Polish reporters worry about newspapers turning into ‘hard-line propaganda’ outlets

WARSAW — Reporters and editors at dozens of Poland’s regional newspapers are worried that they’ll be fired or placed under political pressure after state-controlled refiner PKN Orlen earlier announced the acquisition of Polska Press Group — a major publisher of local media.

They have good reason to be scared.

That’s what happened after Poland’s ruling nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party won power in 2015. The party took control of state radio and TVP state television — which are publicly financed and by law are supposed to be politically neutral but over the last five years have been turned into overtly-pro-government outlets. Journalists who didn’t toe the party line were fired.

The same thing happened in Hungary, when allies of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his ruling Fidesz party took control of almost all Hungarian media.

“I will not agree to any censorship of my work in terms of politics or the worldview they represent,” said Marek Kęskrawiec, editor of the Magazine, a Friday extra that Polska Press produces for its regional newspapers. 

“I am not going to hand in my notice to the current publisher because he has always respected my freedom of expression. I’ll wait for a new one. I will keep doing my job so probably everything I will have done will end up in the bin and I will be fired,” Kęskrawiec added. 

Orlen insists that the purchase — for an undisclosed sum — of Polska Press from Germany’s Verlagsgruppe Passau is a purely business decision driven by the publisher’s control of 20 of Poland’s largest regional daily newspapers, as well as some 120 regional and local weeklies and 500 websites, ranging from popular sources of local news like the naszemiasto.pl portal to specialist ones covering farming or cars.

“We are consistently expanding our business interests,” said CEO Daniel Obajtek, a former PiS politician who is a close ally of party leader Jarosław Kaczyński.

Government spokesman Piotr Müller called it “a decision by a concrete company — state-controlled but having business aims.” He also said worries about the propriety of the investment were “absurd,” adding: “If it’s a German company then it’s good, but if it’s a Polish company then it’s bad?”

Despite those assurances, it’s clear that PiS has been hungering to extend its reach over other sectors of the media. As well as state television and radio and the government press agency, advertising from state-controlled companies keeps a host of smaller right-wing publications afloat. The party is particularly exercised at German companies owning Polish media.

The next parliamentary election is set for late 2023, when PiS will be aiming for a record third term in office. In previous campaigns, government-controlled media have been cheerleaders for the ruling party while smearing the opposition.

Poland has seen a steady fall in perceptions of media freedom. In 2020, it came in 62nd out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index prepared by the NGO Reporters Without Borders, down from 18th in 2015.

Worried about purges

Reporters are expecting big changes.

“The mood is a bit down here in the newsroom. No one has yet spoken to us about the new situation and we don’t know what’s going to happen,” a reporter with several years of experience in Gazeta Krakowska in the southern city of Kraków told POLITICO.

He said he’s reviewing his options depending on what the new owner will do. 

“I am sticking around as long as I possibly can. If the change is soft, I could continue. But if we’re going to become another hard-line propaganda outlet, I’ll quit even if that is going to be difficult for me personally and financially,” he said.

“The mood is downbeat. Everyone is expecting a short transition period and then the carnage in the style of PiS taking over TVP in 2015,” said a Polska Press Group reporter from Warsaw.

“The atmosphere isn’t even nervous or chaotic, just sad. There’s a feeling that people will leave or be fired. If the new hires in regional newspapers are political nominees, the newspapers will lose their independence,” said a non-editorial employee from the company’s Warsaw headquarters.

Even though their sales have been declining — as is the case with most print media — the regional newspapers typically have decades of tradition behind them and are still a force to reckon with when it comes to covering local politics. 

“By taking over local media, PiS — if they can play it subtly — will gain a powerful tool to attack popular opposition mayors,” said Leszek Jażdżewski, editor of the Liberte! journal and a liberal columnist and political commentator. “Local media might not be big but they’re important in inspiring coverage that reverberates in social media and in the big national news outlets.”

The Polska Press purchase marks a change of strategy for PiS. In previous years it tried to impose new rules on non-government media that would have made it difficult for foreign companies to function in Poland. But those efforts were smacked down by U.S. Ambassador Georgette Mosbacher who sprang to the defense of U.S.-owned broadcaster TVN and made it clear Washington wouldn’t countenance a law limiting foreign media ownership.

This spring she again defended TVN after it was attacked by state-run TVP for daring to criticize Kaczyński for ignoring safety rules during the coronavirus pandemic.

“Fakty TVN is part of the Discovery family — a publicly traded US company listed on the NY Stock Exchange, committed to transparency, freedom of speech, and independent, responsible journalism. To suggest otherwise is simply false,” Mosbacher wrote on Twitter in English and in Polish.

Friction with Brussels

Political interference in Poland’s media has come under fire from Brussels, where it is seen as part of a broader problem of the Polish government’s backsliding on its democratic commitments.

The European Commission told POLITICO in an emailed response that “[media freedom and pluralism] are vital to hold governments accountable and to monitor democratic processes. Media should be able to work freely and independently everywhere in the European Union.”

“We will, however, at this stage not comment further on this announcement,” the Commission said of the Orlen acquisition.

The feeling in Polish newsrooms is that there is little chance of Polska Press newspapers retaining their political neutrality.

“I think that the temptation to use newspapers and regional portals for strictly political purposes may be very strong on the PiS side as these titles do reach everywhere on the local level,” said Witold Głowacki, a reporter from Polska the Times, a national paper also part of the Polska Press group.

“Ironically, they owe this to being politically neutral,” he added.