By Agnieszka Wądołowska
Last week, Polish state energy company PKN Orlen announced that it had agreed to buy the media firm Polska Press from its German owner.
The deal will give the oil refiner – which also recently bought Ruch, a major press distributor – control of 20 out of Poland’s 24 regional daily newspapers, a further 120 regional weeklies, as well as hundreds of websites.
The move is seen as a major step towards the ruling national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party’s declared aim of “repolonising” the media by reducing foreign ownership. Critics fear that the actual outcome will be greater government control over the press.
Many have also wondered what legitimate business interest an energy firm has in buying local newspapers. But Orlen’s CEO, Daniel Obajtek, claims that its new media portfolio – especially the websites and their 17.4 million users – will provide data and capacity to better understand and reach customers.
We asked five experts – leading journalists, representatives of journalists’ associations and an analyst from a digital freedom NGO – what the motive behind and consequences of the takeover could be.
“A dangerous precedent”
Andrzej Krajewski, journalist and board member of the Journalism Society (Towarzystwo Dziennikarskie)
Orlen’s takeover of Polska Press is a very serious threat to press freedom in Poland. It is a typical political operation, just like Gazprom Media. There is much to suggest that, as with Orbán in Hungary, Law and Justice (PiS) want to control local information channels ahead of the next local elections.
When an oil company enters the press market, that sets a dangerous precedent. In normal, western-type democracies, this kind of thing does not happen.
With Orlen’s turnover in the billions, the 120 million zloty (€27 million) they apparently spent on Polska Press is a small amount. We have to remember that Orlen practically has a monopoly on the oil market, and it also carefully looked after by the state.
So it can hardly be seen as a business transaction. In normal market conditions, the board of directors would eat the person who made that kind of decision alive. The argument that Orlen bought Polska Press to reach customers through the internet is also dubious.
But it is important to stress that, beyond from the outlets that Orlen has bought, there still remains an independent local press. But their publishers are also justified in feeling under threat, because Orlen has also bought the printing houses where many of them are printed. Now Orlen can raise prices or harass the competition in other ways.
Furthermore, there’s the Ruch newsagents network, which Orlen bought earlier. If we recall that Orlen hid away Gazeta Wyborcza, Polityka and Newsweek [publications critical of the government] at its filling stations, various actions in the distribution network are also possible.
We at the Journalism Society monitored practices on the public radio and television broadcasters in this most sensitive period of the electoral campaign, and favouring of some candidate as well as destroying opposition candidates took place on an enormous scale. Unfortunately, this model is very easy to transfer to the local press.
What’s next? It would certainly be the government’s dream to neutralise [private broadcasters] TVN and TVN24, because they are a thorn in its side. There have already been moves in that direction, but it is still a hard nut to crack. But they managed to neutralise [private broadcaster] Polsat – its owner [Zygmunt Solorz-Żak, one of Poland’s richest people] has his other interests in energy and telcom sectors too, and they put pressure on him.
In these conditions, only a foreign media owner is actually able to resist political pressures. Agora [the media company that owns Gazeta Wyborcza] also has a partly foreign owner, so it can still resist.
“By no means a ridiculous business model”
Michał Szułdrzyński, deputy editor of Rzeczpospolita, one of Poland’s biggest daily newspapers
Orlen’s takeover of the Polska Press group could create a synergy effect: Orlen has already bought Ruch, providing it with its own distribution network, and previously it was the co-founder of the Sigma Bis media house, formed a year ago, which allows it to serve state-owned companies. And now it has its own media.
Although opposition politicians reject this business model entirely, it is by no means completely ridiculous. But when such a powerful financial, press and advertising conglomerate is formed, there are certain temptations of a political nature.
It is no secret that Orlen is a company whose appointments are decided on directly by the Ministry of State Assets. The temptation to exploit these resources politically will be enormous.
The question is whether PiS itself will not fall into the trap of media concentration that so much was spoken about before. At the moment, there is unquestionably huge concentration.
But I don’t share the optimism of some PiS politicians that they have acquired a tool for influencing broad public opinion. The risk associated with this takeover is smaller than if it was one of the influential national media outlets that was being taken over.
The titles that belong to Polska Press were not major players on the political market. It was rare for them to reach the Polish public with important topics. The times when the regional press was an important player in politics have passed.
They do play another important role, though. As long as they had an independent owner – and in this case we are talking about German capital – they could keep the local authorities in check. Now, in many cases they will be monitoring local authorities that are in the hands of PiS politicians.
One more danger is that a media takeover by companies with state capital will make them become the political capital of everyone who wins elections, be that PiS or a more centrist or leftist opposition.
And nobody will give up the power that the influence on the media gives them. Throughout eight years of Civic Platform (PO) government, there were calls for reform of public media to prevent them from becoming political spoils. PO didn’t do anything with that, and PiS exploited it.
It is worth remembering, however, that where a hard political line has been followed, the media have lost audiences and listeners. PiS has excellent experience in ruining the media, but it is unable to build them.
If the local media become another propaganda machine for the government camp and PiS repeat the scenario from the public media, it might turn out that the number of 17 million users will very quickly melt away. Public television only functions thanks to the injection of 2 billion zloty for Jacek Kurski – in market terms it would never have stood up.
“A similar threat to Cambridge Analytica”
Karolina Iwańska, expert at the Panoptykon Foundation, which aims to defend basic freedoms and human rights against threats posed by the development of modern surveillance technologies
What Daniel Obajtek said when justifying the decision to take over Polska Press is part of a trend of building business propelled by data. If this is really the intention of the purchase, that means that the data collected by the websites they have purchased are simply very valuable for Orlen and will allow the company to provide not only advertising, but also potentially use it for political purposes.
