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Comment by jakub_g | Hacker News Reader

Tangentially related: in Poland, the so called "good change" (conservative party) fired or made resign dozens of journalists in public TV and radio over last 4 years, with the culmination two months ago, where hit-parade results were "censored" after an anti-gov song won the charts [1].

So many people were fired or left that basically a whole new crowdfounded internet radio has started broadcasting this month, featuring many of them.

The gov is thinking out loud about 'repolonization' of all private media, citing they are all pro-German, but they have a problem as the main one they dislike (TVN) is US-owned in fact, and Trump-led US is the only country that is not our political enemy yet.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52721152

The difference with Hungary though is that this month's political elections showed a huge divide in Poland (51:49), and this 49% of people are really sick of the ruling party.

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The divide 51:49 is nothing special if there are two candidates, in Poland the difference was typically 2-8 percentage points, in fact in 1995 election the difference was almost the same as in 2020 so I wouldn't say anything special happened.

You seem to be forgetting these ones which are owned by German capital:

RMF - biggest radio station, second biggest is owned by French capital

onet & interia - (biggest?) online portals

Fakt - biggest daily newspaper

Newsweek - biggest weekly newspaper

I don't negate that. My point was just that due to some of them being US-based, PiS is unlikely to go on with their plans.

These publications combined can't match market penetration of those that are controlled by the government or owned by PiS sympathizers (e.g. Karnowscy brothers). So yeah, there are a few but that doesn't magically balance the undue influence PiS has on the messaging.

Plus: nationality of the owner is completely orthogonal to the bias publications may have. At the end of the day it's a large business and you can stay in it only if you have access to those you write about, i.e. people in power.

The moment you start leaning heavily against those in power you lose access and, as a result, relevancy. This problem exists in almost every country and isn't unique to Poland or Hungary.

> Fakt - biggest daily newspaper

A bit of context: Fakt is a tabloid owned by the same company that also owns Bild Zeitung -- the biggest daily newspaper (air quotes) in Germany, and producing the same kind of journalism (air quotes).

Today's front pages: https://imgur.com/a/BZ1DOBx

Bild Zeitung and its owner are staunchly conservative and recently very critical of Angela Merkel (when they aren't talking about sports or tits or celebrity gossip); ie. they are positioned at or beyond the very right edge of the German conservative party -- like the government of Poland, so I'd expect them to get along just fine for the most part.

Also interesting, Duda got even more votes (in absolute numbers) than 5 years ago :o

> So many people were fired or left that basically a whole new crowdfounded internet radio has started broadcasting this month, featuring many of them.

Which one?

https://nowyswiat.online/

Dzieki.

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