Мэдыі ў посткамуністычных грамадзтвах: аб’ектыўная інфармацыя супраць ідэалягічных скажэньняў (fb2) читать постранично, страница - 56

tends to avoid or disregard them.

I will take the language factor as an example. Our country is called the Republic of Belarus. Belarusians as the indigenous population make up the majority, or 78%. Under the latest census returns, over 80% of population called the Belarusian language as their mother tongue. Of course, calling it a mother tongue does not necessarily implies having a good command of it. But, this national progress within the society, which reveals itself even at the level of sub-consciousness, should seem to be strengthened and developed. However, nearly all the independent press is Russian-language. One can refer to the fact that many publications are determined by national features, which are expressed in the motives and topical approaches, and lexical specifics. Well, that’s true, but who can deny the indisputable: the Russian-language environment will inevitably leave its trace on the very essence of journalism. Some Belarusian journalists behave as if they are Russian missionaries or Russian correspondents in Belarus. Their language, thinking and assessments are all only Russian.

Independent journalism pays a lot of attention to empty events and good-for-nothing people, often sounding like a gutter press, filled with platitude. Is it really so important, for instance, how Eleanora Ezerskaya’s pet-cat Kazanova is feeling today? Otherwise, why are newspaper pages filled with the descriptions of his biography?

Journalist cannot be guided by the buy-and-sell categories only. The newspaper magazine and book market is neither journalism nor literature. The market, of course, keeps up the material existence of creators and ensures the movement of certain informational and spiritual values. The market converts those values into commodity, yet it does not create them. A true journalism is created by searching people, who are gifted and who are able to penetrate into the history, traditions, the character of their nation and into everyday routine, to the bottom-line of acute social problems. When reading some publications, I think it to myself: “Whose journalism is it? Who has created it, for whom and for what?” Many publications leave an impression that they were written not by real people, born and raised on this land, but by robots, which do not get hurt and do not see the current tragic state of the nation.

I would also like to touch upon the ethical part of journalistic trade. Since recently, one can observe a moral degradation in the work of some journalists and literary people. Furthermore, both those who write in the official press and those who contribute to independent newspapers match one another. To be certain of this, it is only sufficient to refer to the publications by Eduard Skobelev or Semyon Bukchyn.

As for the Russian media, the brainwashing of Belarusian society over the unification of Belarus and Russia has risen on a new level of barefaced impudence, boorishness and cynicism. On TV, radio or in newspapers, Russian politicians, lawmakers, analysts and journalists, often behave like arrogant merchants at a slaves market, where the Belarusian people are on sale.

I regret very much that with its deafness to national problems, our independent press often unifies with the Belarusian establishment, which pursues an anti-national policy, and with Russian newspapers, which promote imperial myths about the “single nation and the single language”.

All our journalists should think about what place they need to take in our national self-assertion and formation of the independent Belarus. One should not step forth both directly or indirectly against our own history, language, culture, and erode our national foundation and our statehood.

If we continue to live like at a railway-station, nothing good will turn out. Joining Russia will not save us, either. Time will pass, but there will be no complete assimilation of Belarusians, and the national idea of constructing our own independent state will be alive and topical. Like it happened in the history of other nations, which had been swallowed by empires, our children will have to correct a great and tragic error of their grand grandfathers, grandfathers and fathers, who were either brainwashed or busy playing political games. They will need a lot of time and effort for that. Isn’t it better to do everything necessary now, on time and without victims and blood-shedding in order to strengthen statehood and assert the nation for the sake of a stable and decent living in the future?

Ukraine, Lithuania and even the tiny Estonia can live independently; why don’t we? To what extent one cannot understand its people, does not sympathize with them and does not believe in their creative force and capacity, by leading them into non-existence!