The power of the fourth estate

Looking at some of the headlines which have appeared in the Polish press, it's easy to see that Polish and international media outlets are speaking the same language, using strong words to describe the global financial "meltdown." "Financial crisis: the world is horrified and furious," read one headline in _ Gazeta Wyborcza _, while _ Newsweek Polska _ ran "The world on the verge" on one of its covers.

The media's coverage has also met with criticism from Warsaw Stock Exchange authorities. According to Emil Stępień, head of the development department at NewConnect, the WSE's alternative trading platform, the gloom on both NewConnect and the main WSE market over the last several months has been, to a large extent, conjured by the media.

"There is a lot of potential for the media to get information right," Stępień said, noting that exaggeration in the media had contributed to the escalation of the recent crisis on the Warsaw bourse.

Press-Service, a Polish media-monitoring agency, has published a review on domestic reportage of the financial crisis as published in selected newspapers and magazines between mid-September and mid-October 2008. Articles were classified as "alarming," "positive," "neutral" or "reassuring."

According to the agency, in the cases of dailies _ Polska _, _ Puls Biznesu _ and _ Nasz Dziennik _, as well as magazines _ Newsweek Polska _ and _ Polityka _, alarming articles accounted for at least 50 percent of those reviewed. It should be noted, however, that the number of articles reviewed varied greatly between publications, from more than 100 _ Dziennik _ stories to fewer than 10 of _ Polityka's _.

_ Parkiet _ and _ Wprost _ published the most reassuring articles among dailies and magazines, respectively. In the period covered by the research, it seems that alarming articles outnumbered the other categories, but not by so much as to suggest that coverage by the Polish media is recklessly unbalanced.

Joanna Trzeciak and Konrad Kiedrzyński