All That Is Modern Becomes Culture

Michael Hedges January 11, 2016 - Follow on Twitter

Respect for criticism, divergent views and objectivity are the necessary adhesive for societies moving successfully into the future. The media plays an essential role in this narrative as do leaders in every civil sector. While great lessons are learned from history, nobody really lives there. Confusion mixed with fantasy is the place-name for nowhere.

Demonstrators gathered this past Saturday in Warsaw and several other Polish cities to express their angst over diminishing civil liberties under the recently elected right-wing nativist government. What brought them to the streets was the mass dismissal a day earlier of directors and senior managers at public broadcasters Telewizja Polska (TVP) and Polskie Radio. Protesters in Warsaw numbered between a few to several thousand, reported TVN24 (January 9), including well-known print and broadcast journalists and editors.

After enabling laws were passed and signed New Year’s week Treasury Minister Dawid Jackiewicz followed through with the first step in establishing Law and Justice (PiS) party loyalists as policy arbiters in public media. Former PiS representative to the European Parliament Jacek Kurski, recently named deputy culture minister, takes over TVP and the new president of Polskie Radio is Barbara Stanislawczyk, best known as author of several traditionalist ‘self help’ books aimed at women.

Directors of several TVP channels and the television news bureau preemptively resigned after amendments passed both houses of the Polish parliament allowing the Treasury Ministry, official owner of TVP and Polskie Radio, to hire and fire directors and senior executives without approval from media regulator KRRiT or following customary civil service employment rules. Replacements were named shortly after President Andrzej Duda returned from a ski holiday and signed the measures into law. The government’s short term legislative plan, as described by Culture Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Piotr Glinski, is combining TVP and Polskie Radio into a single entity under direct control of the Culture Ministry like the National Opera. In the longer term private sector media will be “re-Polanized” to degrade foreign ownership. Further limiting the independence of the KRRiT is also part of the plan.

But, for politicians, public broadcasting is low-hanging fruit. Minister Glinski threw a hissy-fit when a TVP Info interviewer asked a rather pointed question about the constitutional dimensions of his statements about cultural efficacy. “Your channel has sown propaganda and manipulation for years,” he howled. “This will change because public television is finished.” She was suspended, briefly. Polish politicians of every persuasion have argued about public broadcasting since it emerged from official State broadcasting a quarter century ago, directors, executives, editors and journalists flying out the doors with the political winds.

“I understand the media world and at the same time I'm an honest man,” said new TVP president Kurski upon accession, quoted by forbes.pl (January 8). “I guarantee that I will be able to protect the independence and freedom of the public television of threats from the world of politics. I would like to remind critics of this decision that not so long ago, when politicians took policy options with these same functions there was no such criticism.”

Mr.Kurski’s somewhat conciliatory tone did nothing to quell the anxiety of the Warsaw demonstrators, some brandishing signs with “Free Poland, Free Media” and “Not buying TV PiS.” Recent statements from PiS politicians, including party boss Jaroslav Kaczynski, illuminating their world-view have chilled the air, both in Poland and beyond. Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski, interviewed by German magazine Bild (January 3), bitterly complained about modernity, “as if the world, in a Marxist fashion, were destined to evolve only in one direction, towards a new mix of cultures, of races, a world of vegetarians and bicyclists.”

“Hello, dear bikers, vegetarians, Communists and thieves,” the Warsaw demonstrators were welcomed by daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza deputy editor Jaroslaw Kurski - yes, brother of Jacek Kurski. “Today they came after the public media, tomorrow they will come after (the private media), then they come after civil society,” intentionally, perhaps, reflecting on Lutheran pastor and concentration camp survivor Martin Niemöller’s famous poem. “We will not allow it.”

See also in ftm Knowledge

Media in Poland – new

Poland is the largest media market of the newest EU Member States and the changes have often been surprising, sometimes radical and never ending. Publishers, broadcasters and new media are plentiful, talented and under constant stress not only from competitors. 122 pages PDF, includes updated Resources (January 2016)

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