WHAT'S ON BRITSKÉ LISTY

Czech Virtual Hyde Park

20. 3. 2010

In a typical show of its Hyde Park principles, founder and Editor-in-Chief, Czech Studies Professor at the University of Glasgow Jan Čulík apologized to readers for the publishing online (without his previous knowledge or consent) of an article written by an author closely related to the former communist regime. Čulík claims that the piece contained actual factual errors, which goes against the principles of the site, defending that Britské Listy not censor opinion, even controversial ones, as far as the facts are accurate.

František Nevařil: Zaujatá obžaloba: Jak bylo, je a nejspíš i bude - in czech HERE

Britské Listy's veteran editor Štěpán Kotrba protested, explaining that the text was prepared for the day's issue accompanied by a note, informing the article was one-sided, a selective and subjective comparison between the long ago and not so remote past with the present by an economist who played a main role in the past as an advisor to many prime ministers of the former socialist Czechoslovakia. Kotrba points out that it should not be the objective of editors to change the author's factually correct arguments, notwithstanding its ideologically determined [communist] view.

Within the scope of the principle of Audiatur et altera pars (hear the other side), Kotrba believes that the extracted article is a legitimate type of world perspective, which according to public opinion polls is shared by more than one-fifth of the Czech voters, who are still loyal to the Communist Party (KSČM). Kotrba adds that in October 1999 polls showed 56% of the population considered the previous regime as bad, while in 2009 it went down to 50%. Kotrba argues it is up to the readers to confront their own memories or attitude towards how they see the past and today with the author's.

Kotrba adds that the text was actually put online by colleague editor Karel Dolejší. Then Kotrba heats up and says Jan Čulík "unashamedly lies, if he alleges that I called Nevařil's text "unempirical" and that he calls it "factually wrong". Nevařil writes based on data from the Statistical Office, he does not manipulates numbers or facts, defends Kotrba. And continues that "he just interprets those facts differently than Jan Čulík and a lot of readers are used to.

Kotrba also apologizes, but to the author, for the Editor-in-Chief's diminishing expressions.

Main Editor Karel Dolejší adds to the discussion, saying that "in these turbulent times, in which we live, the clash of various perspectives is unavoidable and in the future will only get more poignant." He explains that he published the text by Nevařil, with which he doesn't agree, just as he had done with dozens of others articles which expressed opinions not close to him. Dolejší says that the text in question is richly backed by factual data.

Dolejší writes that at least from one hundred years since Max Weber pointed to the inevitability of the choice from an endless amount of facts we have known that what is important is to be conscious of both our own and other people's premises. "Given that the article from Nevařil contained a note by Štěpán Kotrba that the text was ideologically determined, I judged that in this specific case it was quite enough", Dolejší justifies. And notes that "ideological determination" does not necessarily mean unempirical. Even seemingly neutral scientific texts are always unavoidably conditioned by the author's value system, he argues. But the unorthodox interpretation of commonly available facts is not necessarily an indication the author is not honest.

Dolejší concludes that the disagreement towards some specific interpretation should be expressed with its respective perspective base made clear, with the value system in which it is based considered.

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