Here is my commentary of “Mass media in Basque Language”

The Basque language has a reduced but relevant place in the media of the Basque country. It is present in all media: television, radio and press. The example of television is quite meaningful. The main channel broadcasting in Basque is ETB1. Its repartition of the genres it broadcasts is influenced by the fact that a certain number of people living in the Basque country still have a low knowledge of Basque. On the other hand, the diffusion of much more fictions by ETB2, a channel in Castellan, must be a consequence of the fact that standard Basque is not appreciated in fictions, which is a symptom of the still low-advanced and spread standardization of the Basque, as this process started only about 40 years ago. That could also explain why local media in general are so numerous and successful. To finish with television, the success of ETB3, a channel mainly dedicated to children, reminds us that young people are more and more numerous to speak the Basque. We could also take the example of the Basque press, to remind that speaking the Basque was and can still be taken as a sign of education, and means in no way an autistic withdrawal, as the quality and the opening of the main Basque newspaper shows it.

            As for the Basque, the use of Catalan has been prosecuted during the Civil war and the reign of Franco. Books in Catalan have been burnt and media in Catalan have been destroyed. However, it appears clearly that the “institutionalization” of Catalan, for instance through media, was developed before the Civil war, which explains why its process of standardization is more advanced nowadays. As for the Basque, the Catalan is now powered up by the local authorities, and has the same kind of tendencies to find its dynamism through local media, as well as to be reserved to a certain type of domains, such as cultural, academic or political ones.  On the other hand, Catalan seems to have a little advance on the Basque considering its presence on television (for instance with the success of TV3) and on the internet, which must come from its biggest number of speakers (estimated to 9 million, with “only” 2 million for the Basque), but shows also that Catalan speakers have the same tendency as Basque ones to be quite opened and well-connected to the world. Lastly, the Catalan knows the same dynamism as Basque, thanks to an education more and more given in those two minority languages.