RIghts weaken in Russia for journalists, environmentalists

Continuing uncertainties about the future of Ukraine and increasing militancy in words and deeds by President Vladimir Putin are keeping tensions high among Russia’s neighbors, including Lithuania and the other Baltic states.

In an April 29 column on Delfi.lt provocatively titled “The Russians are coming to occupy the Baltics,” Marius Laurinavičius, a senior analyst at the Eastern Europe Studies Centre in Vilnius, wrote, “The shocking but far from unrealistic title is my attempt to make the point that Russia’s threat has transitioned from a theoretical issue to a very practical one, which calls for an adequate response, not unlike in 1949” — the year NATO was established.

And while other analysts consider such thinking alarmist, it seems like a suitable time for me to share some observations I made about the media environment and the ecological environment in Russia during my April lecture tour to Saint Petersburg and Chelyabinsk. This comes from my monthly column for Domemagazine.com, an online magazine that focus on politics and public policy

Latvian tomato seeds, environmental justice and globalization

In September 2013, I became director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University. Our focus is both the Great Lakes Basin and global, and I was intrigued by a recent article in an academic journal about the “tomato rebellion” in Latvia, a country I visited twice during my semester teaching in Lithuania.

Author Guntra Aistara raised themes of environmental justice, agricultural diversity, globalization and farmers’ rights that also resonate in the Great Lakes region of Canada and the U.S., as well as in other regions where Knight Center faculty and associate work, such as Central Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Here’s the column I wrote for the Knight Center’s website. A modified version appeared in  Great Lakes Echo, our award-winning environmental online news service.

Tomato seeds, environmental justice and globalization

By Eric Freedman

We often refer to the importance of planting seeds – the seed of an idea, the small acorn that births the giant oak. But can seeds, real seeds, germinate into a revolution?

That’s what happened in a grassroots – or tomato roots – uprising in Latvia, a West Virginia-sized former Soviet republic laying between the Baltic Sea to the west and Russia to the east. Lithuania borders it on the south and Estonia on the north.

Guntra Aistara tells the fascinating tale of Latvia’s Tomato Rebellion in a recent article that links a publicity-fueled protest over the sale of heirloom tomato seeds to broad issues of agricultural biodiversity, environmental justice, farmers’ rights and rural injustices, real or perceived. Aistara, who earned her PhD from the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources, is an assistant professor of environmental sciences and policy at Central European University in Budapest.

The conflict began in early 2012 when a couple who grew more than 200 heirloom tomato varieties sold seed packets to two undercover government inspectors attending a tomato-growing seminar for amateur gardeners at their nursery near Riga, the capital. Authorities charged the couple with selling seed varieties that weren’t registered under a European Union (EU) directive.

Not surprisingly, the first stone – or first tomato – was quickly cast. News of the bust hit the media under the rallying cry of “Freedom for the Tomato!” Spontaneous protests took off. Activists took to the Web: “A tomato revolution – how beautiful!” one Internet commentator posted.

Officials eventually dropped the charges. Beyond that, Latvia’s parliament, the Saeima, changed the law last year to allow such sales, and the EU is reviewing continent-wide seed legislation.

Aistara observes that the tomato seed incident “continues a recent trend in rural protests in Latvia that have erupted against industrial pig farms, EU support payments and other issues that affect the quality and way or rural life in rural areas.”

The situation reminds me of last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision that farmers can be held liable for civil damages if they use patented seeds for more than one planting in violation of their licensing agreement with seed companies.

In what NPR described as a David vs. Goliath battle, agri-tech giant Monsanto successfully sued Hugh Bowman, an Indiana farmer “who regularly bought Monsanto’s Roundup-resistant soybean seed for his first growth and signed a licensing agreement promising to use all the seed and not to use any regenerated seed for future use.” But Bowman wanted “a cheap source of seed” for some plantings and bought it at a local grain elevator.” That unpatented seed also was resistant to Roundup, a powerful herbicide.

Monsanto, a Fortune 500 company, found out what Bowman was doing, sued and won an $84,000 judgment. In upholding the verdict, NPR’s Nina Totenberg reported, the Supreme Court  said that “Bowman’s actions amounted to illegal copying of a patented product, a sort of farming piracy.”

Soybean seed in the American Midwest. Tomato seed in Eastern Europe. What’s the big deal?

The big deal is the big picture that places both conflicts in the context of a wider, deeper interpretation of the environmental justice movement. In the United States, the phrase “environmental justice” traditionally conjures up images of incinerators and pollutant-spewing power plants being constructed in poor inner-city neighborhood and hazardous waste dumpsites being located in poor rural communities.

In Aistara’s article in the Journal of Baltic Studies, she offers a more expansive and contemporary interpretation of the phrase. Although she doesn’t refer to the Monsanto case, the same interpretation arguably applies there too: “Farmers’ rights to save, exchange and sell seeds are also fundamentally a distributive justice issue regarding equitable rights to seeds as resources, to biodiversity as an environmental good, to jobs and income as socioeconomic goods and the peasant way of life as a cultural good.”

She writes, “The brief tomato rebellion in Latvia brought to the fore a host of frustrations and political critiques that demonstrate the protests were about not only one farm’s ability sell tomato seeds, but a range of broader issue of public participation, distribution, recognition and sovereignty.”

Or in other words, who can predict what will grow from a small seed?

• “Journalism Education in Changing Lithuania: Challenges Two Decades after Restoration of Independence”

Journalism Education in Changing Lithuania: Challenges Two Decades after Restoration of Independence

By Kristina Juraitė, Ph.D.

Associate Professor and Head of Department of Public Communications

Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania

k.juraite@pmdf.vdu.lt

&

Eric Freedman, J.D.

Associate Professor of Journalism

Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA

Fulbright Scholar, Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania (August-December 2012)

freedma5@msu.edu

 

Paper presented to the Association for Advancement of Baltic Studies Conference,

Chicago, Illinois, April 28, 2012

Abstract

During Lithuania’s twenty-two years of independence, journalism education evolved dramatically from the rigid, theory-driven pedagogical approach of the Soviet era. However, journalism instructors and their institutions still face significant challenges in producing graduates who can become ethical and fair professionals with the skills essential for careers in a rapidly changing media environment. This paper begins with an overview of journalism education in Lithuania, including the early phase of the 1920s-1940s (First Republic) and the Soviet era, traces subsequent changes in journalism education since restoration of independence in 1990, and explores several major contemporary challenges confronting journalism education in the country today, including theory-based training, lack of sufficient facilities to teach applied skills, and the poor public image of journalists. For additional context, the paper also describes representative challenges facing journalism education in several post-Soviet countries that—in contrast to Lithuania—have not adopted pluralistic, market-based press systems and do not respect press freedom. The role of training and education of journalists seems to be of particular significance in bringing journalism students as close to practice as possible, at the same time allowing the analysis and reflection necessary for journalists to fully understand both the methods involved in reporting and writing, and the social impact of proliferating market journalism. The paper aims to show that despite regularly updated curricula, journalism education has trouble building more solid bridges between academia and the media industries, as well as preparing graduates for a more successful entry into a job-market.

