Agnieszka Romaszewska-Guzy, Director of the first independent TV channel for Belarusians, has participated in one of regular meetings held by the project #HrodnaMediaRoom.
The event took place in the Center of Urban Life in the Belarusian city of Hrodna.
At the beginning of the meeting, Belsat TV director raised the issue of the huge responsibility of journalists in the world of today. According to her, decent and reliable journalism is needed to confront enormous flows of post-truth and fake news.
“These days people mainly get information from the Internet, often from social networks. On the one hand, it is good, because information blockade is apparently going out of existence. However, there is also another side, another emergence that is very dangerous. Everyone can post every piece of information, even a fake one. And it is very difficult to correct it. When something appears on the web, so what if someone says it is not true? If, say, 50 people find and read a false piece without [critical] comment, they may believe that it is true. It is very easy to spread fake news, but there is a role of a journalist who is responsible for verifying information. And it is a very important role. It is crucial that truthful information be voiced. Today it is not so important to fight against fake news, but to create and spread reliable information,” Agnieszka Romaszewska-Guzy said.
What is truth like?
Dedicating much of her life to journalism in Poland and abroad, Romaszewska has its own vision of truthful information. During the meeting, the allegement that ‘everyone has his own truth, journalists should listen and recite such truths’ has been questioned.
“Journalism cannot be limited only to giving the voice to the two sides. For example, one person says that this wall is green. Another states that it is yellow. But what is the truth and what are the facts? What from this information will our audience or reader get to know? Will he know in the end what colour is the wall? No. He only knows what one said one thing and the other said differently. And he will not know the most important thing – that the wall is white! Our duty is to look, think and state that the wall is white and explain why.”
Good journalist’s must-have
In her opinion, first and utmost, a good journalist must have an interest in the world and people:
“If they not interested, they are not journalists. <…> I never give a TV job to a person if they just want to be an anchor, just sit in front of the camera, look nice and talk.”
Another era of Gutenberg
Will media outlets be funded from their own capital in the near future? The question is open and topical; there is still no definite answer to it. The hope for advertising money does not seem to come true – more and more major international media outlets, including The Economist, The Financial Times, the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza, are making readers pay for their online articles.
“I take a dim view of advertising. A bad trend is now clearly seen in Poland: mass media are falling under the control of advertisers. Journalists are barred from writing about many things, because some advertiser who is practically the owner or major shareholder of a publication does not agree. There will be a direct question: to be or not to be. There is a problem of the freedom of mass media. On the other hand, so-called public mission media outlets, e.g. those in Poland, are experiencing political pressure. But I still do not know what we will have in the future, because we may be said to be living in the era of Gutenberg. When he invented the printing press, he could not predict that people would read daily newspapers. The method of presenting information has been fundamentally changed as well. We do not know what it will look like in 20 years. But I think that the need for reliable information will remain. And yet, in my opinion, the reader will have to pay for information,” she said.
Freedom inside
The last question, which is usually put to the guest in #HrodnaMediaRoom is ‘What does Freedom mean to you?’ Each speaker has their own experience and opinion on the subject. Agnieszka Romaszewska-Guzy, whose parents were activists of the anti-communist movement in Poland in the late 80’s, remembered a true-life story.
“I was 19 when I was arrested on December 13. The security service officers came to take my parents, but they were out. An agent who was interrogating me, put a sheet of paper in front of me and said: “Write!”And he began dictating what I was supposed to put down – i.e. condemning the activity of such persons as Zbigniew Bujak, my father, promising loyalty, etc. At that moment I did not know where my parents were, whether they had been grabbed; my dog was locked in the flat alone and I was afraid he would die of hunger there…
My hands were shaking because I was threatened with getting a prison term in case of refusal to condemn my father’s activity. However, when he ordered me to sign that paper, I was totally shocked. Will I really sign it? And what if they will show it to my father? And I said “No! I will not sign it!”
“You are looking for trouble!” the officer said. “Yes, I am, but but I will not sign!” Do what you want. It was my inner freedom. My right to say no.
I was then imprisoned for five months, but released later. Freedom is the inner state of a person. But one cannot say that a person is not free if they experience fear. Everyone fears, but we can and should overcome it.”
Paulina Valish/MS, belsat.eu
