Discourse Analysis also allows to follow and analyse certain patterns of justification and legitimation discourses. In Austria, for example, starting with the so-called “Waldheim- Affair” 1986 (Wodak et al. 1990, Gruber 1991, Mitten 1992), the analysis of the Austrian print media ( all national newspapers and weeklies, contrasted with the NYT) exposed a distortion of certain events, speeches and claims made by the anti-Waldheim camp. A clear list of strategies evolved which we were able to detect during the media reporting 2000 again, during the time of the so-called “sanctions” against the Austrian government by the 14 other member states of the European Union. To name just a few of the characteristics: first, a conspiracy is established; secondly, scapegoats are sought and found; thirdly, certain accusations are denied; fourthly, other accusations are mitigated; fifthly, a counter-attack is constructed; sixthly, a perpetrator-victim reversal is brought about; etc. During the discourse about the “sanctions”, the Austrian media played an immense role in constructing a victim role of Austria and a turn to chauvinistic discourses. The “we”/”they” dichotomy became extremely sharp and expressed.

One has to state, moreover, that the Austrian media are highly tied together, financially. They are dominated by the Neue Kronenzeitung, a tabloid, which is the world-wide most widely read newspaper in relationship to population numbers. This newspaper has an immense impact on public belief systems and also on voting behaviour. Most politicians try to be on good terms with this newspaper which, there fore, has a lot of power in agenda setting and in the reproduction of prejudices. The ORF, the Austrian broadcasting company, is still state-owned; thus, interventions by political parties and by the government have always been the case and visible. However, since the 4th of February 2000, and the instalment of the new coalition government, the interventions by the governing parties have become significantly more; censorship is also enacted, certain names are not to be put in specific contexts (see Wodak and reply by Tenner, Falter February 2000), and journalists are being harassed. The most visible act of intervention took place in a weekly talk show Sunday evening (September 2000), when the party leader of the Freedom Party in parliament, Westenthaler, phoned into the show several times, accusing and contradicting the invited guests, and this was sponatenously reported during the talk show. Only one invited guest, a German correspondent from the Süd Deutsche Zeitung, commented on this very severe case of intervention; all other participants seem to have accepted this already because of the constant pressure. About a month after the instalment of the new government, the ORF decided to host a very big talk show, “Das Österreich Gespräch”, which enacted and enforced the claimed and constructed victim status of Austria. Almost the whole government was present, but only one speaker of the opposition parties. Analysing the discourse of this staged debate made clear how many invited guests which had other opinions were discriminated against.

Already in the 1970`s and nowadays, the analysis of newspapers, specifically of the tabloids, but also of more standard newspapers, shows that racist and anti-Semitic utterances and opinions are conveyed (Marin 2000; Wodak et al. 1984; Matouschek et al. 1995). Racism is more explicit whereas anti-Semitism is more coded. The various discursive constructions of discriminating practices were sampled and also confronted with other genres in varying public spaces (Reisigl and Wodak 2001). Thus, it was possible to show that in anonymous contexts, explicit racist slandering is possible, whereas in official contexts and also in the media, the typical stereotypes and topoi of criminality, deviance and threat are repeated. Antisemitic stereotypes still are mostly the same as in the NS period or before the NS period (“the rich Jews”, “murderers of Christ” etc.), except that new stereotypes were found: “The Jews were able to emigrate anyway, and have survived and are rich”; “The Jews claiming restitution are not the victims” etc. In several expert opinions, discourse analytical tools were used to depict such racist and anti-Semitic patterns in some columns and reports of the Neue Kronenzeitung (Gruber and Wodak 1992).

Austria does not have anti-discrimination guidelines for the media. Discussions in various settings usually end in very absurd remarks about political correctness and in provocative statements, like one statement in an interview with Stadler, a high politician of the Freedom Party who said that if one would follow such guidelines, then one could also not say “good morning” because Hitler had also used such a greeting….The antidiscrimination debate, though certainly viewed as very important by many scholars and also journalists, has not really reached public consciousness. No real negative sanctions exist for uttering discriminating remarks. And, one gets the impression, nowadays, that “anything goes”, and nothing happens afterwards.

On the basis of all our research (see www.oeaw.ac.at/wittgenstein for an overview), we suggest of incorporating findings of discourse analysis into the establishment of guidelines for non-discriminatory practices, following the tradition with guidelines against sexist behaviour (Kargl,Wetschanow and Wodak 1998). Moreover, the financial dependency of the Austrian media should be studied, and one should support a more independent and pluralistic media reporting.