Polish state oil refiner buying key private media company
Poland’s state-run oil company says it is buying a large private media group that owns daily and weekly newspapers in the country
WARSAW, Poland — Poland’s state-run oil company, PKN Orlen, announced Monday that it was buying Polska Press, a private media group that owns a wide swath of daily and weekly newspapers in the country.
The company’s CEO, Daniel Obajtek, tweeted that Orlen is buying Polska Press from its current owner, Germany’s Verlagsgruppe Passau.
Orlen is a refiner of oil and the owner of a chain of gas stations.
The decision is consistent with an effort by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of Poland’s nationalist ruling party, to decrease the significant level of foreign ownership of the media in Poland.
However, critics of the party fear that the change in ownership will be a blow to media freedom after the party has already transformed state TV, radio and other media into party mouthpieces.
Polska Press owns more than 20 dailies and 150 regional weeklies, reaching an estimated 17 million readers in the central European nation of 38 million people.