Introduction

We are witnessing an emerging new media environment in Lithuania with converging communication technologies, diversified media channels, segmented media markets, and fragmented audiences. Communication processes that were quite homogeneous and dominated by national broadcasters, daily newspapers, and popular magazines, are transforming into a diversified media system with numerous media channels, modes, platforms, and publics. In the new media ecology, audience loyalty for a single channel is disappearing, while engagement in active, selective, creative, and critical media use increases. We see it in the constant ebb and flow of newspapers, broadcast channels, websites, and news portals, as well as changes in ownership and orientation of established media outlets. In addition, news organizations feel direct and indirect impacts from alterations of the national political and economic landscapes, the influence of media elites, and the out-migration of talented and ambitious young Lithuanians who thus become lost as media audiences. That complex picture of systems in flux creates new challenges for both news producers and receivers. Global and local transformations within the media also affect journalism practice and education.

In this media world shaped by commercialization and commodification of content, liberalization and marketization of media systems, universalization and democratization of media practices, and new forms of competition, it is essential to examine the role of journalism curriculum in training professional journalists.

University education plays a crucial role in developing critical thinking and providing future journalists with the analytical methods and skills necessary to address technological, market-driven challenges that influence professional performance. However, journalism training institutions face difficulties in addressing dynamic changes in the media world and are often criticized for failing to meet the needs and expectations of students and industry (Zelizer, 2004; Josephi, 2005; Tumber, 2005; Carey, 2007). This changing professional discourse of journalists, coupled with a crisis of norms and values such as objectivity, fairness, balance, ethics, and independence leave academics and practitioners in a contentious dispute about whether journalism education still matters. Criticism of journalism education that usually comes from media professionals has been increasing amid expanding challenges for journalism identity in such forms as tabloid journalism, alternative media and “citizen” journalism.

Since Lithuania regained its independence, journalism education has evolved dramatically from the rigid, theory-driven pedagogical approach of the Soviet era. However, journalism instructors and their institutions in Lithuania still face significant challenges in their efforts to produce graduates who can become ethical and fair professionals with the skills essential for careers in a rapidly changing media environment.

This paper begins with an overview of journalism education in Lithuania, including the early phase of 1920s-1940s (First Republic) and the post-World War II Soviet era, traces subsequent changes in journalism education since restoration of independence in 1990, and explores several major contemporary challenges confronting journalism education in the country today, including theory-based training, lack of sufficient facilities to teach applied skills, and the poor public image of journalists. For additional context, the paper also describes representative challenges facing journalism education in several post-Soviet countries that—in contrast to Lithuania—have not adopted pluralistic, market-based press systems and do not respect press freedom.

The role of training and education of journalists is particularly significant in bringing students as close to practice as possible while encouraging the analysis and reflection necessary for journalists to fully understand the methods involved in reporting and writing and the social impact of proliferating market journalism. The paper is aimed to show that, despite regularly updated curricula, journalism education has had trouble building more solid bridges between the academia and media industries, as well as preparing graduates for a more successful entry into the job market.

Historical foundations and three waves of influences

From the earliest days, intellectuals rather than trained journalists produced Lithuanian newspapers. The first, published in czarist times, were Aušra (1883-86) and Varpas (1889-1906) (Balkelis, 2009, 28). As Balčytienė, Nugaraitė, and Juraitė (2009, 449) observed, “During the twentieth century, the media’s structures, genres and styles followed the overall changes in the socio-political systems that shaped modern Lithuania.” Vaišnys pointed out:

In different time periods, the political systems, media and universities in Lithuania forced both journalists and students to acclimate: to think one way and work in another. Such systems failed to produce an open society but instead provoked underground rebellion (2009, 87).

The contemporary journalism curricula at Lithuanian universities and the pedagogical methods of their instructors evolved in the wake of three major sets of influence: As Vaisnys (2009) explained, formal journalism education and professional training began during the country’s initial period of independence between the two world wars, but with little financial or political support. It was a time of censorship and a restrictive media environment in which professors could be jailed or fired in retaliation for their lectures and when only “loyal journalists who worked for nationalistic goals (and political party press)” received government scholarships for foreign study (Vaisnys, 2009, 85). Thus institutionalization of journalism in Lithuania was a lengthy process. The first lectures in journalism were introduced at Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) in Kaunas in 1925-1926. It then took about two decades until a full journalism study program was set up. In 1941, VMU established the Department of Sociology and Journalism, the only place in the Baltic nations where journalism was included in the academic curriculum. In 1943, however, Nazi German authorities suspended journalism education at the university level. Apart from journalism education at the university level, there also were voluntary correspondence courses and opportunities for training abroad (Balčytienė, Nugaraitė, and Juraitė, 2009).

            Similarly, formal journalism education was emerging elsewhere in Eastern and Central Europe after World War I, including Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Poland. Gross (1999, 148), noted, “Journalism everywhere in Europe, West and East, was practiced by intellectuals, academics, politicians, and those with varying degrees of talent for polemics, editorial writing, analysis, and some reporting.” Training, he continued, came primarily on the job, perhaps supplemented by professional associations rather than provided by universities,

The second major set of influences reflects the Soviet model of journalism and journalism education imposed after the U.S.S.R reoccupied Lithuania at the end of the 1940-1944 Nazi occupation. That model treats the press as a key weapon of propaganda, development of national identity, maintenance of national unity, and supplier of state-driven public education and information. To understand that model, it is helpful to briefly review its origins that predate the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Artutunyan wrote (2009, 65). “While Bolshevik propaganda demonized the czar’s secret police for its censoring function, the first thing the Bolsheviks did when they came to power was monopolize the press.” Under tight party controls, political dissent was rare for journalists (Androunas, 1993), who were members of the Communist Party elite. Even so, journalism educators and even some party officials acknowledged that rigid loyalty to authority would lead to lapdog, incompetent journalists whose propagandistic work would receive public scorn.

The first Soviet “school of journalism” opened in 1918 with lectures by employees of Rosta, the Russian Telegraphic Agency, but it left no significant impact because it shut down after only a few weeks (Mueller, 1998). The U.S.S.R.’s most prestigious program at Moscow Institute of Journalism, or GIZh, began in 1921. Given innate conflicts between the party mandate of Marxism-Leninism purity and professional standards for fact-based reporting, GIZh struggled with “accepting ideologically sound students and admitting competent ones” (Shafer and Freedman, 2007, 19). Journalism curricula across the Soviet Union curricula concentrated on socialist ideology and Marxist-Leninist theory, creating a press system to build and sustain a socialist society, economic reformation, and educating the new socialist person. And as Hopkins (1970) writes, journalism education on an official level minimized class and ethnic origins, while the education, selection, and promotion of journalists was intended to contribute to a uniform, manageable, and obedient press system.

Even so, journalism education in Soviet-era Lithuania was not identical to that in other parts of the vast Soviet empire. For example, courses in journalism programs were taught in the national language, Lithuanian, and “significant time was devoted to learning the proper usage of the native language, studying Lithuanian and foreign literature, philosophy, logics, Lithuanian and world history, and other similar subjects (Balčytienė, Nugaraitė, and Juraitė, 2009, 450).

