An Apparent Change: TVP Info’s Coverage of Events at the Polish-Belarusian Border in 2024

Abstract The migration crisis on the EU-Belarus border is one of the most important security challenges Europe is facing today. Depending on their orientation, the media point to different aspects of the crisis, which affects the interpretation of the actions of the social actors involved. Combining insights from agenda-setting theory, frame analysis, and corpus linguistics, the article investigates TVP Info’s (news website of Polish public service television) discursive construal of main social actors regarding border events during the first 6 months of 2024. Aside from reconstructing the discursive strategies of TVP Info, the paper compares them with the portrayal of the events by the previous editorial board, which gained international notoriety for its unapologetic support of the then government. While the new TVP did abandon racist and EU-sceptical discourse, it disregarded the humanitarian aspects of the events and did not attempt to reconstruct the point of view of those at the border or non-governmental organizations helping them. In addition, the perspective of the opposition was not mentioned, which resulted in giving the reader a false impression that the government consistently takes the right approach on all issues, while in fact, it has not eluded criticism from various formations and organizations. Thus, it appears that despite declarations of the need to present a nuanced picture of reality made by the new TVP authorities, Poland’s public service media still largely show the government’s point of view and ignore the information which might contest its propaganda.