Fakt (newspaper)

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Front page of an September 2006 edition
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Compact (Tabloid)
Owner	Axel Springer AG
Editor	Grzegorz Jankowski
Founded	2003
Political allegiance	populist
Headquarters	Warsaw
Website: www.e-fakt.pl

Fakt (Polish for "fact") is a Polish tabloid-style daily newspaper and the biggest-selling paper in the country, with a circulation of more than 500,000 and an estimated readership of 7 million. The paper was launched in October 2003 by the Polish outlet of the German publishing company Axel Springer AG, Axel Springer Polska, and modeled on Springer's German tabloid Bild, the biggest-selling newspaper in Europe. Like its German counterpart Bild, Fakt is characterised by its downmarket, often sensationalist journalism with a populist appeal. However, politically it is by and large centrist. More recently, it has supported former prime minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz's policies; Marcinkiewicz also regularly contributes invited comments. Other regular contributors of op-ed pieces include Tomasz Lis, a prominent television journalist with political ambitions, TVN anchorman Kamil Durczok, and former Rzeczpospolita columnist Maciej Rybiński.

Untypically for a tabloid and in contrast to its usual content, Fakt has a weekly supplement entitled Europa which contains high-brow (non-original) essays by scholars and public intellectuals, which in 2006 have included Niall Ferguson, Francis Fukuyama, Jürgen Habermas, and Robert Kagan.

[edit] Response from competitors

Within a short time, Fakt replaced the upmarket to middle-market Gazeta Wyborcza as Poland's biggest-selling newspaper, also putting pressure on Super Express, until then the only nationawide tabloid. Gazeta Wyborcza's publisher Agora S.A. responded with the (failed) attempt to establish the distinct middle-market paper Nowy Dzień as a direct competitor of Fakt. When Fakt was launched at a price of 1 Polish złoty, Super Express's publisher MediaExpress accused Springer of dumping prices below production costs. Having lost the ensuing lawsuit against Springer, MediaExpress eventually reduced the price of Super Express to Fakt's level.

[edit] Criticism

Like Bild and other tabloid press products, Fakt has been subjected to criticism concerning its style of journalism from media watchdogs. Twice so far, the Association of Polish Journalists awarded Fakt with its "Hyena Of The Year" award for "particular unscrupulousness and neglect of the principles of the journalistic work ethic": In 2004, Fakt had published a photograph showing the nude dead body of a murder victim; in 2005 it had published the photo of an innocent person with the caption "This sex offender is at large".