Polish Newsweek hit by accusations of bullying by long-serving former editor-in-chief

The Polish version of Newsweek, one of Poland’s leading news magazines, has been hit by accusations of a toxic work culture under its long-serving editor-in-chief, Tomasz Lis, who recently left his position after a decade.

Reports of workplace bullying – including sexist and homophobic jokes – have recently appeared in the media, based on anonymous accounts from staff. Now, in his first column as the new editor-in-chief, Tomasz Sekielski has confirmed that Lis’s “predatory management style” did harm to certain employees.

A prominent journalist at the title has also announced that she was one of the whistleblowers. However, Lis himself has denied any wrongdoing.

In late May, the owners of Newsweek Polska – German-Swiss-owned Ringier Axel Springer Polska (RASP) – announced that Lis had “ceased to act as editor-in-chief” and had “left the company”. No reason for his departure was given. Lis himself said that Newsweek remains “in excellent hands” and wished it luck.

But rumours immediately began to swirl that Lis had been responsible for bullying and other “toxic” practices during his ten years leading Newsweek Polska, which is Poland’s third-biggest news weekly, with average sales of almost 66,000 for each issue in the first quarter of 2022, according to Wirtualne Media.

In late June, a leading news service, Wirtualna Polska, published an investigative report into the work culture at Newsweek Polska based on accounts of dozens of people who had worked with Lis. It found he had “driven staff to panic attacks” through “humilitation, vulgar, sexist taunts [and] an atmosphere permeated with boorishness”.

Wirtualna Polska’s report also claimed that the first complaints about Lis’s abusive behaviour had been filed with RASP in 2018 and that accusations mounted over the following years. Staff reported Lis “maliciously and ruthlessly” mocking employees as well as telling sexist jokes and “horrible jokes about gays”.

Newsweek Polska is a liberal title that has been sympathetic towards women’s and LGBT rights, while Lis himself is an outspoken critic of the current national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government. “The image he shows publicly has no relation to what we saw every day,” said one employee quoted by Wirtualna Polska.

The news service contacted Lis about the allegations. He sent a response through his lawyer “categorically denying any harassment, persecution or intimidation of anyone”. He said that an internal company commission had in 2019 found no evidence of bullying by him. RASP itself has so far refused to comment on specific allegations.

Meanwhile, on 1 June it was announced that Tomasz Sekielski, a journalist and filmmaker, would become the new editor-in-chief of Newsweek Polska. Yesterday saw the first issue of the weekly published under his leadership.

In an editorial titled “I’m not going to pretend nothing happened”, Sekielski confirmed that he had “in recent days heard many stories from people working at Newsweek that there was a ‘toxic atmosphere’ in the office”.

Lis “behaved like an autocrat, and his predatory management style hurt certain people”, wrote Sekielski. “But there are also those who have not experienced anything bad on the part of Tomasz Lis.”

Sekielski also denied that RASP had failed to respond to reports of Lis’s behaviour, but admitted that “unfortunately not all procedures worked as they should”. This “did not, however, result from a desire to hide anything. In some cases, there was simply a lack of communication, trust and sensitivity”.

After Sekielski’s editorial was published online on Sunday, a prominent Newsweek journalist, Renata Kim, tweeted that she was “grateful to the new editor-in-chief for listening to and understanding us”. She also revealed that she had been the person who informed human resources and trade unions about Lis’s alleged behaviour.

While Kim received a wave of support from many media figures, some others have called for Lis to be given a fair hearing and for the full facts to be established before making judgements.

Jacek Żakowski, a prominent journalist and commentator, said that Lis “undoubtedly did not behave towards some of his subordinates as he should and probably rightly ceased to be editor-in-chief”. But he warned that many claims were “unconfirmed allegations and scary-sounding rumours” rather than “publicly documented facts”.

Main image credit: Newsweek Polska (screenshot)

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.