Behind the media

Seventeen years after the political transformation and the fall of Communism, it seems that the Polish media are pulling the skeletons of the past regime out of their cupboards. There is increasing talk of the documents that allegedly prove the collaboration of priests, of bishops, such as Msgr. Wielgus, and of journalists with the security services of the former regime. All this serves to distract attention from the questions that are really important for Poland. It is worth recalling that seventeen years ago, just at the time of the change of regime, Monsignor Tadeusz Pieronek said that the documents of the secret services ought to be opened only once a century had elapsed. Only then ought historians to examine these documents, and seek to draw more or less reliable conclusions from them. I don’t think that the media are seeking sensational stories. I think that this phenomenon, this wave of penalization, has been caused by something or someone else. It wasn’t the media that made fashionable the practice of verifying whether a person was, or was not, linked to the previous Communist regime. This phenomenon is in some sense the consequence of the arrival in power of a new political group of which many members are convinced they suffered wrongs in the past. We ought also to consider the fact that the professional group of journalists – I say so despite having devoted my whole life to this profession – is particularly cynical and hence all too ready to exploit these situations. It ought also to be said that the Polish media today don’t have full independence; they have often become “establishment media”. It’s clear that some newspapers have access to confidential documents. And this is an astonishing fact, to say the least. How is it they succeed in laying their hands on archival documents against some leading personalities, against this or that bishop? We know very well that journalists cannot have gained access to these documents by themselves. It happens all too often, moreover, that those who have been accused by the press of having collaborated with the Communist regime have no chance of defending themselves. The law in force establishes that only persons holding high-ranking public office are subject to the legal procedures of vetting: but no such procedures are provided for others who seek to prove their innocence before the courts, such as the well-known journalist Daniel Passent. It should also be recalled that only a few documents among the files in the archives of the Institute of National Memory could constitute real proof of someone’s guilt. Most of them are no more than memoranda, or notes, compiled by officials of the secret services, who put into writing whatever they wanted. Many priests have spoken of the disproportionate attacks against the clergy, in contrast to other social groups, especially after the death of John Paul II. Poland is a strange country. People speak of John Paul II with great love on the occasion of various anniversaries, but afterwards they forget many things. Why does the so-called generation of John Paul II have so much difficulty in making itself heard? Why are the accusations against the Church for the most part made by forty-year-olds? The young don’t have any wish to wait, but want to know the truth straight away.Is not this “penalization” also a generational question?