Polish state broadcaster to launch 24-hour English TV channel

Poland’s public broadcaster, TVP, is preparing to launch a new 24-hour channel in English, which may go on air in the first half of next year.

The service will “offer a Polish perspective on key issues”, says TVP’s boss, Jacek Kurski. It will also present what is happening “in the entire region”, because Poles “have a better understanding than many other Europeans”, adds the deputy culture minister, Jarosław Sellin.

Critics, however, fear that the new channel will become a political tool for Poland’s populist ruling party, which already uses TVP domestically to promote the government’s narrative and to attack opponents. Reporters Without Borders describes TVP as a “propaganda mouthpiece”.

The working name for the new channel is TVP World, says Kurski, who before being appointed to head TVP was a politician from one of the parties that makes up Poland’s ruling coalition.

The aim of the service will be to “reach Poles who live abroad, feel a connection with the country, but no longer speak Polish”, Kurski told Wirtualne Media. “They want to know what the Polish perspective is on certain key issues”, and TVP will present that in “an extremely professional way”.

Sellin, the deputy minister, expresses even greater ambitions for the project. “We will tell the world – in the language most commonly used today – what is happening in the entire region, not only in Poland,” he says, also quoted by Wirtualne Media.

“I think that we are better specialists in understanding what is happening in the region than many other European nations,” Sellin adds.

A leading opponent of the government, Leszek Balcerowicz – who as finance minister in the 1990s was the architect of Poland’s post-communist economic transition – expressed concern that the new channel would be modelled on Russia Today. He named the broadcaster “PIS-TV”, using the ruling party’s initials.

Poland’s public broadcasters have always been under some government influence, but observers have noted a particularly strong and clear bias since the current ruling coalition led by Law and Justice (PiS) came to power in 2015.

TVP is used during election campaigns to support PiS and its allies while criticising their opponents. Before this year’s presidential election, it warned that the main opposition candidate, Rafał Trzaskowski, may seek to “fulfil Jewish demands” to “rob” Poland of “200 billion zloty”.

It linked Trzaskowski to an alleged “powerful foreign lobby” tied to George Soros and the Bilderberg group, which TVP claimed was responsible for bringing Muslim immigrants to Europe and seeking to introduce “LGBT ideology”. Trzaskowski has sued the station over its reporting.

International observers from the OSCE have, in their reports on Poland’s last two elections, raised concern over the role played by public media.

State TV “acted as a campaign vehicle for the incumbent”, PiS candidate Andrzej Duda, at this year’s presidential election and “failed in its duty to offer balanced and impartial coverage”, wrote the OSCE. “Some of the reporting was charged with xenophobic and antisemitic undertones.”

Earlier this year, ahead of the election, President Duda agreed to grant an additional 2 billion zloty of annual funding to public media. Supporters of PiS argue that, even if state broadcasters are now biased, this is a necessary counterbalance to a media landscape dominated by outlets that favour the opposition.

TVP World is expected to launch in the first half of 2021, reports Wirtualne Media. It will replace Poland In, the current English-language service run by TVP that is available online globally (apart from in North America).

Poland In was launched in 2018 at a cost of 1.8 million zloty (€0.4 million), and has since cost 13.5 million zloty a year to run, reports Wirtualne Media. Its average daily viewership last year was 46,000.

In August this year, TVP launched a weekly hour-long English-language programme for North American viewers of its Polish news channel. It also offers TVP Polonia, which broadcasts in Polish to the diaspora around the world.

Earlier this year, the station launched TVP Wilno, a service aimed at the large ethnic Polish minority in Lithuania. Poland’s foreign ministry also co-funds Belsat, a station that broadcasts to Belarus, which is home to many ethnic Poles.

Main image credit: Kuba Atys / Agencja Gazeta

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.