PARTICIPATION AND MEDIA ACCESS IN CONTEMPORARY ROMANIA
HOCHHGIMGR, JOHN L HOCHHGIMGR
JOANNG DVORAK
Putting people first in development projects comes down to tailoring the design and implementation of projects to the needs and capabilities of people who are supposed to benefit from them.
Joanne Dvorak Hochheimer is
MPS candidate at Department of
Norman Uphoff
Communication,
Introduction
Cornell University, 303 Kennedy Hall, Ithaca. NY 14853.
As we seek to reconsider the theory, policy and practice of access to electronic media, we wish also to examine what preconditions are John Hochheimer necessary for such access to occur, and in what ways we can best is Assistant facilitate actors for meaningful access (as they might define it) to exist. Professor of It is not sufficient merely to supply the equipment and training in Communication at electronic media among people who are beginning to emerge from Roy H. Park years of state oppression, as is the case in both the developing world School of and in the emerging civil societies of eastern and central Europe. We Communication, must also look at the ways in which people fear public participation Ithaca College, in communications, as well as strategies for overcoming these fears. NY I4850-7253. Only with broad-based support and participation can truly democratic access to media begin to be realized.
Diaz Bordenave (1994, 26) calls participation "...the process in which a person sees himself or herself as a unique individual and at the same time as a member of a community." He argues that participation is a human need and, as such, it fits with the value of the individual's right to self-determination. From a structural standpoint, participatory communication systems provide alternatives to the system dominated by transnational corporate interests (Reyes Matta 1986; Hochheimer 1988; Boyd-Barrett & Thussu 1993; Kivikuru 1993).
Uphoff (1985, 379), however, makes the case that, "unless the intended beneficiaries are already organized and accustomed to involvement in formal development programs, some procedures for introducing participation should be explicitly worked out." It is in this context that Diaz Bordenave's (1994, 31) statement about
participatory change is relevant: "If a participative society is to be established in the paradigm of the relationship between the state and civil society, radical changes are necessary. Civil society must grow and the State must reduce its power." Nair and White (1993) concur: "...the people must define their own needs, and set goals," (p. 57) so that "...communication and participation will be affected by social relationships and structures" (p. 63).
Participation can be seen, then, as a process that must be sensitive to a range of social, political, economic, and individual issues. It is directed by the people involved in the participatory process. As Lozare (1994,16) points out "...development occurs when people gain more control over their environment-empowerment through greater participation in planning and action is both an end and a means for motivating people to do something about their lives and others."
This is the theoretical basis of the work undertaken in this paper. It is a case study of a participatory approach to facilitating media access, and the development of a new journalism program at the University of Timisoara, in the evolving democracy of Romania. It reports the issues as they were experienced and described by the participating faculty members, considers the barriers to the process, and discusses the role of group facilitation in a participatory process and the introduction of these concepts to the Romanian faculty.
It was through a participatory approach to development and problem-solving that the Journalism Faculty at the University of Timisoara, Romania were facilitated to experience a new process in which their own stated goals of "developing a journalism program" were explored. In a case study the importance of participant introduction to this new concept will be discussed in some detail. The work is focused on the participation of university faculty in the development of a journalism program, but the wider societal issues that have impacts upon the lives of those faculty and, subsequently, their ability to speak freely without fear about their own program goals will also be discussed.
Problem
Access to media has generally been discussed in terms of the need for disenfranchised people and organizations to afford tools, gain technical skills, and present a strong argument about their needs and rights to communicate to a target audience and their potential support by an audience (Berrigan 1977; Lewis 1984). Hudson (1974), for example, discusses the processes by which native peoples set up a radio telephone network in the Canadian north. This work was undertaken to address the developmental needs of disenfranchised Inuits and Indian peoples. Schulman (1985) addresses the institutional barriers faced when local peoples attempted to create a community radio station for themselves in East Harlem, New York. Hochheimer (1988) describes the ways in which community radio stations can be seen to serve a local community, given that the ways in which communities might be defined, as well as empowered, tends to be a problematic affair. More recently (Hochheimer 1993), he suggests the organization of such community media, despite their claims to open access, present inevitable issues which serve to block free and open access to all who might want to participate.
The focus of much of this work assumes, however, that there is a desire by various people to have their messages seen and heard by others. This, after all, is the locus around which much of the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) debate has centered for some time (Boyd-Barrett and Thussu 1993; Kivikuru 1993). Yet, as Jakubowicz (1988) has pointed out, much of the media access debate assuming that most people wish to be heard is, he argues, a false premise upon which to build the case for wider access. Many people, he says, are just as happy to remain in their roles as receivers, no matter how negative this ostensibly passive role appears to media activists.
