i would like to react at first to Mr Rychetský's speech. i realised during the debates i had yesterday in Prague that we in fact were discussing problems in two different planes. My Western colleagues and i talked of an entirely different media and political situations than you did. Like my other Western colleagues, i feel, too, that we may be something like messengers from the media future. That's because the Czech situation reminds me of a Germany about fifteen years after World War II. Your society is coming through a transitional period, just as Germany was way back then, and it is crucial to resolve in this phase, when and how the media will develop democratically or whether they can be silenced.

Germany at that time had learned its lesson from the case of Der Spiegel weekly, whose 1962 article on a NATO military exercise was very critical of the state of the German Bundeswehr. The government had cited high treason, the police searched the editorial premises, company officials and editorial staff members had been arrested and clamped in jail, the magazine had been suspended. Yet the public rebelled and its protests ensured fundamental press rights and liberties that still apply and hopefully will continue to last forever. Mercifully, what has happened in the Czech Republic today is not the same thing and you are not enthralled in debates whether Respekt should be seized by the police. If, however, the Prime Minister publicly declares his intention to destroy a newspaper, an analogy is close to hand. The contents of an article are no longer an issue, nor is the question of objectivity and information - we are talking about freedom of expression, and defence of this freedom is one of the basic values of a democratic society. Therefore, I wish you could achieve what we have done in Germany. Where democratic society stands united in defence of this freedom, not only one small magazine, or just media oriented towards intellectuals or the civil rights movements of the past.

Mr Rychetský was being sympathetically frank. Politicians seldom demonstrate their power claims in public, they mostly keep to themselves. But Mr Rychetský was being refreshingly brutal. He may not have meant it that way, but it surely came out like that. Never in my life - although I am not that old, I am pushing fifty - have I heard anything like that from a democratic politician. To me, his speech that so bluntly relegated the media to the role of postman between politics and the public, emanated from Leninist foundations. It is called, in this terminology, the vital cogs between the Party and the people. I was astonished to hear that again, but I was at the same time quite pleased because if something is put so bluntly one can take issue with it. My reaction was quite spontaneous and I don't want to repeat myself. But I'd like to react to one trick routinely used by politicians, which Mr Rychetský has used as well. He says a media law is necessary because of the need to fight child pornography, neonazism and xenophobia. Now, this is complete nonsense. Sure such things must be fought against, but this is not done through media legislation, this is purely criminal activity. Any normal, democratic society has criminal laws against child pornography and sexual abuse. Criminal justice is meted out against both the father who sells his daughter, and the journalist who disseminates the photos thereof. None of this needs to be regulated by the media law. In Germany, we have a law against the denial of the Holocaust. It will be used against everybody, not just the media. It will be used against any old nazi who would publicly claim that Jews were not sent to gas chambers. This doesn't have to be part of any special media law, it is not a media problem, it's a societal problem. If, therefore, somebody comes forth with the readily understandable demand that child pornography be stamped out and that this be done through a media law, he's ushering in a Trojan horse with which to assume control over the media as such.

You are dealing with the problem of media regulation. This morning, I heard Mr Rychetský endlessly repeat - control, control, control, control. The media must not be controlled. Certainly, media makes mistakes and trespassers will thrive - yet the media must be a self-regulating business. If they break criminal laws they will face trial. But you should actively oppose the formation of any committees of control. There is self-regulation in Germany. We have a Press Council, which is elected. It is an equal representation of publishers, i.e. media owners, and journalists. The latter have their Press Codes which the journalists, i.e. the media themselves, have formulated. The Press Codes state what is permitted and what is off the limits. They embody nigh on everything, including the line between things commercial and things editorial. Everyone in Germany has the right to contact and complain to the Press Council. The Council independently checks and monitors all media developments, and reigns supreme over all the media without exception. If the Council reprimands a newspaper, the text must be published. One example: the large German tabloid Bildzeitung carried a photograph from the youthful days of a Green Party minister, claiming the man wielded a truncheon with which to beat a policeman. In actual fact, it wasn't a truncheon, it was a rope the man was clinging to. The Press Council issued a reprimand, Bildzeitung published it. The media themselves can regulate such cases, they don't need the state to do that.

