DŽEVAD SULEJMANPAŠIĆ

Relatively little is known about Dževad Sulejmanpašić's life. It is assumed that he was born in the village of Vesela near Bugojno in 1893, that he died in 1976 and that he was buried in the family tomb on Mali Lošinj. He studied in Vienna, though so far there is no reliable research that would explain Sulejmanpašić's familiarity with Kant's philosophy and his good knowledge of European literature. Since he taught at the Teachers' College in Zagreb for a while, it could be assumed that he was also granted an academic status. Adnan Jahić, Enes Karić and Najil Kurtić wrote some papers about this forgotten progressive person, though there is no proper academic verification of Sulejmanpašić's activity. We hope that the interest will grow after a symposium which will be organized in Zagred on 11. 6. 2022 by several institutions headed by the Bosniak national community for the city of Zagreb and Zagreb County. The symposium should result in a monograph about the surprisingly inventive, modern and somewhat prophetic Sulejmanpašić's main work:  Žurnalizam, razarač čovječanstva i novinarstvo s najmanjom merom žurnalizma (Journalism, a destroyer of humanity and press with the least degree of journalism). We do hope that it is the beginning of a greater interest in Dževad Sulejmanpašić.

Today, it is relatively simple to accept the judgment which says that systems of media intermediation are one of the biggest problems of contemporary civilization. There is an abundance of literature which will confirm it, and there is no serious author (among those who discuss media) who has critically wrote about the manipulative character of media, i.e. about the deadliness of media sensationalism, at least in some segments of their work.

However, Dževad Sulejmanpašić spoke and wrote about it as early as in the 1930s. Indeed, his book Žurnalizam razarač čovječanstva i novinstvo sa najmanjom merom žurnalizma was published in 1936, as the first critical work about media in the Southeast Europe.

It was the first study about media and their influence on all segments of human life. Therefore, Dževad Sulejmanpašić was the first media theorist in the contemporary sense of the word in this part of the world. Thus, at the time when members of the Frankfurt circle published their texts and questioned the impact of technology on arts and human experience (Benjamin, Adorno, Horkheimer and others), and about thirty years before claims in Understanding Media by the renowned “guru of modern media” Marshall McLuhan – Bosnia engendered a media theorist who warned of a danger which does not come primarily from the published information but rather from the form of media, far before many others. Some thirty years before McLuhan, Sulejmanpašić attempted to picture, to his contemporaries, the context of what McLuhan would later express by his claim The medium is the message.

In his almost prophetic work Sulejmanpašić analyzed the impact of journalism (sensationalism) on weakening of morality, religion, psychological life, arts, social order, peace, science and, in a more profound (philosophical) sense, the negative impact of journalism on mind and spirit (as he sees them in his understanding of Immanuel Kant).

In his conclusions, even in constructing the value judgment, Sulejmanpašić relied upon literary and philosophic authorities such as Kraus, Goethe, Balzac, Kierkegaard, Baudelaire, Schopenhauer, as well as on views of political authorities (such as, for example Bismarck) and many experts in journalism (owners or reporters).

Sulejmanpašić saw journalism as a phenomenon/means which “kills in the sprout the development of anything sublime and sacred in human soul”.

The oversight of the destructive power of journalism, Sulejmanpašić believed, is the result of the fact that it follows the calligraphic, and then printed word which was the light pointing to good and beautiful for centuries, even for thousands years. Thus, reputation of the printed word was artificially transferred out of the area of the printed word. A parasite appeared, a means which reversed the course of history. A technical device no longer served only to direct life toward universal values. This means, as Sulejmanpašić wrote, “began to tie life with slave chains to the conditionality of the briefest moments and the most transient materiality, and managed to tie it".

In this context Sulejmanpašić graphically warns that the power of journalism was actually born in sin, and as such usurped the power of printed word for intentions which essentially proved to be the negation of morality and spirit.

The author of this pioneer study is aware of the fact that journalism has become a decisive factor for shaping spiritual and moral life. With its form, Sulejmanpašić recorded, journalism addresses the “animal side of human senses”. It results in sensationalism as an unconscious product of the unity of technical possibilities and journalism which necessarily leads to war (as the “greatest sensation in the journalist sense”).

Thus, instead of the printing technology serving the man and his striving for universal, journalism allows “ethic, religion, science and arts to become means and servants of human current needs”.

Sulejmanpašić also conducted true small-scope research analyzing the content of newspapers Politika, Vreme, Pravae, Novosti and Jutarnji list. The topics and percentages of the topics' presence in the newspapers revealed, to Sulejmanpašić, a trend which fully agreed with his generally set value judgment. Thus, as early as at that time, advertisements, accidents, crime and entertainment accounted for the highest percentages of space in the newspapers.

Sulejmanpašić recognized football and film as “two pets of journalism”. It was clear to him that the basis for this is media owners' desire to increase profit. Certainly, it is achieved by pandering to the “basest passions”, the basest audiences, as well as by producing such passions in such audiences.

It is extremely important to be reminded of Sulejmanpašić's proper relating the influence of media sensationalism on starting the war: “Without destroying the global power of journalism and without reshaping reporting on news in a way required by morality and spirit, there are no means to prevent new war catastrophes”.

In simple terms, journalism dulls its consumer to the extent where they will not even feel the horror of what is approaching them and the horror - as Sulejmanpašić believed and published in 1936 – refers to the future world war.

At present, Sulejmanpašić is more or less forgotten. We put great hopes in people and initiatives that will pull the author of the first theoretical book about media in Southeast Europe out of oblivion and give a worthy place to his warnings.

In brief, he announced too many things to be forgotten. He was the first in many things in these regions and as such he should be respected as an author, theorist, expert in the theory and practice of media.