The third wave of influence on journalism education and practices came from the West—Western Europe and the United States—and continues to have an impact on both curriculum and pedagogy. There are several major factors, most importantly that Lithuania embarked on a post-independence path to multi-party democracy with a pluralistic media system and a market-driven economic system—unlike many other former Soviet republics. As part of the transition, all state-owned newspapers were privatized (Hiebert, 1999) and the press rapidly desovietized and created a high degree of public trust (Krupavičius and Šarkutė, 2004). Another factor is the ripple effects of post-Soviet media globalization occurring in nearby countries where “ownership of large segments of Eastern Europe’s print media passed into the hands of foreign, largely Western companies” (Hollifield, 1999, 66). Foreign-owned media outlets in Lithuania remain few “but quite important,” according to Juraitė, citing Swedish-owned TV3, Estonian-owned news portal delfi.lt, and the Norwegian-owned free daily newspaper 15 min (2008, 128). Still another factor: Membership in the European Union, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and other multinational organizations has created pressure to conform to Western standards of freedom of information, transparency, diversity of news coverage, and media responsibility.

Meanwhile, Lithuania drew Western educators and professional trainers with assistance from the European Union, U.S. government, media development nongovernmental organizations, and foreign media companies. Foreign journalists had easy access to the country for news gathering and news dissemination. At the same time, its citizens had access to international news outlets, entertainment, business relationships, and travel. The picture has not been all rosy, however, as public trust in the media dropped. As Matonytė sharply cautioned, “The post-communist Lithuanian media freedom remains distorted by those aggressively seeking to dominate in the public sphere, without contributing to its pluralism and public-mindedness” (2009, 177).

Even now, more than two decades after the collapse of the U.S.S.R., such outside assistance continues. Recent examples include U.S. journalism professors teaching through the Fulbright program at VMU and Vilnius University (VU); European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, Council of Europe training workshops for professionals and academics on media diversity; and guest speakers hosted by civil society and democracy-building NGOs such as Transparency International, .

Challenges to Contemporary Journalism Education

Contemporary journalism education is challenged by the twofold changes in media and academia, including commercialization and popularization of journalism, as well as massification and commodification of higher education. The country’s small news market make competitiveness among media outlets even more aggressive and vulnerable to the proliferation of popular and entertainment-type content rather than provision of quality and well-balanced news, analytical stories, and educational information (Balčytienė and Harro-Loit, 2009; Balčytienė and Juraitė, 2009). Unfortunately, professional journalism culture is too weak to withstand liberal media market pressures that concentrate on generating profits rather than serving the public interest.

Meanwhile, the Lithuanian higher education system also went through substantial structural changes (for example, limiting the number of places in universities financed by the state and increasing tuition fees for students unable to successfully compete for state-funded studies) to become more productive and profitable enterprises (Samalavičius, 2010). Taking into account these transformations in the media and higher education, it is important to shed light on current practices in the Lithuanian journalism curriculum.

Journalism education is provided at four national universities in the largest cities: Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda, and Šiauliai. However, the universities differ in their journalism curricula. As this paper noted earlier, VMU introduced the first courses and later a curriculum were in the early 1920s, but journalism education was disrupted by the dramatic political situations of the first Soviet occupation in 1940, Nazi occupation in 1941-1944, and the second Soviet occupation in 1944-1990. VMU was closed in 1950 and reestablished in 1989, almost 40 years later. During the Soviet period, VU was the only place to study journalism; it initiated journalism training in 1949 and now has the longest continuous tradition of journalism education in Lithuania (Balčytienė, Nugaraitė and Juraitė, 2009).

Undergraduate and postgraduate degrees are offered in the Institute of Journalism (based in the Faculty of Communication) of VU and the Department of Public Communications (affiliated with the Faculty of Political Science and Diplomacy) at VMU. The Department of Communication at Klaipėda University (KU), provides only bachelor’s-level studies, while Šiauliai University (ŠU) offers professional degrees in journalism. In addition to journalism education, media and communication studies are available at all four universities, focusing on communication studies, international communication, public relations, book publishing, information management, and related topics. A similar trend away from focusing on core journalism skills—a trend that is also observed elsewhere, including post-communist and Western nations—challenges journalism training and the whole profession.

Apart from university journalism education, short-term professional trainings have been offered by t media companies, NGOs, and international organizations, including Lithuanian National Radio and Television, Lithuanian Journalists’ Union, Lithuanian Journalism Center, and Transparency International Lietuva. The focus of such trainings varies from subjects such as online reporting and editing to coverage of nuclear energy or elections.

Media professionals around the world have engaged in critical discourse about the role of journalism education. The main reason for disagreement between media educators and professionals related to the needs of future journalists: What is more important for a good journalist: technical skills or theoretical understanding of media systems, social processes, and professional ethics? As Zelizer (2004) points out in her seminal work of journalism education and scholarship, transition from trade school to academic institution has not been as successful as in other fields, such as law, history, political science, economics, and psychology.

Journalism curricula are designed to provide students with both theoretical knowledge and practical skills. However, as we mentioned earlier, combining theory and practice has always been an important challenge for journalism educators. In Lithuania, all journalism schools developed working connections to the media industry, either through student internships or other forms of cooperation including joint professional trainings and workshops. Compulsory internships are included it all BA-level programs, as well as VMU’s MA program in Journalism and Media Analysis.

At VMU, practical training is also incorporated into regular classes, such as creative online writing, audiovisual journalism, news reporting, and political communication and mediatization. Students receive training in professional skills in university newsrooms while producing news reports for online educational tools, including “Tvdu.lt,” “KaunasKitaip.lt,” university newspaper “Universitas Vytauti Magnim” university magazine “Sesija,” and university student radio “VDU Radijas.”.

Mosco (2009) argues that the future of journalism depends on the ability of journalists to mobilize efforts to protect their professional standards. Higher education plays a significant role in setting high professional standards. In a research project called Media for Democracy Monitor, leading news media representatives were asked about employment criteria and the importance of journalistic education (D’Haenens et al., 2009). The vast majority of the informants emphasized that both—journalistic experience as well as journalism education—are needed for successful employment. Nevertheless, available experience, inborn talents, and professionalism surpassed journalism education when compared in the context of job market needs. One national TV channel journalist argued: “If a person is a good journalist, actually, [education] is not a necessity. Often people from other spheres are better journalists than those, who graduated in journalism. It is more a matter of vocation rather than education” (Balčytienė and Naprytė, 2009)

Qualitative research compared normative and practical perspectives towards journalism education with a special focus on professional norms and values training and their implementation in media practice (Mažylytė, 2008). Both academics and professionals agreed on the key normative values needed in journalistic practice, including objectivity, fairness, accuracy, responsibility, independence, democracy, and humanism. These are the core values necessary to meet the standards of high quality and responsible journalism. On the other hand, a number of other skills were listed such as: persistence, confidentiality, creativeness, and informativeness. However, both groups of experts concluded that there is a contradiction between normative perception of journalism and media realities shaping journalism practices. The values are often too abstract and lead to different individual interpretations or even manipulations. To illustrate, one interpretation says the media may be considered as beholden to particular interests at the expense of democratic values, fairness, and objectivity, and whose journalists may be mere cogs in a machine controlled by the editors and owners.

