I didn't comment on the eavesdrop due to the fact that I don't root for anyone in it. I made a bad opinion of Latkowski on the basis of his unwise documentary films. He's a man with a tabloid mentality.
Of course, that doesn't mean I like Gierty. What I think of him, I wrote in the times of the 4th Republic and did not change my head or a note.
However, this situation is very interesting for anyone curious in journalistic ethics. And a writer must be curious in her, or she will someday be curious in him (ba-bum-pss).
The Polish system, as I wrote many times, is bad. We have a 30-year press law, in which there is no mention of the Internet, but there is simply a mention of the Polish People's Republic.
Soon individual will decision it, due to the fact that the resulting mess is in the hands of politicians and journalists (or more specifically, press publishers). The side effect, however, is that journalistic ethics can be broken virtually unpunished, as long as it happens outside the radio and tv (acting according to a separate law and supervised by KRRiTV).
A individual defamed or insulted by the media theoretically remains a civilian or criminal road. Practically the consequence will be random, due to the fact that courts must search on their own the balance between crucial values (freedom of word versus the right to defend individual property).
I consider the Swedish solution to be an ideal. There is the Press Council and the Ombudsman Press Office guarding journalistic ethics.
Journalists invited to Stockholm net Forum arranged a gathering at the office. So we could compare systems in our countries to Swedish solutions.
In each country, the key criterion for assessing journalistic ethics is the concept of "public interest". The tabloids tend to decision it towards “what the audience is curious in” and are usually more or little tempered by courts and control institutions (also in Poland).
The very concept of ‘public interest’ refers to the presumption that there is specified a thing as ‘public sphere’ as opposed to ‘private sphere’. Doda and Herbuś's talk about Natalia Siwiec is simply a private substance of curious celebrities, the minister's talk with the central bank president – not necessarily, even if it took place in private circumstances.
The Swedes have illustrated this. An illustrated Swedish weekly did not like a certain policy and attacked it with a series of texts interfering with its privacy (as a result, the politician brought a complaint to the Press Council).
One article reported that in the business, paid by taxpayers, politicians live together with their partner. The second showed him how hard he drank in his summertime home – he opens another can of beer cheerfully unaware that individual is photographing him with a telephoto lens (another thing that a face on this cover has as if he was not aware of anything).
The Press Council condemned this second publication, but not the first one. Since the flat was business, the politician lost his right to argue “it's my private business who lives with me”. He would have it if he paid rent and media (or at least half for his partner) from his private pocket.
But his private drinking, on private property, for private money – was his private case. Therefore, the weekly was fined and reprimanded for this cover.
With all my reluctance to "Wprost" I think they had the right to print recordings of politicians celebrating for public money. This, of course, does not mean that the people liable for the illegal wiretap have committed a crime, I am only referring to issues of journalistic ethics.
However, there is no excuse to print Gierty's private conversation. That he is “a minister’s attorney”, that does not mean he is simply a public person.
If anything else revealed, there was evidence of a threat to public order from Gierty. But I can see the average behaviour of a lawyer whose client sent in delicate conversations with a possible blackmailer.
And privately, I think that we should besides have a Nordic approach to the business housing and credit cards of our politicians. Punish them for any usage for private purposes, but besides pay them adequate to not gotta grandfather.
