TVP ‘cleans house’
December 22, 2023
Polish national broadcaster TVP has suspended its Info 24 hour news channel this week as new Polish prime minister Donald Tusk tries to ‘clean house’ at an institution widely thought to have become a creature of the previous government. The new government’s culture minister, Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz, has dismissed the heads of public television, radio and the state news agency.
The right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party, defeated at recent elections, staged a sit-in at TVP’s main facility after walking out of the Polish parliament during a debate on the future of the broadcaster. The Polish media regulator, KRRiT, which is still dominated by PiS appointees, also criticised the move as illegal.
PiS had changed Poland’s media law to enable it to fire management and appoint journalists sympathetic to its policies. It also engineered the state-owned energy company Orlen buying the country’s largest local media outfit, Polska Press, enabling it to take control of newspapers and news websites. It also tried to the limit foreign media ownership, including Discovery’s control of commercial broadcaster TVN.