Polish nationalists occupy state TV offices in protest against media freedom reforms

Polish populist nationalists occupied public television premises overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday to protest against the announced reforms of the national channel – widely considered to be a propaganda tool for the previous government.

The populist nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, in office for eight years, lost power following the October legislative elections.

A coalition led by pro-EU Prime Minister Donald Tusk has now taken the reins, and has committed to reforming state television and radio in particular to restore their independence.

On Tuesday, the new ruling coalition adopted a resolution calling for the restoration of “the impartiality and reliability of public media.” The vote was largely boycotted by PiS MPs, who responded with a sit-in protest in the television building to defend what they called “media pluralism”.

The occupation came as the Polish Culture Ministry announced on Wednesday that it had fired the state media’s management team.

PiS’s Jaroslaw Kaczynski responded angrily, saying: “There is no democracy without media pluralism or strong anti-government media, and in Poland it is the public media.”

Kaczynski joined the protesters at the public television building, alongside former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, seen on social media posing with channel employees.

On Wednesday morning, Morawiecki wrote on X (formerly) Twitter that “The illegal actions of the Minister of Culture in relation to TVP, Polish Radio and PAP show how the authorities that supposedly care about the rule of law violate it at every step. And they only rule for a week… We will not give up. We will not allow the construction of a dictatorship in Poland.”

The new government appears unintimidated. “We want to make sure that there is a legal order in Poland and that the media remains free,” PiS MP Marek Suski said on Wednesday.

The former PiS government was consistently accused by the pro-European opposition, the EU, and domestic and international non-governmental organisations of restricting media freedom while directing significant funding to state media.

In its 2020 report, the organisation Reporters Without Borders (RSF) highlighted that “partisan speech and incitement to hatred are still the rule in the (Polish) public media, which have been transformed as a mouthpiece for government propaganda.