PiS Had Big Plans for TV and Radio. And It Turned Out as Usual [OUR CYCLE: How Politicians Want To Change The Media]

By Beata Czuma, wirtualnemedia.pl | 13 October 2023

In our series “How politicians want to change the media,” we presented the plans of the Civic Platform, the Left, the Third Way and the Confederation. Unfortunately, the Law and Justice Party did not want to answer our questions, so we present the ruling party’s achievements and plans regarding public media, the broadcasting license fee or the infamous Article 212 based on facts and public statements by Law and Justice leaders. We asked members of the National Media Council and the parliamentary committee on culture and media, who are in opposition to the ruling party, for comment. “A third term will give PiS a strong sense of self-confidence, so they will have no inhibitions towards the media,” Iwona Śledzińska-Katarasińska, vice-chairwoman of the Sejm committee on culture and media, told Wirtualnemedia.pl.

We asked Law and Justice for answers to our questions a few weeks ago, but by the time the text was published, we had not received them. The ruling party took water in its mouth after we sent them the questions. Law and Justice spokesman Rafal Bochenek refused to answer our questions (although he assured us that we would get one), nor did Piotr Babinetz, head of the parliamentary committee on culture and media, who did not answer our phone and did not respond to text messages. Jaroslaw Zielinski, a member of that committee, twice refused to talk to us about the media, hiding behind a lack of time. So we present the ruling party’s achievements and intentions on the basis of its accomplishments on the media and public statements, and commented on them by Robert Kwiatkowski, a member of the National Media Council and Democratic Left MP, and Iwona Śledzińska-Katarasińska, deputy chairwoman of the parliamentary committee on culture and media and PO MP.

Andrzej Duda promised: I will guard the impartiality of the media

Law and Justice has been accused of politicizing public media since the beginning of its rule. Just a few weeks after the party’s victory in the 2015 parliamentary elections, the Sejm amended the Broadcasting Law, through which the Treasury Ministry took over from the National Broadcasting Council the authority to appoint and dismiss the management and supervisory boards of Polish Television and Polish Radio. The change was a major one, because previously the boards of directors of TVP and PR were selected in competitions by supervisory boards, and their selection had to be approved by the National Broadcasting Council. But that’s not all. The mandates of existing members of the management and supervisory boards of state media also expired on the day the law took effect. The independent press and television described this as an assault on public media.

The amendment was signed by President Andrzej Duda. – The president is concerned that public media be characterized by credibility, reliability, objectivity,” Malgorzata Sadurska, then head of the President’s Chancellery, stressed at the time. She announced that “the president will observe the public media so that they are characterized by impartiality towards each side of the political scene, so that objective information is not mixed with commentary.”

The next day Janusz Daszczynski ceased to serve as TVP president and was replaced by Jacek Kurski, a longtime politician in Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s party, nicknamed the “Law and Justice bully.” The “small media law” adopted by the ruling party at the time was to be replaced by a “big law,” but PiS failed to prepare it, so the Sejm adopted a so-called “bridge law” in June 2016. It established the National Media Council, which was given powers to appoint and dismiss the management and supervisory boards of TVP and Polish Radio. The way it was appointed meant that the ruling party’s picks had a majority in it.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s party did not bury its pears in ashes and immediately after taking power and introducing legal changes began a purge in the public media, primarily in TVP. Previously working journalists were replaced by right-wing journalists, including Michał Rachoń, a former PiS activist and the party’s spokesman in Sopot, who in 2009 dressed up as a penis and thus demonstrated his opposition Bronisław Wildstein, a columnist for “Gazeta Polska Codziennie” and the weekly “Sieci” and “Do Rzeczy”, or Samuel Pereira, currently deputy director of Telewizyjna Agencja Informacyjna, and previously a journalist for “Gazeta Polska Codziennie” and the Niezależna.pl portal. Among others, Beata Tadla, Hanna Lis were fired from TVP, and Piotr Krasko himself left the station.

The statistics are striking. Public media promote only Kaczynski’s party

Since then, the public media has been criticized for practicing government propaganda and discrediting the opposition, as well as violating journalistic ethics: truth, objectivity, and separating information from commentary.

In mid-September of this year, the TVP Information Center reported data on airtime for party representatives. It is obliged to do so by the Broadcasting Act. The data shows that representatives of the Law and Justice party get the most airtime. The report covers the period from January to June this year, and includes TVP1, TVP2, TVP3 and TVP Info. User X/Twitter published a chart based on the data, which shows that PiS has a huge advantage over other parties in access to public airtime. Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s politicians appeared there for about 252 hours, PO – the largest opposition party – had only 10 hours, the New Left had 26 hours, PSL had 22 hours, and Poland 2050 had about 2 hours.

