Bosses At Poland’s Oldest State Broadcaster Fired & News Channel Shuttered By New Government Amidst Propaganda Concerns
Bosses at Poland’s oldest state broadcaster have been removed and its news channel taken off air by Donald Tusk’s new government.
The heads of TVP, Polish Radio and state news agency PAP were fired yesterday with the new Tusk-led coalition dismissing TVP as a propaganda channel that had been aligned with the Law and Justice (PiS) party – the nation’s previous ruling administration.
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Responding, PiS’ head Jaroslaw Kaczynski condemned the Tusk government’s “illegal actions” and joined a protest at TVP headquarters in the Polish capital Warsaw overnight. Last night, TVP Info, the 24-hour news service, symbolically changed its headline strap from red to black before being taken off air.
Poland’s state treasury owns 100% of the 70-year-old state broadcaster and “the necessity for this type of action and the justification were set out in the resolution of the [parliament] of the Republic of Poland of December 19, 2023,” according to the Polish culture ministry, which said the move was made for the “restoration of legal order and the impartiality and reliability of the public media and the Polish Press Agency.”
“The decision to dismiss the current authorities and appoint new ones was made at the General Meetings of Shareholders by the owner of the Companies, represented by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, who has full autonomy in making such decisions,” added the ministry’s statement.
Management and boards were dismissed this morning and Tusk’s new coalition, which took power last week after a rocky few months, has vowed to create new news outlets that take a more balanced approach.
In recent years, TVP had broadly been seen as a propaganda machine for Kaczynski’s right-wing government, repeatedly toeing the PiS line. Conversely, PiS had threatened closure of Warner Bros. Discovery-owned TVN, a local channel network that the government first tried to close down via foreign ownership rules and then claimed was pro-Russian. Neither move was successful prior to last year’s election.
State media is highly valued in Poland and around a third of people rely solely on it for their news, having no access to private broadcasters, according to the BBC.
Other than news channels, TVP also operates a number of linear and sports networks, most recently commissioning the likes of war series The Bay of Spies.
Tusk, who is leading Poland for the second time and is a former European Council President, was voted in last week by lawmakers two months after the election, which saw PiS get the most votes but fail to find a parliamentary majority. PiS had been in charge for the previous eight years.
Deadline has contacted TVP for comment.
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