Abstract
Abstract The article identifies the discursive characteristics of news media texts covering Poland’s ‘constitutional crisis’. Following the conception of discourse presented in Laclau and Mouffe (1985), i.e. as an articulatory practice that conveys meaning through a structured system of positions and differences, the article highlights some features of English-language news media texts (e.g. from the Guardian, Telegraph, Economist, Financial Times, New York Times, Washington Post) that can be described as typical. The following features are identified: a lecturing tone, the use of structural oppositions, immediate rebuttals, misrepresentation, appeals to expertise, and the sovereignty taboo. These features are diagnosed as contributing to the narrow discursive range covered by news articles. To shed light on this narrow range, the article presents three conflicting positions from Polish legal theory that address the issues of constitutional courts, the rule of law and national sovereignty: Ryszard Piotrowki’s legal constitutionalism, Paweł Bała and Adam Wielomski’s Schmitt-inspired position, and Adam Sulikowski’s reading of the constitutional courts as an instrument of hegemonic discourse. In the conclusion it is suggested that news media discourse would benefit from demonstrating a greater awareness of other discourses, and from developing a more generous, balanced approach to presenting and addressing their claims.
Highlights
The crisis essentially concerns the steps taken by the Polish government and President, after the Law and Justice Party came to power in October 2015, with regard to the judicial power, which has taken the form of appointments, mandatory retirements and legislation on structure and organisation
Coverage has persisted through Covid-19 pandemic, with reference being made to the crisis in editorials in the Guardian and Telegraph on Poland’s presidential election of May-July 2020,2 and in commentary on the ‘abortion ban’ of October 2020.3 In UK and US news sources, the Polish ‘rule of law crisis’ is treated as symptomatic of more general trends, with Poland frequently being positioned as further along the lurch into illiberalism and authoritarianism
The description of the government’s action as a “purge” is neither informative nor neutral: the reader is not given any information – at this point – on what exactly the government has done to the Supreme Court; and when the term ‘purge’ is deployed shortly before the reference to Soviet domination in the final clause, the Polish government is thereby implicitly compared with the Soviet Union, which readers with even basic knowledge of communism will associate with Stalinist purges
Summary
Over the course of 5 years, Poland’s ‘rule of law crisis’ or ‘constitutional crisis’, as it is referred to in English news media and scholarship, has become immensely complex and deeply divisive. Phillips details the “abuses of power” of two EU member states – Hungary and Poland: in Hungary, we see ever more centralisation of power and authority, with judges being forcibly retired in large numbers, political figures given greater control of the judiciary and even the establishment of courts overseen directly by government. Even if their agendas concerning the EU are opposed, the authors are united in their descriptions of the steps taken by the Polish government in its dealings with the judiciary. Their consensus is that the Polish government is undermining the rule of law in Poland and the EU; and that PiS poses a broad threat to liberal democracy in Europe. In terms of discourse theory, both journalists can be viewed as occupying positions in the same discourse, and more broadly, in the same discursive formation
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