WARSAW — Poland’s new government moved Wednesday to seize control of the country’s publicly owned television, radio and news agency from the hands of loyalists to the Law and Justice (PiS) party, which lost power following the October 15 parliamentary election.
It’s part of a broader revolution that has the new parliament setting up special commissions to investigate the actions of the former government — in power from 2015 to this year. The new government is also replacing the heads of security agencies.
Separately, a court, not under political control, on Wednesday sentenced two prominent PiS politicians to terms in prison for crimes committed when PiS briefly governed from 2005 to 2007.
TVP public television, Polish Radio, and the Polish Press Agency (PAP) became subject to tight political control shortly after PiS won power in 2015, which saw Poland slide in global media freedom rankings. The coverage was heavily skewed toward the government, something election observers said heavily favored PiS, as well as President Andrzej Duda, and helped shift the outcome in the 2019 parliamentary vote and 2020 presidential election.
State media were firmly behind PiS in this year’s parliamentary election campaign as well.
The PiS government spent over 2 billion złoty (€465 million) on TVP this year and over 7 billion from 2017 to 2022.
That made retaking control of those institutions a key priority for Tusk and his coalition government ahead of this spring’s local elections and the European election in June.
On Wednesday morning, Culture Minister Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz fired the heads of TVP, Polish Radio and PAP. The ministry cited “exercising ownership rights on behalf of the State Treasury, holding 100% of shares” in public media companies.
“The minister appointed new supervisory boards for the mentioned companies, which, in turn, appointed new management boards,” the ministry said in a statement.
Current senior officials were blocked from entering media buildings and police were summoned.
TVP’s round-the-clock news channel TVP Info briefly went off the air after the decision was announced before going back on with an old TV series about a priest who moonlights as a detective. TVP1, the country’s main public TV channel, broadcast only its logo for 10 minutes instead of normal noon programming.
A day earlier, the parliament passed a resolution calling on the ministry of culture to take decisive action to restore “citizens’ access to reliable information, the functioning of public media, as well as ensuring (their) independence, objectivity, and pluralism.”
Before that vote, Duda wrote to Parliament, calling on MPs “to act within the boundaries of the constitution.”
Wednesday’s move was greeted with fury by PiS MPs, many of whom have taken up residence in the TVP headquarters in Warsaw in an effort to block management changes. They were joined by Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of PiS and Poland’s de facto ruler from 2015 to this year’s general election.
“This is a defense of democracy,” he said on Tuesday evening. “In every democracy there must be strong anti-government media.”
Faced with anti-PiS protesters on Wednesday, an angry Kaczyński said to one of them: “Watch out that you don’t end up in prison, you little shit.”
A powerful voice
Polish public media are financed by mandatory licensing fees paid by the public, and by statute they are supposed to be free of bias. Under earlier governments they tilted toward whoever was in power, but did try to be broadly fair. However, when PiS won the 2015 election, it moved swiftly to oust management, editors and reporters seen as unfavorable to the new government. The PiS argument was that public media were needed as a counterweight to private television and newspapers that generally favored their opponents.
Losing control of powerful media outlets just after losing power is a double blow for the party.
“The Tusk government is implementing its plan to take over public media — disregarding the law,” Beata Szydło, a former PiS prime minister and now a member of the European Parliament said on X. “The Tusk administration tramples on fundamental principles of democracy.”
Maciej Świrski, the PiS-backed head of the government media regulator, called the move “a flagrant violation of the law.”
But the new ruling coalition celebrated. “Good morning, free media,” said Robert Biedroń, an MEP for the Left, which is a part of the Tusk-led coalition.
It’s part of a broader effort by the Tusk government to cut PiS off from its sources of political power and cash.
State-controlled corporations, most run by PiS loyalists, are bracing for a purge. In recent days, parliament has created special commissions that will probe past wrongdoing, such as dodgy COVID-era contracts and spending 70 million złoty to hold a 2020 election by postal ballot which hadn’t been authorized by parliament. On Tuesday, Tusk appointed new heads for the main intelligence and security agencies, which had been accused of supporting PiS and of spying on the party’s opponents.
“Fasten your seatbelts,” Tusk announced on Tuesday.
On Wednesday, a court also sentenced two prominent PiS MPs to prison for abuse of power in 2007, in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling that a pardon issued by Duda in 2015 was flawed.
The two — Mariusz Kamiński, the former security services minister, and his deputy Maciej Wąsik — said they would disregard the verdict and would refuse to give up their parliamentary seats.
“This verdict, which we do not recognize, does not give grounds for extinguishing our seats. It is contemptible,” Kamiński said in parliament.
The new justice minister, Adam Bodnar, said: “We are all equal before the law and are obliged to obey it … Only an independent court can decide guilt. This is what the rule of law is all about.”
President Duda’s office insisted that the verdict was flawed.
“The gentlemen are pardoned, the pardon is valid and in legal force,” said Małgorzata Paprocka, a presidential adviser.
