Polish opposition submit bill to abolish state TV’s “propaganda” news channel

Poland’s largest opposition party, the centrist Civic Platform (PO) has submitted a bill that would abolish the public broadcaster news channel, TVP Info, which PO says has become a “propaganda” outlet for the national-conservative ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party.

The legislation has been spearheaded by Rafał Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw and a deputy leader of PO. He first proposed the idea while running for president against PiS-backed incumbent Andrzej Duda in 2020.

During that campaign, TVP’s news broadcasters were used not only to support Duda but also to portray Trzaskowski as working on behalf of a “powerful foreign lobby” linked to George Soros and of seeking to “fulfil Jewish demands”.

Trzaskowski ended up losing his presidential bid with 49% of the vote to Duda’s 51% in a second-round run-off.

“State media under the PiS government have long ceased to [serve the] state, ceased to care about reliable information,” said Trzaskowski, quoted by news outlet Wirtualne Media. “It is impossible to call them public media anymore.”

He noted they have been used for politically motivated campaigns not only against the opposition, but also other government targets, such as protesting doctors and teachers, LGBT people, refugees and other minorities.

“Just as Dziennik Telewizyjny [communist-era propaganda news] was consigned to history after 1989, now the TVP Info channel should be abolished,” declared Trzaskowski. “Poles deserve real public television, not like Russia Today, but like the BBC.”

The bill has been submitted as a so-called citizens’ initiative – a type of legislation that must be considered by parliament if it receives at least 100,000 supporting signatures from the public. Trzaskowski says that more than the required number have been gathered.

Whereas normal bills submitted by the opposition can be effectively ignored by the PiS speaker of the Sejm, the lower house of parliament, a valid citizens’ initiative must be submitted for consideration by the Sejm within 14 days. However, given the government’s majority in the chamber, it unlikely to proceed any further than that.

Signatures in support of the legislation were actually collected in 2021. Trzaskowski says it is only being submitted now because “there were other priorities” during the pandemic and after Russia’s invasion of Ukrainian. However, Gazeta Wyborcza, a leading liberal daily, reports there also were disagreements about the bill within PO.

Another reason for submitting the bill – which would also abolish the licence fee – now, says Trzaskowski, is that PiS recently pushed through an extra 700 million zloty of additional funding for public media in 2023, when vital parliamentary elections will be held. “Money is being taken from Poles to finance propaganda,” he says.

During election campaigns in 2019 and 2020, observers from the OSCE noted that TVP had “acted as a campaign vehicle for the incumbent”, with a “lack of impartiality…[that] undermined voters’ ability to make an informed choice…[and] amplified the advantage of the ruling party”.

PiS argues, however, that the changes at TVP are part of a necessary re-balancing of the media landscape, which was previously dominated by liberal and leftist outlets. Its supporters note that public media in Poland have always been under the influence of whichever parties are in power.

However, since PiS entered government, public trust in TVP has fallen to its lowest recorded level, according to state research agency CBOS. The channel is now Poles’ least trusted major source of news, according to an annual study by researchers at the University of Oxford.

Main image credit: Michal Ryniak / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

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.