The Opposition Wants to Take Over the Public Media. What is its Plan for Doing So?

By Adrian Gabka, wirtualnemedia.pl | 17 October 2023

The opposition wants quick changes to the public media. Given the risk of a presidential veto, this is to take place without changes to laws. According to unofficial information from Wirtualnemedia.pl, the plan is to put Polish Television and Polish Radio into liquidation and appoint receiverships.  Janusz Daszczynski may return to the chair of TVP.

Until recently, there was a conviction in Polish Television that one could be at ease with one’s job until at least the fall of 2025, the period after Law and Justice’s eventual loss in the presidential election. The likely government of the Civic Coalition-Polish People’s Party-Polish 2050 and the Left wants to quickly clean up the public media.

Kurski’s predecessor may return to the chairman’s seat  

The opposition wants to bypass the Law and Justice (PiS)-dominated National Media Council when introducing changes to the public media.

As Wirtualnemedia.pl determined, the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, through the General Assembly, would put media companies into liquidation. Then, boards of trustees would be appointed, which the RMN could not revoke. The state of liquidation would be revoked only after statutory reforms of the media market. They would strip the National Media Council of the right to appoint public media boards. In accordance with the Constitutional Court’s ruling, these powers could return to the National Broadcasting Council, the composition of which, by the way, would be replaced. The terms of the KRRiT and RMN expire in 2028.

“The change of authorities in the public media could be made by the future Minister of Culture, reconstructing – within his competence – the regulations governing TVP and Polish Radio.  As for who could become the new head of TVP or the new company created from the merger of TVP and PR, Janusz Daszczynski certainly seems to me to be a candidate for this position. He has all the substantive competence to take on this function. It should also be remembered that eight years ago he was illegally removed from the presidency of TVP,” notes Jan Ordynski, an opposition member of the Polish Radio Program Council, in an interview with Wirtualnemedia.pl.

According to our information, Daszczynski is under serious consideration.

Daszczynski was elected president of TVP by the public broadcaster’s supervisory board in June 2015. He was to serve until mid-2019, but was dismissed in January 2016 after the Sejm passed a law extinguishing the mandates of public media board members. Daszczynski’s place was taken by Jacek Kurski. Daszczynski, who was vice president of TVP from 1994 to 1999, currently sits on the broadcaster’s Program Council (on the recommendation of the Civic Coalition). The former head of TVP is fighting for more than PLN 200,000 in compensation for the termination of his employment contract.

The prevailing belief is that the changes will primarily involve managers and journalists dealing with news and journalism. – Changes – substantive and personnel changes – and thorough ones, at TVP should primarily affect TVP Info and news and current affairs programs broadcast on other TVP antennas. Their disastrous, destructive – in recent years – role cannot be justified by anything. After all, lying, pissing, trash and, in general, terrible quality reigned there. And the people working there were not journalists. Instead, they became functionaries of the PiS propaganda front. This was never the case after 1989,” assesses Ordynski.

Changes already at the turn of the year?

Opposition member of the TVP Program Council Krzysztof Luft is convinced that changes will take place immediately after the opposition takes power. In his opinion, the opposition will not wait until 2025, as TVP journalists would like to see.

“I am not surprised by such a belief prevailing in TVP. They are so used there to the fact that TVP is owned by PiS that they lack imagination that this can change very quickly. And it will change as soon as the current opposition takes power – as soon as the new government is formed. It is absolutely inconceivable that such a grotesque, propaganda rath will continue to function after the formation of a new government, formed by a democratic opposition. TVP, unprecedentedly appropriated in recent years by the party in power, must be restored to the entire public. There are ways to bring about this change very quickly,” Luft argues.

Robert Kwiatkowski, who sits on the National Media Council, does not rule out that there will be some kind of agreement between the opposition and the president. In the past, the head of state has vetoed a bill called Lex TVN.

“Just as TVP has become a pillar of power for the Law and Justice Party, so now the opposition’s seizure of power must, in my opinion, involve a change in TVP itself, or rather, a change in TVP into a public broadcaster. Personally, I think this will be a longer process than the opposition leaders are announcing, but indeed changes are needed immediately. As for specific ways to force these changes, I don’t want to comment for obvious reasons, but I wouldn’t count on the cooperation of the PiS majority in the RMN. Besides, the changes are already visible: in the main edition of the News, although the rant against immigrants remained, but no longer against Tusk. However, this may not be enough. I don’t think President Duda wants to die for TVP in its current form, especially since we remember the affronts he suffered from PiS when he tried to influence the change of then-president Jacek Kurski,” assesses Kwiatkowski.

Former TVP chairman Juliusz Braun is also counting on an agreement with the president.

“The first, interventionist changes can take place immediately after the government is formed. No new laws are needed for this. If those in TVP don’t know this, it means they are still living in their separate world. The second step is to build a new public TV, this must take longer, and here an agreement with the president will be necessary. But I hope Andrzej Duda will see that the existence of honest public television is in the interests of all political forces,” Braun notes.

The nuclear option? Many TVP channels may disappear

In early 2016, a “personnel broom” at TVP led to the dismissal of most journalists covering politics. Experts affiliated with the opposition believe that changes are needed to restore the objective and pluralistic nature of the public broadcaster. However, it is unclear whether the TVP authorities will accept a receivership. If they don’t, two boards of directors may operate in parallel, and the matter will be stuck in the courts for months. Then the opposition may use the tactic of “starving” TVP, i.e. no subscription compensation, which recently amounted to PLN 2.35 billion. Such a move could force TVP to eliminate many TV channels and jobs.

“Cutting off the compensation is the “nuclear option,” but it was Law and Justice – convinced that it will rule forever – that introduced a system of financing based on last-minute discretionary subsidies called compensation for disguise. This method of financing made the very existence of TVP fully dependent on the decisions of the parliamentary majority. If the new majority did not pass such a subsidy in next year’s budget (and yet the budget has not yet been passed), then with the current scale of TVP’s operations, it would quickly run out of money even to heat and light the Woronicza building. Thus, the topic of public media financing could also be an important argument in talks with the president on statutory changes,” Braun argues.

In his opinion, the fate of Chairman Mateusz Matyszkowicz is a foregone conclusion. “In my opinion, Chairman Matyszkowicz should already start packing up. If the RMN wanted to make personnel changes at TVP in the coming days, even before the new government is appointed, it would only add to the chaos that exists there. When pondering the situation of the board of directors and the supervisory board, moreover, one should also keep in mind the findings of the just-published NIK report,” the former head of TVP reminds us.