The Press: Report from Warsaw

Like many a war correspondent, the New York Herald Tribune’s Pulitzer Prizewinner Homer Bigart feared that postwar reporting would seem dull. But last week, in his new post in Poland, he was in no danger of being bored. Bigart, who describes his own politics as “left-of-center,” expected to be welcomed in Warsaw. Instead, he found himself in the thick of a fight.

When he presented his passport, General Grosz, Poland’s director of press information, said: “Ah, yes, your paper is unfriendly to us.” He produced a clipping and began reading aloud. But, protested Bigart, that was an editorial from the Washington Star. “Makes no difference,” said Grosz, “I know you’ve said bad things about us.” The Communist party blamed “excitable dispatches” of foreign correspondents for the strained relations between Poland and the U.S. “Meanwhile,” wrote Bigart, “the Government-controlled press faithfully follows orders to ‘furiously attack’ American and British correspondents whose reports are objectionable to the Government. . . .

“A reporter cannot stay two weeks in the poisoned atmosphere of Warsaw without developing a bias which … is bound to color his reports, and there is no correspondent in Poland today who hasn’t in his heart aligned himself with either the Communist-dominated Government or … Vice Premier Stanislaw Mikolajczyk’s Polish Peasant party.” Bigart had, for one; he was now firmly antiCommunist. He added: “There is no middle ground, no impartial witness.”