Polish media go off air for 24h to protest new tax

Polish media go off air for 24h to protest new tax(reuters.com)

8 points by wojciechka1 5 years ago | 6 comments

pndy 5 years ago |

This is not just about new tax - it's a bigger scenario that PiS gov't tries to play out. Few months ago they announced they'll finally will roll out their plans of "media repolonization" which will be dealing with foreign capital running media outlets in Poland and deconcentrating the market. If you're even slightly following what happens here in last year then you probably get the obvious idea: it's about making sure that PiS party will have means of delivering their propaganda, even if they lose power in future.

I expect that tonight (or less possible in a few days) public broadcaster TVP in its pre-prime time Wiadomości news service at 19:30 will announce that "the cruel non-Polish media refuse to help millions of citizens in this hard pandemic time by refusing paying important new tax". The news service is ridiculed for their headline bars that just scream with old communistic Polish People's Republic propaganda language.

The main political aspect aside, I can hardly sympathize with media operating on the Internet seeing how much data they're harvesting from us - there's no site that wouldn't be infested with tracking. Some outlets shamelessly drop ads disguised as news articles or are lazy enough to just copy article that was already copied somewhere by same subsidiary and pretend it's well-sourced. I don't have to add that quality of content is quite poor in majority but that happens everywhere within online journalism nowadays. Back few years ago there was this cross-publisher's project of payments system that aimed at monetizing content produced by outlets with slogan "do you value a good online journalism?" (shortly become a meme itself) but it hardly get traction; some news sites are still using it but it already become forgotten.

wojciechka1 5 years ago |

Many private media outlets went off the air in Poland for 24h on Wednesday, running slogans like "This used to be your favourite programme", in protest against a proposed media advertising tax they say threatens media independence and diversity.

LatteLazy 5 years ago |

I don't particularly trust the current Polish government. But a tax on advertising is hardly censorship.

throwaway7726 5 years ago | |

In this particular case, the media supporting the government are subsidized with public money. This happens two ways:

1. through advertisements of national companies put in selected media outlets

2. through direct ownership. The largest national company - Orlen - purchased a large set of local publishers "Polska Press".

Effectively, the new tax will be a burden only to the media that do not support the government.

emteycz 5 years ago | |

It is when media is severely lacking funding and you know it and establish the tax purposefully.

jarek83 5 years ago | |

Tax here is not what most might think it is. What they want to do with money from this "tax" is to finance government-driven bodies which will 'educate' the public about media manipulation. Today we already see what the government means by that - they own state media and amount of hate and misinformation spilling out of them is horrendous. My parents remember exact type of narrative from when the communists had their best time in Poland.