What you see above is the front page of the “Gazeta Wyborcza,” one of Poland’s largest papers, precisely as it ran last Wednesday. The look is intentional: “Gazeta,” along with Poland’s “Rzeczpospolita,” participated in an Amnesty International campaign to highlight repression in Belarus. Both papers ran an obscured version of their front page with an Amnesty tagline at bottom: “This is what freedom of speech looks like in Belarus.”

I love this concept. It’s refreshing to see the press take such a clear, stark stand against oppression. Though I am certainly sympathetic to commenters on NewsDesigner.com (from which I learned of the story, and borrowed the above image) about the importance of objectivity and perceived neutrality, in this case I think the editors made a brilliant choice.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 27th, 2005 at 11:42 pm and is filed under Law & Politics.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.