Tusk hosts anti-hate speech rally to justify public media takeover

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk is calling for an anti-hate speech rally in Gdańsk on Saturday in a move to justify his public media policies, which have divided Polish society and raised serious concerns among media freedom organisations.

The rally comes at a moment when a replacement of the public media management boards by new Culture Minister Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz (PO, EPP) sparked voiced opposition among the PiS members, who went as far as to occupy one of TVP headquarters at Warsaw’s Woronicza Street.

The day after the rally, 14 January, will be the fifth anniversary of the tragic death of Gdańsk mayor Paweł Adamowicz, a former politician of Tusk’s Civic Platform party (PO, EPP) who was stabbed during a charity event.

The assassination was linked to the smear campaign against Adamowicz launched by the public TVP broadcaster, accused by experts of being strictly controlled by the government of the nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS, ECR), which ruled in Poland at the time.

“We will never forget that tragic lesson. Let us not let hatred and lies triumph again,” Tusk wrote on X, announcing Saturday’s event.

During its eight-year rule, the PiS government changed the legislation under the media “re-polonisation” label to dramatically enhance the ruling majority’s control over the public media.

As a result, TVP became an alleged propaganda machine for the PiS government, regularly mocking the opposition and accusing it of acting against Polish interests and supporting the government’s policies.

Still, despite winning last October’s national elections, PiS failed to secure a parliamentary majority and was replaced in power by Tusk’s wide coalition of centrist and leftist parties.

Adamowicz’s death a justification for media takeover

Meanwhile, the new management managed to take over the other headquarters at Powstańców Square, where TVP’s content is broadcast. It started by replacing TVP’s main daily information programme, Wiadomości, beginning at 7.30 PM, which was widely criticised for lauding the PiS government’s policies and attacking the opposition, with a new one under the name “19.30.”

The media takeover, which was portrayed by Tusk’s camp as necessary to “unpoliticise” the public media to make them a reliable source of information again, also faced a backlash from President Andrzej Duda, who is a former member of PiS and some media freedom associations.

For Tusk, political rallies have become a powerful political weapon in recent months. According to different estimations, his June march had between 100,000 and 500,000 people gathered and may have contributed to his electoral success later in the year.

Tusk himself did not indicate any connection between the march and the recent events regarding the public media. However, many PO politicians have long indicated possible motives for Adamowicz’s death.

They suggested that the assassin, sentenced to life for his crime, may have been inspired by the narratives of TVP that targeted Adamowicz at a time when he successfully ran for re-election as a Gdańsk mayor in 2018 against PiS candidate Kacper Płażyński, now MP.

The deceased mayor’s wife, Magdalena Adamowicz, a lawyer who specialised in maritime law, ran in the European elections in 2019, months after her husband’s death, and succeeded in winning a mandate as an EPP MEP.

Last year, she was a shadow rapporteur on the proposal for extending the list of EU crimes to hate speech and hate crimes.

(Aleksandra Krzysztoszek | Euractiv.pl)