Another report also plunges PiS. In mid-May of this year, sitting member of the National Broadcasting Council Prof. Tadeusz Kowalski prepared a report on the time the TP allocated in the first quarter of this year to present the positions of the various political groups. It shows that 77 percent of the airtime was taken up by representatives of the ruling coalition and the groups that support it. From January to March, Law and Justice, Solidarity Poland, the Republican Party, OdNowa RP, Kukiz’15, as well as the offices of the President, Prime Minister and Speaker of the Sejm had a total of 77 percent of the time devoted to politicians of all parties. Law and Justice politicians, as well as the prime minister, president and speaker of the Sejm, took up the most of that time – a total of 235 hours, or 69 percent of the airtime. Parties in coalition with the government took up 30 hours (9 percent).

The public broadcaster devoted a total of 23 percent of the time allocated to all parties in the first quarter to presenting the positions of opposition political parties (Civic Platform, Inicjatywa Polska, Polska 2050, Nowa Lewica, Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe, Lewica Razem, Centrum dla Polski, Nowoczesna, Partia Zieloni, Federacja dla Rzeczypospolitej, Polska Partia Socjalistyczna) and the Speaker of the Senate.

The Civic Platform and the Speaker of the Senate got 25 hours (giving 7 percent of the total time), while the other opposition parties had a total of 53 hours (15 percent). Among them were those such as the PSL, whose politicians were shown on TVP screens for 17.3 hours (5 percent of the time), but also those with zero percent – such as the Polish Initiative. Szymon Holownia’s Poland 2050 party took up 1 percent of the airtime allocated to politicians (2.26 hours).

TVP and PR live on billions in taxpayers’ money

Public TV and radio have been unable to support themselves since the PiS government and have received successive drips of taxpayers’ money, much to the outrage of PiS political opponents. Radio and television subscription revenues have been at their lowest since 2013, which is why the government media receive solid support from the public purse every year.

This year Telewizja Polska and Polskie Radio received PLN 2.7 billion in bonds as compensation. At the same time, last year TVP recorded a loss of PLN 50 million with about 3.6 billion in revenues. In 2022, TP’s subscription revenue was about PLN 296 million, and TVP received PLN 1.78 billion in compensation in the form of securities. Polish Radio, on the other hand, at that time had revenue of PLN 354.31 million, advertising revenue of PLN 41.38 million, subscription fees of PLN 159.95 million and received and PLN 125.92 million in compensation.

In 2021, TVP’s subscription revenues amounted to PLN 330.13 million, and as much as PLN 1.711 billion in compensation from the state budget. In contrast, Polskie Radio had PLN 159.95 million from subscription fees and PLN 125.916 million from compensation, and regional public radio companies had PLN 159.92 million from subscription fees and PLN 112.66 million from compensation. The Law and Justice party did not include the TVP and Polish Radio subscription compensation in the budget law this year.

Now seniors over 75 and the poorest do not have to pay for TVP and PR. The subscription fee this year is PLN 8.70 for the use of a radio receiver, and PLN 27.30 for the use of a television receiver or a radio and television receiver.

Where does the money from the license fee and government drip go? As Onet recently determined, the presenters of “News” – Danuta Holecka, Michal Adamczyk, Edyta Lewandowska and Marta Kielczyk – may have earned as much as about PLN 12 million net over five years. According to the portal’s findings, Holecka and Adamczyk have two contracts with TVP. They are employed as individuals with salaries of 5-10 thousand zlotys a month, but they also have their own companies, with which TVP signs contracts that are much more lucrative.

PiS wanted to abolish the subscription fee. When PO was in power

That was not the plan. After the first term of government, before the 2019 parliamentary elections, PiS announced the abolition of the rtv subscription and the financing of public media from the state budget.

“I hope that in the next term we will be able to create a system of financing public media that would not inconvenience Poles, and preferably not involve the citizen at all,” Deputy Culture Minister Pawel Lewandowski announced at the time. At the time, the portal wirtualnemedia.pl reached information that indicated that changing the financing of public media would be one of Law and Justice’s two main goals for the next term. The most likely approach at the time was to fund the media directly from the state budget.

This was already another approach of the Law and Justice camp to change the financing of public media.

At the end of 2017, news cooled that the subscription fee was to be replaced by a subsidy from the state budget. Such a solution was supported at the time by Krzysztof Czabański, Law and Justice MP and chairman of the National Media Council. – This would be a good and interesting idea, which should be strongly considered. It would be a project for the benefit of the people. It would not be individual fees, it would not absorb anyone,” he said in an interview with Super Express. He added that work is underway on a different system of financing public media.

