It seems that the elections in Poland are, in a sense, taking place in Germany, as the German media has been dealing with this topic for months, mainly through Warsaw correspondents and articles from Polish opposition newspapers. As can be predicted, objective information about the elections in Poland is lacking in the German media – says Belgian historian Prof. PAP. David English.
““You can’t hear any positive or even neutral voices.”
With the exception of some conservative niche media, such as the (weekly) “Junge Freiheit” or the (monthly) “Tichys Einblick”, there is of course not a single positive or even neutral voice to be heard about the current Polish government.
– Engels points out.
He states that “regardless of whether they are magazines or websites close to the Christian Democrats, liberals, social democrats, greens or post-communists, they are all competing with each other by calling the Polish government ‘alt-right’, ‘populist’ , ‘nationalist’ and even ‘extreme right’ and describes life in Poland in the darkest terms.”
According to Engels, in the German media, Poland is a country where “Muslims and LGBTQIA2S+ people have to fear for their lives, that wants to leave the EU, where dangerous nuclear power plants are being built near the border with Germany, where women are forced to return to the kitchen, where freedom of expression exists, where Jews have no rights, where industrial pollution is endemic and is routinely channeled to neighboring countries, where EU subsidies regularly end up in private pockets, etc.
Alleged scandals have been blown up
According to him, “all real or alleged scandals reported by the Polish opposition press are inflated and eagerly passed on to the German public via the evening news, and the information is of course never corrected if it turns out to be incorrect.”
Germans heard about the visa scandal, among other things. that Polish authorities, with the help of state officials, illegally sold visas to 250,000 people. foreigners to ‘flood’ Germany with migrants
– Engels gives an example and adds that “the fact that there were at most a few hundred visas has not yet reached the German mainstream media and probably never will.”
The historian complains that “the popular media has spent a lot of time on the German government’s decision to restore border controls with Poland to ‘secure’ the country against Warsaw’s perceived lack of reliability, although Germany continues to sharply criticize Poland for erecting a barrier at the border with Belarus (and preventing Italy from sending ships carrying asylum seekers back to Tunisia and Libya) because ‘no human being is illegal’ and Germany ‘needs’ at least a quarter of a million new citizens every year to reverse the decline of to stop his country. own population.”
Polish Catholicism
The situation is similar to the recent, and in fact quite unsavory, scandal surrounding certain Catholic priests, which is presented in the German media as an example of the sorry state of Polish Catholicism and its ‘problematic’ support for the government, although that of course it is. looking in vain for good news about pastoral, moral or social commitment to the Church for the benefit of Polish society
– English complains.
He also emphasizes that “if this scandal turns out to be exaggerated, or perhaps even untrue, I am afraid that this will certainly not be reported in the German media.”
“The scope of Polish military assistance is seriously downplayed.”
And of course the war in Ukraine
– sighs the PAP interlocutor.
According to him, “the current dispute between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Polish government is being widely exploited by the German media, but the context is highly distorted.”
For a year now, the extent of Polish military aid has been severely downplayed in German news, and virtually nothing has been heard about Polish aid to Ukrainian refugees. If you believe the mainstream German newspapers, you get the impression that Germany is the main European donor dealing with the majority of Ukrainian refugees, while Poland indulges in its anti-Russian complexes, ruining Ukrainian agriculture due to the stop grain imports and create a lot. more for a large and useless army, the financing of which is indirectly guaranteed by the German taxpayer, who as a net EU contributor is responsible for the Polish economic miracle
– describes an analyst from the Western Institute.
In summary: objective information about the elections in Poland is lacking in the German media
– summarizes the historian.
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olnk/PAP
Source: wPolityce