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Polish oil giant in talks to buy local press: report

09.10.2020 15:30
Poland’s state-owned oil giant PKN Orlen is in talks with German publishing house Verlagsgruppe Passau on the purchase of its Polish branch, British weekly The Economist has reported.
PKN Orlen.
PKN Orlen.Minale Tattersfield/CC BY-SA 2.0/Flickr

The branch, called Polska Press, owns 20 out of 24 local dailies published in Poland.

The Economist reported that despite the fact that most of these newspapers have a relatively small circulation, they are important for Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party, because their readers are usually inhabitants of rural regions of the country who are the backbone of the party’s electorate.

According to the British weekly, the possible purchase would be part of Warsaw’s steps aimed at the "deconcentration" of mass media in Poland.

The magazine reported that in a recent interview, Law and Justice leader Jarosław Kaczyński said that the government wanted to reduce the share of foreign investors in Polish mass media to no more than 30 percent, and limit the number of titles which could be owned by one media group.

(jh/pk)

Source: Polskie Radio