News in Poland: are Poles more positive?

When I was in Poland I saw a few different things on the news. One was about the May 1st celebrations about the end of communism. Another was about Poles voting in the London Mayor elections. Another about the success of the Polish formula 1 driver.

As soon as I got back to England I saw the usual English news. The muslims wanted to kill us, 1/4 of the population are on disability benefit, we have more grandmothers in there 30s than ever before, credit crunch etc. etc. All bad news.

Is is just me - or are British people quite negative and the Poles more positive? I know the Poles like to complain but I didn't here any complaining when I visited. I could be wrong about this, I'm just curious to know does anyone else think that Poles are more forward thinking than the British?

just because there were more positive stories on the Polish news at the time of your stay, doesn't mean Poland is more positive or 'forward thinking'. after living in both Poland and England, i dare to say English people are more positive and laid back. there were many things for us to celebrate at that time obviously, but what you usually get is the antics of the Polish government, people complaining about hospitals, someone striking somewhere... Just the usual stuff you see on the news in UK too. besides, bad news sells better than good news.

Yes, I am sure I may well be wrong.

I am quite a negative Brit. I loved Poland when I was there. To me it felt like a country on the way up whereas Britain feels like a country in decline.

Its probably just that holiday feeling.

It could be that indeed. Everything always looks better when you're somewhere on holiday but the natives would see it differently.

It could also be that the news in Poland focus on a variety of things rather than everything that's bad, I don't know.


That's right. If there's a really good news story that will warm people's hearts and make them smile it won't make the airwaves if there's a tragic event to be reported.

Completely agreed.
Just a fresh example:

Yesterday at 23.00 I was watching TVN 24 (Polish news channel) and they were showing some images from Austria, repeating that many Polish fans/hooligans had been arrested for fights with Germans, and they were showing pictures on which I could see only German or unidentified football fans. This morning we could read that out of the 157 people arrested, 144 were Germans, 10 Polish :)

But last night they just kept repeating in TV how many Polish hooligans were arrested hoping that this could keep the viewers attention for a longer time (because who cares about German hooligans?)

Something to mull over on the subject:
Changing Attitudes
nwe.pl/National.php?article_id=535

I got the same impression that Polish News are quite different. I think it is due to the fact that there is more hunger for real information. Polish people mistrust any marketing gags. Finally they want you to give money, people say. To get any advertising effects is much harder here. In "Old Europe" all people used to live in an economic environment that tries to betray everyone. So all do it. The daily lies of capitalism are well-known in U.K. Poland seems to be fresher. We'll see what is coming...