| I began to believe that I had stepped through the looking glass hand in hand with Alice reads the concluding sentence of your "edited extract" from Michael Moran's A Country in the Moon ("The Weekend Australian", Travel, p. 2, 28 February 2009). And so did I, and my colleagues. We also thought that such peculiar and, obviously and sadly, purposefully misleading editing that has turned the message of Michael Moran's delightful book upside down on its head infuses a distinct "Alice in Wonderland" flavour to "The Weekend Australian's", Travel section.
However, Lewis Carroll was writing a fairy tale while your travel section purports to offer its readers some current, hopefully reliable information that may be of use to intending travellers. Why then devote half a page to a melancholy narrative dealing with how Warsaw may have appeared to a first time visitor not now but in the winter of 1992. Not quite three years after Poland began to emerge from almost half a century of Soviet-imposed and controlled, stifling communist domination. There were also the eight years of Western economic sanctions imposed after martial law was proclaimed in December 1981 to crush the Solidarity Free Trade Union. Why then publish in your travel section this specific "edited" (and indeed heavily, manipulatively edited) extract that deals with history but provides no current information to an Australian reader possibly considering a visit to Poland.
What the reader sees clearly suggests that nothing has changed. This is how Warsaw allegedly still looks and feels today. One can't help thinking that the real purpose is to create, albeit by implication, a highly distorted and very unflattering image of Poland. This suspicion is strengthened by the fact that Michael Moran's book, in fact, does quite the reverse. It is about the country's positive transformation in which Moran has played a part. You also don't tell your readers that Michael Moran has been living in Warsaw for some time or that the genuine version of his book has been translated into Polish and will soon be published in Poland.
Aleksander Gancarz
President
Council of Australian-Polish Organisations in the ACT Inc.
THis protest letter has been sent to "The Australian". The Editor – Travel Section.Fax: 02 - 92 882 363.Email: travel@theaustralian.com.au &
indulgence@theaustralian.com.au
Link to an article & the reprinted passage from Moran's book
Read Moran's biography and reviews of his book
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