Citizen participation should not be too easily dismissed. The issue of the desire of
people to be active producers of communications begins much before the media themselves are made available to them (either by largesse or by force). Throughout eastern
Europe, for example, civil passivity was an institutional imperative of the state for many _
years,1 wherein the state was considered the sole legitimate voice of public interest.	qj
Even assuming that there is a desire to create a participatory media system, access to media begins much further back in the process than money, equipment or even the acquisition of technical skills. Access to media begins with the individual's ability to conceive of him or herself as having the right to define what her/his individual, institutional (such as university, newspaper, or television station) or societal media needs and goals are. The barrier encountered at this earlier stage can be conceived of as "psycho-social access." Its transcendence, and how to assist people in dealing with it, are of primary concern here.
This process demands more than instruction by those with technical expertise in media production. Facilitating participation means adopting a liberatory pedagogy in which teachers and students (or colleagues) see each other as equal actors, subjects and not objects (Hochheimer 1992). It requires an understanding, and a patience, to assist people who have never known freedom of public voice to begin to articulate their needs, desires, complaints, and dreams to friends, neighbors, associates, and institutions in the world outside. This process of critical pedagogical action is the necessary precursor to the development of people deciding upon how they wish to engage their rights to communicate (Freire 1973).
Context
Romania, a country of approximately 23 million people, had one of the most highly repressive dictatorship of all the eastern bloc countries. Harsanyi and Harsanyi (1993) attempt to shed some light on the resultant fear in the Romanian historical experience. They recount how, in the 1970s, many Romanians heard about the Soviet crackdown in Prague and were led to believe that the Ceausescu regime was not their biggest threat; rather, they were told the threat came from the Soviets. The situation in Prague only served to convince the Romanian people that, "Socialism could not be destroyed, it was believed, and therefore, criticism had to be cautigus, for the Soviets would not hesitate to repeat the Prague crackdown." This threat was "...waved periodically, just in case, to keep the people busy thinking of something else and finding somewhere else the reasons for their frustrations and dissatisfactions" (Harsanyi and Harsanyi 1993,244).
Citizen reaction to oppressive government is, as Burns (1978) says, ubiquitous. Most people tend to shy away from independent public expression or action for fear of reprisal. He quotes an unnamed Soviet dissident describing repression as, "With us, it is there, like the wind, like the sky. It is something permanent, unchangeable. So the individual acquiesces, does not dream of changing it—except a few, few people..." (Burns 1978,21). Perdue says "From an institutional perspective, the means of domination through fear may be embodied in the modern nation-state. ... In the lives of ordinary people, the corruption of state power may be expressed in the knock on the door, mass arrests, disappearances, and summary execution" (Perdue 1989,4).
What these authors are describing is just a glimpse into the day-to-day fear that has been permeating the lives of many Romanian people. In 1989, the Ceausescu regime was overthrown in a bloody revolution that had its beginning in Timisoara, and the dictator was killed. But as Harsanyi and Harsanyi (1993,246) tell us, "...there was no solidarity, no trust among the (Romanian) people, no underground network, no organized and known dissidence, no alternative."
Romania, like all of the former Soviet empire has been in the process of reformation
as a result of the revolution of 1989. The country and its people find themselves in a time of vast transformation. They are free at last, but although the dictator Ceausescu is dead, his legacy of forty years of oppressive rule has been deeply integrated into their psyches. More than some "magic bullet" is needed.
Many people expressed hope about the idea of freedom but who (as a society) have little knowledge of what it means to be free. Free to do what? Free to be unemployed? Free to have money that loses its value so rapidly that they must work several jobs so that they can buy food? Freedom carries with it a balance of rights and responsibilities that people who have lived in an oppressive society are not prepared to exercise or respond to.
It was into that process of dramatic social and political change, in 1993, that we were invited to the University of Timisoara. With the Journalism Faculty, we helped to facilitate the creation of a new journalism curriculum in 1993. Through the use of the social work skills of group facilitation we were able to begin to assist faculty members inexperienced in either free journalism, critical pedagogy, or curriculum planning, to articulate their needs and those of their students as they faced the development of a free and democratic media system in a formerly repressive society.