The current ruling camp has already tried twice to introduce changes to the rtv subscription collection system. In the spring of 2022, it tabled bills to replace the subscription fee with an audiovisual contribution collected together with electricity bills. PiS withdrew from the idea in the middle of the year, when it turned out that such legislation required notification by the European Commission.

In turn, in the spring of this year, the ruling party wanted to change the law so that cable networks and digital platforms would provide the Polish Post with the data of their pay-TV customers and their declarations of TV ownership. Pay-TV providers and their organizations protested against such a solution. As a result, in the summer the government dropped the legislation.

“They have discovered the philosopher’s stone and they are proud of it,” said the government.

“I don’t have a clue what they are planning, even by the expression on their faces I can’t tell. I can only speculate,” jokes Robert Kwiatkowski in an interview with Wirtualnemedia.pl. – In my opinion, they won’t do anything with the subscription, because they have discovered the philosopher’s stone and are happy with it. The key is in Brussels. If they wanted to introduce a different system of subsidizing public media, they would have to notify the European Union as state aid. It’s a multi-year and extremely complicated process, so they’ve come up with the ploy that the subscription fee is the basis for the functioning of the public media, and since it’s as hollow as a sieve, the government takes it upon itself to compensate for the losses in it. The billions that flow into TVP and PR are not a subsidy for the media, because Brussels wouldn’t agree to that, they are merely compensation for the losses in the license fee. They are easy to calculate, because the number of households is estimated, multiplied by the amount of the subscription, plus a surcharge for people who have been statutorily exempted from paying the subscription, and this is then paid through the KRRiT. They certainly won’t change anything here. I’m going to defend this, because they’ve done a lot to invent a system where even if they lose their majority in parliament, they’ll rely on a presidential veto and keep this legal status quo as long as they can, that is, until 2025, the next presidential election. And as we know, in Polish politics, two years is an eternity,” adds Kwiatkowski.

“They won’t change anything. They have billions from the budget, then why change it? If more money needs to be added, they will do it. They are not concerned with merit at all,” adds Iwona Śledzińska-Katarasińska.

Opposition announces liquidation of “dummy bodies”

Another bone of contention between the Law and Justice Party and the opposition is the National Media Council, established through the efforts of the Law and Justice Party in 2016. It has aroused great controversy from the beginning because of the powers it was given – it dismisses and appoints the management and supervisory boards of TVP, Polish Radio and the Polish Press Agency. Immediately after its establishment, the Constitutional Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to deprive the National Broadcasting Council of its participation in the appointment and dismissal of TVP and PR authorities.

The RNM currently consists of: Krzysztof Czabański (chairman), Piotr Babinetz (Law and Justice MP), Joanna Lichocka (Law and Justice MP), Robert Kwiatkowski (Democratic Left MP) and Marek Rutka (Left MP). The RNM last year cost taxpayers 968, 9 thousand, nearly 40 thousand more than in 2021.

When asked by us whether changes should be made to the system of oversight of public media, so that one party cannot independently influence it, opposition parties have no doubts.

“The National Media Council is a partisan, extra-constitutional body that is a PiS office of radio and television personnel, and will be abolished. Its powers must pass to the National Broadcasting Council, which will also be reformed,” announces Śledzińska-Katarasińska.

Krzysztof Bosak, one of the Confederation’s leaders, believes that “it is a dummy body, created for political control by PiS.” “It should be abolished immediately, and the composition of the KRRiT should be written off. Highly competent people, representing different political options and backgrounds, who have experience in the media should go there,” he stresses.

Poland 2050 believes that the political National Media Council should be abolished and its powers transferred to the KRRiT. “Promises of open competitions, transparent procedures have not been realized, and the statutory supermajority of members of the ruling camp radically limits the pluralism of this body,” Szymon Holownia told us.

Law and Justice wanted to abolish Article 212 – when it was in opposition               

The infamous Article 212 of the Criminal Code, which hits journalists, has been in dispute for years. According to it, “defamation by means of mass communication is punishable by a fine, restriction of freedom or imprisonment for up to a year.” Another article, 213, adds that “there is no offense under Article 212 if an allegation made non-publicly is true,” and “no offense under Article 212 is committed by one who publicly raises or spreads a true allegation to defend a socially legitimate interest, if the allegation relates to private or family life, proof of the truth may be made only if the allegation is to prevent danger to human life or health or the demoralization of a minor.”

Such an article first appeared in the Criminal Code in 1932 and resembled current legislation. In 1969, they were somewhat relaxed, expanding the circumstances excluding criminal liability for defamation to include “conviction based on reasonable grounds,” or so-called “good faith.” The Criminal Code, enacted in 1997, eliminated “good faith” from the provision.

