Wydarzenia 1968 roku na Zachodzie w polskich mediach
The events of 1968 in the West, as portrayed in the Polish media

Summary/Abstract: The mass communication media are one of the most effective means of influencing public opinion. It was for this reason that exercising control over them was so important for the authorities in the People’s Republic of Poland. Thanks to the censorship and the guidelines as to what could be presented, and how, society received a pre-set image of events, subordinated to Poland’s foreign policy. Television, radio and the print media communicated a depressing vision of the Western states coping with gravely serious problems, both domestic and in foreign policy. In 1968, there were two central negative characters, the USA and the FRG. The USA was presented as a state breaching human rights, both in the international arena and in its domestic policy, immersed in deep social and moral problems, with political assassinations, employed as a dubious method of solving political problems being pointed to as evidence of that situation, and with the murky ties of leading politicians to the mafia structures providing the basis of the economic success so envied by other nations, including the Poles. The RFG, in its turn, was treated as a real threat to European and global peace and security, because of its running a revisionist policy, its expectations in regard of arming the country, and the West German opposition to disarmament. Against this backdrop, only the manner in which France was presented was markedly distinct, this being in view of the differences in the manner by which it carried out its foreign policy and, in particular because of its criticism of the USA and its reservations regarding Germany’s growing role in Europe, as well as its blocking of the enlargement of the European Communities. The other Western States were the focus of attention on the part of the Polish press, radio and television only occasionally.

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