The new government of Poland, comprised of pro-European Union (EU) liberals led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, announced it was firing the directors and managers of its state television, radio, and news agencies, who had been hired from the former right-of-center administration.
Donald Tusk, a Polish national by birth, has spent a good part of his political career in the EU working as a bureaucrat. He was the President of the European Council from 2014 to 2019, and was previously the Prime Minister of Poland between 2007 and 2014. Tusk is motivated by “classical liberal” ideas and is in favor of markets; however, he also supports the EU’s line on mass immigration, LGBT values, and government powers, which his nationalist detractors oppose.
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The previous administration, led by the Law and Justice Party, has been accused by Tusk and his affiliates of using the government’s media apparatus as “propaganda tools,” sharply criticizing Tusk and others and pushing “euroskeptic” narratives. The Tusk-led Parliament is explicitly calling for the return of objectivity and pluralism, or “the impartiality and reliability of public media,” in the ranks of government-run media.
The ex-Prime Minister of the Law and Justice Party (Pis) Jarosław Kaczyński condemned the firings as “illegal actions.” In response to the ruling, which was made on Tuesday, Poles aligned with the nationalist faction occupied the government television offices overnight in protest. They were joined by PiS MPs, who claimed they were on the side of “media pluralism.”
Former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki wrote: “The illegal actions of the Minister of Culture in relation to TVP, Polish Radio and PAP show how the authorities that supposedly care about the rule of law violate it at every step. And they only rule for a week… We will not give up. We will not allow the construction of a dictatorship in Poland.”
Bezprawne działania ministra kultury w odniesieniu do TVP, Polskiego Radia i PAP pokazują jak władza, która rzekomo dba o praworządność łamie ją na każdym kroku. A rządzą tylko tydzień… Nie poddamy się. Nie pozwolimy na budowę dyktatury w Polsce.
— Mateusz Morawiecki (@MorawieckiM) December 20, 2023
The media staffers were fired by dictate of a resolution. Poland’s new Minister of Culture Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz chose new personnel to fill the leadership roles and the supervisory media board, who will now be appointing new employees.
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