Press association to monitor freedom of the press in Poland

The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) announced on Friday that it had set up a two-member committee to monitor freedom of the press in Poland, a country in which, "the government uses courts to attack an independent daily and make it controlled by the state." The affair is the result of numerous court proceedings against publisher Presspublica, owner of Rzeczpospolita. One of the two members of the committee, Egbert Dommering, calls it "an attempt to take control over newspaper content by the governing political majority." The whole issue also caused a number of protests from media representatives and politicians. The Presspublica affair was included in a report received by the European Council at the end of January in which Poland was placed next to countries like Azerbaijan, Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, accused of legal attacks on the media. (www.mediarun.pl) M.M.