"The Never Ending Battle for Freedom of the Media"

In Poland, the media market is pursuing its freedom after the change of its political system. Therefore, Professor Tomasz Goban-Klas used The Never Ending Battle for Freedom of the Media as the title of his lecture about history of media and technology industries  in Poland. I really like this title as it describes the exact situation here vividly and would like to share the insights and my reflections from his lecture with all of you.

During the ruling of communists, the media market in Poland was totally under the control of the government. All the media companies, such as television, radio and newspaper, were state-owned. The government controlled what could be watched and heard by people. Sometimes, the companies had to serve as a tool of propaganda for the party. Media companies couldn't provide the objective content to the audience. Instead, the information was sometimes filtered and twisted on purpose. For example, some capitalism countries were depicted as evil places. The media industry seemed to have no freedom at all, because of the strong censorship. Of course, there always were some open-minded people to fight against the suppression.

When Poland turned into capitalism, the situation became better. Some media companies are still state-owned, but they are public companies now. They have the freedom to provide objective content to the people, even the content may be negative towards the government. So it is a big step forward for the media market in Poland. And the concept of public companies is interesting. The main fund comes from taxation instead of advertisements. So the companies don't have to cater the need of advertisers, which is pretty positive to the companies.

But as the new president and prime minister become in power, the regulation to the media market from the government seems to become tighter. So the battle for freedom of the media will never end.

The professor also mentioned that the political system is changeable. So I think that maybe it is possible to establish a free media market in a communism country. This kind of possibility is highly depend on the heads of the government or the party, I think. If they are open-minded, they may be likely to offer more freedom to the media market, as the communism country, like China, can have a market economy now.

Moreover, the new technologies, especially the development of the Internet, give people more options and make it more difficult for the government to control the media industry. And social media provide people with more channels to express their opinions. Those channels are also difficult for the government to control.

Lastly, I hope the battle for freedom of the media not only in Poland, but also in every other countries can have more positive results. The total victory seems impossible, since the battle will never end.