PiS Blockade and a New Show
On Wednesday, Poland’s new government replaced the leadership of the public media. The ousted PiS party staged a protest and blocked access to the office of the new chief of the news agency PAP.
The conflict between political factions over public media in Poland continues. About a dozen members of the ousted national-conservative government party PiS spent the night from Thursday to Friday in the building of the PAP news agency, as reported by the private television channel TVN24. According to the report, the new director, Marek Blonski, was prevented from entering his office.
First broadcast of a new news show
The new pro-European government of Donald Tusk took the first steps on Wednesday to end PiS’s control over the public media. Minister of Culture, Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz, fired the entire leadership of the public broadcasters in one fell swoop. This affected the CEOs and supervisory boards of the TVP television channel, Polish Radio, and the PAP news agency. On Thursday, the first main news show was aired after the removal of the TVP1 channel’s leadership. At the beginning, experts and representatives of the broadcaster explained why the programs under the national-conservative government violated principles of objectivity and fairness and why the government replaced the leadership of the channel so quickly. Even the name of the show was changed from “News” to “19.30”.
The Tusk government accuses the media of spreading party propaganda during the last eight years under the PiS government. International organizations have also criticized the one-sided reporting by the public media in Poland.
Human rights activists raise legal doubts
“The previous practices of Polish television, Polish radio, and the PAP news agency are in flagrant contradiction to what public media should be in a democratic rule of law,” said a statement by the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, which has now been published. The public broadcasters became propaganda organs under PiS and participated in, for example, homophobic smear campaigns.
However, there are constitutional doubts as to whether a member of the government should be allowed to make decisions about the staffing of the administrative bodies of the public media, according to the human rights activists. In the election on October 15, a three-party coalition led by Tusk, which was previously in opposition, won the majority in the government. The PiS, which has been in power since 2015, lost power.