If suppression of my story in Poland was not extreme enough when I lived there, the release of it now on my own website coincides with news of even greater restraints on journalistic freedom than before I left. This stands to reason as the EU is currently up in arms over anti-democratic behavior that is reported to be the case of the recently elected right-wing PIS government.
A just published study by Reporters without Borders ranking a freedom of the press index of 180 countries says that in 2015 Poland fell 29 positions to 47th globally. According to the Los Angeles Times (see the above chart), only two countries have dropped further: the tiny country of Brunei on the island of Borneo and Tajikistan.
Click here for more from Radio Poland, “Poland plummets in press freedom index”
Nevertheless, freedom of the press in the United States has fallen even further than Poland to 49th position. CNN claims that this is largely due to the Obama administration’s prosecution of whistle blowers:
US slips again in press freedom ranking with blame on Obama administration
One has to wonder what will be said about 2016, the year that the US presidential campaign has become driven by media sensationalization like no time in history. What has become blatantly transparent is an enormous gap between the youth vote and the vote of older Americans, largely because those raised in the age of the Internet and social media are being educated by alternative, independent sources of information that most older Americans who obtain their information from corporate-owned mainstream media sources know nothing about.
According to the Radio Poland article, it is government control of the media that is at fault, whereas in the US it is not just the prosecution of whistle blowers but a matter of political influence being wielded by those in power of commercial media sources that are driven by a profit-oriented approach to the selling of news. As a result, serious issues are often not discussed. I do not doubt that the billboards about Olga Tokarczcuk serve as examples of the kind of sensationalism that has been learned in the former communist state from commercial American influences. Nevertheless, I cannot fathom such an emotionally-charged issue concerning Jews could ever be commercially exploited in the US in such an ugly and crude fashion.
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