viewpoint
The strangulation of Polish journalism
Denis MacShane charts several years of government attacks F
or decades, Polish journalists have been their nation’s best ambassadors. Ryszard Kapus´cin
´ski reported
on dictators in Africa during Poland’s communist years after 1950. He did not attack the ruling regime in Warsaw – but everyone got the message. The great Polish journalist Adam Michnik was a founding genius of Solidarnosc. The underground paper Wyborcza is now Poland’s main non-conservative daily. This century, the sparky irreverence of Polish journalists exposed the failings of previous centre-left and neo-liberal pro-business administrations. But Poland’s journalism is now a sad
shadow of its former self. Since the right-wing, Catholic-nationalist Law and Justice Party (PiS in its Polish acronym) won power in 2015, there have been relentless attacks on journalism and journalists that owe more to the media management techniques of Vladimir Putin than the traditions Polish news media once upheld. Step 1 was to remove independent
journalists from key position in public broadcasting. As soon as PiS won power in 2015, there was a wholesale purge of editors and journalists from Polish Radio and Polish TV – the equivalent of the BBC in Poland. They were replaced by PiS supporters. Step 2 was to start using criminal libel law against journalists. Ministers, PiS-appointed judges, business oligarchs linked to the ruling party and wealthy individuals are allowed to launch “strategic lawsuits against public participants”– with the splendid acronym SLAPPs – against any
journalist or media outlet. Judges can hand down fines or even prison sentences against journalists. The PiS-linked initiators of SLAPPS
have bottomless purses. Those they attack do not. The object is to intimidate and demoralise the journalist or editor with legal cases that can last forever. Poland’s Society of Journalists, like
the NUJ an affiliate of the International Federation of Journalists, has identified 187 legal attacks by PiS and its networks against Polish reporters and editors since 2016. It is tiring and demoralising and it is so much easier to report other issues that do not require questioning or challenging the government. Step 3 is the compulsory sale of media outlets to PiS-supporting firms. After PiS pressure, a network of 24 regional newspapers was fire-sold to a firm allied to the ruling party. Now the government has its eyes on Poland’s most popular independent and balanced news network, TVN24. This was launched soon after
communism ended, with investment by France’s Canal+ group. Canal+ sold it to Discovery in the US. Discovery doesn’t do politics but it does believe in western norms of independent journalism. This is unacceptable to the PiS aim of
the Putinisation of Polish media. The regime has proposed a legal change saying foreign owners of any media in Poland have to be based in the European Union or European Economic Area. At one level, this is sheer chutzpah as the EU is bearing down hard on the PiS attack on an independent judiciary. Poland faces severe sanctions if it continues to defy the European Court of Justice and insists judges are under state control as in neighbouring Russia or Belarus.
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The US and especially President Joe Biden have taken pride in being Poland’s very best friend in world affairs. Not any longer. The attempt to boot out Poland’s top news outlet – even if the majority of Poles now get their news from social media – is playing badly in Washington. Discovery is merging with Warner Brothers to form a $130 billion global media giant. The idea of gay-hating Polish politicians trying to impose a Putin media model on Poland will not appeal to the nation of the first amendment. However, a PiS lawmaker, the Sejme
The first step was to remove independent journalists from key positions in public broadcasting. There was a wholesale purge
deputy Marek Suski, said forcing the sale of the US media giant to Polish businessmen would give the government “some influence” over TVN24. In Washington, the State Department has protested against this attack on free media in Poland. A group of senior senators on the foreign affairs committee have condemned the attempts to force Discovery out of Poland. American lawmakers also say Nato membership is incompatible with the kind of attacks on free journalism now at the heart of the ruling regime in Warsaw. For now, there is stalemate. There are
no international bodies or mechanisms that can impose a free media on a government that rejects the very idea of it. For roughly 200 years, the ideas of democracy and progress were inextricably linked to freedom of expression and journalism. For how much longer? Denis MacShane is a former NUJ president and executive member of the International Federation of Journalists. He wrote the first book in English on Polish Solidarity in 1982
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