Poland’s media landscape took a further shift to the left this week after Maciej Świrski was dismissed from his position as chairman of the National Broadcasting Council (KRRiT) regulator. This move followed Friday’s vote by parliament’s lower house, the Sejm, to bring Świrski—a conservative who was appointed by the former Law and Justice (PiS) government—to ‘justice’ before the State Tribunal. This body has the power to punish the state’s highest officials.
The (now former) regulator chief will not challenge his dismissal for fear of handing leftist officials “a pretext for actions that could jeopardise” the inauguration of newly-elected President Karol Nawrocki. But he did attack the move as legally flawed and said he had been overwhelmed by messages in support of “pluralism, independence of public institutions and freedom of speech.” Such principles are, he added,
particularly important in an unbalanced media market, where most media outlets are left-liberal in nature and apply editorial censorship to conservative and patriotic content.
Conversely, Zdzisław Gawlik, chairman of the Sejm’s constitutional accountability committee, said the decision to put Świrski on trial comes “not out of revenge, not out of emotion, but out of a duty to the law and to the citizens.”
This attack on conservatives in Polish media is by no means an isolated incident. A Warsaw court revoked the licences of two conservative channels in April, just before the liberal establishment’s devastating presidential election defeat. Jacek Karnowski, the editor-in-chief of one of these channels (wPolsce24), toldeuropeanconservative.com the move showed that Poland under Tusk “is no longer a democracy.”
It is obvious that this is a political decision; they want more control because economically and socially the government has disenchanted even its own base. … They are losing and that is why they are resorting to more persecution, more circus instead of bread.
Former PM Mateusz Morawiecki added that its turn to censorship reveals that Tusk’s government “fears free media.”
Michael Curzon is a news writer for europeanconservative.com based in England’s Midlands. He is also Editor of Bournbrook Magazine, which he founded in 2019, and previously wrote for London’s Express Online. His Twitter handle is @MichaelCurzon_.
