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Of all the changes in Poland since Prime Minister Donald Tusk came to power last December, few are as obvious for ordinary Poles as how news is presented on their favourite channels.
Instead of polarising rants claiming Tusk is a German stooge, state broadcaster TVP now airs conventional news bulletins about domestic and international events.
“Some say the news on TVP is now boring, but I would rather call it calm,” said teacher Aneta Ćwieluch. “I prefer peace than this hate towards everyone that was presented while PiS was in power,” she said in reference to the previous government led by the rightwing Law and Justice (PiS) party.
One of Tusk’s first acts as prime minister was to rid the TVP of its right-wing staff, who had heavily promoted the previous government.
That led to a shutdown of news channel TVP Info for a week in December. The station’s new management was initially forced to work out of a secondary studio because the main one was barricaded by loyalists of the former government.
But Tusk deploying his “iron broom” to clean up state media has boosted the ratings of conservative news channels. TV Republika, which seeks to mimic the style of Fox News, the US channel supporting former president Donald Trump, has overtaken TVP in daily viewership share.
The news channel with the largest share of Polish audience however remains TVN24, which is owned by US media company Discovery, and which has long been supportive of Tusk.
Republika’s new main anchor is Michał Rachoń, who became Tusk’s nemesis while working at TVP. Ahead of last October’s election, Rachoń made headlines when he interrupted a news conference to shout a question at Tusk about his alleged links to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
During a recent visit by the Financial Times to Republika’s studios, Rachoń described Roger Ailes, the former boss of Fox News, as his role model. “We knew the moment would come when Poland could develop something like that [Fox],” Rachoń said as he stood in front of a wall of screens showing the station’s round-the-clock coverage of farmers protesting against the Tusk government. Some were also showing the British channel GB News.
“If you have a situation in which a big part of the electorate no longer has media representation, it creates possibilities for those who understand the business of media,” Rachoń said.
Since December, journalists and executives who had been promoted and appointed by PiS have also been involved in other right-wing media projects beyond Republika. Anchors and staff who had been sidelined during the eight years of PiS rule have meanwhile reclaimed their former jobs at TVP.
Republika’s main shareholder, Tomasz Sakiewicz, compared Tusk’s overhaul of TVP to “a robber who explodes the bank”, leaving the sector in chaos. “The fundamental rule for a democracy is that media should be untouchable,” he told the FT. “I’m shocked that the whole of Europe accepted something like this.”
Among the beneficiaries of the turmoil affecting the main broadcasters are online ventures such as Kanał Zero, which has gathered over 1mn subscribers since launching on YouTube in February.
Kanał Zero was founded by former sports journalist Krzysztof Stanowski, who half-jokingly said during a recent interview with President Andrzej Duda that he wanted to run for the country’s top job next year. Stanowski said his presidential bid was motivated by his desire to “observe this circus closely and take part in the debates” and to boost viewership.
For the new TVP, the arduous task is to stop the bleed and regain viewership while working with less money and a less sensationalist and confrontational news agenda. The channel has broadened its guest list to include LGBT+ community members who were shunned under PiS.
Entrepreneur Sławomir Zieliński said he was watching Republika after concluding that Tusk’s revamped TVP was less vitriolic, but also “blatantly distorted” politics — this time to help Tusk. “I now see the same message on TVP as on TVN24,” he said.
TVP’s new director Paweł Moskalewicz acknowledged that “we have a long time ahead of us to painstakingly rebuild viewership”, noting that “we lack money” as funding has been cut under the new government.
Tusk’s culture minister Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz explained last month that media funding will be reduced compared to what it was under the PiS government “because that was looting public money with lies and throwing mud at opponents”.
The station’s defenders suggest the drop in audience numbers was inevitable. “The people who now mock us because TVP’s viewership has dropped also forget that they are the perpetrators, they were the ones who polarised Poles and destroyed public media,” said Maciej Orłoś, a journalist who recently returned to TVP after quitting when PiS came to power in 2015.
As Poland’s new media battle gets under way, few pundits expect state media to regain its major influence over society.
No matter who runs TVP, said Tadeusz Kowalski, a professor of media studies at the University of Warsaw, “public media has lost credibility in the eyes of many Poles”.
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