The government party, the PiS, and the state institutions to intimidate critical media. Currently, the national Bank wants to stop article about corruption in the financial sector. Journalists ‘ organisations to protest.
The newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza revealed in mid-November, a corruption scandal forced the head of the Committee for financial supervision to resign. Marek Chrzanowski have offered to a Bank’s owners, its assistance in the solution of the problems of his Bank. The Institute should employ one of Chrzanowski recommended specialists and him with a fee in the amount of 10 million Euro reward. The conversation was recorded.
The pressure on journalists is growing
Since the publication of the corruption story of Gazeta Wyborcza is under pressure. For a as the investigative journalist Wojciech Czuchnowski the be is daily bread. In this year alone, the Director’s are ruling the PiS are drawn, party and other state institutions, against 50 in his article legal field. They complained to apologies and fines up to 12,000 euros. However, since the article that has brought the chief of the financial Supervisory to fall, he is under massive pressure from the Polish national Bank, the removal of all media-calls for articles on this topic from the network.
Gazeta Wyborcza: “Unwanted” Reporting
“It complicates my work, and costs time, because I need to comment on each prompt. The freezes my journalistic work”, says Czuchnowski in an interview with DW. “But every Time, if I must answer, I check my information carefully, and find this often with new stories,” he adds. And not let themselves be intimidated. What makes him strong, is the support of the readers.
The “letter to the world”
The support also comes from colleagues. The liberal journalists society (http://towarzystwodziennikarskie.pl/), a member of the International Federation of Journalists (https://www.ifj.org), raises the Alarm. In the “letter to the world” States that the recent Attempts to intimidate journalists, have the character of censorship.
“The journalists who expose the scandals and pathologies are treated by the state apparatus as a potential criminal”. The goal is of critical reporting, to hold and to shake their credibility. In the letter, the case of the Newsweek mentioned reporter Wojciech Ciesla, who was charged for his Text about the controversial chief of the constitutional Tribunal to the interrogation.
Media freedom in danger
The Press Club Polska (www.pressclub.pl) on 10.12. in an open letter to Poland’s Prime Minister reacts. It of “bullying against journalists”. The Press Club protesting against the Attempts to force journalists to reveal their sources of information and also against the repeated interrogations without concrete allegations, which the critical Reporter regularly would.
“If the state institutions instrumentalize the law and to intimidate journalists or to still try, then the freedom of the media is at serious risk,” – said in the appeal to Poland’s head of government Mateusz Morawiecki.
A long-term campaign of the PiS
Internationally, the challenged media freedom in Poland provides for debates. “Reporters without borders” calls on the Polish government with the intimidation of the journalists to stop. “The whole bullying is a part of the campaign, which leads the Polish government against the independent media since 2015. The campaign aims to curb critical media, financial and investigative journalism to suppress,” says Pauline Adès-Mével, Director of the EU – and Balkandesks.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, a strong man of the PiS and supporters of the “illiberal” democracy
Other recent examples, such as the allegations against a private TV channel, TVN, Adès-Mével indignant. At the beginning of 2018 TVN, part of the U.S. media group Discovery had shown a news story to the young people who celebrated in the South of Poland, the birthday of Adolf Hitler with the Nazi salute and Nazi slogans. Nazi Propaganda only the TVN camera man was accused of but. The have allegedly also made the Hitler salute, in the neo-Nazi Milieu are free to move.
The U.S. Embassy supported the freedom of the media
After protests in many Polish media, the allegations were withdrawn. Also because Poland did not want to mess with an ally of the US. In the debate on freedom of the media has been turned on, namely, the US Ambassador in Warsaw, Georgette Mosbacher, and in a letter to Poland’s Prime Minister, its “deep concern” about the treatment of the TVN journalists expressed. At a Meeting with members of Parliament, she was also on the discussed “Re-Polonization” of the media concerned. This could mean a restriction of foreign media capital.
Also “reporters without borders” is highly alarmed: “The Polish government has already made the national media to a propaganda tool and tried to do the same with the independent journalists. This purpose could also serve as a Re-Polonization of the media,” says Adès-Mével.
In the annually published Index of media freedom, “reporters without borders” is Poland like for 2016, and of course 18 to 58.