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Poland The End of Press Censorship
A key element of the Round Table Agreement was the end
of the
communist monopoly of the news media. In April 1990, state
censorship was abolished. The PZPR publishing and
distribution
monopoly, the Workers' Publication Cooperative Press-Book-
Movement began to break up, and numerous communist-era
periodicals were privatized. Some periodical titles, such
as the
daily Rzeczpospolita (Republic) and the weekly
Polityka(Politics), were recast and gained respect
for the
quality of their journalism. Others, most notably the
official
party organ Trybuna Ludu (People's Tribune),
changed their
names but continued to represent a leftist political
viewpoint
(Trybuna Ludu became simply Trybuna).
Many
familiar communist ideological publications were
discontinued,
however. After mid-1989, hundreds of new periodicals
appeared,
failed, reappeared, and failed again. These failures were
the
result of the high cost of newsprint, ignorance of
free-market
business principles, and the unpredictable demand created
by a
newly liberated reading public.
As of mid-1992, nearly 1,000 Polish periodicals were
being
published. Among these were seventy-five daily and 164
weekly
newspapers. The left-of-center Gazeta Wyborcza
(Election
Gazette), with a circulation of 550,000 weekday copies and
more
than 850,000 weekend copies, was the most widely read
newspaper.
Gazeta Wyborcza, issued in thirteen local
editions,
resembled Western papers in its layout and extensive
commercial
advertising. Rzeczpospolit claimed roughly 250,000
readers, followed closely by Zycie Warszawy (Warsaw
Life).
Of the national political weeklies, Polityka and
Wprost (Straightforward) enjoyed the greatest
success,
with circulations of 350,000 and 250,000, respectively.
In the years following the Round Table Agreement, the
Polish
press presented a range of opinion that reflected the
increasingly fractured political landscape. Following the
schism
between Mazowiecki and Walesa forces in 1990,
Tygodnik
Solidarnosc became the mouthpiece of the pro-Walesa
Center
Alliance, while Michnik's Gazeta Wyborcza and the
Catholic
church's Tygodnik Powszechny supported the
Mazowiecki
faction.
Data as of October 1992
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