Poland’s new government moves to free state media from previous team’s political control

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland’s new pro-European Union government said Wednesday that it had changed the directors of state television, radio and the government-run news agency as it embarked on the path of freeing publicly-owned media from the political control of the previous nationalist conservative administration.

The Cabinet of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, which took office last week, has made it a priority to restore objectivity and free expression in state media, which the previous government, under the Law and Justice party, used as aggressive propaganda tools, attacking Tusk and the opposition and spreading its euroskeptic views.

The new government’s first steps toward a return to media freedom were met with protest by Law and Justice. Party leader Jarosław Kaczyński and many lawmakers occupied buildings housing the offices of state-run television TVP in the hopes that their supporters would come out to demonstrate in big numbers.

While that didn’t happen, some of the Law and Justice officials still hadn’t left the TVP facilities. But there was no police presence or signs of any violence.

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On Tuesday, Polish lawmakers adopted a resolution presented by Tusk’s government calling for the restoration of “legal order, objectivity and fairness” of TVP, Polish Radio and the PAP news agency.

Following the resolution, Poland’s new culture minister, Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz, replaced the heads and the supervisory boards of state media, which chose new management.

The new head of TVP’s supervisory board, Piotr Zemła, a lawyer, came to the broadcaster’s headquarters on Wednesday.

In the first sign of change, the all-news TVP INFO channel, one of the previous government’s main propaganda tools, ceased to broadcast on air and over the internet on Wednesday morning.

Earlier this week, the previous ruling team called a rally at the state television building to protest any planned changes, but only a few hundred people turned up.

President Andrzej Duda, who was an ally of the previous government, has warned that he won’t accept moves that he believes to be against the law. However, his critics have long accused him of violating the Polish Constitution and other laws as he tried to support the policies of the Law and Justice party.

The government took office last week and began reversing policies of the previous administration that many in Poland found divisive.

Parties that make up the new government collectively won the majority of votes in the Oct. 15 election. They have vowed to jointly govern under the leadership of Tusk, who served as prime minister in 2007-2014 and was head of the European Council in 2014-2019.