Status: 21.07.2021 4:02 a.m.
An amendment to the law in Poland is supposed to forbid “hostile” powers from spreading propaganda. Immediately, however, the violation has an impact on the government-critical private broadcaster TVN, which belongs to a US company.
By Jan Pallokat,
ARD studio Warsaw
Since the return of the former Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk to Polish domestic politics with a lot of fanfare, the national television TVP, as the public radio has been known for some time, has known a big topic: Tusk, which is portrayed as a danger to the country. It hardly matters what he thinks, says or possibly intends to do. Sentences torn out of context from speech excerpts from a German-language appearance of Tusk shrink to a mere illustration in a representation that is supposed to expose Tusk as a liar and representative of foreign interests.
Specifically, it sounds like this, for example: “Tusk has, as commentators say …” says a reporter – cut to Tusk, who – in German – says: “For Germany!” and thus quoted from the context – cut to the reporter who finishes his sentence: “… subjected to German politicians”. “For Germany”, these words cut out of context, often interspersed several times, can only be directed against Poland according to this reading.
Broadcasting licenses only to EEC companies?
In this allusive type of anti-opposition propaganda, a daily News-Quote taken from the new Polish “opposition leader”, with the emphasis on “Führer”. That Tusks made a political comeback that day in the daily News The first message was, the makers of TVP were proof that Berlin and the “Berlin media” support Tusk.
“Not only the media, but also the Polish media, especially those with foreign capital,” a reporter railed – and again there was a cut to Tusk, as he said in German: “Thank you for everything.”
What would prepare the ground for a controversial law that, according to the latest information, is to be discussed in the Sejm for the first time today – and with which the PiS government accepts the conflict with the USA. The essence of the amendment is to only issue licenses for television and radio if the majority owner of the medium is based in the European Economic Area (EEC); supposedly a response to recent hacking attacks from abroad.
Only TVN critical of the government would be affected
A PiS spokesman presented the project as follows: “Let’s take the hypothetical situation that a large Russian energy company is setting up a subsidiary in Cyprus and then in principle has the right to own a medium in Poland, to buy a transmitter and here a Polish variant by Russia Today. The Polish state cannot agree to that! ”
In fact, the only broadcaster in Poland directly affected by the draft law is not a Kremlin mouthpiece, but rather the private broadcaster TVN, which is often decidedly critical of the government and owned by the US company Discovery and has been trying to renew its license for its information program TVN24 for more than a year now tried hard. The project, quickly dubbed “Lex TVN” by independent media, sets a deadline for existing licensees to give up their majority.
In the discussion group of the government-affiliated Gazeta Polska, the author of the law Marek Suski revealed that it is precisely a matter of squeezing out the TVN owner, even if he put his words into perspective afterwards: “If with the help of this law a sale of shares to Polish business people is achieved and we any If you have an influence on what happens in this channel, then it will definitely not be the same as with Polska Press, which you could buy off completely, but it goes in that direction, “he said.
Polska Press is a leading provider of regional newspapers and local web portals in Poland. The takeover of the media group previously owned by the “Passauer Verlagsgruppe” by the state-controlled oil chain PKN Orlen recently made headlines. Since then, almost all of the 15 editors-in-chief have been swapped and replaced by staff members close to the ruling party.
The majority in the Sejm is questionable
In contrast to the case of the German publishing house, this time the US is also campaigning for freedom of the press at TVN: One observes the tussle about the license extension at TVN with increasing concern, wrote the chargé d’affaires of the US embassy.
Big US media like the Washington Post also took up the topic. But law author Marek Suski assures: “We will not give in to the pressure from the USA – and if the law does not come, it will only be because there is no majority in the Sejm.”
It wobbles because the smaller PiS partner, the “Understanding” party, does not want to support the law. Party leader Jaroslaw Gowin suggested expanding the circle of permitted foreign media owners to all OECD countries. It was heard from circles of the authority responsible for the issuing of licenses that they were working on exception rules and that a direct agreement with the USA was being sought.
Suski is meanwhile also on the program council of Polskie Radio, which, like the former public television TVP, lost many listeners due to its possible turn to the party line, especially the intelligence wave “Trójka” (the third). Nevertheless, the programs on radio and television still reach an audience of millions: mainly people who support PiS anyway, media scientist Jacek Dabala from the Catholic University of Lublin puts into perspective: “It’s like in other countries: when the instinct for power awakens, the powerful want that all media will turn into propaganda horns and exclusively praise the achievements of the government. ”
PiS boss Kaczynski has already criticized the fact that too few people watch TVP – certainly also because there are alternatives with channels like TVN with broad, including political reporting.