Both groups of experts agreed on the need for professional values training in the curricula, integrating theoretical knowledge and practical skills training. The lack of practical training was particularly emphasized by the professionals, who complained that graduates have only a theoretical understanding but no practical skills. Technological innovations and changing news practices require a solid professional background as well as practical skills, including analytical and critical thinking.

Journalism Education Elsewhere in the Post-Soviet Realm

The collapse of the Soviet Union and dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991 did not signal an immediate or automatic dismantling of established systems of journalism education and practice, whether in the fifteen former republics or in the formerly occupied states of Eastern and Central Europe. The mass media and the regime’s attitude toward the pass media evolved differently in each newly independent country, and that evolution usually was uneven, as in Lithuania. Freedom House (2011) evaluations provide indicators of how much—and how little—has changed in the former communist sphere and how vast the differences are among those countries. Excluding the three Baltic states, nine of the twelve former Soviet republics were “consolidated or semi-consolidated authoritarian regimes” in 2010, and all had grown increasingly authoritarian during the previous ten years; only Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova were less autocratic. Beyond the borders of the former Soviet Union, the highest Democracy Score standings went to Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

This paper cannot provide an overview of journalism education in the twenty-eight other countries covered by the Freedom House report. However, it will provide some perspective on the Lithuanian situation by briefly describing challenges that researchers have identified confronting journalism education in three other former Soviet republics, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Latvia.

Russia

Media rights groups such as Reporters without Borders, Committee to Protect Journalists, Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations, Freedom House, and International Research & Exchanges Board have criticized deepening constraints on journalists and media organizations.).        Based on interviews with journalism educators in Russia, one study (Antonova, Shafer, and Freedman, forthcoming) identified positive developments, including the spread of programs and specializations; modernization of instructional technology; closer links to professionals and industry; hiring younger instructors and researchers at universities; internationalizing journalism education ; and greater transparency in programs. That helps explains why journalism programs are more sensitive to student demands and attempting to conform to international standards of performance quality

At the same time, their study pointed out obstacles to reform, such as resistance from older professors who trained or worked in Soviet times; the historical traditional orientation of journalism curricula toward literature; financial pressures on universities and media industries; and ongoing governmental control over curriculum at many universities.

Such developments reflect attempts by academic communities to respond to perceived external pressures and demands. However, deep structural and philosophical sentiments exist within those faculties. Some professors have welcomed the de-ideologizing of the curricula, the strengthening of the theoretical components, and the renewed emphasis on teaching practical reporting and editing skills. However, others regarded the concept of objective reporting as alien (Gross, 1999) and have resisted drastic departures from sixty-year-old traditions (Antonova, Shafer, and Freedman, forthcoming).

            Kazakhstan

In exploring the education and preparation of aspiring journalists, independent scholar Maureen According to Nemecek, Ketterer, Ibrayeva, and Los (2011), the journalism curriculum has changed significantly since independence, eliminating courses on Marxism-Leninism, propaganda, Soviet journalism theory, and demagoguery. There is now greater attention paid to practical aspects of the profession, legal protection for the press—and press freedom, despite the government’s poor human rights record. However, their survey of journalism educators found that it remains bureaucratically cumbersome to change or add to the curriculum, and the researchers said professionals complain that their university education failed to supply them with essential skills. Instructors have called for higher salaries, less paperwork, and stronger support for academic scholarship.

“Leaving the Soviet mentality behind has not been easy,” they wrote. “Privatization, the marketplace, competition, and new curricula to meet the needs of today’s students all pose special challenges to teachers trained in the Soviet system” (2011, 229).

            Latvia

            Like Lithuania, Latvia is a small state with a long history of foreign occupations, a short inter-world war period of independence, and a two-decade record of independence again. Likewise, its journalists underwent Soviet-era education that was long on theory and short on practice. Since independence, communication programs at the undergraduate and post-graduate levels have proliferated, according to Brikše, raising the question of “whether the large number of programmes is not a factor that can have deleterious effect on the quality of studies…and whether government financing is used sensibly is so many programmes receive subsidies” (2009, 106.). Her study also cites shifting student attitudes toward careers, with growing interest in entertainment media rather than news and analysis, coupled with the need for better professional engagement to help implement study programs and supervise learning outcomes.

Conclusion

Journalism training institutions have met with difficulties to address dynamic changes in media world and have been often criticized for not meeting the needs and expectations of today’s media (Zelizer, 2004; Josephi, 2005; Tumber, 2005; Carey, 2007). Journalists’ hanging professional discourse and the crisis of norms and values, such as objectivity, factuality, balance, and independence has kept academics and practitioners in a continuous dispute, whether journalism education still matters. On the other hand, the professionalization of journalism has been often questioned by people who believe that the best way to learn the craft is by doing journalism in a newsroom. As Zelizer (2004, 29) puts it, “journalism itself is composed of many contradictory people, dimensions, practices, and functions.”

As mentioned, the future of journalism depends on the ability of journalists to mobilize their efforts to safeguard professional standards (Mosco, 2009). Higher education plays a significant role for determining and maintaining high standards, and formal training and academic reflection on media performance are crucially important for formation of the professional identity of journalism.

Significant changes have taken place in Lithuanian media, journalism practice,= and education in the past two decades. In these times of global and local challenges—media diversification, journalism tabloidization, and audience fragmentation among them—university education plays an important role in developing critical and analytical thinking, and providing future journalists with the necessary knowledge and skills to deconstruct ongoing social and political processes that shape journalistic performance (Balčytienė, Nugaraitė, Juraitė, 2009).

Journalism education faces other significant problems in Lithuania, including reduced state funding, students’ efforts to combine studies and work to pay for their studies, increasing youth emigration, as well as still-scarce teaching resources, including technical equipment and software, the latest literature, as well as the desire to involve more professionals in teaching. Still uncertain are the long-term implications for journalism education from the continuing transnational media consolidations evidence in the Baltic countries and elsewhere in Europe.

Finally, journalism education—like journalism itself—must address the problem of weakening public trust. This is imperative for several reasons: students must believe that it worthwhile to invest time and money in journalism education for a career that is meaningful to themselves and society. Second, journalism educators must imbue their students with ethical and professional values that are of little use to untrustworthy media institutions. And third, the public and advertisers are unlikely to pay for news and information that is not trusted.

Thus maintaining and rebuilding public trust remains a challenge in Lithuania. Trust is a two-way street. Not only should the public trust the integrity, accuracy, and quality of its news organizations, but those news organizations should trust the public with information about their own operations and policies. A 2009 study of media transparency among five Lithuanian national newspapers concluded that Lithuania “is in the early development stage of accountability” compared to measures taken by many Western news organizations concerning correction of errors and ownership. It identified shortcomings among most of all of the five newspapers, including: printing corrections; publishing letters to the editor; disclosing ownership information; maintaining written ethics codes: policies on separation of editorial and business functions; guidelines on selection of stories; and meetings with readers (Transparency International Lietuvos Skyrius, 2009, 15)

Lithuanian journalism students, educators, and practitioners are not alone. A 2010 survey conducted in the European Union concluded that “trust in the media remains relatively fragile and limited.” Results varied among the 27 EU countries, it found that 52 percent of respondents overall reported that they tend not to trust the press—newspapers—as a source of information about European political matters; 45 percent tend not to trust television; 35 percent tend not to trust radio; and 41 percent tend not to trust the Internet (Eurobarometer, 2010, 14).

