Poland’s government is formally dissolving the public media in order to rebuild it. The government of Donald Tusk and non-governmental organizations accuse the media companies of spreading PiS propaganda.
The new Polish government of Donald Tusk wants to formally dissolve the public media, but maintain jobs. “Following the decision of Poland’s president to suspend funding for public media, I have decided to put the companies TVP, Polish Radio and the PAP news agency into liquidation,” Culture Minister Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz wrote on the X platform on Wednesday the continued functioning of these media can be secured and their restructuring can be continued.
Poland has been arguing about public media for years
With this step, the dispute between the new and the old government camp over public media is entering the next round. Last week, Sienkiewicz fired the entire leadership of the public broadcaster in one fell swoop. The Tusk government accuses the media of having spread party propaganda in recent years under the national-conservative PiS government, which has now been voted out. International organizations had also criticized the one-sided reporting by the public media in Poland.
On Saturday, Poland’s President Andrzej Duda, who belongs to the PiS, vetoed a law passed by Tusk’s government that provided for the equivalent of 690 million euros in subsidizing public broadcasters. Duda justified his move by saying that this was a circumvention of the constitution and a breach of constitutional principles. He demanded that the public media must first be repaired thoroughly and in accordance with the law.
After the elections in October, the new pro-European Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his allies took over the government in Warsaw two weeks ago. The opposition and non-governmental organizations had repeatedly accused the previously ruling PiS party 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 right-wing nationalist government propaganda.
The non-governmental organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) found around 2020 that one-sided reporting and “hate speech” were the order of the day in the state media in Poland. The state media has been transformed into “propaganda mouthpieces for the government.” In its 2023 report, the organization noted that the PiS government is also increasingly trying to bring private media under its control.
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.
