Are the Polish Media Objective about Politics and Politicians?

Polish journalists are seldom objective about anything and they make no exception for politics and politicians. Of course there is objective, professional journalism but the best places to seek it are the pages of Rzeczpospolita (the semi official economics based paper) and specialist and technical publications. Television journalism is much the same. Sadly this is not specific to Poland. The press lack of objectivity is generally combined with a very partisan antipathy toward any person, not having a university degree or group composed of such persons.

Polish journalism can also be regarded as crisis journalism. This is because Poles have a tendency to create a crisis where there is none, but among journalists this is exaggerated and constant. The reasons for this type of writing are numerous, but principally: Polish life from 1939 has been a succession of catastrophes and this is not yet over; the serious press, except for Rzeczpospolita, is ever closer to the gutter press; and then there is the educational caste group.

Poles have a somewhat Latin temperament, if there is a crisis – they bestir themselves, when there is no crisis, they do nothing to prevent the next one. In such a situation journalists are forced to magnify trivia and personalise issues in order to sell newspapers. It is said that in war – truth is the first casualty, in a circulation war – objective issue based journalism is discarded. Poland has been governed since 1989 by a bewildering kaleidoscope of party groupings, most of which are at least half based on the Soviet-serving Communists. These people and their parents created a culture where educational qualifications are paramount and actual competence is a secondary consideration. As this idea is difficult to defend, the educated caste defends it all the more desperately, for their own well-being and self-esteem depends upon it. Journalists seem to regard themselves as being the most intellectual and most highly educated of all and write accordingly. This leads to a blatant prejudice in favour of the two self-styled educated groupings and venomous denunciations of those regarded as illiterate and uncouth.

It is apparent that many journalists are reluctant to castigate a judge or prosecutor or educated parliamentarian for felony or embezzling public funds. Heaven help the offender if he is a politician of the people without a degree to flaunt, the press will hound him day and night for weeks.

Lamentably there is a marked lack of integrity in foreign and Polish politics, so the press is constantly distracted from the fundamental issues. Normal occurrences such as the annual procedure of the school leavers’ final exams are always reported like the battle of Stalingrad. It is the same with the weather; if the temperature dips a couple of degrees there are cries of a great ice age.

As a nation of newspaper buyers we have a choice, to buy or not. However this dilemma is similar to that of the voter in a democracy. Does one vote for the party that is less corrupt and a little more competent than the others? Experience shows that one should because the fewer the voters the worse the politicians. Yet, is it reasonable to expect everyone to read about economic trends and new legislation?

Achilles Węgorz

Polish media are not much different from media of other countries. If they feature news from abroad, they just translate them from other sources. Some media do it more, others less correctly ("times is money," even with the cost of accuracy).

This seems to be a sad heritage of Eastern-Central-Europe that we can't just simply shake off. For example, the situation is much the same in Hungary (though I'd say it's worse). The media are almost totally under the control of the post-Communists. Instead of the late Soviet Union, they now serve the European Union. Not to mention the conquest of the Arabic countries by the US and Israel (soldiers were sent to fight in Afghanistan and Irak etc.). The current government have the media under control in nearly 100%. They try to oppress everything that does not speak in their favour. Journalists and news-channels are not in any way objective.
I doubt that we could ever shake off this ominous heritage in Eastern-Europe.

radio maria, may we say more....