You seem to be waging an all-out battle for freedom of media opinion. Opinion, not objectivity. Objectivity has been a pet theme lately. The media do not have to be objective at all. This is not their role. There are media which openly state their views are biased in a given way. Weeklies are typical opinionated media, they do not break news, they merely classify events, explain their background and comment on them - which is hardly achieved with objectivity on mind. The problem is not one of an individual without a bias but whether people are free to speak their minds within the limits of the criminal code. That's all. Politicians always tend to misuse the media. We are past this phase in Germany. a government which would attack a newspaper the way yours attacked Respekt would fall. I wonder why your government doesn't realise the danger, but then again, it may be a passing phase of this transitional period. Your government runs the risk of losing court. What happens next? Will they resign? Will they receive a rubberstamped certificate of corruptness from the Justice? Can't they plan one move ahead? I am both puzzled and enlightened by these developments and can imagine the Czechs draw the appropriate conclusions for their future.

Germany may be past this elementary media-versus-politicians phase but the situation is even more complex than in your country. The politics-media relationships in a democratic society is getting fuzzy - but fuzziness is part of the fun.

The first thing a political journalist will lose is respect for lofty motivations of the politicians. The first thing for a politician to lose is respect for the journalists' love of the truth. This just about sums up the eternally conflicting relationship between those responsible for informing and orienting the public, and those who organise the state and society. Media and politics in a democratic society - this is an insoluble conflict between closeness and distance, chumminess and critique, instrumentation and vocal opposition. Publicist Hans Magnus Enzensberger says of professional politicians that most of them are people without a vocation. The same caustic tenet might apply to journalists as well. Press people and politicians resemble each other in many ways, not least by their tendency to speculate and take chances, and by their semi-literacy, which they naturally hide carefully from the public where they play brilliantly informed experts. "Politicians and journalists," the former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt once observed, "share a common sad fate and often talk about things today that they will come to grasp tomorrow." I think this is amply illustrative of the state of semi-literacy.

Media and politicians are bogged down in a complex, extremely contradictory relationship. Should the media be seen as a fourth pillar of democracy, i.e. one which controls the other pillars of state power (executive, legislative and judicial), then it is the only pillar whose relation to the other three is not regulated by the constitution. The constitution merely sanctions in general terms the freedom of opinion and the right to be informed; apart from the constitution there may be other laws that regulate responsibilities within the media, as well as the state authorities' obligation to provide information. But other than that, simply put, the law of the jungle reigns supreme. Media and politicians vitally depend on one another - the former use the latter's support to improve their sales and audience ratings (thereby also incomes), whereas politicians would not be able to pursue successful policies without the media. This explains the bilateral temptation to strike mutually profitable deals, opportunism, ideological (if not material) corruption, and the twisting of the truth and the reality. On the other hand, a hand which caressed and helped yesterday may strike hard and do harm tomorrow - which, again, is a two-way street. Politicians see themselves as being unfairly pursued by the media, which in turn feel being disqualified or side-tracked by politics.

Moreover, especially in public-service radio and TV stations but indirectly also in newspapers and magazines, politicians often influence nominations to top management posts. This is where complications arise. If appointed, a party loyalist, whether real or thus perceived, is naturally expected to show his gratitude. If he doesn't, he puts his career at stake or may expect at least an internal disciplinary action. Politicians cling to their right to influence top management positions in radio and television and all attempts to change that and radically to liberate public broadcasters from party and state dictate will fail miserably. Yet even so - and this complicates the matter still further - public-service stations seem to be better, more informative and better-differentiated than their private competitors. It seems their sorry state is still relatively the best bet. The system thus regulates itself in a most intriguing way. People are not stupid and will instinctively discern any bogus or clownish elements in both fields. Politicians and journalists have poor public opinion ratings, being outdone by doctors, lawyers, teachers and businessmen. These two suspect professions are rated low, and not quite unfairly so. They both lack credibility.

German schools have only just begun some sort of instruction on the media, and something similar ought to become a compulsory subject everywhere, for only this will enable young people to critically discern the information and views on offer and build their own, sensible world outlook. One has to learn to understand that not all that's in the papers or on TV may be true but that the information on offer may help him to find bearing and formulate personal views. Also, one should be able to develop alternative views on facts as presented by the media.

