Foreign interference in Poland's election: air superiority, or the domination of Polish media - Part 1

Poland's liberals have been given all the financial, political and media support from abroad that they needed to win a majority in Sunday's elections. Although foreign interference in Hungary was fended off last year, the events in Poland prefigure what lies ahead for Hungarians who insist on national self-determination in the next elections.

Gdansk, 2021. november 8. Donald Tusk, a lengyel ellenzéki Polgári Platform (PO) elnöke gdanski sajtóértekezletén 2021. november 8-án. A lengyel határnál összegyûlt nagy létszámú migránscsoport megkezdte erõszakos behatolási kísérletét Fehéroroszországból Lengyelországba és az Európai Unióba, de a lengyel biztonsági erõk közlésük szerint a helyzetet ellenõrzésük alatt tartják. Tusk a Lengyelországot Fehéroroszország felõl fenyegetõ illegális bevándorlásról is nyilatkozott. MTI/PAP/Adam Warzawa Fotó: Adam Warzawa

Soros's media buy-outs and NGO funding, the withdrawal of EU funds and political pressure and intervention by a group called Action for Democracy - all these combined have done a lot to assist the Polish liberal-leaning side ahead of Sunday's general elections. From Hungary's perspective, even compared against the Hungarian general elections in 2022, serious foreign forces have been mobilized to change the government in Poland. 

The stakes were high: a further shift towards the United States of Europe, the adoption of mandatory migrant quotas and the supply of Ukraine with money and weapons.

 In a series of articles, we'll unveil the foreign influence that played a key role in deciding the Polish elections, because it provides valuable lessons in terms of Hungary's national self-determination.

George Soros has bought key stakes 

The media build-up of the Soros network has been ongoing for years in the largest state in our region. In the context of Polish media relations, it is important to know that according to this year's Reuters Media Market Report, the largest reach TV channel has always been American, and the largest reach radio channel German. However, just to be on the safe side, a fund linked to George Soros acquired a significant part of the second largest Polish radio network in 2019.

The Soros network had already taken ownership of the country's largest public daily newspaper years earlier.

As we have previously reported in detail, in 2016, when Agora - the publisher of the liberal daily Gazeta Wyborcza - found itself in dire financial straits, the billionaire-backed Media Development Investment Fund stepped in to buy Agora's five million shares for almost $17 million. The 444.hu portal and Magyar Narancs magazine were backed by the same fund in Hungary. According to the Reuters Institute, Gazeta Wyborcza reaches 12 percent of those who get their information from TV, radio and print newspapers on a weekly basis, while roughly one-eighth of those who receive their news from online newspapers also follow it at least weekly.

All this, however, was not enough. In January 2022, news broke that the media consortium Pluralis, partly owned by George Soros, bought a 40% stake in the publisher of the second largest Polish political newspaper, Rzeczpospolita, which is followed by around three million people on the internet every day.

Then, in August this year, it was announced that a fund backed by an American speculator had acquired a majority 52-percent stake in the once more right-leaning newspaper.

German interference 

It is worth noting that the Soros expansion - with the acquisition of commercial radios as well as a spectrum of leftist-liberal and centre-right media outlets - has allowed the network to establish a division of labor with other foreign-owned media. These media outlets were able to exert a multi-directional political influence on a wide range of voters, which fitted in well with the Polish opposition's concept of running on three different lists, among other things.

At this point, we can also make mention of the influence of German-owned outlets. In 2020, Magyar Nemzet already showed how the most important German publisher in Poland backed the liberal candidate, the mayor of Warsaw, in the presidential election campaign of that year.

Current Polish President Andrzej Duda, who built his campaign on conservative family values, has been attacked in an article published in the leading tabloid, Fakt. The newspaper is owned by Ringier Axel Springer Polska, the Polish subsidiary of the Swiss-German media group, which is also known in Poland. On its front page, Fakt accused Mr Duda of having pardoned a pedophile convict. Even though the man has already served his prison sentence, the president only lifted the restraining order imposed by the court, in compliance with the request of the perpetrator's adult victim.

 

Fakt has a significant reach even in itself. According to the Reuters Institute, cited above, it reaches 14% of those who get their information from TV, radio and print newspapers on a weekly basis, while roughly 13% of those who get their information from online newspapers also follow it at least weekly.

It is also a key fact that besides the country's the biggest television broadcaster, its largest radio stations and most significant public newspapers, the online news portal called onet.pl is also in foreign - namely German - hands. The owner in this case is also Ringier Axel Springer Polska. According to various estimates, Onet reaches 39-42% of Polish online readers every week.

In 2021, the Polish parliament voted in favour of a bill that would have restricted non-EU companies from acquiring a majority stake in Polish media. The proposal was met with huge protests, mostly from Brussels and Washington, and was vetoed by President Andrzej Duda. Similar foreign influence was known to have existed in the Hungarian media before 2010, but this has changed considerably in recent years. In February 2021, PM Orban spoke at the opening event of the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry's annual economic year, saying that "in 2010 we identified four sectors of strategic importance for the national economy, where our goal was to ensure that Hungarian ownership would exceed 50 percent." According to Mr Orban, in addition to the banking sector, energy and retail

this is how the world of media and related industries looked like, where we started from 34 percent and are now at 55 percent.

However, the question of foreign influence and the possibility of foreign interference in Hungary still remain unanswered.  

In the run-up to and since the 2022 elections, there has been a renewed push to recapitalize some of Hungary's leftist-liberal media outlets. These include Partizan, which is partly financed from overseas, Telex, 24.hu (whose owner Zoltán Varga, a man currently facing criminal proceedings, has acquired a 13.43% stake in the Polish Gremi Media group alongside Soros's Pluralis), which is also supported by EU funds, and 444.hu. A few years ago in Hungary, the leftist-liberal "Free Europe" (Szabad Europa) portal was launched exclusively with US funds.

The latter also cooperates with a number of local liberal media outlets (nyugat.hu, debreciner.hu, kecsup.hu, szabadpecs.hu), partly financed from Brussels, partly by George Soros, and partly from overseas. For example, the Áramlat (Flow) Foundation, which is behind the Kecsup portal, has been granted US funds in addition to left-wing party funds, since it received donations from the Soros network in the year of its registration. Behind these national and local channels of money, it is not difficult to identify the overarching intention to make preparations for the upcoming local elections.

(To be continued)

Cover photo: Donald Tusk, the darling of the Soros empire in Poland (Photo: Adam Warzawa)