On the other hand, there have been positive changes in Lithuanian Journalism education, especially in the curricula, including compulsory and elective courses and attention to both normative standards and professional values. There is also expanding knowledge and training about contemporary issues; among them are the media and globalization, political communication, crisis and risk communication, and practical skills training. Internationalization of education through student and teacher exchanges on both BA and MA levels is another positive change that contributes to curriculum development and involves international partners in teaching and research.[1] Active faculty engagement in national and international research is another objective to strengthen journalism education and provide students with relevant data on the country’s media and journalism situation, as well as involving students in research activities.

To withstand market-driven challenges and strengthen quality journalism education in post-communist countries, the following steps should be taken: 1) empowerment of young graduates with a solid background in professional journalism knowledge, values, and skills needed for the job-market; 2) curricula development with a stronger emphasis on hands-on learning; 3) better integration of journalism professionals into the university curricula via teaching, internships, joint projects, and curriculum improvement; 4) further promotion of internationalization to acknowledge and adopt good practices in journalism teaching and learning.

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[The Information Elite: Corporations and the News Market], Moscow: Moscow State University.

Antonova, S., Shafer, R., and Freedman, E. (forthcoming). Journalism education in Russia:

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Artutunyan, A. (2009). The Media in Russia, Maidenhead, England: Open University Press.

Balkelis, T. (2009). The Making of Modern Lithuania. London: Routledge.

Balčytienė, A., Nugaraitė, A., and Juraitė, K. (2009). The Lithuanian Journalism Education

            Landscape in G.. Terzis (Ed.) European Journalism Education. Bristol: Intellect, 447-

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            Research, Vol. 2, 98-122.

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APPENDIX: Institutions that provide journalism training in Lithuania

 

Vilnius University	http://www.kf.vu.lt/lt/fakultetas/struktura/zi
Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas	http://www.mediastudies.lt
Klaipėda University	http://www.ku.lt/smf/komunikacija/index.php
Šiauliai University	http://www.hu.su.lt
Lithuanian Journalism Center	http://www.lzc.lt
Lithuanian Journalists’ Union	http://www.lzs.lt
Transparency International Lietuva	http://www.transparency.lt
Institute of Social Integration

 

---

[1] The European Journalism Training Association, with more than 50 institutional members in Europe, including VMU and VU, accepted the standards of journalism education (Tartu Declaration). A strong emphasis is put on training and education following normative understanding of the role of journalists who should serve the public by providing critical insight into political, economic, and socio-cultural conditions by strengthening democracy at all levels, by stimulating their own professional autonomy and accountability. Apparently, journalism education should strongly emphasize training for specific professional competencies such as critical reflection, analysis, assessment, and organization of professional work (Balčytienė & Harro-Loit, 2009). For more information, see http://www.ejta.eu/index.php/website/projects.

A Short Sojourn

I knew what to expect in my second Lithuanian autumn. Yellow-green leaves littering Laisvės Alėja. Scarves in full profusion.

Gloves out of pockets. Hats blooming. Umbrellas close at hand. Few patrons occupying outdoor tables in front of cafes and restaurants. Basketball much talked about. Bakeries leading us—or at least me—into temptation. Beetroot soup. Potato pancakes. Kaunas Castle at night. Not enough time to see and do everything I’d hoped to see and do.
Little has visibly changed in Kaunas since I left the city 10 months earlier, other than billboards for Angry Birds Cola. (Don’t ask.)

Some students at Vytautas Magnus University sounded a bit more upbeat than last year about their economic future if they stay in Lithuania after graduation, but many still talk about emigrating to the United Kingdom or elsewhere west.

Interestingly, when I asked in class, the vast majority said they’d voted in the parliamentary (Seimas) election—a far higher proportion than I expect will participate in our upcoming presidential and congressional election.

On another topic:

I spent Saturday afternoon in Vilnius before flying home early—on a 6 a.m. flight—Sunday. Walking through Old Town, I stopped at my favorite church there, the Russian Orthodox Church of the Holy Spirit. It was built in 1638 and rebuilt after 18th century fires. Sitting on a bench in the back of the sanctuary, I watched a robe-garbed monk stride past, and black-clad women clad cleaning and praying, and an impatient young boy trying to drag his father outside—the father, clutching a handful of fall leaves, sat near me so his son could rest his visibly tired head against his chest while awaiting the rest of the family.

Saints looked down on us. On walls of dark green and salmon hung ornate gold-framed icons. Footsteps echoed on the tile floor, and the heavy wooden door clanged every time someone pushed it open. The smell of burning candles wafted through the room, as did the presence of mysteries and history—and martyrs.

A sign in the sanctuary explains the fate of the three Martyrs of Vilnius, a story I summarized in an earlier post about the churches of Old Town. The time was the 14th century when Algirdas was grand duke of Lithuania. He’d been a pagan until marrying the Orthodox duchess Maria, and thus found it “politically convenient” to convert to Christianity. Many of his people followed suit, including two brothers who would face a nasty end as a result—Anthony and John—and their equally faithful but ill-fated cousin, Eustathios.

When Maria died, the grand duke returned to paganism and ordered his subjects to follow suit. John and Anthony refused and, under heavy lobbying by pagan priests, Algirdas ordered them jailed and tortured in 1347. Still obstinate, Anthony was hanged upon an oak, as was his brother John 10 days later—on the same oak. Eustathios suffered the same fate on the same tree eight months later. As for Algirdas, he had second—actually third—thoughts about his faith, returned to Christianity and became a monk. All dozen of his sons became Christians.

Kaunas Beckons Me Back

I’ve been separated from my Lithuanian home-away-from-home for 10 months but fortunately will return—although for only a week (October 13-21)—to lecture at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, my Fulbright host.
It means I’m removed temporarily from U.S. election fever—bitter and misleading television commercials, irritating robocalls, a flood of glossy candidate and party flyers in the mailbox and the occasional office-seeker ringing the doorbell to chat. But I’m not escaping from all things political because Lithuania holds its 2-stage parliamentary election on October 14 and 28. All 141 seats in the Seimas are up for grabs.
If you think the U.S. election system is confusing – 2 major parties, a handful of minor ones and some independent candidates for Congress and the presidency – the Lithuanian playlist will boggle your mind with 34 political parties in the mix. Not all parties will win even a single seat, but if the 2008 election is an indicator, it will take a cheat sheet to keep track of who is there. Four years ago, 10 parties won seats in the Seimas, as did 4 independents. For me it will be interesting to watch.
In Michigan, voters will decide a half-dozen ballot issues, including ones dealing with alternative energy, tax hikes, the right to unionize and alternative energy. Lithuanians will have their referendum on a controversial proposal to build a nuclear power plant. That, too, will be interesting to watch.
And of course, my return gives me the opportunity to catch up with friends, stroll along Laisvės Alėja—Freedom Avenue—stop for baked goods and coffee and talk about future collaborative projects with my university colleagues.

