– Would you like content verifiers to work with us? It's not like that. media It's the top concentration of hypocrisy. These people could usage a moral backbone, not fact-checking – mocks Iwon, who worked for a large media company. The same, which is celebrated for its titles criticizing the Law and Justice, but has no problem taking money for advertising from companies affiliated with Orlen. Are you going to say that this has always been the case, and there's no specified thing as journalistic independence?
At least in part you are right, and surely in polarized Poland it is not easy to do so. If a writer describes PiS The scandals, she automatically becomes a supporter of Tusk and vice versa. all criticism of the Civic Platform is evidence of conschachts with Kaczyński's right. There's nothing in between. Therefore, the discussion of journalistic freedom by all the characters of this book is bloomed with laughter, due to the fact that the whip holds a political patron and, of course, advertising, frequently entering into agreements with companies of the state Treasury or the entrepreneurship of the opposition. organization coloring is not meaningless here. Well, but possibly the stakes that are at stake. More money is usually offered at the state trough.
In order to clarify this, I will usage the paraphrased by me summary of the lecture by Prof. Jarosław Flis on the condition of Polish media. The media scene according to sociologist's assessment reflects this political and dualistic one, so it resembles American wrestling and looks more dangerous than it actually is. Nevertheless, sometimes individual in this spectacular athletics dies.
You might wonder what the function of journalism plays here. Should it only relate to the gameplay of political forces, exposure the artificiality of the show, or can it stand on 1 side, indicating it as the bright one, and the enemy – absolutely as evil incarnate? There are at least a fewer answers, but most of the journalistic community chooses the last of the roads, which, especially in the last 2 decades, pursues the alleged fresh division into left and right (or, in fact, to right and centre-right, or PiS and PO).
While classically ideological differences – according to Flis – were seen in the approach to the individual and the community, where the left – or simply progressive environments – was focused on communityism in economics and individualism in morals, and the right – in the simplistic of conservatives – in contrast, present in mainstream, supporters of expanding freedom in both the economy and morality with the adversaries of communityality (mostly resulting from belonging to the nation) clash with each another in both cases.
As a result, in 1 corner of the ringing are those who are well educated, alternatively wealthy and self-sufficient, and in the another – little privileged, thus incapable to keep up with improvement and needing state care in both economical and identity areas.
Of course there's class tension. How does this affect the state of the media? The overwhelming majority of them, as well as advertisers, represents in Poland alleged advanced parties, which want more freedom, little community in all aspects. They have a problem with the pits referred to as a pitiful “dark” that brings to power populists leading to authoritarianism and murderism (yes, it is the PiS, utilizing a increasing sense of harm to the lower social strata and a desire to play back for them).
In specified a landscape, first of all, there is no area for social sensitivities and knowing of the position and problems of people with low cultural and economical capital, including the increasing within the journalistic community of the precarriage, which usually only has the first group of resources. Secondly, nuances are difficult. Although it is not that the communicative of threats on 1 side or the another side has no basis, it is becoming problematic, due to the fact that yet it comes down to the constatus that depending on who has power and voice, homeland or democracy will fall. Flis utilized the metaphor of hard and soft eggs in characterization dependent on this belief of discourse.
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If the superiority of any over others portrayed a media narrative, it would turn out that in the game there are only charred eggs versus natural eggs, which has nothing to do with reality. However, there are any journalists and journalists who see shades of grey in this black and white palette. In a word: they complicate the simplified communication to the limits.
What do you do with them? He throws in a bag of symmetrical pests, or cryptographers of an enemy camp besides called frequently useful PiS or PO idiots, prairie or libs/levacy. "You're not sitting on the barricade, but you're frequently peeing on our website" – he was expected to read about his effort to nuance the message as a commentator of public life Prof. Flis.
However, media workers are not stupid, and they know that in this business individual is always stepping on their heels. I mean, not someone, but very circumstantial politicians and businessmen. Yes, there are no shortages of voices in the media that violently uncover this sad dependence. any hazard their careers that way. Others enjoy their years of position and privilege.
