ABSTRACT
This chapter covers media policy issues in Poland that are particularly important for local media context or exist mainly in local context. One of the latter issues that is examined is local media financed partly or fully by local government institutions and considered by local media owners as ‘unfair competition’. National regulations shape the local media context and local media policies the most in Poland. Therefore, in the second part of the chapter I analyse the issues of authorisation, correction and criminalisation of libel/slander offences to present their particular impacts on local journalists and to illustrate how these impacts lead journalists to turn to international institutions for help. The final part of the chapter provides examples of how local context influences journalistic standards and can create conflicts of interests and values.
