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From: TT
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Photo: Czarek Sokolowski / AP / TT
The leader of the ruling PIS party, Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Stock Photography.
A media group that runs newspapers throughout Poland is bought by a state company.
Thus, politics is expected to gain even more power in the country’s shrinking media market, and tensions within the EU are rising.
The state-owned PKN Orlen oil refinery buys Polska Press and its approximately 20 regional newspapers, spread throughout the country, as well as around 100 other publications.
The seller is the German company Verlagsgruppe Passau. Poland’s right-wing government, led by the Law and Justice Party (PIS), has long pushed the line for Polish media to have Polish owners.
Great gift from the EU
Poland, along with Hungary, has stood aside from the EU negotiations on a long-term budget, referring to the fact that they do not want financial means to be conditioned on the basis of the principles of democracy and the rule of law of the Union. This includes support money that is available due to the corona pandemic.
Within the EU, there has been harsh criticism, among other things, of the populist governments of countries that circumvent the judiciary and the judiciary, respectively, and restrict the independence of the media. In Hungary, this has been done, among other things, by state-owned companies or government confidants who buy up much of the industry.
So far, the Polish government has refrained from large interventions in the media market precisely so as not to pour additional gasoline on the fire, officials told Reuters.
“Is it German target?”
PIS is trying to take control of Poland’s independent media “through state-owned companies, with money from Polish taxpayers,” says Borys Budka, who heads the opposition Citizen Platform party. He points out, among other things, to the state broadcasting company TVP, which critics believe has become the mouthpiece of the government’s often very conservative message.
PIS EU MP Ryszard Czarnecki disagrees that the state takeover of the media group should lead to different coverage.
– If the media are German, they are objective, but if they are Polish, are they biased? I reject that idea, he says.
The annual report on freedom of the press by Reporters Without Borders states that the Polish state media have been allowed to seize biased and hate messages, as these “have become voices of government propaganda”.
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