It was a short sigh of relief when the majority of the Polish Senate voted against the PiS government’s controversial new broadcasting law on September 9th. Poland’s opposition, which dominates the Senate, thus sent an important signal against the national populist ruling party. In July, the latter had passed the amendment that would force the US owners of the television broadcaster TVN 24 to sell their controlling majority with the amendments to the law. TVN24 is Poland’s leading news channel, the most important still independent nationwide source of information. The government wants to bring it under its control, as it did before the state television and the regional newspaper group Polska Press, which was recently bought by the state company Orlen.
The station belongs to the US group Discovery. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has sharply criticized the so-called TVN law, which prohibits owners outside the European Economic Area from majority ownership of Polish radio or television stations. In the Polish Senate, the legal service and other legal experts found that the amendment contradicts many points of the Polish constitution, the EU treaties and a Polish-American trade agreement from 1990. The senators rejected the draft with 53 votes out of 100.
But Jarosław Kaczyński, head of the PiS, is sticking to it. “We are convinced that the media law is indispensable,” he said last week. Although ex-diplomats and members of the opposition warn against sensitive countermeasures by Washington, he is just as tough on the broadcasting law as he is in the dispute with the EU over the dismantling of the Polish rule of law.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) paid Poland 500,000 euros a day on Monday. A record fine because the country did not stop lignite mining in the Turów opencast mine as ordered in May – and thus violated EU law. However, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki reiterated that Turów would remain open. The European Commission has applied for further high fines to the ECJ because Warsaw disregards decisions on the rule of law, such as the order to immediately dissolve the illegal disciplinary body at the Supreme Court, which has taken action against independent judges on several occasions.
“The media should serve the rulers”
So far there is no sign of giving in, on the contrary. At the request of the head of government, the politically controlled constitutional court is supposed to declare unconstitutional those articles of the EU treaties that do not suit Poland because of the obligation to adhere to the rule of law. The TVN law also has a chance: After the vote in the Senate, it goes back to the Sejm, the first chamber of parliament that can overrule the Senate with a simple majority. It is possible that Kaczyński will try that this week.
Media expert Jan Dworak sees three reasons for Kaczyński’s approach. “Joe Biden is now sitting in the White House, from whom Kaczyński, unlike Donald Trump, does not expect anything. In addition, the PiS has been ruling for five years. Its populist resources have been exhausted and their popularity has fallen,” says Dworak, who ran from 2004 to 2006 steered the public television broadcaster TVP. Even a new, massive spending program has not changed that. But there will be elections again in autumn 2023 at the latest. “In Kaczyński’s view, the media are not there for the formation of democratic opinion, but rather should serve the rulers. “
For years, Dworak also headed the National Broadcasting and Television Council, a constitutional body that also appointed the head of public television TVP. But at the end of 2015 the Council unconstitutionally disempowered. The new TVP boss Jacek Kurski, who praises himself as the “Bull Terrier of the Kaczyńskis”, immediately converted the station into a “propaganda channel with an invented reality”, as Dworak says. “Kaczyński thinks that if he now also controls TVN24, there will be no more talk of all the scandals in the ranks of the government or the conflict with the EU. He believes he can convince people of his version of reality.”
It is still unclear whether the PiS wants to push through the Broadcasting Act in its current version or amend it beforehand. Poland’s President Andrzej Duda, also appointed by the PiS, has announced his veto if the amendment remains as it is. However, Duda has so far never finally prevented an illegal law from the PiS government, but has been satisfied with cosmetic changes.
The Broadcasting Council acts loyally to the government – against TVN
But the law is not the only lever against the TVN24. The National Broadcasting and Television Council should have approved the extension of its license, which expired on Friday, long ago. “He is legally obliged to do so,” says Dworak. However, it did not happen. Whether it will be approved after a council meeting scheduled for this Tuesday remains to be seen.
To be on the safe side, the owners of TVN24 applied for – and received – an EU-wide broadcasting license in Holland in August. But that does not solve the problem of a legally enforced sale, said the broadcaster. Therefore, speculation continues as to whether the station with its hundreds of employees will lose its base in Poland because of alleged violations of regulations.
How the Broadcasting Council can damage the station was already indicated in August. The trigger was a violent criticism of the opposition politician Władysław Frasyniuk on a TVN24 live broadcast. Soldiers who blocked refugees on the Polish-Belarusian border were “not serving the Polish state,” complained Frasyniuk. “That’s not how soldiers act. Just rubbish. This is not human behavior, this is anti-Polish behavior,” he raged. As a result, 25 alleged complaints from private individuals were submitted to the Broadcasting Council.
Other methods are also possible: in 2018, after an investigative report on Polish neo-Nazis, the public prosecutor and the secret service took charges against TVN24 alleged propagation of National Socialism before. In 2017, the council imposed a fine – which was later withdrawn – a fine of millions against the broadcaster. Opponents took action after the PiS won the election at the end of 2015. The PiS parliamentarian Maciej Świrski, the nominal author of the current TVN law, suggested at the time that the American owners should be informed that their station was “an insult to a third of society”. Świrski already had the next steps in mind: “Litigation on a massive scale”.