Sugar-coating the pill of unpopularity
Chris Wells takes a tenacious trawl through what the world's English-language press is saying about Poland
Reading the US press these days is a stimulating activity in reading between the lines. As the Iraq war has turned out to be not as straightforward as those on Capitol Hill expected, the country's media now has the problem of reporting the ramifications of the Rumsfeld & Wolfowitz "Setting-The-World-On-Fire" Tour (featuring George Bush on vocals) - which was last seen bogged down after only its second round Baghdad, due to problems foreseen by everyone except them.
Obviously, US papers are reluctant, even now, to criticize the present administration openly because they are afraid of not only alienating their readerships (although "informing" might be a better word), but also of falling foul of the debate-stifling crime of being "unpatriotic". This is the one accusation that leaders can always use against their country's press when they know that their arguments don't stand up to scrutiny.
Although there are criticisms of the Iraq war in the US media, it is invariably restricted to individual columnists, whose views are not representative of the paper for which they write. Thus, when a paper wants to report anything remotely negative, it has to be dressed up in a saccharine-sweet coating, which is exactly what The New York Times did this week in an article filed from Warsaw and titled: "Some in Poland have concerns about nation's expanding role in Iraq."
In only the second sentence the author said, and I quote, "...President Bush, who is - far and away - the most popular politician in Poland". Unfortunately, the writer doesn't produce any statistics to support this claim and, to local observers, this kind of outlandish statement would, if anything, be a reflection of the unpopularity of the Miller government.
Nevertheless, having now given his readership the unsubstantiated mental image of 40 million Poles dancing in the streets waving "We love George Bush!" banners, he can move on to the main point of the article. This is that a recent opinion poll showed that 61 percent of Poles are against the deployment of more Polish troops in Iraq.
To make the article more current, the author went to a shopping mall to interview ordinary Poles and drew on quotations from various sources - the most telling of which was from the Director of the Institute for Public Affairs, who said that people don't understand why we (Poland) are interfering in another people's country on another continent. The author acknowledged that the irony was not lost on local commentators; who believe that as a nation occupied for the better part of two centuries, helping to occupy Iraq was a repudiation of Poland's history. The article quoted Zdzisław Nagder, who, writing in Rzeczpospolita, argued that Poland is now seen as a paid subcontractor of the occupiers.
The article carried a quotation from an older married couple who had spent time teaching in Iraq in the 60s and 70s. The woman, Lidia Dmovska, struck a chord when she said that she wondered if America could handle the occupation and if it could solve the current problems. In essence, the author was making the point that, although the Iraq war is an issue, the US remains generally popular in Poland - which is probably not far from the truth. The most disappointing aspect is that it all had to be dressed up for New Yorkers in easy-to-digest pro-Bush patriotism.
In unscientific research, the American friends of this writer confirm that recently, their media has been positively critical, compared to before the war and this can be validated by a mere cursory glance at US newspapers' archives
The objective of journalism in any free country is to stimulate an open and honest debate of the issues, without which people cannot possibly be sufficiently informed to make reasoned decisions. Unfortunately, it appears that the media in the world's greatest democracy still has some way to go to rediscover the reason for their existence.
