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Shackling the fourth estate

Andrzej Krajewski is president of the Press Freedom Monitoring Center at the Polish Journalists Association.

We will probably never know the real reason for culture minister Waldemar Dabrowski's recent visit to Jerzy Baczynski, the editor of the weekly Polityka. First the talk around town was electrified by the news that Dabrowski tried to stop the magazine's publication of a story about influential businessman Jan Kulczyk, entitled "Jan is the state." Then came the denial that anything of the sort took place. Finally, we learned that the visit did happen, but that the gentlemen discussed a different topic.

The story, which revealed what went on behind the scenes of the greatest privatization transactions in which Kulczyk's assistance was as indispensable as a midwife's, did finally see the light of day. So is it not futile to investigate what the two gentlemen talked about in the English-style office on the fourth floor of the Polityka building in Warsaw 's Ochota district?



I do not think it is, especially now that the Rywingate affair has dispelled some of the clouds that previously covered the dealings of Warsaw 's "society," involving people in the highest places in the worlds of politics, business and media. Thanks to this, it is now clear for at least the moment that in a country where the constitution outlaws censorship, the fourth estate not only remains in very good relations with the other primary three, but also frequently surrenders to their pressures.

It is not only pressure from politicians, but from businesspeople as well. This is the same Polityka that dropped a question about the Rywin affair from an interview with the prime minister, though in that case it was a rival newspaper editor who intervened. Another example, cited by Julia Pitera, the head of Transparency International Poland, is that of the daughter of a well-known personage who was accused of a serious criminal offence. Her father did the rounds and visited all the editors of major newspapers with the result that the story was published just once as a tiny note.

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