Case Study: Media coverage (PL & UA) of the attack on two Ukrainian women in Poznań (April 1-14, 2026)

An analysis of media coverage in Polish outlets revealed a clear pattern: most major national news portals (Interia Wydarzenia, WP Wiadomości, TVN24) adopted an emotional style of reporting, filling their materials with expressive language and shocking details from the video footage, while local media and regional branches of national outlets (TVP3 Poznań, wPoznaniu.pl, Radio Poznań, Głos Wielkopolski) demonstrated significantly greater restraint and balance in their wording. This shows a specific mode of the Polish media landscape in which a large portion of Polish society receives information in a highly emotionalized form, which may affect the depth of rational understanding of the issue of xenophobia. Moreover, quoting explicit insults on the one hand highlights the complexity of the mental state of the woman who carried out the attack, but on the other hand, further disseminates these aggressive slogans in the public sphere, creating an effect of reproducing hate speech for a wide audience. In a highly emotionally charged social climate, this may have negative consequences, amplifying feelings of anxiety among the Ukrainian community in Poland.

The roles of local Radio Poznań and the nationwide informational channel of the private TV network TVN24 became an important aspect of the analysis, as they chose to place a special focus on the victims. Journalists there did not merely reproduce dry facts from the police report but reached out directly to Ms. Dariia, asking about her emotional state and experiences. This moves the news beyond a simple crime report, focusing attention on the physical and psychological distress of the victims. In contrast, the editorial policy of some other outlets, including the informational channel of another private TV network - Polsat News, raises questions due to a problematic choice of context: placing links on its portal next to the report about the assault on Ukrainian women that reference past criminal incidents involving Ukrainian citizens creates a manipulative frame of “symmetry of blame”. It shifts attention away from the specific act of xenophobia.

Particular attention should be paid to the tendency of the media to attribute xenophobic behavior exclusively to antisocial elements and individuals with a marginal past. The constant emphasis on the “extensive criminal record” of the attacker, Monika B., creates a misleading perception that xenophobia is a trait of the criminal world alone, rather than a problem that can also arise outside of it. Such framing, on the one hand, protects the reputation of Polish society, but on the other hand, dulls the perception of the issue by placing it outside the realm of everyday social responsibility. The broad coverage of the event — from local newspapers to national television channels — confirms the sensitivity of the topic; however, the focus on the perpetrator’s “irrationality” often overshadows a systemic analysis of xenophobic attitudes in the media space.

In summary, it can be argued that the Polish media landscape revealed its ambiguity in this case. While national media competed for attention through emotional headlines, regional journalists focused on legal aspects and the diplomatic response. This polarization leads to a situation in which society perceives such incidents more as isolated outbursts of uncontrolled aggression from the “social underclass” than as a trigger for a deeper public discussion on the safety and integration of Ukrainians in Poland.

The case we documented confirms that the ways in which information is presented and the contextual framing of news often matter no less than the facts themselves, shaping the level of mutual (dis)trust between the two nations.

The incident received broad but largely uniform coverage in Ukrainian media. The materials can be divided into two waves. The first publications on April 5–6 (before the official response of the Polish police) were based solely on social media videos and were limited in their qualification of the event, merely stating the fact of the incident. Subsequent reports, produced after the official statement of the Greater Poland Voivodeship police on Facebook regarding the detention of the suspect and published after April 7, included legal qualification and, in some cases, details of the suspect’s criminal past.

In most of the Ukrainian media materials included in the monitoring, the official statement of the Polish police was directly reproduced as the main and often the only source. A significant number of outlets, including the public broadcaster’s news portal (Suspilne), national liberal or centrist media (Korespondent, NV), as well as regional news websites (Rayon.in.ua, Volynski novyny), effectively republished the same set of facts without adding their own value. Some materials (Volynski novyny, Korrespondent) directly cited other media outlets — Hromadske and the Ukrainian service of Polish Radio — without conducting independent source verification.

In the description of the suspect, a range of lexical choices can be observed: from neutral terms such as “suspect” and “woman” (Hromadske, Suspilne), to additional colloquial epithets like “intoxicated” and “aggressive” or “showing signs of intoxication” (liberal NV, tabloid blik.ua), to the stylistically derogatory term “hooligan” (tabloid TrueUA). The lexeme “Polish woman” appeared only in two headlines (TrueUA, blik.ua), while other media either avoided indicating the suspect’s nationality or framed their headlines more neutrally. The TrueUA publication also featured a cover image that could prematurely shape an excessively negative perception of the attacker. At the same time, unlike the public broadcaster’s website, which correctly used a quote from the suspect in the headline — “Go back to Ukraine” — several media outlets (Korespondent, Comments.ua) employed clickbait headlines that, together with quotation marks, could create the impression of a misleading direct quote: “Poland for Poles.” In some publications (notably TSN.ua, the news portal of the national private 1+1 TV channel), it was stated that these were the words reported by the victims, allegedly shouted by the suspect. The suspect’s condition during the incident (intoxication) was mentioned in the texts of almost all reviewed media, usually with modal qualifiers such as “probably” or “possibly,” indicating editorial caution.

When it comes to the social framing, most materials were limited to an event-based narrative without a broader context. Only three outlets — Polskie Radio dla Ukrainy, Nasz Wybir (a diaspora media outlet and portal for Ukrainians in Poland), and Comments.ua — made an effort to provide contextualization, placing the incident within a broader pattern of “rapid law enforcement responses to attacks against Ukrainians in regions of Poland.” Nasz Wybir went beyond the event itself by adding a practical guide from the Ambassador of Ukraine to Poland, Vasyl Bodnar, as well as information on prosecutorial reform, while Comments.ua drew parallels with specific previous incidents. The legal qualification as a “hate crime or an insult based on ethnic grounds” appears in the vast majority of materials, but as a quotation from the Polish police, rather than as an independent journalistic interpretation. Overall, the coverage of this event in Ukrainian media is characterized by a reactive nature.