The Law and Justice Party, when it was in opposition, demanded the abolition of this article. In May 2012, Adam Hofman, the party’s spokesman at the time, declared that he was in favor of abolishing Article 212 – We will submit such amendments during work on the law. It is also necessary to abolish what is the biggest problem of press freedom in Poland, i.e. inadequate demands for rectification in various TV channels, which cost crores of money, he argued.

When Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s party took power, contrary to announcements, it did not change these laws, and even wanted to tighten them. At the end of May 2019, the Sejm passed amendments to Article 212 proposed by the Justice Ministry. but backed down under media criticism. The amendment to the Criminal Code adopted by the Sejm at the time, which was mainly concerned with toughening penalties for pedophilia, added a paragraph to Article 212 providing for a penalty of up to a year in prison also for “creating false evidence to confirm a false allegation or inducing others to confirm the circumstances covered by the allegation.”

“The Justice Ministry does not want the discussion based on the misinterpretation of the new provision and the concerns it raises to overshadow the main goal of the amendment to the Penal Code, which is to toughen penalties for the most serious crimes, particularly sexual offenses, so it will table an amendment in the Senate deleting the said provision,” Sebastian Kaleta, deputy justice minister, told PAP at the time.

Ziobro announces abolition of Article 212: “This is some kind of joke.”

During its eight years in power, the Law and Justice Party could have abolished the infamous Article 212, but failed to do so. Just before the elections, in mid-July of this year, the leaders of the United Right woke up and announced the repeal of this provision.

“In the name of freedom of debate and public discussion in Poland, we are taking the initiative to abolish defamation laws, Zbigniew Ziobro, Minister of Justice and head of Solidarna Polska, announced. – Freedom of the media is freedom of speech, not fear of criminal liability and the prospect of prison. We want Poland to be a normal country, not one where state services invade independent editorial offices, intimidate journalists and search for material that compromises those currently in power. This was the case under Prime Minister Donald Tusk,” he added.

The draft amendment to the Penal Code prepared by the SP has reportedly been submitted to the Sejm, and is also signed by Law and Justice deputies, including Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak. – So at this point it is a joint initiative of the entire United Right – both Sovereign Poland and PiS, Ziobro announced. What is its further fate? It is not known.

The Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, the Chamber of Press Publishers, the Association of Polish Journalists and former ROP Adam Bodnar have been campaigning for the deletion of the provision from the code for years. The punishment of imprisonment for speech contradicts guarantees of free speech, the UN and OSCE admonished Poland.

“This is some kind of joke. Before the elections, it was Jaroslaw Gowin who was supposed to be the minister of national defense… The allergy of the president and all his subordinates to journalists is growing rather than diminishing, so there is no good news here for journos,” Robert Kwiatkowski stresses.

“A year ago, in the committee, they were muttering something about abolishing this article. Even Joanna Lichocka, as I talked about it, said: “Yes, yes, we will support it.” And then they forgot about it. You can abolish Article 212 from the Criminal Code, but you have to introduce a procedure in the Civil Procedure Code, because it can’t be that you can spit and slander a person with impunity,” adds Iwona Śledzińska-Katarasińska.

Lex TVN will return? “They’re going to do it again, because it’s their idea fixe.”

The debate over private media with foreign capital has been going on in Poland for two years. It was started by the Law and Justice party, which submitted a draft amendment to the Broadcasting Act to the Sejm in July 2021, which stipulated that a broadcasting license could be granted to TV stations in which the share of foreign capital does not exceed 49 percent. This provision hit the TVN24 station, which was owned by a Dutch company and its sole shareholder was the American company Discovery. If the amendment is implemented, the station’s parent company, Discovery, Inc. would be forced to sell at least 51 percent of its shares to an entity or entities meeting the conditions of the amended law. The amendment, commonly referred to as “lex TVN,” was passed, but vetoed by President Andrzej Duda in December 2021.

Last November, Jaroslaw Kaczynski said that the Law and Justice Party was not going back on passing the legislation referred to as “lex TVN” because TVN is protected by the US, “our biggest and only real ally.” – We are not able to understand this, because TVN, after all, was created by the usual secret police or even Soviet agents in Poland,” the Law and Justice chairman stressed.

Will lex TVN return if PiS wins the next elections?

“They don’t say anything about it in my presence. I assume that, as if they won, they will want to close everything they failed to do, but as you can see, their effectiveness in this regard is lousy. TVN has strong defenders and protectors – the Americans,” believes Robert Kwiatkowski.

“If they win the elections, they will again try to push this bill through, because this has been their idee fixe since their first term. They will go back to it. A third term will give them a strong sense of self-confidence, so they will have no inhibitions,” stresses Iwona Śledzińska-Katarasińska.