Dariusz Rosiak, respected journalist, reporter and author World State Report published in Radio Three, and then with the support of listeners via the Patronite website, he writes that independency in the profession has always been the same: “to defy temptation to the stronger, influential and more numerous” and to stay under the burden of “three types of pressure: political, commercial and emotional-environmental”. Let's thin over this political one.
Magda, who turned her occupation in a public average into a garbage dump in a portaloza, claims that both economical and labour law issues and political issues on both sides are the same. She thought working for the media serving as a government propaganda tube was bottom. But net portals came to her from the bottom.
– From a large news agency that thought he co-ordinated the country due to the fact that he sympathized with power, I went to a portaloose created by a man praying to Donald Tusk. It's hard to tell where it got worse. In my first job, I was challenged consecutive from the morons, in my second job, by a sophisticated mobbing. I'm presently unemployed and depressed. I hear there's a crisis going on in large media, and journalists are being released in groups, full departments. Could it get worse? Yes, due to the fact that I inactive hope to find a way to make a career in this profession, and the creeps that I tell you about it – he tells me about my question about journalistic objectivity and he knocks himself on the forehead.
However, let us leave the discussion about whether a writer can have and present his views, who is simply a partyist and who is not, especially since media-known individuals invitation politicians to their birthday organization or boast on Twitter about drinking vodka with them. Rather, let us look at how political convictions and sympathy can translate into the functioning of the editorial board.
– First, I had 2 capital plots: waste management and a zoo. Oh, my God. How much do you fuck with lions and shit? In my case, about a year and a half. In general, it was ass-hours, but it was exhausting due to the fact that I wanted to write, and I hatred small more than doing nothing or feeling like I'm wasting my time on stupidity and going intellectually. Then I heard that I'm lazy and I can't do anything, and my occupation is to satisfy the authoritative political line. The chief told me to keep calling the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport and ask what Trzaskowski was doing wrong.
Another time, she was to look in Grochów, 1 of Warsaw's districts, something called green waste, or, for example, lying old leaves. This time it was the neighborhoods who were grabbing their heads erstwhile Magda asked them about the alleged negligence of the president of the capital. She even left work early erstwhile to find out what was in the pea dumpsters.
– I know how it sounds, but I was desperate. I thought I was missing something, that these leaves truly are there – I admit with shame.
It's evening, Magda and I are ordering coffee, due to the fact that we never made it to the final of her professional peripety. In the restaurant we visit, we stay until the staff starts washing the floor. Then we stand long before entering the subway, although the weather is as disgusting as the propaganda that was ordered to movie my caller. I compose this passage due to the fact that according to 1 of the writing schools, reports of specified tastes and genre scenes are expected to add value to the text. So be it – coffee we drank black. All right, oatmeal milk.
Magda peculiarly misremembers the pandemic period, which was treated in her editorial office as a conspiracy and thus affected the safety of journalists. The vice-president of the state news agency, in which she developed neurosis, for months after the outbreak of the Wuhan virus expansion, was a coronasseptic.
- And an anti-strain. He said the covid was a fabricated case. You should've written thousands of news about the pandemic so that they'd yet know he was wrong. The editor-in-chief had a problem sending us to distant mode during the top wave of infections. "The editorial doesn't exist, it doesn't make sense erstwhile people work from home," he claimed, despite the fact that you might as well tap on the toilet. But no, it's the nature of the job. What kind of fucking character? Fuck each another and blow the government? After all, the on-call editorial gag was the 1 about Radosław Foglu. We called him our correspondent from Nowogrodzka, with whom we ran a hotline – my interviewer notes and adds:
– erstwhile I interviewed experts who exposed the Pegasus affair, I was struck off due to the fact that he was hitting the government. We were only publishing peans, and the helmet had a clean effect on our bosses, though it happened that Novogrodzka besides crap on our bosses. Then they turned on us anyway. Sometimes, of course, the primaries took in any cool and enthusiastically government-oriented dung beetle, but mostly we all drowned in crap and bullshit. I quit it so I could later go to the copy-paste service. In my first occupation I fucked up in Trzaskowski, in my second occupation – in Kaczora – he adds.