Maintaining Lithuanian Ties

It’s been 4+ months since I left Kaunas, although in many ways I haven’t left. Recently, I’ve been fortunate to find a few touchstones of contact—although that’s certainly not the same as being there on the ground.

This past weekend, I attended the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies annual conference in Chicago—the city and its environs are home to more ethnic Lithuanians than anyplace outside Lithuania. On Saturday, I presented a paper (abstract) on challenges facing journalism education in Lithuania, written with my Vytautas Magnus University colleague Kristina Juraitė who, unfortunately, couldn’t attend.

Friday night, Mary Ann and I attended a conference cultural event, a concert by the American Latvian Men’s Choir and “Dainava” Lithuanian Men’s Ensemble.

We ate lunch at Russian Tea Time, a restaurant near the Art Institute of Chicago that specializes in cuisine of Russia and the former Soviet republics. And yes, it serves Lithuania alus, Kalnapilis (reminding me of the brewery’s large advertising sign at one end of Laisves Aleja).

Before driving home to Michigan, we detoured 10 miles to the Racine Bakery, a Lithuanian-Latvian-Polish bakery I found on the Web (Ačiū, Google). We bought Lithuanian rye, Latvian pumpernickel, several poppy seed desserts and a shortbread-like Lithuanian cookie that was so good we toyed with the idea of doing a U-turn and going back for more after we finished them before reaching the city limits.

More Kaunas: A few weeks earlier, I returned (technologically but not physically) to Kaunas to deliver a paper at a VDU conference, “Media Culture: Art, Communication, Technologies.”  The paper, written with my Michigan State University colleague Howard Bossen and our student Julie Mianecki, examined challenges photographers face when they seek access to steel mills in the U.S. and elsewhere. Although there was no Lithuania-specific content, the paper discusses the experience of Margaret Bourke-White, the renowned American photographer, who secured official permission to photograph steel mills and steel workers on three trips to the Soviet Union in the 1930s. For some great photography, see our Steel VDU presentation.

More Kaunas: While at the Chicago conference, I picked up copies of the literary magazine Lituanus. A back issue includes 2 poems about Kaunas by Rimas Uzgris. I’ll end this post with excerpts from his “Four Scenes of Kaunas.”

            Grey skies rise over a dilapidated church

            that greets the dawn with rafters of hope.

            Two rivers merge into one strong stream

where people flee to find some green space

past the crumbling castle wall, and dream.

Freezing rain falls—early winter in October.

***

Pedestrians stroll on Freedom Boulevard

beating grey slush with dull boots,

holding bent umbrellas into the wind,

below wet snow, under heavy clouds.

***

The road arcs gently down to the river where

frosted reeds poke through the thickening ice.

Vytautas’ red-brick church glows

like a smoldering ember. The trees

across the river stand naked and gray.

Oh, the Places I’ll Go Next Time I’m in Lithuania

I’ve been fortunate to explore the diversity of Lithuania—not only around Kaunas where I lived or in the capital city of Vilnius, but also Klaipeda, Palanga, Raudonė and Alytus. Yet the country offers many places to go and things to do that I haven’t experienced yet and hope to go when I return.

I’ll start closest to home in Kaunas:

I never went into the yellow-domed Old Orthodox church literally next door to my apartment. Its gate was rarely open, and even then it was because there were workers repairing the brick wall.

Old Russian Orthodox Church

I watched an opera and “Sound of Music”—both in Lithuanian—at the State Musical Theatre, attended a concert in Yiddish at the Kauno filharmonija, joined friends at a musical comedy spoof at the Kaunas State Puppet Theatre (Kauno valstybinis leliu teatras) and attended a concert by Kaunas-born pianist Edvinas Minkstimas at Vytautas Magnus University. However, I haven’t seen a performance at the Kaunas State Drama Theatre or heard a concert by Vitautus Magnus University music students – yet.

I toured 9^th Fort and 7^th Fort, the 2 best-preserved of the network of czarist military forts that encircled the city to defend the westernmost section of the Russian Empire from Germany. I’d like to visit the other sites, although most of them are in ruins, and what remains of 8^th Fort is best explored by scuba divers due to flooding. To learn more about them, I recommend the heavily illustrated book in English, The Atlas of Fortress Kaunas, which my landlady’s father graciously gave me.

On All Saints Day, Mary Ann and I wandered through Karamela Cemetery with a friend and her in-laws. Now I want to see Higher Sanciai (Aukštieji Šančiai) Cemetery, the final resting spot for Lithuanian soldiers killed during the independence period between World War I and World War II. Also buried there are national heroes Steponas Darius and Stasys Girenas, who died in 1933 when their plane crashed near the end of an historic trans-Atlantic flight, an achievement commemorated on Lithuania’s 10-litai bill.

There’s a helpful website for information about some of Kaunas’s lesser-known sites.

Elsewhere in Lithuania, my must-visit-for-the-first-time list includes:

• Nida, the resort town that many people consider the most beautiful spot in Lithuania. It’s on the Curonian Spit, the narrow peninsula running along the coast of the Baltic Sea and a place of human occupation since prehistoric times. Its sand dunes are among the highest in Europe. Only about 1,650 people live there year-round but 200,000 to 300,000 tourists visit each summer.
• Kernavė Archaeological Site, designated by UNESCO as one of the country’s 4 world heritage sites. This was Lithuania‘s ancient capital, and is now a place of ancient settlements, hilltop forts, mysterious mounds and a lost city that enemy invaders destroyed more than 700 years ago.
• During many visits to Vilnius, I walked past the National Drama Theatre (Lietuvos nacionalinis dramos teatras) with its eerie statue of 3 gold-faced women. I’d like to see a performance there.

• I enjoyed Trakai National Historic Park but haven’t seen the country’s other 4 national parks: Aukštaitijos, Dzūkijos, Žemaitijos and Kuršių nerijos.
• A colleague, our student and I walked through the neighborhood that used to be the Jewish ghetto in Kaunas but I haven’t been to the Vilna Ghetto, its counterpart in the capital—yet.
• Grūtas Park (Grūto parkas), the other-worldly sculpture garden of Soviet-era statues and other relics of a discredited past, is near Druskininkai It’s nicknamed “Stalin’s World,” but Stalin isn’t the only toppled ideological hero whose statue is there. I’m looking forward to seeing Lenin, Marx and even Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first director the Cheka—the Bolshevik secret police and predecessor of the KGB..
• More castles. I saw many castles—or their remains—during my Baltic travels, some more than once: Kaunas, Gediminas Tower in Vilnius, Trakai, Raudonė and Klaipeda in Lithuania, as well as ones in Tartu and Tallinn. But there are many more yet to see.

Will I make it to all of them? And will all of them live up to my expectations? Perhaps not, but Dr. Seuss had the right philosophy as laid out in Oh, the Places You’ll Go, the last book before his death:

“You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.”

