Read their lips

   One of the greatest tasks for serious journalists is finding and writing the right and most accurate words. That should be equally important for politicians. But the current presidential campaign in Poland seems to prove otherwise. On the one hand, politicians don't seem to care about the words they use when they speak to their voters. After all, their electoral teams can always release a statement correcting blunders. On the other hand, the media and especially public broadcasters, which are accused of promoting politicians of only one political affiliation – and not without reason – rarely investigate even the gravest blunders.

   Last week, when justifying his decision to veto the enfranchisement bill, the incumbent President Aleksander Kwasniewski said he had worked hard and paid dearly for his flat in Warsaw, which is why he is against giving things away for free. Marian Krzaklewski's electoral team responded by calling Kwasniewski a liar, and drew attention to something most Varsovians should remember: namely, that the flat in question is situated in a district which, in the 1980s and 1990s, used to be inhabited by the so-called nomenklatura. At a time when an average citizen had to wait for his flat for years, Communist party aparatchiks – and let's not forget Kwasniewski was one of them – used to get theirs at special rates and without delay. The whole episode was reduced down to just a trick used by one electoral campaign about a popular competitor, and the media did nothing to help voters to draw their own conclusions. The issue wasn't investigated and simply ceased to exist.

   So instead of information and issues, viewers get shots of candidates and their spouses at various cultural events. Worse still, when the media has time to be painstaking about politicans and their words, it doesn't bother. One example was the enfranchisement coverage, which ostensibly forgot to feature any of the controversial bill's authors. There has so far only been one presidential candidate who had the guts to attack the media's indolence and unprofessionalism. Ironically, this turned out to be Janusz Korwin-Mikke. Patronized by those covering his campaign, he won a court case against a public broadcaster that distorted his words during a news program on the presidential race.

   You could say that one shouldn't expect too much information from television, as it's only a collection of flickering images anyway. Unfortunately, Poles read less than ever and seem to acquire all their knowledge about the contemporary world from the boob tube. And together with radio and the press, television fosters an aura of inevitability around the results of the election by releasing public opinion surveys, which predict the sure defeat of all but Kwasniewski. It may be a truism, but democracy is about making up one's own mind. But will Polish voters be given the chance to do so?