Polish government takes public TV news channel off air amid reform drive

By Anna Koper and Pawel Florkiewicz

WARSAW (Reuters) -Poland's new government took a public news channel off the air on Wednesday and dismissed executives from state media to restore "impartiality", the culture ministry said, as Prime Minister Donald Tusk's reform drive faced its first big test.

Tusk's pro-European Union coalition took power last week from the nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, which critics say damaged judicial independence, soured European Union relations and turned state-owned media into an outlet for propaganda during its eight years in office.

Tusk's plans for change, though, are facing a fight from the outset from the former ruling party.

Dismissals at state television (TVP), radio and news agency PAP on Wednesday came after the new parliament on Tuesday adopted a resolution for restoring public media impartiality.

The resolution called 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".

PiS sharply attacked the dismissals on Wednesday. Police were called as some PiS politicians appeared at state broadcaster TVP headquarters and other state media offices. Protesters gathered in the evening outside TVP offices in Poland's capital and smaller cities.

The state-run 24-hour news channel TVP Info, a strong critic of Tusk that has sought to portray him as dishonest and under the sway of Germany and Russia, stopped broadcasting.

"The end of TVPiS," Civic Platform - the biggest party in the new government - said on social media platform X after TVP Info stopped airing.

The government has vowed to create stations that would take a more balanced approach to public service broadcasting.

On Wednesday, public TV did not air its main evening news bulletin. Instead, a journalist returning to TVP appeared who pledged that starting from Thursday it would present "photographs, not paintings".

Supporters of TVP Info say shutting it would damage pluralism by removing a conservative voice. The broadcaster has backed PiS's hardline on EU migration debates.

Tusk's predecessor, Mateusz Morawiecki, called the management dismissals a takeover and illegal.

PiS politicians had already appeared Tuesday evening at TVP to "defend democracy", as their leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski told reporters outside, according to media footage.

"It is clear that PiS politicians do not defend media freedom, they defend freedom for their own propaganda," Milosz Motyka, from coalition party PSL, said on Polsat News.

'A LITTLE PATIENCE'

Police were called on Wednesday to maintain order as PiS politicians occupied TVP and other state media buildings.

"For us, it doesn't matter who the report comes from, regardless of whether they are PiS (lawmakers) or from another party," police spokesperson Sylwester Marczak told a news conference.

The head of the National Broadcasting Council - PiS-backed Maciej Swirski - also said the dismissal of public media authorities broke the law, and PiS-backed member Maciej Swirski said it "recalls the worst times of martial law", referring to events during the communist era in Poland.

Poland's President Andrzej Duda called on the government to obey the law adding that "a political goal cannot constitute an excuse for violating constitutional principles and the law".

PiS lawmaker and former deputy justice minister Marcin Romanowski said he had submitted a report to the prosecutor's office on suspicion that the culture minister and his associates had committed a crime.

Culture Minister Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz said PiS's protests would not change the dismissals.

"Have a little patience," he told lawmakers when asked on PiS's actions in parliament, according to news website Wyborcza.pl.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) called on the government to adopt a comprehensive bill on the independence of the public media and on decreasing political influence in their oversight, funding and leadership appointment after a public debate involving experts and civil society.

"The public media belong neither to PiS, nor to any other party. For the same reason, the public media need an ambitious and widely-consulted reform going beyond a personnel overhaul," said Pavol Szalai.

(Reporting by Anna Koper, Pawel Florkiewicz and Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk, writing by Jason Hovet; Editing by Hugh Lawson, Toby Chopra and Nick Zieminski)