The realignment of radio and television is a priority for Poland’s new Prime Minister Tusk. The previous national-conservative government had brought the broadcasters firmly under its control. Now they should be able to report independently again.
Anyone who wanted to watch news on the Polish public broadcaster TVP on Wednesday was disappointed: instead of the program there was only a placeholder with the logo and a Christmas star. The news channel TVP Info and its internet portal were even completely switched off. It wasn’t a technical glitch: Donald Tusk’s new pro-European government has begun a major cleanup of the public media.
The main news on TVP was also canceled in the evening at 7:30 p.m. Instead, viewers saw the well-known television journalist Marek Czyz, who once had to leave the station. “Every Polish citizen who finances the public media has the right to demand factual, professional and honest information from them,” said Czyz. That’s why there will be a different type of news program from Thursday: “No soup, but clear water.”
One week after the Tusk government took office, Culture Minister Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz fired the entire leadership of the public broadcaster in one fell swoop. The decision affects the CEOs and supervisory boards of TVP, Polish radio and the PAP news agency, his ministry announced on Wednesday. New supervisory boards have already been appointed and they will elect new board members. At the PAP agency, the previous boss Wojciech Surmacz did not want to accept his dismissal, as the gazeta.pl portal reported. At the same time, the new manager Marek Blonski was in the company and had ordered the first personnel changes.
PiS politicians occupy television headquarters in Poland
The Ministry of Culture expressly referred to a parliamentary resolution intended to restore the impartiality of the public media. For years they were seen as mouthpieces for right-wing nationalists previous government.
Parliament passed the resolution to restore “the impartiality and reliability of the public media” on Tuesday with the majority of the new coalition under Prime Minister Donald Tusk. It said these media had lost their legal mandate to provide reliable and impartial information and had become partisan media. The Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of State Investments, which are involved in the institutions through ownership committees, must now take corrective action. Most of the MPs from the right-wing populist party in power so far PiS boycotted the vote.
Large demonstration in Warsaw
An estimated one million Poles take part in an opposition demonstration against the government
After the vote, PiS politicians occupied the TVP television building on Wednesday night to, according to their own statements, defend “media pluralism”. “There is no democracy without media pluralism or strong media critical of the government, and in Poland these are the public media,” said PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who joined the protesters along with former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. An AFP reporter also saw police stationed at the public television headquarters.
Poland’s president criticizes new Tusk government
Morawiecki spoke of a “violent intrusion” by television’s new leadership. “We see the first step towards a dictatorship,” he emphasized to journalists. According to Kaczynski, the PiS politicians want to continue their protests alternately. PiS MP Marek Suski reiterated on Wednesday that it was about defending “media freedom”. PiS politicians also protested on Thursday.
President Andrzej Duda, who is close to the PiS, criticized the new government’s actions in the media sector. On the online service X, formerly Twitter, he called on Prime Minister Tusk and his cabinet to “respect the Polish legal order.” He attached a letter to Tusk stressing that “a parliamentary resolution has no force of law.” Duda called the action “completely unlawful” and a violation of the constitution. Anyone who wants different rules for the management of the media must first change the relevant law, Duda told the radio station Zet on Thursday. “This is anarchy. It is anarchy to circumvent the existing law,” he said.
Tusk reacted immediately and rejected Duda’s request. “As I have already informed you, today’s action is, in accordance with our intention, aimed at restoring the law and order and common decency in public life.” Duda can count on the government’s “iron determination” in this regard.
International organizations criticize press freedom in Poland
After their election victory in October, Tusk and his alliance partners took over the government on Wednesday last week. The restructuring of public broadcasting is one of the priorities of the Tusk government. The opposition and non-governmental organizations had previously repeatedly accused the PiS of increasingly restricting media freedom during its eight years in power, funneling significant financial resources into the state media and converting them into mouthpieces for government propaganda. Particular attention is paid to TVP, popularly known as “TVPiS”.
The Polish newspaper “Rzeczpospolita” commented on the media restructuring on Thursday: “It was already clear when Donald Tusk’s new government was sworn in last week that the first measures (…) would affect four areas: the public media , the rule of law, relations with the EU and state-owned companies. And that’s what they did. In the corridors of Parliament, the coalition heard that changes in the public media were necessary before Christmas. The coalition’s voters should already during Christmas and family holidays have the feeling that the new government is really working. And the most important symbol should be Polish television and especially its flagship, the (news program) ‘Wiadomosci’.”
International organizations had criticized the public media’s one-sided reporting on the election campaign. These have “completely transformed themselves into a propaganda arm of the ruling PiS” and are participating in the denigration of their critics, according to a report by the European Center for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF), which is mainly financed by the EU Commission.
The OSCE election observation mission complained that the public broadcaster “clearly favored the PiS in its reporting and at the same time showed open hostility towards the opposition.” Socio-political events were consistently portrayed in a distorted and openly partisan manner.
TVP hated by PiS opponents
The non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) found in 2020 that one-sided reporting and “hate speech” were still the order of the day in the state media in Poland. The state media have been transformed into “government propaganda mouthpieces.” In its 2023 report, the organization noted that the PiS government is also increasingly trying to bring private media under its control.
TVP Info in particular became an object of hatred among many PiS opponents in the population. After a radio presenter described Tusk as “red-haired and mean”, many participants in a large demonstration against the PiS during the election campaign appeared with red-haired wigs.
Note: This article was updated after publication.
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