We found university faculty who were personally, internally bound to the oppressive system which had scrutinized, ruled and educated them.3 They expressed enthusiasm at the prospects of a free press, but when we asked them what they wanted to do to create a new democratic media system they responded, "You're from the West. You're the experts. Tell us what to do."4
We were witnessing a people who appear to be idealizing the abstract concepts of democracy and yet who have little experience in problem-solving or decision-making to assist them in what initial steps they might take toward the design of a culturally appropriate strategy or progress towards their imagined free and democratic society. And we found western media experts attempting to impose alien ideas and expressing frustration that the locals were not being as receptive to new ideas or sufficiently appreciative of western efforts (Hochheimer and Dvorak Hochheimer 1994).
The Romanian people had no experience with or little exposure to democracy or its concepts. Under a centralized oppressive government the people were told what was acceptable. They were not encouraged to think (or speak) critically. The dogma of the State was absolute and to question that was to increase risk to individuals and their family members. This is an example of how fear affected behavior.
Thus, through the use of such institutional devices as secret police, broadly-placed informants (that included listening devices in homes and offices), and state censorship, the people were silenced by fear. This fear was socialized to the children as they grew up and what emerged was a dual reality. The dual reality was the conscious melding of the official "truth," as defined by the state), and real life-as-experienced (Hochheimer and Dvorak Hochheimer 1994).
An example of this is that, in Romania, the people often repeated the party line that, "We are a strong and proud people." In reality this was said at a time when (due to Ceausescu's state policy of exporting food to pay their national debt, there were inadequate food supplies) the Romanian people were not able to find enough food. The people were not proud, but they were starving and, in fact, many people gave up their children because they had so little access to food. This kind of dual reality was pervasive in all aspects of life and over time seems to have created a people who fear self expression, a people who fear the consequences of state retaliation.6 Again Harsanyi and Harsanyi (1993,257) state, "The latter forces (the army) rely on the ordinary citizens' reluctance to commit themselves politically as they are caught between an unattractive past and an insecure future."
People explained to us that, in a political climate they believe to be unstable and lacking in true democratic principals, only a few highly visible persons are willing to act in a manner that might be a threat to themselves or their families (again, this manifested the power of their integrated fears).
Process
When we begin to think of participation in a free and democratic media system, we consider a people's ability to feel free to express themselves without fear of retribution as a sine qua non. Our colleagues in Romania did not have that confidence; thus they wanted the "experts" to define programs and curriculum for them.7 They would not be liable for possible retribution from the state, or the wrath or rejection of their own teachers and mentors, many of whom remain wedded to the old ways of authoritarian rule and education.8
We found ourselves frustrated, conflicted, and yet eager to assist without betraying our commitment to a participatory approach to research and program development. We were committed to a process described by Giroux and Simon (1989,223), "The education organized by a critical pedagogy is one that must raise questions of how we can work for the reconstruction of social imagination in the service of human freedom." As Nair and White (1993, 15) state, we were engaged in: "...participatory research to support the people's efforts to eliminate social inequality and exploitation. Participatory research did not claim to be value neutral." In fact our work was guided by the value of the individual's right to self-determination.
It took months for us to try to piece together what was being said and to understanding the complexities of a cultural experience beyond what we have known (and it must be said that we realize that we are only just beginning to understand the complexities of the Romanian culture). The true experts are our Romanian colleagues, whom we relied on a great deal to assist us in our attempt to learn about their culture. The continued existence of a dual reality made this situation appear even more obscure.9
What we did was try to "actively listen" to what our colleagues said and through a dialogic process of posing questions continued to work with our colleagues to develop a greater understanding of the current situation, their historical perspective, and their desires for the direction of their future work. This was a true education for all of us who had the opportunity to share and to try to understand the "other."
Due to hyper-inflation since the revolution many of our colleagues at the University are working several jobs which made faculty department meetings literally impossible. We asked if our colleagues (and their spouses) would come to a series of dinners at our apartment so that we might use that as an opportunity to discuss their ideas about a university journalism program (this will be referred to as "dinner and dialogue"). This approach was favorably responded to.
We had failed to gain insight and understanding about our Romanian colleagues' programmatic goals when, at first, we asked what the faculty wanted for their program. So this time we had determined that we would use a group facilitation approach (also considered a participatory research method). Our four main goals were:
•	To provide an opportunity for the journalism faculty to meet together to openly dialogue about the development of their journalism program (as amazing as it seemed to us the realities of their lives had prevented such a meeting from taking place).
