўскі. Як маладая дзяўчына з Берліна спрабуе развіваць беларускую журналістыку

    What issues do you see in the Belaru­sian media sphere?

    I don’t think I will tell much new. The first dif­fer­ence of Belaru­sian media from Ger­man can be illus­trat­ed by this mate­r­i­al item: the col­lec­tion con­tains arti­cles from Ger­man mass media about the idea of cre­at­ing in Berlin a memo­r­i­al com­mem­o­rat­ing mur­dered Jews in Europe. The top­ic was wide­ly dis­cussed in Ger­man media, from var­i­ous aspects. The col­lec­tion illus­trates vivid­ly how much the media par­tic­i­pat­ed in the dis­cus­sion and helped the soci­ety shape the opin­ion regard­ing this or that issue.

    The book shows that in Ger­many mass media are a plat­form for dis­cus­sion of burn­ing issues. In Belarus you can sel­dom come across such dis­cus­sions. Either they don’t start, or only one side speaks out.

    Also, mass media in Ger­many has the sta­ble role of con­trol­ling politi­cians and the gov­ern­ment. Cer­tain­ly, there is a prob­lem when politi­cians use media, but in Belarus this prob­lem is very vivid. And it con­cerns not only state-run mass media – there is much to do with pol­i­tics in inde­pen­dent media, too.

    As I observe it, Belaru­sian jour­nal­ists often refer them­selves to com­pet­ing camps. So to say, you are in the state-run camp, I am from the oppo­si­tion­al one, and there is a wall between us. It seems to me, some open­ness lacks here, some dia­logue. Of course, admin­is­tra­tion influ­ences peo­ple, but every­body has one’s own brains.

    From the out­set of the School of Jour­nal­ism, the IBB stages meet­ings with­in Jour­nal­ists’ Club which is a unique plat­form for dia­logue between jour­nal­ists of state-run and inde­pen­dent mass media. Here hot issues are dis­cussed, all jour­nal­ists can par­tic­i­pate in the Club regard­less of belong­ing to any of the “camps”.

    So, in Belarus I often come across with stamps, with ide­ol­o­gized infor­ma­tion. I won’t tell about nowa­days, I’m talk­ing about the past. Last year we worked a lot over the top­ic of mem­o­ry, we held a lot of events, met many peo­ple and did inter­views. And I noticed that many peo­ple talk not with their own words, they talk with stamps, clichés. I have an impres­sion that they read learnt phras­es from some books. In such atmos­phere, it’s clear, it is dif­fi­cult to orga­nize at least some­what civ­il dis­cus­sion, but some­times it is bad­ly need­ed.

    One more indi­ca­tor for me is, for instance, the num­ber of com­plaints with which the pub­lic responds to this or that pub­li­ca­tion. In most Euro­pean coun­tries, there are civ­il coun­cils who con­sid­er dis­putes in media sphere. In Ger­many, let’s say, such coun­cil han­dles thou­sands of com­plaints. When a per­son is in doubt about this or that pub­li­ca­tion, he eas­i­ly applies to the coun­cil to con­sid­er the issue from the point of view of jour­nal­ism ethics. In Belarus, there is no such all-nation­al coun­cil.

    But the most impor­tant thing for me is that here, pub­lic dis­cus­sion in the media is scarce.

    Сабрына Бабоўскі. Як маладая дзяўчына з Берліна спрабуе развіваць беларускую журналістыку 

    In your view, is it pos­si­ble to solve these prob­lems? As in East Ger­many, before the uni­fi­ca­tion, there had also been prob­lems as such.

    I think one should focus on the things that you can real­ly influ­ence. What­ev­er I’d want, I don’t have influ­ence on some glob­al process­es. But I can com­mu­ni­cate with peo­ple, offer them some changes, prospects.

    I know many peo­ple in Belarus who strive for changes and want to influ­ence some­thing in their sur­round­ings. There are lead­ers of opin­ion in the media. There are also in the sphere of NGOs. And what the School of Jour­nal­ism can offer is to be plat­form for dis­cus­sion of var­i­ous top­ics from dif­fer­ent aspects. Nev­er mind, what media talk and to what camp they think they belong.

    We can also offer a pos­si­bil­i­ty for jour­nal­ists to study and to rise lev­el. In all I think the best thing that can hap­pen to you in life is that you can learn some­thing new. The IBB School of Jour­nal­ism gives this pos­si­bil­i­ty. Last year, we had an edu­ca­tion­al course on the cul­ture of mem­o­ry. This spring we have also planned an edu­ca­tion­al course. Most like­ly, there will also be a course con­nect­ed with social issues and alter­na­tive cul­ture.

    When you’ve been in con­tact with a per­son who caused some doubts in your world view – this is the first step towards changes, the first step towards a crit­i­cal view over one’s own cre­ativ­i­ty and opin­ions.

    In autumn, we are going to hold an edu­ca­tion­al trip for jour­nal­ists to Ger­many. The main top­ic is how the soci­ety copes with glob­al prob­lems and what the place of the media is in this process. The trip aims to explore more about social issues – from migrants’ prob­lems to the ques­tions of devel­op­ing and expand­ing cities. This is how we are plan­ning to work for the process of changes in the Belaru­sian media sphere.Сабрына Бабоўскі. Як маладая дзяўчына з Берліна спрабуе развіваць беларускую журналістыку

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