The beginnings in Magda's portaloza are mentioned as a time of reflection and checking who they are dealing with. But not truly much time was spent on any science. This is confirmed by another portal staff who say that the training usually involves the operation of a content management strategy alternatively than the survey of a journalism workshop.
– Why? This was like leaving a kid with a knife in the woods: “Oh, let’s see if he can handle it, whether he finds himself here or catches a vibe?” And the vibe was a combination of autofellatio (because they were dripping with awesomeness) with making cane PO. They thought they were forming an elite in controversies for these pathetic pigs. They were making dinners, smoking sushi, as if 2002 had never passed, watching TVN together, and commenting: "Ah this stupid Kaczyński, oh this wonderful Tusk". This is where propaganda worked the other way, where opposition politicians had their blogs. mostly intellectual grandparents and broads. I feel sick erstwhile I think about it: the saviors of Poland, who will defend us from the ruling class. Generally, specified an atmosphere as on the cover of “Newsweek” with Tusk on a white horse. Describe Giertych's accomplishments as the leader of the opposition, spreading his "great" tweets about defending democracy, flaunting rudeness, burrness and simplicity. But for my editorial staff they were “strong words”, “celebratory ripost”, “to the point”. So what if he was erstwhile a haunted right-wing Catholic, he “repented.”
Igor, a erstwhile worker of the online service of Polish Radio, tells that experts from the Catholic University of Lublin and the Institute of Legal Culture of Ordo Iuris were invited to discuss abortion, which cannot be described as “religious fundamentalists paid by the Kremlin”.
– You knew what they were going to say, and that was the point. Public media have besides developed a mechanics to reverse all attack that has been directed at the government. If individual is talking about PiS that they violated the abortion compromise, then Lichock is about to fly with the text, that the left has opened a conflict over abortion and that for the opposition it is simply a substitute subject, although it is rather the opposite. Government and Law and Justice do it. About women's strikes we had to compose that these “probably women sponsored by someone” spread covid. We besides exaggerated incidents, specified as writing slogans on the walls of churches, which in the eyes of Polish Radio grew to the rank of plague or something notorious. I went to protests myself. I did not experience any aggression from the demonstrators there, but then I went to work and had to compose that there were “Dantean scenes”.
A writer was told to call Euro MPs of the Law and pretend to be a BBC writer to see if they could talk English.
Pauli was asked a subject about people working on junk contracts.– I was going to compose an outraged text about them fucking over-working in a pandemic. Have I mentioned that I did not have an employment contract myself? – he asks rhetorically.
Igora from the paragraphs above, who was hired on the garbage truck in Polish Radio, was besides recommended to compose about journalists from “Electoral”.
Daria, in the media for 30 years, says that TVP Info was similar: – They do not sign a contract with you. You get a “work” from alleged laborers, i.e. permanent workers conducting mini-business activities, specified as assemblers or operators who first take money from TVP and then hook up a group of people on garbage trucks and pay them scraps. As a result, tv has clean hands and says that unlike the remainder of the media (oppositional) respects its employees, it has values. What values? Passing the law? Misleading the public?
Matthew, who worked in the biggest Polish tabloids, laughs that the writer is present “the most unnecessary profession ever”. erstwhile he went from “Faktu” to competition, he did not get an employment contract and thus insurance. There was a pandemic, so he trembled all time individual next to him sneezed. Although most of the editorial board worked from home and the editorial board wrote about the request to keep social distance, his fresh employer required to stand in the office.
– I remember riding an almost empty bus with passengers that could be counted on the fingers of 1 hand and that I looked at with fear not to say hatred if 1 of them would be a host of the virus. But that wasn't the worst part. My employer has always been arranged with almost all political party, but most of all with the 1 who just ruled. I assumed that since I already came to the media, it would be worth looking at power (any: present PiS, next day PO, next week PSL. That's what it looks like in this playhole) on your hands. The head of my department, however, had almost all subject I brought. For example, the list of prohibited people included a strike by LOT employees or scams in state companies, even though the opposition representatives are officially publishing there. It was like digging with a horse, he says.
