Judges in Polish Newspaper Headlines in 2022: A Contribution to the Media Image of the Judge

Abstract

The study fits within the scope of research on the media image of judges, which is part of a larger media image of the world. The relevance of the subject of research results from the position and significance of judges for the functioning of society and the state, as well as the interdependence between the functioning of the profession of judge, its prestige and the so-called public opinion. The aim of the article is a reconstruction of the image of the judge (its properties and relationships between these properties), the carrier of which are front pages of newspapers. Having found it reasonable to restrict the source base to paper issues of national daily newspapers representative for the Polish newspaper market, issued in 2022, the following three titles have been analysed: “Dziennik Gazeta Prawna”, “Gazeta Wyborcza” and “Nasz Dziennik”. These analyses allowed to: identify the properties attributed to judges in each periodical and structure them; observe the identity of the linguistic measures and devices used in the newspapers in question to shape the image of the judge and concurrently the different nature of images of the judge shaped on the front pages of the newspapers under research; conclude that, in all the titles examined, the images of the judge as a personal embodiment of the court (which is not always properly differentiated) are not a reflection of reality, but an interpretation thereof, and are a collection of subjective and emotionally related characteristics.