[randycupertino]

It is a pretty good song, and I like the juxtaposition of the lyrics being about fighting depression vs the upbeat catchy tune.

Does Poland still have state-controlled media? I'm Polish (living in the US, though have visited 2x) but wasn't aware that still existed there.

[ajuc]

The problem isn't that they are state controlled. They were pretty good for a while (between 1989 and 2015). Maybe biased, but the rules about equal time for each party etc. were respected and journalists from both sides of the political spectrum had their programs there no matter who was in power at the time (for example very anti-PO Ziemkiewicz and Wildstein during PO terms).

The problem is that the current government took over prosecutors, judges, media oversight institutions, constitutional court, basically all institutions that were supposed to protect media neutrality and rule of law - and openly ignores the rules. Since 2015 it goes worse and worse and by now it's basically North Korea level.

I'm not joking, this was in the state media before presidential elections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9O3tc21cU0

Whenever they show Donald Tusk (one of leaders of opposition) in TVP they put his voice through distortion so he sounds like Darth Vader. And they cut to him saying stuff in German every few minutes as it has bad associations in Polish :)

[shameless_plug]

It would be good to hear somebody from the other side of the spectrum so the reader who does not live in Poland can develop unbiased opinion.

From my observations supporters of current government was saying exactly the same thing before this government was elected.

[ajuc]

You'll have a hard time finding their supporters on English-speaking internet, especially now when they lost young people after the abortion scandal.

At any rate I was stating falsifiable facts. For example the law says that all political parties should have time on state TV according to their percentage of votes from previous elections. Here is the charts of TV time when previous government (PO) were controlling media and when current government (PIS) does:

https://www.wykop.pl/cdn/c3201142/comment_KV0oMf1z6dv7AywTSa...

PIS had about 37% support in 2018, PO had about 30% support in 2014. This is not cherry-picked btw, the percentage gets worse with time, here's data from 2019: https://twitter.com/szczesniak__a/status/1228076766998278144...

Regarding breaking the rule of law - EU courts ruled that the changes PIS made were breaking the rule of law. Even PIS lawyers agree with that (for example Krystyna Pawłowicz admited the changes were "obviously unconstitutional, but we agreed with President Duda that we will vote for them"). She got nominated by President Duda for the next judge at constutitional tribunal after that. You can find video of the quote, it's not manipulated.

They basically changed the law shortening the retirement age for judges so that judges older than X were immediately fired so they can replace all of them at once - making the highest Polish court fully staffed with their people. Constitution says the judges cannot be replaced before term and PIS doesn't have 66% required to change the constitution, but they just introduce the law anyway and as they have their people in courts - whatever they say goes. And their people got to the courts by breaking the constitution in the first place. So now we have 2 legal systems in Poland - the government one and the legal one. And we pay fines to EU because of that.

It's a mess.

[shameless_plug]

I feel sorry to see people so fixated on this political theater, both sides are worth of each other. And thanks for down-voting too. Peace.

[ajuc]

I have hundreds of comments on hn, 99% of them about programming and stuff.

You have 6 comments on hn, 5 of them defending Polish government.

Yet I am the one fixated on "political theater" :)

[atraac]

TVP is practically owned by a leading party, it’s a propaganda tube by now. And it’s not even subtle, it’s North Korea level now.

[KptMarchewa]

Yes, and they spew north korea-level propaganda.

[shameless_plug]

Pretty much every mainstream media in Poland are "North Korea style propaganda" (as another commenter named it), just depending on which political camp people are they will call the other part of mainstream propaganda. People who voted for this government would call TVN propaganda, people who hate this government call TVP propaganda. This extends to radio and press. And people who don't vote because there is no political option with sensible program in many cases don't watch TV or listen to the radio..

[garaetjjte]

There's no comparison between PiS and any other government that was before. They are on wholly different level. Trying to muddle things by saying the other side it also bad is just disingenuous.

>And people who don't vote because there is no political option with sensible program

You say that as if not voting was some virtue, it's not, and one of the reasons for the situation we are currently in.

[shameless_plug]

Both camps say exactly what you said, blaming politicians glorified by other camp. Not voting is not a virtue, especially when nobody comes up with sensible program. Easiest way to disconnect mentally from this hate race is not to watch TV :)

[garaetjjte]

Yeah, better to bury your head in the sand and wait until we're in autocratic country de facto outside the EU.

This is not a contest for perfect politician where opposing sides have different loud opinions but ultimately all would do acceptable job governing the country. PiS is not playing by the democratic rules, they are consistently taking over all the institutions and filling them with own pawns, and it's of critical importance to stop them.

[shameless_plug]

I don't vote for "less evil" and I do remember what most of these politicians were saying and voting 20-25 years ago. Based on that experience I came to conclusion that life is too short to worry about any political party or agendas they proclaim. In the same time I respect your opinion. Peace.

[coolso]

> You say that as if not voting was some virtue, it's not

It absolutely can be.

Every politician desperately wants you to vote. It’s, obviously, what gives them power and either an implicit or explicit endorsement of their policies and behaviors.

If you hate politicians, don’t do what they desperately want you to do.

[ajuc]

> Every politician desperately wants you to vote.

Not true. Depending on the voters demographics politicians want you to vote or to stay at home. You can see this clearly in USA where one side wants immigrants to have voting rights and easy way to vote and the other side wants to make it as hard as possible for them to vote, preferably to ban it altogether.

In Poland it's the same, but the divisions are different - mostly city vs countryside and old vs young. So for example PIS moved the presidential elections to holidays (when most young people from cities are away from home and have to deal with more bureaoucracy to vote) and sponsored special prizes for villages with the highest voting percentage.

Other examples is voting abroad - when PIS had majority there - it made it easier to vote from abroad; now that most people abroad vote opposition - PIS made it very hard to vote from abroad and hundreds of thousands of votes from abroad weren't counted for formal reasons.

Another thing is - in a very polarized society it's almost impossible to make person switch voting from one side to the other. But it's possible to persuade your opponent voters to stay at home. Hence targeted PR campaigns in social media.

Politicians want to get and keep power, that's universal, but some politicians will break the rules to achieve that goal and others won't. It's counterproductive to treat them all the same just because you think being cynical is cool.

[hawski]

I don't believe, that TVN is an objective TV station, but they are on a different level, than TVP. Even if we would say for the sake of argument, that they are about similar level of propaganda the state run television is financed by taxes [1] and TVN is a private station, that lately had to put up with more obstacles. Also it is a well known fact how time allocation by party in the state TV got severely skewed under the current rule towards the ruling party.

[1] and they increase the amount of money put there - https://www.nik.gov.pl/aktualnosci/gospodarka-majatkowa-i-fi...

[pixl97]

I dont know anything about the stations, but it's always possible that both stations are propaganda.