Polish media conflict pits government against far right
January 3, 2024
Three weeks after the change of power in Poland, the public media remains the most prominent political dispute between the center-left government of Donald Tusk and Jaroslaw Kaczynski's outgoing national conservative Law and Justice party (PiS).
President Andrzej Duda, an independent close to the PiS, placed this topic at the center of his New Year's address. "For the first time in free Poland since 1989, there was an attempt to take over the public media by force. The broadcasting signal of some TV channels was turned off and informational programs were no longer broadcast," he said.
"I will never accept the violation of the constitution. Unfortunately, we are currently dealing with such a situation," he added, saying that the government can reform the media, but it must do so in accordance with the law.
Dual power in the media
The president's words, which most commentators interpreted as confrontational, came in reaction to the latest development in a media dispute that led to a kind of dual power between Christmas and the New Year.
New appointments to the supervisory and management boards of the three state-run media outlets by Culture Minister Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz on December 19 launched a wave of protests by the PiS. The populist, national-conservative opposition party said the personnel changes were unlawful and refused to recognize them.
PiS parliamentarians forced their way into the headquarters of public broadcaster TVP and the news agency PAP to prevent the new leadership from taking their posts. The politicians, who justified their action as "MP monitoring," occupied the offices and scuffled with police. Their protest didn't end until after Christmas. Meanwhile the building in Warsaw remains occupied.
Government dissolves public media
Duda has subsequently added fuel to the fire by vetoing a budget law that provided the public media funding of 3 billion zlotys (Є690 million, or $754 million).
The move turned out to be a major challenge for Prime Minister Tusk, whose culture minister dissolved the media organizations three days later due to a lack of funds. According to the authorities, however, the aim is not the actual closure of the affected institutions, but restructuring and their continued operation.
The formal dissolution ends the dispute over who the legal director is, lawyer Katarzyna Bilewska explained to liberal daily Gazeta Wyborcza.
After a break of several days, the main news program is now back on air with new staff and a new name. Information channel TVP Info is also now back on air.
"The era of agitation against the opposition is over," online news platform Onet wrote.
A threat to media credibility
The ongoing dispute is catastrophic for the prestige, credibility and future of the media outlets in question, Boguslaw Chrabota, editor-in-chief of the moderately conservative daily Rzeczpospolita, warned over the weekend.
"All parties to the conflict bear joint responsibility for the institutional and material decline [of public media] as well as the dwindling audience and readership figures," he wrote, calling for work to begin quickly on a new media law that would redefine financing and tasks for the public media.
Political influence on information programs has been a serious problem in Poland since the emergence of the democratic state in 1989/1990. Former heads of government and presidents have even been known to personally make calls expressing their dissatisfaction with coverage.
After the PiS prevailed in both the presidential and parliamentary elections of 2015, party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski instrumentalized the media as a propaganda tool. The PiS set up the National Media Council (RNM), an unconstitutional body that acted unilaterally on personnel changes in the public media, enabling the removal of unpopular journalists.
New draft law?
A new media law is not possible without the president's approval, but the governing coalition does not have enough lawmakers to reject the head of state's veto.
President Duda may ultimately decide to cooperate, however. His adviser, Andrzej Zybertowicz, recently said that television in the PiS era was "not a model of objectivity," describing the information programs as "bad propaganda."
While there have been plenty of good ideas for reform over the years, political will has been lacking for implementation. But media scholar Tadeusz Kowalski said a draft for comprehensive media reform already exists.
"There have already been public consultations for two years. Very concrete principles have been prepared, including a new financing concept," Kowalski told private TV station TVN.
The chairperson of the parliamentary culture committee, Bogdan Zdrojewski, said work on the draft law could begin in the course of this year.
Another protest planned
The focus of public media should be on citizens and not politicians, Kowalski said. Politicians should be in the minority on "trustee councils” that combine the tasks of the supervisory and program councils, he suggested. Personnel decisions should also return to the jurisdiction of the National Broadcasting Council, as things were before the PiS came to power.
"After the last exchange of blows, both sides [the president and the government] know that they have strong cards at their disposal and will not hesitate to use them in an emergency. Now is the time to start negotiations," journalist Zuzanna Dabrowska in wrote in Rzeczpospolita.
Though PiS leader Kaczynski is on the losing side in the dispute over the media, he doesn't appear to be giving up the fight. He called for a rally in front of the parliament building in Warsaw on January 11 under the slogan "Defense of free media."
"Should I laugh or cry?" writer and playwright Artur Ilgner wrote in Rzeczpospolita, adding that the notion would be as absurd as Russian President Vladimir Putin calling for a rally at Red Square in Moscow in defense of invading Ukraine.
This article was originally written in German.