The new Polish government has gutted the top management of public television, making good on a campaign promise to reform a broadcaster that functioned as a mouthpiece of its rightwing populist predecessor, but also prompting criticism of their methods from some quarters.
The government led by prime minister, Donald Tusk, was sworn into office last Wednesday. It has promised to launch an ambitious programme to reverse the damage done to rule of law in the country during eight years of government by the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party.
Under PiS, state media was accused of promoting the party’s policies and launched vicious, personal attacks on opposition figures, and Tusk in particular. “We will need exactly 24 hours to turn the PiS TV back into public TV. Take my word for it,” Tusk said during a campaign rally in early October. In the end, it has taken his government a week. On Tuesday, the new parliament adopted a resolution calling for the restoration of “impartiality and reliability of the public media”. After the resolution, the new culture minister, Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz, announced that the chairs and boards of state television, news and radio had all been removed.
How was the news?
People cried watching them. Seriously.
Some stuff was obviously done with sticks and scotch tape so to say, since the takeover was very chaotic, the new team didn’t really have much resources. But it seems a lot of lower level people have been retained.
The first segment was about the takeover itself, and while it kinda reeked of propaganda, after they’ve shown the government’s justification for the whole thing, they brought up the President’s response. And he is from Law and Justice, the previous team. This is what made people cry, since for the first time in 8 years you could hear the opposition voices in state media.
It only got better from there with the budget, where every party got a moment, and the sentencing of those two MPs I’ve mentioned in main comment.
Overall rather bland, but most people say that’s what public media should be like - bland and including every side involved.
Of course, it doesn’t mean that every view should be acceptable, but they should be inclusive, even to those with fringe views.