PRASA JAKO NARZĘDZIE INTERWENCJI W OKRESIE PRL-U. PRZYPADEK PRZEDSIĘBIORSTWA PAŃSTWOWE TORY WYŚCIGÓW KONNYCH W LATACH 70. I 80. XX WIEKU
PRESS AS AN INTERVENTION INSTRUMENT IN THE PPR. CASE STUDY OF STATE HORSE RACING TRACKS ENTERPRISE IN THE 1970S AND 1980S

Summary/Abstract: In Polish People’s Republic, in limited media freedom conditions, the horseracing journalists discourse radically stood out. For decades they acted as a spokespersons of Racetrack Służewiec racegoers and criticized the Horse Racetracks State Enterprise (Państwowe Tory Wyścigów Konnych) organisation and work over the seventies and eighties. The article discusses how the scale and grounds on which it was carried out as well forms of journalists interventions into this state company management. The main thesis of the paper is that constant press criticism of Horse Racetracks State Enterprise was tolerated by state authorities since it legitimized the symbolic marginalization of this form of entertainment and hazard within Polish People’s Republic society. Additionally it resulted out of the fear over reactions of racegoers community towards journalists repressions, which instead of decreasing, would emphasize the meaning of the horseraces to country’s economy and capital’s social life. The ambivalent position of the horseraces within communist state created conditions for the rise of social movement which, although apolitical, thorough democratic tools intended to partially change the social system of that times.

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