Politics versus the media in Poland: A game without rules

Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics

Volumn 12, Issue 4, 1996, Pages 24-41

  Goban Klas, Tomasz ^a  

^a JAGIELLONIAN UNIVERSITY   (Poland)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0040091654     PISSN: 13523279     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13523279608415321     Document Type: Article

References (26)

1. Journal of Communication, Vol.45, No.4 (Autumn 1995), pp.125-39.
2. 'We are in tune with social attitudes', the editor explained: quoted from an article concerning the Polish press: 'Free at Last', Newsweek, 10 June 1991, p.21.
3. The Bill of the Law on Radio and Television, 13 September 1991', Przekazy i Opinie, Nos.3-4 (1991), pp.62-73.
4. This stance was obviously influenced by church demands. The bishops asked rhetorically: 'Just who are parliamentary deputies representing when, in a country with a decisive majority of Christians, they reject a motion to respect the Christian value system in the mass media?': see Slowo Powszechne, 19 Oct. 1992, p.1.
5. The Law on Broadcasting, 19 Oct. 1991, unpublished.
6. The same stalemate occurred in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Romania.
7. Danuta Mastalska, 'Polska wieza Babel', Niedziela, 21 Jan. 1993, p.7.
8. Gazeta Wyborcza, 29 Jan. 1993, p.1.
9. According to estimates by the Association of Journalists of the Republic of Poland.
10. Snopkiewicz published a book about his editorship, a very revealing depiction of the internal pressures in post-communist television: Dziennik Telewizyjny (Warsaw: BWG, 1991).
11. Gazeta Wyborcza, 12 Feb. 1992, p.2.
12. In theory, the Polish journalists' code of ethics is among the oldest in Europe, having been approved as early as 1916; however, it never had a chance to be implemented.
13. A similar, probably even worse, situation exists in other former communist countries. As Jim Podesta, an American who opened a short-lived school of journalism for 20 students in Bucharest, remarked bitterly: 'In Romania today no one understands the role of an independent, critical press. Essentially there is no journalism here. Opinion is news. Facts are dispensable': cited in Kevin Devlin, 'Postrevolutionary Ferment in the East European Media', Radio Free Europe Report on Eastern Europe, 13 July 1990, p.51.
14. Public opinion polls unanimously point out that the profession of journalist falls near the low end of the prestige scale, well below other intellectual professionals such as professors, teachers and doctors.
15. Norman Davies, God's Playground: A History of Poland, Vol 1 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981), p.225.
16. Vincent C. Chrypinski, 'Church and Nationality in Postwar Poland', in Pedro Ramet (ed.) Religion and Nationalism in Soviet and East European Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1984), p.123.
17. The legal basis is the Law on State and Church Relations approved by the communist government and parliament on 17 May 1989.
18. Gazeta Wyborcza 21 June 1991, p.17.
19. Ibid., 14 Sept. 1991, p.14.
20. The New York Times, 15 Sept. 1991, p.6, concluded that The Polish Roman Catholic Church lashed out at the press for what it calls distortion and "blasphemous utterances".
21. Prepared in May 1992; unpublished document, p.9.
22. This thesis was suggested by Rudolf Tökés, Opposition in Eastern Europe (London: Macmillan, 1979), pp.7-8.
23. See one such letter from the Association for Humanism and Independent Ethics, Gazeta Wyborcza, 12 March 1992, p.17.
24. Pál Tamás, 'Nationalism and Liberalism in the New Media Elites', unpublished paper, 1992.
25. WV, 30 April 1995.
26. Paolo Mancini, 'The Public Sphere and the Use of the News in a "Coalition" System of Government', in P. Dahlgreen (ed.), Communication and Citizenship (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 137-56.