Polish State-owned Orlen Buys Top Regional Media Group

Poland's state-owned PKN Orlen energy group said Monday it had acquired Polska Press, the largest regional and local newspaper distributers in the EU country

Warsaw, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 7th Dec, 2020 ) :Poland's state-owned PKN Orlen energy group said Monday it had acquired Polska Press, the largest regional and local newspaper distributers in the EU country.

Orlen said it bought the company from German media group Verlagsgruppe Passau (VGP), for an undisclosed sum.

With the purchase, PKN Orlen will control the paper and digital versions of 20 of 24 regional dailies and nearly 120 local weekly newspapers, according to a company statement.

"We are, among other things, gaining access to 17.4 million users of the websites managed by Polska Press," it added.

Poland's governing nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS), has long said it wanted to "repolonise" the country's media, accusing foreign-owned publications of representing outside interests, especially German ones.

VGP managing director Alexander Diekmann cited "strategic reasons" behind the decision to sell its Polish holdings.

"This will allow our press group to further implement our growth plan, which began a few years ago, particularly in Bavaria," he told the Passauer neue Presse daily.

Owners of VGP, the Diekmann family, added that "the sale remains subject to acceptance by competition authorities".

The takeover by the state-owned Orlen has raised concerns about press freedom, however.

Since winning office 2015, the nationalist PiS has taken a firm hold on public radio and television, drawing criticism from Poland's liberal opposition and international observers.

Global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said in its 2020 world report on press freedom that "partisan discourse and hate speech are still the rule within (Poland's) state-owned media, which have been transformed into government propaganda mouthpieces."