As Dr. Seuss recognized, tough decisions are necessary because there are far, far too many places to go than we can actually go.

“You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked.
A place you could sprain both your elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?

Philosopher and student of human nature that he was, Dr. Seuss acknowledged that some decisions will prove disappointing:

“I’m afraid that some times
you’ll play lonely games too.
Games you can’t win
’cause you’ll play against you.
All Alone!”

However, Dr. Seuss knew that the overall journey will be worthwhile:

“On and on you will hike
and I know you’ll hike far
and face up to your problems
whatever they are.

You’ll get mixed up, of course,
as you already know.
You’ll get mixed up
with many strange birds as you go.
So be sure when you step.
Step with care and great tact
and remember that Life’s
a Great Balancing Act.”

In Old Town, Tallinn

Due to my transition back to the United States, I fell behind in my posts, so this one recaps my early December visit to Tallinn:

My 4 months in the Baltics took me to 6 Old Towns, some of them more than once—Kaunas, Vilnius and Klaipeda in Lithuania, Riga in Latvia and Tartu—and finally Tallinn—in Estonia. I never tired of the wonder of wandering along winding cobblestoned streets amid buildings that have survived fires, wars, economic collapses and invasions since long before the United States gained its independence.

As in the other cities, Tallinn’s Old Town blends  history, tourism, kitsch, culture and modern Europeanism. Tourists and the people who serve them fill the streets, restaurants, clubs, cafes and shops. Visitors buy souvenirs and crafts, beer and foods from local and international cuisines. They flow into castles, churches and museums. They shoot photos, pick up postcards and are unlikely to make much effort to speculate about the realities and hardships of life when these old towns were young. I plead guilty too, at least in large part, although I enjoy imagining life long ago in places like this. What was it like to stand guard atop the towers when the enemy soldiers came into view? How long did children live? How many people did plague or famine wipe out?

Because of my lecture schedule at Tallinn University’s Institute of Communication, my free time was limited. The fact that daylight was in short supply as the winter solstice neared and that it snowed also crimped my explorations.

However, I did visit several landmarks, including Freedom Square (Victory Square during the Soviet era). The plaza is a popular gathering spot that commemorates Estonia’s struggle for independence in 1918-1920. It’s dominated by the War of Independence Victory Column topped with a large Cross of Liberty. At one end is St. John’s Lutheran Church, where I listened to Christmas carols. Banners hanging from poles proclaimed that Tallinn was Europe’s cultural capital in 2011.

St. John’s Lutheran Church

Freedom Square

I enjoyed Kiek in de Kok, a 6-story, 15th century cannon tower that was once a key part of the city defenses and is now a museum. The name means “peep into the kitchen,” an apparent reference to the fact that its windows provided a good vantage point to look into neighboring structures. This picture shows part of the Old Town skyline through a window at the top level.

skyline view

With its thick walls, this was a good place to be when enemies attacked, although it seemed a bit incongruous to see a piano for concerts and an exhibition of contemporary photos by Veera Kopti of weathered and aging buildings and walls in urban and rural areas, with dandelions poking their way through cracked pavement. Among them was an image of the door of former KGB headquarters

Despite the cold, the annual Christmas Market in seasonally decorated Town Hall Square was bustling on Sunday night when I arrived, Under a directive not to buy more things to clutter the house, I exercised due restraint amid all the Estonian crafts, artwork and other offerings. Many people wandered around the booths drinking the traditional cinnamon-and-almond spiced hot wine known as gløgg—I found it too sweet. Meanwhile, 2 bored-looking reindeer lay down in their pen as children reached through the fence to pet them

I walked inside the magnificent Alexander Nevsky Russian Orthodox Cathedral and walked by but didn’t go into the salmon-colored 19^th century Toompea Castle that houses the Estonian parliament, Riigikogu.

The U.S. Election through Baltic Eyes: Race, Politics and the Politics of Race

Quick—name the heads of six foreign governments. Queen Elizabeth doesn’t count.

Take Moammar Khadafy and Hosni Mubarak off your instant-response list. Who’s that German chancellor at the center of the Eurozone crisis—Miracle or Murky or something like that? Who’s the incumbent president of France who no longer worriesabout a reelection challenge from Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the disgraced, womanizing ex-chief of the International Monetary Fund? And what about the Italian president who makes the news almost as often for his sexual relationships, fraud allegations and scathing attacks on critics as for his economic and immigration policies?

I have no doubt that most Americans, even many who follow current events and politics, can’t name the current leaders of our closest neighbors—Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada and President Felipe Calderon of Mexico—let alone a half-dozen of the leaders of the world’s other 190-plus nations.

Even what they think they know is often wrong—who remembers that Cuba has been headed for almost 4 years by Raul Castro, not his brother Fidel—or that Vladimir Putin is now the power behind the Russian throne although no longer ensconced on it?

That brings us to Barack Obama, his reelection campaign and the field of Republicans angling for the job.

As I’ve talked with people in the Baltics about the U.S. presidency during the past four months, I found foreign audiences far more knowledgeable about U.S. politics and politicians than Americans are about politics in any country beyond our own borders. A Tallinn University student in Estonia told me how she’d followed the 2008 Democratic primary, hoping that Hillary Clinton would win the nomination. Her comment reminded me of that same summer when Mary Ann and I were looking at wall hangings in a gift shop in the capital of Kyrgyzstan, and the owner told us that Clinton had ended her campaign that day—news we 2 Americans hadn’t heard yet.

It’s no shock that every member of my audiences and classes abroad appears to recognize the name Sarah Palin, but what does it tell us when a Lithuanian student can ask questions about Michelle Bachman’s candidacy?

Not surprisingly, Obama’s personal story resonates globally. His victory in 2008 as the first black president opened a new chapter in our national saga and gave the world new insights into the American people. The election of the son of a black Kenyan father, who left the family when his son was only 2, and a white American woman shines light on both the progress the United States has made in race relations and the continuing racial divide that challenges the country.

Race has always been a difficult, often painful issue for all our presidents in every era since independence, regardless of party, home state, age, religion or political theology. Steve Jones–a former Associated Press and Detroit Free Press journalist who now teaches history at Central Michigan University–detail those relationships in our new book, President and Black America: A Documentary History (Congressional Quarterly Press).

At my lectures in Lithuania and Estonia, I’ve emphasized the continuum of complex and contrary presidential relationships with black Americans from the struggle for independence to the present. For example, see my PowerPoint from a recent human rights conference at Mykolas Romeris University in Vilnius: Race Presidents Dec. 9 Vilnius

In doing so, I’ve seen that the fascination overseas with American politics goes beyond Obama himself. When I show audiences a photo montage of our presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush, they immediately see that all were white men of Western European ancestry. Thus the novelty of an African American not only running but winning in 2008 drew even more foreign attention to the campaign than usual.

On one level, it’s fully understandable that citizens of the world follow the contest to lead the world’s only superpower, and that they wonder what that person’s policies and politics might mean for their own countries. Consider our two wars underway during the 2008 election and underway still. Estonian troops fought in Iraq as part of George W. Bush’s “coalition of the willing” until 2009. They’re still fighting in Afghanistan, where 25-year-old Corporal Agris Hutrof became the 9th Estonian soldier killed in that war.

