The Polish parliament has passed a resolution seeking to restore the impartiality of public broadcasters in the country. At the same time, the government replaced the intelligence chiefs.
A week after the change of power in Poland, parliament passed a resolution intended to restore the impartiality of public media.
It says, for example, that over the past eight years, the public broadcasters and the PAP news agency have become party media under the then national-conservative PiS government. These had “clearly carried out propaganda tasks”. The Ministry for State Investments, which has a stake in the institutions through ownership committees, must now take corrective action.
After the parliamentary session, many PiS MPs gathered late in the evening in front of the TVP station’s headquarters to “protect” it – as they claimed on social media.
Politicians from the PiS party stand with flags in front of the headquarters of the TVP broadcaster.
Media restructuring is a high priority for Tusk
The resolution comes as no surprise: restructuring public broadcasters is one of the top priorities of Donald Tusk’s new pro-European government. The criticism is particularly directed at the television station TVP. About the station, Tusk said:
Such public media as we currently have does not deserve funding from taxpayers’ pockets.
In the election on October 15, a three-party alliance of the former opposition led by Tusk won the government majority. The PiS, which had been in power since 2015, had lost power.
OSCE: PiS in reporting “clearly preferred”
International organizations had long criticized the public media’s one-sided reporting on the election campaign. “The public media has completely transformed itself into a propaganda arm of the ruling PiS and serves not only to promote the party’s interests, but also to attack and denigrate its critics,” it says a report by the European Center for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF)which is mainly financed by the EU Commission.
The OSCE election observation mission complained, the public broadcaster “clearly favored the PiS in its reporting and at the same time displayed open hostility towards the opposition.” Socio-political events were consistently portrayed in a distorted and biased manner.
intelligence chiefs exchanged
The new Polish government also replaced the heads of the country’s secret services and anti-corruption agency. Prime Minister Tusk also announced this yesterday. The previous heads of authorities had served under the previous right-wing populist and eurosceptic government of the PiS party.
At a press conference, Tusk said he expected “very good, loyal and disciplined” cooperation with the new management, all of whom have significant experience in their areas of expertise.
Dorota Gawecka will be the new head of military intelligence. Agnieszka Kwiatkowska-Gurdak will head the Central Anti-Corruption Authority. Rafal Syrysko was appointed head of the domestic intelligence service, Pawel Szot as head of the foreign intelligence service and Jaroslaw Strozyk as head of the military counterintelligence service.
Martin Adam, ARD Warsaw, tagesschau, December 20, 2023 1:18 p.m