Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T02:09:05.530Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - Professional associations and professional politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 September 2009

Get access

Summary

The professional life and world of Polish journalists does not end as they leave their offices and finish their day's work. Nor are their editors and the leading journalists on their staff their only protectors, mentors, and role models. Like Western professionals, Polish journalists' lives are embedded in a web of informal and formal organizations, gatherings, and information exchanges. Their relations with the world outside their profession are brokered not only through their editors and their personal connections but also through their informal and formal professional organization and the example and power of their own professional elite. Finally, their professional training and work experience as well as the demands and the realities imposed on them by their readers and the political elite are not their only basis for the development of group history, myths, and heroes. The professional community and the profession's formal association serves as a forum for the creation and maintenance of this history and these group myths and heroes – even when there is clear political pressure against them.

Ironically, many working journalists in the sixties and seventies publicly scoffed at the idea of the association being any more than a building, clubs of journalists working on the same topics, and services ranging from medical care to a good restaurant with subsidized meals. But, when the Solidarity movement forced journalists to take stock and clean house, it was their organization, the Association of Polish Journalists (the SDP), that they turned to immediately.

Type
Chapter
Information
Poland's Journalists
Professionalism and Politics
, pp. 117 - 160
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×