Authors

Roman Sacharov¹;  ¹ University of Lodz, Poland

Discussion

Among factors negatively affects quality of journalism, it is often indicated pressure by various actors - government and politicians, business, particular social groups, especially if they form a target audience for a media outlet. Such a pressure may cause fears or concerns about reporting on specific topics or personas. These are what journalists mention as one of the main reasons for self-censorship (individual or editorial).

Based on an interdisciplinary study combining a research into Polish journalistic environment through in-depth interviews and an analysis texts of Polish mass media, the phenomenon of so-called positive self-censorship was discovered, which, unlike censorship, has no clearly negative assessment within professional circles.

Unlike regular self-censorship, positive self-censorship is more often motivated not by external forces, but by inner convictions of journalist. A typical case for Poland is unwillingness to put topics dealing with religion in a bad light. In addition to tactics of total silence, which seems inefficient in view of media development, Polish journalists use other techniques, including a variety of language and extralinguistic means to soften the coverage.

This pilot study brings up many questions for media scholars and linguists, and the most important of these is the ability to detect identifiable indicators of growing self-censorship in media in real-time mode.