Polish Media System in a Comparative Perspective

Thus, in the case of the American system, we can talk about a minimal political input and considerable economic influence on the media. In contrast to the USA, in Europe, they had an etatistic character. State media were monopolist and, since market laws were not working, or their reach was strongly limited, politics played a decisive role in the process of shaping the media system. The situation first began to change in the 1980s with the deregulation and privatization of the media in European Union member states. During the following thirty years, a new quality was formed in these states – the dual model, which seriously endangered the public media. The press of political parties has been depoliticized step by step, journalism has become commercialized, tabloidized, globalized, and unprofessional. Even where the state jealously protected the position of public media as national values (e.g., Scandinavia, Austria), deep systemic changes took place, moving them toward the liberal model. How does Central Europe and Poland present themselves against this background?

The fall of the Soviet bloc coincided with a global audio-visual revolution and a progressive privatization of media in Western Europe. These two global processes, technological and economic, were bound to influence the formation of young democratic media systems developing on the ashes of communism. Now, almost thirty years later, we need to ask: how much of `the old` and how much of `the new` is present in contemporary solutions? Have the old, undemocratic practices become history, or are they still present? And if they are, then in what form? In what direction is the Polish media system heading? Is it prone to globalization and commercialization with all their consequences? Do politicians still control the media and play key roles, like in the old regimes? How do journalists feel about and react to this reality? And the audience? What part is played by Catholic institutions and organizations linked to the media? The last question has particular significance for the considerations on the media system in Poland, especially after 2015.

This work is not about the whole, complex media system (Dobek-Ostrowska, 2007:116; Dobek-Ostrowska, 2012:49–50; Dobek-Ostrowska, 2015c:15–16), but its fragment – the relationship between the core of the system – the mass media on the primary market, and the political actors present on the secondary market (Fig. I.1). I am particularly interested in the relationship between the mass media and the political parties, which constitutes the foundations of every democratic political system, in which the authorities are chosen in regularly-held elections. The analysis of these interactions is conducted on two levels: from the point of view of the participants on the political scene i.e., politicians, parties, party leaders; and the media itself, that is owners, publishers, journalists, and media workers. In the first case, I pose the question how much media is present in politics? I focus on media strategies (or lack thereof) of political actors, the way they perceive the media, and their expectations on them. In other words, I consider what politicians in practice do or would like to do with the media. The focal point of the second analytical plane is the media content devoted to politics, that is, publicizing politics in the media. This is the best way to assess the political engagement of journalists, publishers, or owners; the distance from the world of current political events. Thus, I ask how much politics is present in the media? This approach, naturally, leads to Hallin and Mancini’s two-dimensional media system – political parallelism, which allows us to explain the first analytical level (what do politicians do with the media?) as well as journalistic professionalism, which I see as the leading instrument on the second level (what do the media do with politics?) I leave the two remaining dimensions of Hallin and Mancini’s media system, i.e., the development of the mass media and the importance of the state, outside the mainstream of my analysis. I refer to these aspects occasionally, to exemplify a discussed process or a specific situation.

The scope of the work includes an analysis of journalistic professionalism and culture, which, in turn, are determined by the attitude of the media and of journalists toward politics, politicians, and political parties. This is reflected in the intensity of the mediatization process and the quality of publicizing politics in the main, stable countrywide media, such as the two newspapers (the leftist Gazeta Wyborcza and the conservative Rzeczpospolita), the four opinion weeklies (Polityka, Wprost, Newsweek, Gazeta Polska), the three main television broadcasters (TVP public broadcaster, and private -TVN and TV Polsat) and the three radio broadcasters (the privately-owned RMF FM and Radio ZET, and the public Polish Radio). It has to be mentioned that, after 2015, the importance of Catholic media has considerably grown (with Radio Maryja and TV Trwam in particular) due to a much higher interest and strengthening of relations with the governing party — Law and Justice.

Literature base

This study places itself in the field of studies on political communication, which emerged at the turn of the1950s and the 1960s on the edge of political science and communication studies. It is, therefore, no coincidence that so many experts in the field come from political science. In the last fifty years a vast amount scientific literature, as well as numerous key concepts and theories were created. Researchers have established new analytic methods during their more and more frequent participation in international projects. Particular attention should be paid to the achievements of American, German, Scandinavian, and British scholars who are leaders of this sub-discipline.