WARSAW (Reuters) - The management of
Polish public television, radio and news agency PAP have been
dismissed, the culture ministry said on Wednesday, as one public news
channel that critics said had become politicised under the previous
government went off air.
Critics
say that state-run media, in particular 24-hour news channel TVP Info,
became an outlet for propaganda during Law and Justice's (PiS) eight
years in office. Prime Minister Donald Tusk's coalition has vowed to
create new stations that take a more balanced approach.
On
Wednesday the signal of TVP Info disappeared and was replaced by that
of the first channel of public television. The same happened to its
website.
"The end of TVPiS. TVP Info was
turned off," Civic Platform - the biggest party in the new government -
said on social media platform X.
On
Tuesday Poland's new parliament adopted a resolution calling on "all
state authorities to immediately take action aimed at restoring
constitutional order in terms of citizens' access to reliable
information and the functioning of public media".
Media
showed footage of PiS politicians appearing in the evening at the
headquarters of public television to "defend democracy", as their leader
Jaroslaw Kaczynski told reporters outside.
"The
illegal actions of the Minister of Culture in relation to TVP, Polish
Radio and PAP show how the authorities that supposedly care about the
rule of law violate it at every step" former PiS Prime Minister Mateusz
Morawiecki wrote on platform X
."We will not give up. We will not allow for a dictatorship to be built in Poland."
