Cold War Broadcasting: Impact on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe

Chapter 7: The Audience to Western Broadcasts to Poland During the Cold War

121 CHaPter 7 the audience to Western Broadcasts to Poland during the Cold War leChosłaW gaWlikoWski (with yvette neisser moreno) the purpose of this paper is to examine the audience to radio free europe ’s Polish service from the 1960s to the early 1990s. the paper includes and compares data from three sources: external surveys with travelers conducted by rfe’s audience research department; restricted internal surveys conducted by the audience research department of Polish radio (government-sponsored research) that have become available since the end of the Communist period; and surveys of military personnel and draftees conducted by researchers with the military Political academy in Warsaw.1 OBOP. the Center for Public opinion research in Warsaw (Polish abbreviation oBoP), attached to Polish radio, was the first public opinion research institution in Poland, and the only research organization in the Communist bloc in the early post-war years. Because sociological research was banned during the stalinist period, Polish scholars became very interested in the development of public opinion research worldwide, especially in the united states, when the stalinist period waned. after 1956, there was much greater freedom to conduct scientific research. for many years, oBoP was the only institution in Poland that conducted scientific audience research among listeners to rfe’s Polish programs. oBoP archive documents now available indicate that audience research aimed at determining the number of listeners to Western radio programs in Poland was not initiated until 1969, although audience research 1 rfe’s overall reach in Poland varied, depending on current events and the political situation at different periods of time. the following timeline gives an overview of pertinent events that will be referred to in this chapter: gomułka tenure: 1956–1970; student unrest: 1968; Workers’ riots: 1969–70: gierek tenure : 1970–1980; social crisis: aug.–nov. 1980; martial law: dec. 1981–1988. i4 J&P.indb 121 2010.07.05. 7:54 122 into domestic radio listening had started in the late 1950s. the oBoP data in this paper come from the institution’s existing source documents for the years 1969 to 1992. However, since oBoP produced reports only for the internal use of the leadership of the Party, government and propaganda apparatus, and since the research methodology was not consistent from year to year, not all of the data are reliable. for example, prior to 1975, the sampling method was not clearly defined. from 1976 to 1979, the data were somewhat reliable, though probably not accurate, since many survey respondents may have feared admitting that they listened to rfe. Hence, the reliability of the oBoP surveys on rfe’s listenership and audience was highest between august 1980, when Poland’s social crisis began and there was a turn-over in staff at the Center, and 1982, when the effects of martial law began to impact the research and its analysis. this was the period when the researchers had the greatest freedom to conduct and interpret their surveys. since the report on 1980 has not been preserved, the 1981 and 1982 surveys produced the most interesting results, including data on the structure of rfe’s audience and on listeners’ assessments of rfe’s reliability. However, after 1982, oBoP introduced changes, either in the surveying method (never officially admitted), or in the interpretation of survey results, or both, which led to excessively low results for rfe listenership , not only by rfe standards but also by internal oBoP standards. thus, the oBoP data from 1983 onward are not valid, with one possible exception: in march 1989, oBoP was commissioned by the BBC to conduct a survey of Western radio listenership in Poland. the results of this survey, according to oBoP documents, indicated much higher—and hence, probably more accurate—listening rates than oBoP’s own surveys in the late 1980s. EEAOR. rfe’s department of east european audience and opinion research (eeaor, after 1976 part of the combined rfe/rl organization)2 , operating under conditions of inaccessible populations (in terms of classical sampling procedures) in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and romania, applied and refined the method of Comparative and Continuous sampling. the method derives from the prin2 until 1981, this department was called the “department of audience and Public opinion research” (aPor); however, for the sake of consistency, it will be referred to as eeaor throughout this chapter. i4 J&P.indb 122 2010.07.05. 7:54 123 ciple of repeated samples used, for example, in the...