Media, as the name suggests, mediate social communication and oftentimes also play a leading role in constructing it by manipulation (Nierenberg, 2011). Pierre Bourdieu (1998) points out that intellectuals have a moral obligation to react to media manipulation, by offering themes and ideas enriching discourses and helping to make symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1986) socially wider accessible. In this text we show how the media discourse currently dominating in Poland creates an image of the public sector. We claim that such an image may ignite a destructive conflict, provoking a number of managerial dysfunctions. Instead of cultivating such an image we propose an approach more oriented towards diversity, which may promote constructive conflicts, which are creative, and also support humanistic functions of management and makes the symbolic capital of the ethos of public service more easily socially available.