None of this is new. What's new is the radical change of the strange companionship of media and politics that is happening in the Western countries. We have coined terms such as "TV democracy" and "politainment". What's behind this vocabulary? Electronic media in general, and television in particular, have become political arenas. Parties, parliaments and politically-elected bodies are fast losing their importance. What this means and how it projects into everyday life, becomes clear in these days of war and terror. George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Colin Powell need television, seek television, namely the global news channel CNN, in order to win over and influence the public or, and this is worse, to fool the public by propaganda and misinformation. Likewise, the Islamic terrorist Osama bin Laden needs CNN's Arab counterpart, Al Jazeera. Globally televised messages instantly become political artifacts that change the mood of entire nations and may cause changes in the war situation. George W. Bush may use the fatal term "crusade", bin Laden may speak of the "holy war" - but nobody will succeed in eliminating a terminology that has become part of our collective memory. Osama bin Laden has become a popular character, courtesy of television, Osama masks and T-shirts are selling like hot cakes. He is despicable, but he projects well on the screen, like a post-modern Jesus or Che Guevara. The Americans are well aware of this type of influencing and are trying hard to find a propaganda antidote.

TV-shy characters are basically unsuitable for politics and can be discounted for any top office. Helmut Kohl may have been Germany's last politician to pursue his career in spite of the media, or at least their overwhelming part. it was not until the end of his political career, following German reunification in 1990, that the critical media caved in and asked him for interviews; but this short-lived spell was followed by fierce media attacks against him. His complex, grim disposition and clumsy appearance would have disqualified Kohl for any further political role today. That man is lost who would demonstrate his anti-television nature on the TV screen.

Top political posts today await only those who feel in the media like fish in the water - or should I say shark? Nowhere is this momentous change more apparent than in Kohl's successor, Gerhard Schroeder. He is Germany's first media chancellor of the new type. He speaks the language, he is witty, flexible, sympathetic, good-looking - in short, he acts naturally. All the successful Western politicos impersonate this typecast: Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Gerhard Schroeder - the big-league stage names. Or take Japan's big star, Yunichiro Koizumi. Their appearances are carefully stage-managed as super media events - party conventions, elections, tours, speeches. They don't address people in the lecture-room but television helps them to address the whole nation, and indeed the whole world.

My first tenet is, the relations between the politicians and the media have never been stronger. This has far-reaching implications for politicians and their public image that are best summed up as "politainment". Whether a politician is perceived favourably, is determined by his non-political and extra-political skills or, bluntly said, by his ability to entertain. Media advisers, image-builders and miscellaneous "spin doctors" thus gain close access at state offices and ministries to their bosses whom they partially replace. (The "spin doctors" are an especially despicable variant of media adviser whose task is to fool and two-time the general public. They have previously worked for the secret services, today these people sit in the media teams of top political leaders.) Top-notch politicians can be seen everywhere. On TV family shows, as support artists in crime movies, in lifestyle programmes and, of course, in a scattering of TV talk shows. There's no hiding from them. They will publicly bank on (nigh) everything, including their private lives. Everything but one - their true aims and what shaped their decisions. Instead, they peddle interviews from their summer vacations, TV shots showing them pat young calves on the farm, scenes from their family, marital and love life. Simply - soap operas. Yes, soap opera becomes part of politics.

Berlin's new Mayor, Klaus Wowereit precluded press exposure by coming out on his gay orientation at a party congress. "I am homosexual," he said, "and it's alright." "It's alright" instantly became the battle cry of his election campaign. He won the elections. That's modern politics to you.

So my second tenet is, new media relations dramatically change the politician's public image, all risks counted in. Gerhard Schroeder gave a successful media promotion to his second marriage, now long divorced. The Schroeders then could be seen with their dogs, horses, daughters - they were everywhere. It backfired on him during his divorce suit, which was treated as a public affair and a chance to wash dirty linen. He knew better in his next marriage, which he has kept out of the limelight. He made two other mistakes. When he became federal chancellor, he posed for the firm that clothes him. That photograph was published. Also, he smoked cigars on all occasions. Unemployment rising, Chancellor smoking Cuba's finest Cohibas - terrible. Of course he recognised his blunder, stopped the practice and today smokes cigars in privacy. He stopped modelling for fashion magazines as well.

Another politician, the more simple-minded Defence Minister Scharping, failed to do his homework. This past summer, when German soldiers were busy in Macedonia disarming the NLA, he and his girlfriend, a countess, were in Majorca, posing by the swimming-pool for a tabloid magazine. This would have ended his career if it had not been for September 11. Things happened at the right time for Rudolf Scharping, whose resignation seemed imminent. But he was left with a nickname, which paraphrases the name of bin Laden. He is "Bin Baden" (I had a bath).

