A few months before the elections to the Bundestag, a Polish bank issues bonds worth 5 million euros and announces in a communiqué that it will allocate them to the functioning of “independent media” in Germany. Of course, the German media and politicians immediately cause an uproar and accuse Poland of wanting to interfere in the election campaign, the EPP group led by the German Manfred Weber is preparing a draft EP resolution against our country, accusing it of a lack of rule of law, and Ursula von der Leyen writes a letter to the Polish government demanding an explanation of the matter and threatening to refer the complaint to the CJEU.
political fiction? Naturally. But the decision of the socio-ecological bank GLS from Bochum to issue bonds worth 5 million euros to support “threatened” media in Poland and Slovakia is no longer fiction. And in support of “journalistic independence in Eastern Europe”, as announced in the Polish-language version of Deutsche Welle.
Poles worried about media freedom?
There must be an alibi for this “brotherly help”, so a few days earlier the same title published a completely exotic and incredible poll on media freedom in the V4 group (Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic). The research is being carried out by the Czech charitable foundation Bakala Foundation (owned by the owner of the publishing house, Czech billionaire Zdenek Bakala), which until now has not been interested in Poland at all. It shows that as many as 71% of Poles are concerned about issues related to freedom of expression. 1,000 people from each country were surveyed, but what was the methodology of this study, how is it a representative group, we will not know. Dr. Václav Sztietka, a sociologist from Loughborough University in England, who designed and conducted opinion polls on media freedom in four Visegrad Group (V4) countries, hypothesizes that the main reason for the large increase in concern in Slovakia and Poland is probably the fact that there are parliamentary elections in both countries this year. Of course, throughout the election campaign, the governments of both countries will introduce censorship and shut down all media associated with the opposition, while those with foreign capital will be chased away once and for all. No wonder the Poles are worried!
Commenting on the decision of the German bank GLS to provide “fraternal aid” to the oppressed media in Poland, Klaus Deuse cites the acquisition of Polska Presse, formerly owned by the German Verlagsgruppe Passau, as an example of a threat to the freedom and diversity of the press in Poland. Logical – the German concern, which controls the majority of the regional press in Poland, did not pose a threat to the freedom and diversity of the press, the Polish certainly did.
1.5 million euros for the kindness of German journalists?
This willingness to finance and take social responsibility, to provide financial security to the independent media in Central and Eastern Europe, seems rather unfortunate at a time when Germany was rocked by a scandal that called into question the independence of the German media . It has been revealed that over the past five years, the federal government and its subordinate bodies have paid about 1.5 million euros to journalists for “moderation, texts, editing, training, lectures and other events”. EUR 900,000 went to journalists from public broadcasters, about 600,000. euros to private media employees. About 200 journalists are involved in the case, some of them were employed by the newspapers “Spiegel”, “Zeit”, “Tagesspiegel” and other private media, but about 120 worked for public broadcasters such as ARD, ZDF, WDR and rbb. The German public in the survey of any company, not even the Czech one, is concerned about the independence of its media, so there is nothing to worry about.
Where does the money from Germany go?
Observing this concern about the independence of the Polish media coming from across the western border (and soon millions of euros with it), one can conclude how concerned the liberal European elites are about the possibility of a third term of office of the United Right. If you lose faith in the power and influence of powerful foreign companies, which forces Poland every day through the Internet, radio, weeklies and commercial television only the right vision of the future of our country under the leadership of the opposition and the rule of those who really deciding the fate of the EU and resorting to familiarity from the days of free elections in Poland means that foreign countries will use all their strength and resources to help the opposition win. The money will flow not only to carefully selected non-governmental organizations (by the way – in the bureau drawer of which ministry is the draft law on the transparency of the financing of these organizations?), but also to city portals and radio stations, living on subsidies and advertisements from local government (of course in these local governments where the opposition rules), and perhaps also in the pockets of independent journalists who work in truly free media, because in the latter case, as you can see, the practice has been practiced in Germany for a very long time long.
Elections in Poland are not free elections, which theoretically gave the opportunity to choose the best of the candidates, but gradually became a field of manipulation for stronger neighboring countries. From the end of the 17th century, they actually decided on the choice of rulers. Today the Poles decide on the choice of democratic power.
Source: wPolityce