Poland wants to dry up its propaganda apparatus
The PiS party's authoritarian style of government in Poland also includes influencing the public media in its favor. This has recently become particularly clear during the election campaign. The new three-party alliance under Donald Tusk wants to put an end to the propaganda swamp.
One week after the change of power in Poland, parliament passed a resolution to restore the impartiality of public media. In the past eight years, the public broadcasters and the PAP news agency had become party media under the then national-conservative PiS government, which had "clearly performed propaganda tasks", according to the resolution passed. The Ministry for State Participation, which is involved in the broadcasters via ownership bodies, must now take corrective action.
The restructuring of public broadcasters is one of the top priorities of Donald Tusk's new pro-European government. The criticism is directed in particular at TVP. "Such public service media as we currently have do not deserve funding from taxpayers' pockets," said Tusk.
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, lost power and did everything in its power to delay the change at the top of the state after the election defeat.
"Propaganda arm of the ruling PiS"
International organizations had criticized the public media's one-sided coverage of the election campaign. "The public media have completely transformed into a propaganda arm of the ruling PiS and serve not only to promote the interests of the party, but also to attack and denigrate its critics," reads a report by the European Center for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF), which is mainly funded by the EU Commission.
The OSCE election observer mission complained that the public broadcaster had "clearly favored the PiS in its reporting and at the same time displayed open hostility towards the opposition". Socio-political events were consistently presented in a distorted and biased manner.
After the parliamentary session, many PiS MPs gathered in front of the TVP headquarters late in the evening to protect it, as they claimed on social media.
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The European Center for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF) criticized the public media's one-sided coverage of the election campaign, labeling it as a "propaganda arm of the ruling PiS." Under the then national-conservative PiS government, Donald Tusk's new alliance aims to reverse this trend by addressing the restructuring of public broadcasters, with TVP being a key focus.
Source: www.ntv.de
