Media coverage of the self-immolation of Jan Palach in Rudé právo, Reportér and Zprávy

Diploma thesis Media coverage of the self-immolation of Jan Palach in Rude pravo, Reporter and Zpravy attempts to show how the ruling ideology influences the media coverage of an event by analyzing newspaper articles from three different periodicals (Rude pravo, Reporter, Zpravy). In this case, the event is Jan Palach's protest against the political and social situation in Czechoslovakia after the arrival of the Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968. Palach performed his protest in January 1969 inspired by the form of self-immolation displayed by Buddhist monks in Tibet. It appears that the political situation at that time can be characterized as a transformation from democracy to tatalitarianism. The official newspaper of the Communist Party Rude pravo was neither using censorship nor distorting reality. It captured the events essentially as they had been running, though there were no arguments or comments. The comparison of Rude pravo with the other two newspapers, Reporter, representing pro-reform democratic media, and Zpravy, representing totalitarian media, reveals the fact that articles in Rude pravo were neutral