•	To begin to build a respectful egalitarian relationship between ourselves and our Romanian colleagues and thus demonstrate the usefulness and their ability for a relationship of trust. (It must be stated that given the life experiences of our col-
leagues this was merely an initial exercise and will require much more opportunity, nurturing, and support to be an internalized and accepted experience). As Wethington and Kessler (1986) demonstrate, peoples' fears of stressful life events are mitigated by the degree to which they perceive social support, or the likelihood of social support, from their social networks.
•	To provide a "safe" environment to explore issues that relate to our colleagues' teaching experience and their desires for their students.
•	To provide a positive experience with a participatory approach to exploration of an issue of importance as defined by the faculty.
These are some of the goals we had in mind in our pursuit of a participatory process ("dinner and dialogue"). It is important to remember that this was truly a participatory process because it was, in fact, our Romanian colleagues who had invited us to work with them. They had already expressed a desire to establish a journalism program at their university (if we had come with an agenda, or told the Romanian faculty what they "should do" it would not had been a true participatory process in that it would not have included the essential component of liberation or respect).
Facilitation: What Does It Take?
We choose to engage in a group process that was co-facilitated (as opposed to led) by a trained social worker with many years of experience in the facilitation of groups, and by a professor of Journalism/ Communication. The group had the benefit of a range of resources that could support their stated goals. Grossman and Silverstein (1993,146) say that some of the qualification of facilitation are: 1) knowledge about group process, 2) being open to others' feelings, and 3) being aware of nonverbal communications. The facilitator, "...must be able to listen to and interpret what is going on in each session." That concept of "knowing what is going on" takes on a special complexity when one facilitates a group that is outside of one's own cultural experience. To compensate for that issue the social worker engaged in debriefing sessions with the translator who was a support to our "dinner and dialogue" sessions as we worked to anticipate (and eliminate) as many barriers as possible.
Our Romanian friends seemed to be constrained to the point of immobility particularly on the issue of journalism program development, as a result of psycho-social access barriers. When facing such hurdles, Khan and Bhardwaj (1994) suggest that facilitators conceptualize access in terms of barriers and how to overcome them (see also Dervin 1981; Dervin and Clark 1993). Given that framework, we found the facilitation process most helpful in uncovering the issues that our colleagues faced and having them defined by them in their own social, political, and economic context.
As Grossman & Silverstein (1993, 147) point out, the facilitator's role is one that, "...encourages members to discuss themselves." McKeachie (1986, 59) refers to "...the teacher as facilitator tends to respond primarily to the student's own definition of his (sic) goals." In other words, it is vital to assist the individual in articulating his/her own issues, needs, and goals. Faculty members of the journalism program at the University of Timisoara were unable to articulate the goals for their program; we saw the possibility of assisting them to unearth their own views through facilitation of dialogue.
McKeachie (1986, 59) says that "...for one person to facilitate the learning and development of another often involves a recognition of the substantial differences between individuals in terms of what they value and what they are seeking." To value or respect the views and opinions of others requires open and meaningful communication. As in active-listening, the listener must attempt to the best of his or her ability to hear what the
other is saying, and not to rely on the listener's own interpretation (or listener's version). To accomplish this requires clarification of statements to confirm mutual understandings or needed adjustments of words or meanings. In an active listening situation, the other person's view or statement is primary. Bolton (1979) refers to respect, acceptance and positive regard as a kind of "nonpossessive love." That there is an extremely deeply held belief in the "other;" this might be called a belief in one's friends or colleagues. In this way, the facilitator acts much the same as does the liberatory teacher (see Hochheimer 1992).
In the case of "dinner and dialogue" the goal had been articulated by the participants as "the development of a journalism program at the University of Timisoara." Prior to the meeting the facilitator had constructed a set of dialogue-provoking questions relating to issues the faculty members had reported to be central to the needs of their students. But as the meeting began the facilitator explained the group facilitation process (Dvorak Hochheimer 1993) as:
•	all participants in the dialogue are equal (we all have responsibility for the success or failure of this process),
•	all participants are expected to actively contribute to the discussion (this includes being considerate in allowing time for all people to speak),
•	all participants are asked to listen closely to the thoughts and opinions of each other (open communication),
•	explanation of the role of the facilitator:
•	assist in clarification of issues,
•	assist the group in being focused or working toward their goals,
•	solicit input (posing questions),
•	provide feedback,
•	assist in accessing resources,
•	be aware of group process and group development,
•	share observations with the group,
•	work with the group to develop trusting relationships and a positive sense of interdependence,
•	provide affirmation and support to group members.