So, what's it like with the anti-government media? Can't you trust them too? Economist Łukasz Komuda has no good news for you: “The ideas – despite what their followers like to preach, including journalists with the right and naive at the same time the stubbornness of maniacs defending alleged free media in Poland – are a good gold wrapper coining virtually everything. If this can be achieved by fighting an oppressive state – that's good. But for image advertising or large campaigns conducted by media houses, alternatively different content fits.” This – says Komuda – killed the ethical-control dimension of journalism.
The deficiency of this – in areas besides outside the political stricte – is signaled by the medical expert, Dr hab. Jacek Wasilewski:
– A fashion writer will have no motivation to study trends from the runs and at the same time compose about how the climate is affected by the fashion manufacture due to the fact that he is addicted to advertising from the latter. In fact, today, activists take over as part of critical journalism, formerly in the ethos of the profession.
Nina, an ex-journalist of the portal on professional aspirations, illustrates this conclusion with a akin example:
– I've been working with a girl who's curious in environmental discipline who's anti-capitalistic about what she's doing. She created a large critical material about Shein, after which she learned that the advertising department had signed with them. Vogue is not even hidden from the fact that it takes money from the same brand – exploiting people and a powerful environment – and creates a pean in his honour, under which the name is signed by a individual rather respected in the profession. We can besides compose about Ukraine, but then we discover that our corp advertises companies that finance war. So erstwhile I perceive to the statements of elder editors who say that erstwhile journalism was different, I parskam due to the fact that they were the ones who created the media we work in today.
– You think there's an antidote for this?
– I don't know. There's no money for it. The money, Mr. journalist, is for the board and advertiser, the money is on a non-dirty business and a politically convenient article sponsored, not a reportage or investigative journalism – says my interviewer, who ran distant from the corp to a niche cultural portal and does not hide amusement, though she herself says it is simply a laughter through tears and that many people like this model just fits. The ideals are – according to her – a saddening number of conformists.
– In practice, it looks like everything else. If the money is taught by X, which has suspicious ties to China, then in an interview with a typical or in a text about their products or technologies you just don't mention it – a writer with a technological cut tells me. It's the same in politics.
Modern media, depending on the kind of funding, can be divided into 3 separate groups, but it is impossible to overlook their common denominator – systematically imposed on employees and workers of exploitation and/or car exploitation, which have many names. They are cultivated in the name of diverse objectives: spreading government propaganda in state media, generating sales in commercial media and pursuing crucial social ideas, and patching holes created by the state and private enterprises erstwhile it comes to NGOs. As a result, journalism ceases to be a socially useful profession, which inspires assurance in recipients and sustains the engagement of creators.
On the 1 hand, there is the defence of the media, in which there is no freedom. On the another hand, the urge to repolonize the media. The second is not intended to reconstruct journalism as an information and control tool, but at 1 point it is in line with reality – erstwhile it indicates that abroad companies are the main owners in the industry, which brings any drawbacks.
Jakub Sawulski, describing the full economy, specifically mentions 2 in this model:
"(...) the owners of companies investing in Poland collect interest on this capital. In another words, any of the profits achieved by abroad companies are reinvested in our country, but any come from our country, for example in the form of dividends for the owners of capital. Secondly, there is simply a hazard that in the adopted model of improvement of the Polish economy it will be hard to leave the function of a supplier. And the supplier usually earns little than the 1 he works for.”
Earnings are the best tool of discipline, but besides maintaining a vertical power arrangement in editorial offices and destroying solidarity. Especially between private employees and middle-level managers. And if we presume that journalism is the 4th power, the public media should be depoliticised and commercially made public. But for many it is simply a dream of a beheaded head.
**
Book fragment It's bullshit. Why are Polish media working so badly? which appeared in the Publishing home of Political Critics.
