Poland

Restrictive media landscape

After consolidating control over state broadcast media, the government is pursuing further control over privately-owned media threatening them with a revocation of their broadcasting license. The governmental strategy of taking over news includes “repolonization of media”, which means eventually, only companies with a majority of Polish shareholding can operate in Poland. 

Another way of government censorship is not letting journalists report at the Polish-Belarussian border, when the refugee crisis arose. A special law and a closed zone was established to obstruct reporting. Private media are informing the public about ready-made, tailored interviews with governmental politicians, but due to low media literacy, this news does not reach a wider audience. 

Overall, the media in Poland are losing trust, mainly because of such a difference in narration from national broadcasters on the one hand and privately owned media on the other. The Global Trustworthiness Monitor of 2022, says that only 20% of the Polish people trust their media. 

The biggest independent news channels are losing their ratings and advertising budgets. A proposed new tax on advertising revenue, another step in the government’s censorship strategy, prompted a “black screen” protest in which many privately-owned media outlets participated. Even though this process was now stopped, it is not sure whether it will come back, as Poland is dealing with one of the highest inflation rates in Europe, and the highest in 25 years. With their finances already weakened by the pandemic’s economic effects, independent media fear that the new tax will finish them off. 

These are all steps on the road to the 'Orbanisation' of the Polish media. Also, as pointed out by the International Press Institute, “state resources  (... )  continue to be weaponized to starve certain media of public advertising revenue.” After the start of the war in Ukraine, the government continued its tactics by investing in “fighting” with Russian propaganda. Those goals are just another way of influencing public opinion with governmental messages, which is often information that is anti European Union.
 

Safety

There are clear signs that Poland, EU’s 5th biggest member state, is following a similar path to Hungary, stifling independent media and civil society. Concerned about the attacks against journalists and media in several European countries, the European Parliament adopted the Resolution on Strengthening Media Freedom: the Protection of Journalists in Europe, Hate Speech, Disinformation and the Role of Platforms, in November 2020. The battle for democracy and freedom of speech is at a critical stage, not only in Poland, but throughout the EU. Some argue that Europe’s post-pandemic future will be decided in Poland. If the EU fails to use its financial resources to stop the spread of autocracy, its post-pandemic recovery will at best become a Pyrrhic victory. 

Meanwhile, the police repeatedly failed to protect journalists covering protests, carrying out arbitrary arrests to restrict the right to inform. Now that more and more journalists are finding political or economic refuge online, starting new online media, a politicized regulation of the internet is feared. In a new report by the European Commission: “Rule of Law Report 2022”, there is a clear message that Polish journalists are taken to court just to be threatened. “Gazeta Wyborcza”, the biggest Polish independent daily that is clearly critical of the government, was dealing with over 50 court cases. “We need more safeguards to ensure that the independence of public media is protected and that adequate public funding is not used to exert political pressure on these media,” says Věra Jourová, EC vice president for values and transparency, in the report. Full access to public information should be guaranteed, which is currently not the case in Poland.

Poland was also one of the few EU-member states where the government arbitrarily monitored independent journalists, businessmen, and academics critical to the government by using the Pegasus software.
 

Free Press Unlimited's work in Poland

For the local journalists in Central Europe, Free Press Unlimited provides courses about cross-border journalism, sharing with them Free Press Unlimited’s experience in creating and producing the transborder journalistic stories, as well as the distribution of this content to the cross-border audience. To develop their skills, Free Press Unlimited also provides mentoring and other types of assistance in content production.

Besides this project, Free Press Unlimited works together with other international organizations to advocate for the protection of press freedom in Europe. To maintain good knowledge on a country's situation, representative quantitative and qualitative research is conducted, and that knowledge is widely shared within the network established by Free Press for Eastern Europe.
 

Photo: Grzegorz Żukowski.