Medial exposure of private life was far more painful in the case of Helmut Kohl. When his wife Hannelore took her life, the well-known Stern magazine carried a long report on their failed marriage - a taboo-breaking thing to do when death comes to house. Yet this is the dark side of what the politicians do. Suppose a political figure sells his private life to the media. Can this figure hope for privacy in critical situations? When his private life began to be poked in, SPD's former chief Oskar Lafontaine coined the phrase, "Schweine-Journalismus" ("Dirty Press"). This label still has a place in the German media today.

Mixing with entertainment has far-reaching implications for politics. Political decisions in Germany are made almost exclusively outside parliamentary soil, cabinets and party committees - we are talking about "kitchen cabinets" - and tend to be instantly disclosed in the media before being properly discussed in political circles. Again, this is done through the media. Talk shows replace parliament, party conventions are reduced to empty media stage productions complete with lights and music. As a rule, nothing is ever decided at party congresses. Executives, swarms of bureaucrats and personal assistance teams formulate policies on the basis of their market potential. When, for example, the German government decided to go ahead with a sweeping reform of the tax and pension system, it had no preliminary inputs coming from the ruling Social Democrats. In comparison with the previous routine, when emergency conventions indulged in stormy debates, this is an about-face. There no longer exist committees on the party level which would prepare and discuss important decisions. It is safe to say that the Party is dead. The support the party clings to are public opinion polls formulated and published by the media. Parliament has found itself at the very end of a long decision-making process and all it can do is rubberstamp government initiatives.

What about the people, you may ask, what about the electorate, how will they react? Are they completely stage-managed now, trapped by someone's media shows? Will they jump on the most refined vendor's bandwagon? More generally, are media circuses detrimental to the very core of democracy as people no longer base their judgement on political criteria but on emotional standards set by the soap opera? Despite all criticisms, I do not share such cultural pessimism. I know that flashy media antics always fail in the face of hardcore politics. a glossy veneer cannot hide poor contents. People continue to prove, especially when the go to the polls, their innate ability to discard less-than-serious political inducements.

The media - and thankfully, this tenet still holds - have two faces. They are the companions of power, from which they profit, but are at the same time the adversaries of power. They have lost nothing of their fourth-pillar ability to control. Television has always played second fiddle in exposing wrongdoing and scandals. Historically, this has always been the prerogative of newspapers and magazines. All the big scandals in Germany's post-war history without exception have been unveiled by the print media. This brings us to the third and last tenet. In spite of the threats emanating from their close relationship to politic, the media still play democracy's key role of opponents and verifiers of power.

But the risk is incalculable as the competition never sleeps, topics come and go at an astonishing pace, and crowd mentality with uniform views seem to be winning the day. Politicians, caught in the middle of a pushy, noisy crowd of TV crews and photographers, view this as an onerous burden. It is the price they legitimately have to pay for having politically pushed so many private media outlets. Now, private media are giving a hard time to politicians, now political leaders suffer at the mercy of uneducated, poorly prepared presenters and announcers who ask questions so stupid they really have no answers. Politicians themselves have created these monsters and are now stuck with them. The worst thing is that the ever more intimate rapport between politics and media dims and disfigures the journalists' perception of the true state of society. The politico-media road show thinks absolutist, regarding itself as the heart of society. This is a grave error of judgement, as shown by mass anti-globalisation protests in Genoa or Prague - as you may have seen for yourselves. The returns are alarming - there is a network in society, a new social movement of critics of globalisation who need neither politics nor media. Why, they talk to each other on the internet. We the media people were puzzled and said, well, here comes something and we don't know what it is. We know better now, we are watching and evaluating the developments.

We are living a war. The whole spectacle, the talk shows and VIP variety evenings - politicians are VIPs, media people are VIPs, suddenly everybody is a VIP and celebrity - the whole show with all the trimmings, is gone. In times of war and crisis, common sense prevails, as evidenced by the growing sales of serious media which address serious matters. Their sales are up while the others are having problems. Contents, attitudes and seriousness is what really counts. This is one - I am not being cynical - of a few positive side-events of the strange war that's going on in Central Asia. At least for a moment, the politicians' stance on the media, and the media's behaviour patterns, have changed. I don't believe it is a long-term change for I have watched the politico-media circuses quite closely. Come the nearest opportunity and they all will resume their stage antics, chewing fat as they have always done.