By the same reasoning, Americans should care enough about our own national interests to know a few facts about the heads of state in China and India, our major challengers for future economic dominance. And of the two countries where more than 6,300 American troops have died, Iraq and Afghanistan. And of at least a couple of countries at the epicenter of U.S. military and diplomatic attention—Israel and Pakistan come immediately to mind.

Meanwhile, race–aside from Obama’s own–is another attention-magnet in foreign scrutiny of current U.S. presidential politics.Race is attracting wide  interest in the current campaign for a different reason: The anti-immigration rhetoric among conservative Republican presidential hopefuls and their Tea Party supporters carries strong racial undertones, no matter how diplomatically their statements are couched in terms of economics or national security or the cost of public services.

This resonates with many Europeans whose countries confront their own racial attitudes amid the continuing arrival of immigrants for political, humanitarian and economic reasons—especially immigrants from non-white, non-Christian areas of the Middle East, North Africa and China.

What do Europeans see happening in the United States?

They see Tea Party activists who are overwhelmingly white, although Herman Cain had noticeable success in garnering their support until multiple allegations of sexual misconduct toppled his beyond-the-Beltway campaign.

They see differences—some actual and some distorted—between what our laws state and what minorities experience in the United States. To illustrate, I recently spoke about race and presidents at a human rights conference of law students from Lithuania, Poland and Belarus. The topics of participants’ questions included efforts to censor works of literature such as the Adventures of Tom Sawyer, high unemployment and low college enrollment rates among African Americans, English-as-an-official-language policies and racial discrimination in politics.

Meanwhile, the demographics of America are changing as our population becomes more diverse, a trend evident in many European nations as well. The 2010 Census found that more than half the residents in 4 states aren’t white. That’s also true in 13 of the 40 largest metropolitan areas. Overall, racial and ethnic minorities account for 36 percent of our population.

Tea Party leaders dispute accusations of racism, but a number of incidents demonstrate that racial hatred is part of some members’ psyche. For example, black elected officials have reported that activists shouted racial slurs at them. Movement activists have distributed posters showing President Obama as a jungle savage. And informal New York Daily News poll asked readers whether they believe racism is to blame for the Tea Party’s attacks on Obama: An overwhelming 75% agreed that racism is a factor in the Tea Party’s disapproval of the president.

Is that surprising in a political environment where Rush Limbaugh tells a radio audience that Obama was “behaving like an African colonial despot,” called him an “angry black man” and played a song, “Barack, the Magic Negro,” to the tune of “Puff, the Magic Dragon?” Or where sings at Tea Party rallies proclaim “Obamanomics—monkey see, monkey do” and “The zoo has an African lion and the White House has a lyin’ African?”

A statement last year by the NAACP asked “all people of good will to repudiate the racism of the Tea Party and to oppose its drive to push our country back to the pre-civil rights era.” Tea Party leaders respond to such criticism by blaming a small fringe within their movement.

I don’t see the GOP candidates’ substantially similar views on immigration as the determining factor in who will win the Republican nomination. I don’t see race and immigration as the decisive issues on Election Day 2012. And I don’t see that Obama’s race will be the determining factor in whether he wins a second term—nor is there much he can do about voters who oppose him simply because he is black. His greater problems will be the state of the economy, the national budget and the status of the wars abroad.

Even so, Obama’s race and the immigration debate will help keep the world’s eyes on the election.

 

Amid the Shadows of the Kaunas Ghetto

From 1941 through 1944, most of Kaunas’ large Jewish population was confined by barbed wire and armed guards to a ghetto in the Slobodka (Vilijampole) area of the city. It’s across the Neris River from Old Town. Most of them died there or at the nearby 7^th Fort and 9^th Fort in Kaunas or in concentration camps elsewhere in the Nazi empire.

On a recent chilly, rainy afternoon, my friend Jaq, our mutual Vytautas Magnus University student Erika and I explored the area where that infamous ghetto had been. Equipped with copies of 2 old maps of the ghetto and a modern street map, we searched for evidence of that sordid piece of history. Our search proved largely in vain.

Kaunas Ghetto 1941-1944

All we found was a monument inscribed with the Star of David, the years 1941-1944 and a few words in Hebrew and Lithuania at the site of one of the ghetto’s two gates. It’s at a small, nondescript intersection set amid mossy cobblestones in front of a house with peeling stucco. Past visitors placed small stones on top and in front of the memorial, just as mourners do when visiting the graves of their friends and relatives at Jewish cemeteries.

memorial marker at the ghetto gate

We found no marker at the site of the other ghetto gate. The Jewish cemetery shown on the old maps is gone without a visible trace. We saw nothing to memorialize the locations of the 2 hospitals, the yeshiva or the headquarters of the Jewish Council (Aeltestenrat, or Council of Elders), the ghetto’s Nazi-appointed governing group that secretly assisted underground resistance groups

The Nazis were by no means the first anti-Semites in Kaunas. “Throughout history the Jews of [the city] were periodically exiled by the town’s leaders and were forced on many occasions to leave,” something that occurred repeatedly over hundreds of years, according to the Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team. That organization and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum have documented the history of the ghetto, including daily life and the fate of its residents.

The first part of the 20^th century continued that legacy. In 1915 while Lithuania was part of the czar’s empire, the commander of the Russian army ordered the expulsion of all Jews from the city. Many returned after World War I, and Kaunas again developed a vigorous Jewish community with dozens of synagogues, yeshivas and cultural organizations. In 1939, an estimated 40,000 residents of Kaunas—about 25% of the population–were Jewish.

On June 14, 1941, only 10 days before the German invasion, the Soviets deported hundreds of Jewish families to Siberia. When the Germans arrived, about 30,000 to 37,000 Jews lived in the city. Only 3,000 of them would survive the war.

In July 1944, the Germans destroyed the ghetto and shipped all the survivors they could find to death camps.

post-ghetto Soviet-era housing

Today, many ugly Soviet-era Today, many ugly Soviet-era apartment buildings stand where the overcrowded ghetto used to be.

And sadly, the legacy of bigotry has not disappeared. When we walked through a large park in an area that had been in the heart of the ghetto, we saw a concrete wall spray-painted with a swastika and the Polish words for Kaunas and Vilnius—with lines through both city names.

As we traveled through the streets, Erika talked about her family history. The daughter of a Roman Catholic father and Jewish mother, she grew up in a non-religious home in a small city about an hour from Kaunas. Her maternal grandfather had lived in the ghetto but managed to escape into the woods. Her maternal grandmother’s family had fortunately emigrated before the Germans arrived—during the first Soviet occupation of Lithuania—to Uzbekistan, which also belonged to the Soviet Union. Her grandmother returned to Lithuania after the war.

Erika has traveled to Israel where she met relative. Now Jaq has lined up a freelance magazine assignment for her to write about the quest to discover her Jewish heritage, including her thoughts as she walked through the much-forgotten Kaunas ghetto on that chilly, rainy afternoon.