"Dinner and dialogue" began with an explanation of a facilitated dialogue, and the faculty expressed much interest by asking more questions about the group process. We moved from that discussion to the prepared questions, starting with who the students of the journalism program are and how they are selected. Those simple questions led us into a dialogue that was the center of focus for that evening's discussion. By continuing to ask for clarification we learned that the faculty had no input on student selection or that process. The facilitators explained that it was important to understand the journalism program thoroughly, and, by soliciting input from the faculty, the faculty discovered that they had each understood various factors about the program quite differently, because they had only their individual assumptions to go on prior to our "dinner and dialogue" meeting.
As we talked about student selection they began (most modestly at first) to express opinions about what qualities and characteristics they sought in journalism students. This provided an opportunity for them to begin to clarify their own thinking on the issues surrounding the journalism program. At this point it was the role of the facilitators to mirror for the participating faculty what, in fact, they were accomplishing through dialogue and active participation.
This was a new process for them, and it required a great deal of affirmative practice.
It was important that the faculty members experienced a meaningful process with tangible outcomes. To demonstrate the outcome or results of the "dinner & dialogue," the facilitator typed up the notes and shared them with the faculty to use for group feedback and the basis of subsequent "dinner and dialogue" sessions.
Epilogue
In this case study, we have explored how people in an emerging democratic society and, particularly, the faculty from the University of Timisoara are seeking to develop a new journalism program. We have reviewed the psycho-social access barriers of learned fear, submission to totalitarian authority, lack of experience in open communication and trusting relationships that are the basis of democratic and participatory societies. These barriers have hindered the progress of a faculty that has only just begun to experience the permission and support to be free to speak their own opinions, ideas and dreams for the future.
We have examined the process of a participatory development project where a social worker and a professor of journalism from the United States co-facilitated a "dinner and dialogue" series to introduce new methods of discussion, problem-solving and personal growth through participation that can lead to self-defined personal or professional goals.
Admittedly, this was merely a beginning, but the faculty actively engaged in the process and the University administration expressed a desire for us to remain in Timisoara and to continue work on this process. In September 1994, approximately 16 months after our first work in Timisoara, we returned for five days to take part in follow-up interviews with our Romanian colleagues. In one of these interviews, the director of the program described some recent Timisoaran history.
An important local leader had recently died, and the director realized that an important community voice had been lost forever. He explained his idea of how his journalism program might build itself around a local oral history project where journalism students, assisted by their professors, could work to document the personal experiences and insights of a wide range of community members. He explained that, as the seat of the Romanian revolution of 1989, it was important to document who the people who revolted were, what they had experienced prior to, during and since the revolution.
He explained that this oral history project would involve faculty working with students in the community. The project would give students an opportunity to practice interviewing skills, reporting and news writing, and print and broadcast news production experience. They would also build a database of their findings, giving students computer experience. He explained that, with this project as a beginning, he and his colleagues could build their own program, something they could refine and defend.
This came from a man who, 16 months earlier, had staunchly resisted any idea that he and his colleagues had the capacity for designing anything meaningful. Colleagues from the journalism program insisted that we tell them "how to do it (journalism education)." If we had given them a "recipe" or "how to" directions, they would have used our model, but the program would have been ours. Instead, we sought to constantly assure them that they themselves were the best qualified people to define journalism education for their program to meet the needs of their students given their own culture.
The personal and professional growth which had transpired over that 16 month period was phenomenal. They were now able as a faculty to work collaboratively to refine the project idea and to take best advantage of their own expertise. Professors who previously had been silent or resistant were now active parts of "their" journalism program. Now that they had accepted ownership, we outsiders could now work with them to develop their curriculum, establish staffing plans, and the like.
Continued collaborative work with our Romanian colleagues will allow us to document future developments of their program. It is our desire to return and to continue this work, but only with the direction of the faculty. We need to develop measures to examine the degree to which faculty participants believe they, and their program, benefitted from this interactive exchange, and to what degree they were able to develop a level of confidence in their own abilities to design and implement their own program. Our Romanian colleagues can now broach the issue of access to media systems, because now they are beginning to use their own ideas and their own voices which, we believe, are the first steps to providing access to media.
Access to media begins with the expressed goals and opinions of people, and in whom, with patience, support and practice, the principles of participation will provide a basis for the democratic growth of a civil society. Much work remains to be done in defining the conditions under which people would want to participate, the ways in which media systems allow for their participation and what levels of facilitation are needed. By developing strategies for facilitating communication actors prior to the introduction of more accessible media systems, we can move from a bifurcated notion of communication theory versus practice to the active integration to a communicative theory of practice. It is in this interaction, when theory and practice of more truly democratic communications merge, when the psycho-social barriers to free and open communication are eliminated through active citizen participation, that true media access can begin.
