The Media and Democracy: A Dialogue

Adam Michnik has been editor-in-chief of the Polish daily newspaper since its founding in 1989. Previously he spent a total of six years in prison for his opposition to Poland’s communist regime, and he was part of the Solidarity team during the Roundtable negotiations that brought that regime to an end in 1989.

Jay Rosen, associate professor of journalism at New York University, where he is director of the Project on Public Life and the Press, is a leader of the “public journalism” movement. The following text is based on a dialogue organized by the East and Central Europe Program (ECEP) at the New School for Social Research in New York City on 21 February 1997. Portions of the dialogue were published in the May 1997 Bulletin of the ECEP. Adam Michnik’s remarks were translated from the Polish by Elzbieta Matynia, director of the ECEP and the New School’s Transregional Center for Democratic Studies.