Since Donald Tusk’s return as leader of Poland’s main opposition party, state television – which is used as a mouthpiece by the government – has broadcast negative coverage of him virtually every day, a study has found.
Between 3 July, when Tusk was appointed acting leader of the centrist Civic Platform (PO), and 3 August, the main evening news on public broadcaster TVP mentioned him every single day apart from 28 July and 1 August.
Over that period, 78 reports on the half-hour Wiadomości news show featured Tusk, and 75 (96%) of those presented him negatively, according to analysis by the Press Service Monitoring Mediów (PSMM) agency for Wirtualne Media, an industry news website. Four segments showed Tusk neutrally and none presented him in a positive light.
TVP’s reports sought to present Tusk as dishonest, as a representative of German and Russian interests, and as wanting to take away the social benefits introduced by the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government.
“Tusk’s return pleases the Germans” and “Tusk in the club of Putin’s friends”, headlined Wiadomości the day after his return. It reported on “Donald Tusk’s campaign of lies” two days later. “Will Tusk take money from Poles?” asked another headline later in the month.
Similar coverage appeared on TVP’s other news programming. On its afternoon Teleexpress broadcast, 100% of reports that mentioned Tusk showed him negatively, found PSMM, while the Panorama news show on TVP’s second channel mentioned him in 37 reports, 95% of them negative.
More than half of tonight's 30-minute evening news broadcast on Polish state TV's main channel was devoted to attacking Donald Tusk, including this report titled "Tusk's Campaign of Lies" https://t.co/D8faGiETJ1 pic.twitter.com/JGqTuSRM5X
— Daniel Tilles (@danieltilles1) July 6, 2021
By contrast, over the same period, Poland’s two main private broadcasters provided much more balanced coverage of Tusk – whose party has risen rapidly in the polls since his return – found PSMM.
The main news programme on Polsat, Wydarzenie, mentioned the oppostion leader in 35 reports, with 30 of them (86%) showing him neutrally, 4 (11%) negatively and only 1 (3%) positively.
On TVN, a channel often accused by PiS of having a pro-opposition bias, Tusk was mentioned in only 23 reports on its main Fakty news broadcast: 17 (74%) neutral, 5 (22%) negative and 1 (4%) positive.
In July, TVN’s Fakty was the most-watched news programme in Poland, averaging 1.96 million viewers. TVP followed close behind with 1.93 million viewers for Wiadomości and 1.88 million for Teleexpress. Polsat’s Wydarzenia had 1.39 million viewers and Panorama on TVP2 had 1.1 million.
Negative attitudes towards Poland’s public broadcaster TVP have risen to their highest ever level, and outweigh positive attitudes for the first time.
TVP has in recent years been used as a mouthpiece by the government https://t.co/n6dAtTx4G6
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) May 12, 2021
Although public broadcasters in Poland are statutorily obliged to be neutral, they have always been under some influence from whichever government is in power. However, experts have noted that there has been an unprecedented bias since PiS came to power in late 2015.
The party quickly installed one of its former politicians, Jacek Kurski, as CEO of TVP. Earlier this year, he outlined his vision for the channel to “fight the neo-Bolshevik onslaught of anti-values” that is threatening Poland and Europe.
TVP regularly promotes PiS’s narrative, praises its actions, and attacks its opponents. During last year’s presidential election campaign, news broadcasts presented the main opposition candidate as working on behalf of a “powerful foreign lobby” linked to George Soros and of seeking to “fulfil Jewish demands”.
Before 2015, regular polling by state research agency CBOS had found that the proportion of the public with a positive view of TVP had always been between 70% and 85%. Since 2015, that figure has fallen to its lowest ever level of 40%, with negative views (44%) outnumbering positive ones for the first time.
A recent study at the University of Oxford found that TVP is Poles’ least trusted news source. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) notes that, since 2015, public media in Poland have been “transformed into government propaganda mouthpieces”.
In the RSF’s annual World Press Freedom Index, Poland has fallen every year under the PiS government, from its highest ever position of 18th in 2015 to its lowest ever one of 64th this year. PiS, however, argues that it has carried out a necessary rebalancing of a media landscape that was previously dominated by left-liberal outlets.
Main image credit: TVP Wiadomości (screenshot)
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.