We could even say this is a similar threat in terms of scale to what happened with Cambridge Analytica. In today’s increasingly digital world, data gathered by tracking scripts make it possible to display personalised messages to specific website users, and they can therefore be used to influence moods and decisions directly.
Since Orlen is a company dependent on the government, concerns therefore arise that these data will simply be used for political manipulation. We will see whether that actually happens, but technically it is absolutely possible.
The danger we are facing might involve not only communication adapted to individuals, but also the ways social groups are influenced. Especially during an election campaign, statistical data about 17 million users provide a lot of information about what those people are interested in right now, what they are reading, what concerns they have and what particularly bothers them. They give a real idea about people’s lives.
Within this group of 17 million, there will of course be many segments and subgroups, such as young men or single mothers, and communications will be able to be adapted to each of them.
But it is worth stressing that it is most likely not the data from the websites themselves that will allow precise user profiles to be created. The threat becomes way more serious when insights about website visitors are linked to the information that the big internet platforms like Facebook or Google have, and this are undoubtedly much more extensive and exactly what firms like Cambridge Analytica made use of.
The biggest challenge is that in the current technological and regulatory reality, we don’t have access to what actually happens behind the scenes to the data that is collected. This might however change with the new European rules for online platforms – the Digital Services Act package – announced just on the 15th of December.
“A chance to break up the dominance of foreign publishers”
Jolanta Hajdasz, vice-president of the Polish Journalists Association (SDP)
The SDP have on numerous occasions highlighted the dangers of excessive presence of foreign capital on the Polish media market, including Polska Press’s practical monopoly in the regional press. As early as April 2015, we pointed out that the regional media 26 years after the transformation were in a very difficult, and in some respects even catastrophic situation.
This was demonstrated by the gradual decrease in the number of publications, falling readership numbers and the increasingly marginal significance of these media in the public life of Polish regions and provinces. At the time, the SDP called for restoration of the rightful position of regional media in local communities, prevention of monopolisation of regional media and support for Polish entities active in the regional and local media market.
The SDP is therefore hopeful about PKN Orlen’s decision to purchase Polska Press from the Verlagsgruppe Passau media company. We see this a chance to break up the dominance of foreign publishers in Poland’s regional printed press and regional websites market.
At the same time, the SDP calls upon Orlen to create transparent mechanisms guaranteeing respect for the principle of freedom of speech, pluralism of views and journalistic independence.
It is definitely too early to call this transaction “an attempt to change local titles into propaganda media”; we must give a Polish company a chance to publish these newspapers. This purchase is a step in the right direction to eliminate the mistakes after the scandalous implementation of privatisation of the printed press in the 1990s.
The most newspapers in Poland, more than 200 million copies annually, are sold by the German publisher Bauer, closely followed by the German-Swiss company Ringier Axel Springer, which sells over 120 million newspapers and magazines, and number 3 on the list, with sales of 100 million newspapers, is Polska Press, owned by the German publisher Verlagsgruppe Passau.
These titles are Polish, because newspapers with these names have been published since just after the Second World War, but Polish readers did not even realise that they were owned by someone from another country. Incidentally, they are only nominally regional – only two or three pages are edited in Poznań, Gdańsk or Katowice, and the rest comes from head office in Warsaw.
“The motivations were certainly political”
Łukasz Warzecha, columnist for the Do Rzeczy news weekly
Daniel Obajtek and government politicians have to say what they say, but business motives cannot have been significant here, because the press market is extremely difficult and demands deep, specialist knowledge. And it is certainly neither a market with good prospects nor an important one for a company that deals with fuel and energy matters.
Therefore the motivations were certainly political. The state treasury has a decisive share, albeit not a majority one, in Orlen, which means that Mr. Obajtek answers directly to deputy prime minister Mr. Jacek Sasin, who is above all Jarosław Kaczyński’s man. Additionally, Obajtek is probably playing his own game here, and trying to strengthen his own position with this acquisition.
Significantly, in his first remarks he did not mention at all how he was going to avoid influence on editors, to protect journalistic independence, and separate the publisher from the editors. Either this was not considered important, or these topics were deliberately omitted. Only when asked by journalists did Obajtek say that he would not oversee every article. Of course he will not oversee them himself – others will do that for him.
There will certainly be editorial changes in the Polska Press group now – the question is how significant they will be. In the public media, the purging mechanism was very far-reaching, much more so than the one Civic Platform applied in 2010, no less than three years after its electoral victory. It always starts with chief editors – some might have views in line with the government and will stay, while others leave.
The question remains whether these editorial offices will be set up in a similar way as the state media and become an unsubtle government propaganda machine, or if they will be redirected to a more socially conservative course.
Is this the Hungarian model? No, the situation in Hungary is different. Orbán first allowed his business allies to make money on state contracts, and only then did they begin to buy the media. But those media remain private. So if something changes – which seems unlikely, as Orbán is doing very well – then the media will not have new owners.
In Poland, the process has been different, and we have another segment of the media that will become political spoils. The way this has happened is indeed a threat to media freedom in Poland. State-owned companies are not there for managing the media, and in my opinion they should have a statutory ban on entering this sector.
Main image credit: Slawomir Kaminski / Agencja Gazeta
Agnieszka Wądołowska is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She has previously worked for Gazeta.pl and Tokfm.pl and contributed to Gazeta Wyborcza, Wysokie Obcasy, Duży Format, Midrasz and Kultura Liberalna
