WARSAW (dpa-AFX) – The new Polish government of Donald Tusk wants to formally dissolve the public media, but maintain jobs. “Following the decision of Poland’s president to suspend funding for public media, I have decided to put the companies TVP, Polish Radio and the PAP news agency into liquidation,” Culture Minister Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz wrote on the X platform on Wednesday the continued functioning of these media can be secured and their restructuring can be continued.
With this step, the dispute between the new and the old government camp over public media is entering the next round. Last week, Sienkiewicz fired the entire leadership of the public broadcaster in one fell swoop. The Tusk government accuses the media of having spread party propaganda in recent years under the national-conservative PiS government, which has now been voted out. International organizations had also criticized the one-sided reporting by the public media in Poland.
On Saturday, Poland’s President Andrzej Duda, who himself comes from the ranks of the PiS, vetoed a law passed by Tusk’s government that provided for the equivalent of 690 million euros to be subsidized by public broadcasters. Duda justified his move by saying that this was a circumvention of the constitution and a breach of constitutional principles. He demanded that the public media must first be repaired thoroughly and in accordance with the law./dhe/DP/he