Gazeta-gate?
Even in a country of which it has been said "the exceptional is more often than not to be taken as normal" the alleged attempt to extract a bribe from the editor of the country's best-known newspaper - and moreover one who commands an honourable niche in the anticommunist pantheon - the Gazeta Wyborcza Affair is a rum tale by any standards. An impresario of modest repute is said to have visited the sainted Adam Michnik with a proposition to deliver adjustments in the law favourable to the ambitions of the Agora group in broadcasting, in return for a consideration of precisely $17.5 million. It is said the offer was heavily larded with hints that the bounty would end up for the benefit of the SLD, the principal partner in the government coalition. Mr. Michnik tape-recorded the encounter, and aside from an interlude in which he entertained the Prime Minister with a private hearing, he tucked it back in the office safe for almost half a year until the Copenhagen Summit had been safely put to bed, "for fear of putting the country in a bad light."
In the United States, the journalistic fraternity would immediately suspect a "sting," with the intention of serving harm upon one or more of the parties involved, Gazeta Wyborcza and its editor on the one hand, and the SLD and the Prime Minister on the other. One may safely describe the temperature between them as tepid, at the fairest of times,. But the oddest thing is why anyone in possession of merely average critical faculties should believe that the skeletons would remain firmly locked in the cupboard, that Michnik would offer a polite "thanks, but no thanks," suppress his deepest journalistic instincts, not to say his personal morality, and say no more? Or was it really thought he would play along? Then, if there is even a shred of substance to support the allegations so far made, is there really anyone in the administration who would license a third party to undertake a mission fraught with such obvious risk from the outset? Agora has long since chosen at any event to pursue its dispute with the radio and television regulators by a rather more conventional avenue - in the courts.
The public prosecutor has now been instructed to get to the bottom of the business. The professionally cynical might suspect the hand of a third party, and in the end the affair may turn out to possess little more substance than seasonal entertainment, known in those countries which specialise in such cultural diversions as a "pantomime." Yet, the essence of pantomime is that the spectacle always contains a scene in which a villain is apparent to the audience but invisible to the participants on the stage: hence the ritual chant from the auditorium: "He's behind you!" Perhaps this crucial element of farce is yet to emerge.
Collateral damage is being inflicted in all directions. The nation, which has already taken a heavy pounding on the grounds of tolerating endemic corruption at all levels of society, now has another scandal, moreover one which is grand enough to command international attention. It touches the government itself, the office of the Prime Minister, and a newspaper which has become a national institution and is a rib taken from another - Solidarnoć.
The story has highlighted yet again, and perhaps also to an extent obscured, an essential debate about the direction of broadcasting policy in this country, which the Constitutional Tribunal, in a separate judgement concerning another party, has already judged as unconstitutional in important respects.
Even as what may become known as Gazeta-gate thundered in the headlines, it served to distract attention from the probable appointment of more sympathisers of the SLD to the governing council of the radio and television regulating body. Here is the real story. The tenure of these placements, six years (two years longer than the presidential mandate) is such as to permit a government to exercise "life after death" news control, even when dismissed from office. The temptation - for any government - to stack them with its own supporters is irresistible. And indeed, while the desire of the politicians to act as a filter between the media and the public is by no means confined to this country, its expression here has acquired distinctly undemocratic overtones. Agora suspects that as the largest media grouping, it is being frustrated from expanding into the spoken word. The authorities insist they are merely seeking to confine monopolies. The independent broadcasters, competitors though they are, can all agree in one respect: there is excessive official meddling with the airwaves, and proposed legislation represents yet another unwarranted interference.
All pantomimes eventually come to an end: what will then be needed is a sober reassessment of policy over broadcasting and the eviction of blatantly political commissars from its affairs. Should that be the eventual outcome, this bizarre interlude may have unintentionally served a purpose.
In the United States, the journalistic fraternity would immediately suspect a "sting," with the intention of serving harm upon one or more of the parties involved, Gazeta Wyborcza and its editor on the one hand, and the SLD and the Prime Minister on the other. One may safely describe the temperature between them as tepid, at the fairest of times,. But the oddest thing is why anyone in possession of merely average critical faculties should believe that the skeletons would remain firmly locked in the cupboard, that Michnik would offer a polite "thanks, but no thanks," suppress his deepest journalistic instincts, not to say his personal morality, and say no more? Or was it really thought he would play along? Then, if there is even a shred of substance to support the allegations so far made, is there really anyone in the administration who would license a third party to undertake a mission fraught with such obvious risk from the outset? Agora has long since chosen at any event to pursue its dispute with the radio and television regulators by a rather more conventional avenue - in the courts.
The public prosecutor has now been instructed to get to the bottom of the business. The professionally cynical might suspect the hand of a third party, and in the end the affair may turn out to possess little more substance than seasonal entertainment, known in those countries which specialise in such cultural diversions as a "pantomime." Yet, the essence of pantomime is that the spectacle always contains a scene in which a villain is apparent to the audience but invisible to the participants on the stage: hence the ritual chant from the auditorium: "He's behind you!" Perhaps this crucial element of farce is yet to emerge.
Collateral damage is being inflicted in all directions. The nation, which has already taken a heavy pounding on the grounds of tolerating endemic corruption at all levels of society, now has another scandal, moreover one which is grand enough to command international attention. It touches the government itself, the office of the Prime Minister, and a newspaper which has become a national institution and is a rib taken from another - Solidarnoć.
The story has highlighted yet again, and perhaps also to an extent obscured, an essential debate about the direction of broadcasting policy in this country, which the Constitutional Tribunal, in a separate judgement concerning another party, has already judged as unconstitutional in important respects.
Even as what may become known as Gazeta-gate thundered in the headlines, it served to distract attention from the probable appointment of more sympathisers of the SLD to the governing council of the radio and television regulating body. Here is the real story. The tenure of these placements, six years (two years longer than the presidential mandate) is such as to permit a government to exercise "life after death" news control, even when dismissed from office. The temptation - for any government - to stack them with its own supporters is irresistible. And indeed, while the desire of the politicians to act as a filter between the media and the public is by no means confined to this country, its expression here has acquired distinctly undemocratic overtones. Agora suspects that as the largest media grouping, it is being frustrated from expanding into the spoken word. The authorities insist they are merely seeking to confine monopolies. The independent broadcasters, competitors though they are, can all agree in one respect: there is excessive official meddling with the airwaves, and proposed legislation represents yet another unwarranted interference.
All pantomimes eventually come to an end: what will then be needed is a sober reassessment of policy over broadcasting and the eviction of blatantly political commissars from its affairs. Should that be the eventual outcome, this bizarre interlude may have unintentionally served a purpose.
