European values: Poland’s media fears a crackdown

“We have to have our own media. In our country, non-Polish media should be an exception,” Kaczynski, now deputy prime minister, said in an interview with wPolsce. pl last month. “Maybe that is not easy, and it is certainly not a short path, but it is the only way to defend our freedom, our sovereignty.”

In the absence of legislation, PiS politicians have urged state-controlled companies to buy up foreign-owned Polish media. In December, PKN Orlen struck a deal to buy Polska Press from Germany’s Verlagsgruppe Passau, in a move that will give the state-owned oil refiner,

run by a close ally of PiS, control over 20 of Poland’s 24 regional newspapers, and almost 120 local weeklies.