Notes:
1.	As Andriy Demydenko, Ukranian deputy environment minister, said of people in both Ukraine and Russia, "We have a totalitarian legacy of citizens not making decisions - since long before the 1917 socialist revolution, someone always made them for us. To teach people to use information democratically, we have to educate a new generation. It doesn't happen overnight" (quoted in Weisman, 1994, 47-48). Many more years of experience and education will be necessary before people become comfortable with the idea that they, too, have a right and desire to have something to say. It is as problematic to dismiss public access to media now because so few people apparently want it, as it is to dismiss a person's desire to read because s/he has never seen a book.
2.	Mayo and Servaes (1994, 21) suggest that participatory communication projects can be typified by the following criteria:
•	"truly participatory media are internally organized along democratic lines (as worker cooperatives or collectives);"
■ They are "recognized by their juxtaposition to commercial media as well as other cultural industries dominated by multinational corporations;"
•	They "often emerge after the liberation of linguistic and ethnic groups or following a major social transformation;"
•	"the emergence of participatory media may be explained in terms of class struggle within society; and
"participatory media tend to be individualized and content specific; rarely do they provide homogenized services across a wide area."
3.	"The absence of a critical independent spirit throughout the communist period and the creation of a society policed by automatons who carry out specific tasks without questioning their function have ensured that Romania's primitive political culture has remained intact as it enters the age of democracy" (Misha Glenny, quoted in Harsanyi & Harsanyi 1993, 254).
4.	This is the scenario throughout much of eastern Europe, and, in all too many instances, western media executives and faculty members are "parachuting in" to impose western style media systems regardless of the lack of cultural fit or appropriateness (Hochheimer & Dvorak Hochheimer 1994).
5.	A media system can never be more democratic than the political system within which it is imbedded
(Jakubowicz 1990; 1993; Vreg 1990). Further, one cannot easily teach people to develop a democratic media system when they have never been allowed to see democratic behaviors modeled (Freire 1973; Hochheimer 1992).
6.	In an August 1994, meeting at Cornell University, a group of former Soviet bloc media professionals confirmed that fear continued to silence community residents.
7.	Harsanyi and Harsanyi (1993, 254) bear this out, "...people have not yet been accustomed to compare their own thoughts with those of others, or with the opinions of some trustworthy personalities. They did not have any ways or guidelines to systematize their feelings."
8.	It had been commonly accepted that the anomie of the populace was widespread. Romanians had "...established a way of thinking and behavior expressed in such fatalistic responses to any attempt at protest as: it won't change anything at all, one could disappear and the sacrifice would be in vain for it will not make any difference and will not lead to anything but trouble, it would actually worsen the already bad situation, no one will show any support, etc.... This attitude was reinforced by bringing up the fatalistic nature of the Romanians, which was taken for granted and was not supposed to be challenged" (Harsanyi & Harsanyi 1993, 249).
9.	We must emphasize the fact that we were only in the country six months and this is certainly not enough time to fully realize and come to understand the complexity of a culture.
10.	Clearly, the development of democratic media systems is a stressful experience for our colleagues. Some of them say that they still fear that they may be incarcerated, or worse, for daring to establish a western-style journalism education program at the University. This fear certainly explains a part of their reluctance to engage in too much change too quickly. Given recent examples of government repression of opposition news media in neighboring Hungary (Perlez 1994), these fears have been hardly ill-founded.
11.	The American Heritage Dictionary defines "facilitation" as the act of making easy or easier. The manner in which this is accomplished requires a complex set of skills, but even more importantly it requires a particular value orientation, that of the individual's right to self-determination. This is a core social work value and points out the very real benefit of interdisciplinary collaborative research and program efforts. This problem is hardly unique to our experience in mobilizing social support (see Eckenrode & Wethington 1990).
12.	That was the model of learning they knew. They had continually expressed the fear of the idea of presenting their own ideas. What if experts did not like them? Would others be angry with them? Could they lose their jobs for disagreeing? Would change be an affront to their own professors who were now their colleagues? Is there a real political threat that might put them in jail for daring to question the established authority of the state? Their leaders? Or U.S. Fulbright scholars like ourselves?
It would have been easy for us to be sanguine about their fears. But, we have U.S. passports, meaning we could leave if the going ever got too rough. They, on the other hand, had would have to suffer whatever consequences change might precipitate. This is a type of fear outside facilitators must never underestimate.
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