TVP news channel goes off air as Polish government clears out PiS appointees

Source: Alamy.com

Polish public broadcaster TVP’s news channel ceased broadcasting on Wednesday as new Polish prime minister Donald Tusk moved to take control of an institution widely criticised for acting as a mouthpiece for the previous government.

The shutdown of TVP Info, the broadcaster’s 24-hour news channel, sparked protests by members of the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, with PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński leading a sit-in at TVP’s main facility after leaving the Polish parliament, the Sejm, during a debate on the future of the broadcaster.

The new government’s culture minister, Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz, has dismissed the heads of public television, radio and the state news agency, with Tomasz Sygut taking over at TVP.

Polish opposition parties including Tusk’s Civic Platform had criticised TVP for acting as a highly biased government propaganda outlet during PiS’s controversial period in power.

PiS politicians have meanwhile appealed to the Polish constitutional court, dominated by PiS-appointed judges to stop the new government’s reform of public media. The Polish media regulator, KRRiT, which is still dominated by PiS appointees, also criticised the move as illegal.

On taking office in 2015, PiS had changed Poland’s media law and set up a new regulatory to enable it to fire management and appoint journalists sympathetic to its policies.

The PiS government also used state-owned energy company Orlen to acquire the country’s largest local media outfit, Polska Press, enabling it to take control of newspapers and news websites, and attempted to the limit foreign media ownership, including Discovery’s control of commercial broadcaster TVN. The government was forced to row back on the latter move after protests by the US.

During PiS’s time in office, Poland dropped from 18^th to 57^th place in the World Press Freedom Index.