Polarised and Partisan: Polish Media and Presidential Election | The Listening Post (Full)

Polish voters have re-elected President Andrzej Duda to another term in office and the state broadcaster Telewijza Polska (TVP) was instrumental in his media campaign. To many Poles, TVP could just as well be Telewizja Propaganda - the channel backed Duda to the hilt, and helped him scrape through with a 51 percent victory. Privately owned news outlets have been far more critical of Duda, so the president and his backers have tried to delegitimise those platforms over their foreign ownership. They have played the xenophobia card, suggesting that German investors in Polish media companies were trying to swing the election. Now the Law and Justice party government is talking about the “repolonisation“ of the country’s privately-owned media - thinly disguised code for “nationalisation“.