CONSERVATIVE

looks like”. Sikorski had been doing just this. In fact, it
had all been well documented in the preceding days in a
major press platform (Wprost) known for its investigative
reporting, particularly of those in power.
Given that I had written these remarks while
in New York and under the protection of the First
Amendment, in English, to a small group of friends and
followers, on a personal non-commercial page, and on
a platform operated by an American entity, this was not
really a winnable case. Rather, it was merely an act of
bluster from Mr. Giertych. This was the sort of action
that he regularly deploys as a tool to silence critics of the
political figures in the cabal that he represents.
The burdens that politically connected actors like
this impose upon a free people who may want to express
ideas that are unpopular with certain segments is such
that criticism and the plurality of alternative viewpoints,
the lifeblood of democracy, are stifled. Without an
environment for unfettered debate, where the best
ideas and the best people rise to the top, freedom and
ultimately prosperity are constantly threatened and never
maximized.
Another example of how free expression is
undermined in Poland is the subversive work of the
mainstream press itself—particularly its most mature
segment, which mostly utilizes conventional distribution
practices. This segment historically has been better
capitalized; but in recent years, the industry has faced the
creative destruction that new distribution technologies
have wrought and they are now scrambling to shift their
businesses to these alternative methods of delivery. As
this industry has become rife with cronyism, the focus
now is on pleasing special interests for favours and
seeking protections like a cartel rather than embracing
competition. The legacy players in the media industry
cannot maintain their share in this dynamic—and more
egalitarian—new media system where the barriers to
entry are low. The old players remain bloated, stagnant,
and slow to adapt.
The ‘mainstream’ media’s ideological bent has
always slanted towards the left. This is news to no one. My
father often wrote about how the media’s predetermined
agenda—both in the US and Poland—impacts the way in
which politics is consumed by the masses. Unfortunately,
what is new to the dynamic—given that their motive is
now just as financial as it is ideological—is that most
Polish mainstream platforms, reliant on state orchestrated
protection, coordinate what they communicate and ‘sell’
to the mass market with their political partners.
The most insidious aspect of this is that this is done
under a veneer of independence—in an effort to convince
the consumer/voter that what is being delivered informs
rather than manipulates. And the easiest way these
‘leaders’ of the press manipulate the popular narrative is
by omission.
Last year, the newsweekly Wprost published
transcripts of recordings of Polish politicians engaging
in overtly corrupt back room deals over expensive
dinners billed to taxpayers. This had the potential to
bring down the entire government by prompting mass
resignations and leading to numerous potential criminal
charges. The mainstream media machine went into
hyper-drive to defend, play down, spin, and protect the
principals involved. However, the underlying acts of
the scandal were not discussed by any major platform
(omission), except by Wprost which exposed the tapes in
the first place—despite the fact that the content of the
conversations was positively frightening.
To illustrate how egregious these violations
of law were: One tape revealed the head of the
constitutionally mandated independent central bank—
National Bank of Poland President Marek Belka—
actively coordinating monetary policy with an emissary
of the current government—Interior Minister Bartlomiej
Sienkiewicz—in a clearly delineated attempt to swing an
upcoming election in favour of the incumbent party to
which Sienkiewicz (and Belka) belong. This conspiracy
to rapidly depreciate the currency in order to finance the
purchase of the national election is tantamount to stealing
from every citizen in Poland.
It was also reprehensible that the wife—Anne
Applebaum—of one of the majorly implicated players—
Radoslaw Sikorski (yet again)—in these embarrassing
revelations worked vociferously to defend her husband
and his fellow incriminated officials in print and in speech,
both domestically and internationally. (As a self-described
‘journalist’, she has availed herself of mainstream media
platforms in the UK, the US, and Western Europe, in
addition to local Polish platforms.) But her contributions
to the discourse clearly did not meet the standard
definition of journalism since the most important facts
of the case were never disclosed (again: omission).
The defence offered time and again by the
mainstream media was that the actors exposed on
undercover tapes had their privacy rights violated and
that that crime had superseded any other that might
have taken place (which of course went unmentioned).
The media attempted to sell the idea that their privacy
rights were more important than the right of citizens
not to be duped by their elected and appointed officials.
Moreover, when the state sent agents from the internal
security service to extract ‘evidence’ that the editorin-chief
of Wprost ostensibly had on his laptop—all
of which had been deemed pertinent to the ‘privacy
violation’ cases that they were investigating—the images
of physical force being used at the magazine’s offices and
the protests that ensued again garnered no reactions and
virtual silence from the ‘mainstream’ press. (Perhaps not
surprisingly, the current Polish government, which has
been widely implicated in this scandal, has drafted—and
is currently trying to pass before current terms of office
are up—legislation that would dismiss and render void
any evidence gathered of illegal activity that is considered
to have violated a politician’s privacy.)
Beyond the previously discussed methods of media
manipulation—which include omission, spin, defence,
coordination, and frivolous lawsuits—there exists one
more method that only the biggest rent-seekers in the
media can even begin to dream of: the bailout.
As an investor, this is the one that undermines
10
Summer 2015