After eight years of pumping out vitriol against opponents of Poland’s governing party, state-controlled television has rallied to an unlikely new cause: a free media and fair play.
Unsettled by the election this month of a new Parliament controlled by political forces it previously vilified, Poland’s main public broadcaster last week set up a telephone hotline as part of what it described as a “special campaign to defend media pluralism” and counter “increasingly frequent attacks on journalists.”The abrupt about face by a public broadcaster notorious for its often vicious, one-sided coverage reflected Poland’s febrile political atmosphere as loyalists of the defeated Law and Justice party scramble to keep their jobs by presenting themselves as victims of persecution and of a compromised election.
That loyalists have much to lose as a result of the Oct. 15 vote was made clear last week when Gazeta Wyborcza, a liberal newspaper, published a long list of journalists and other Law and Justice supporters who “will have to say goodbye to their positions” in media, state corporations and other state-controlled entities.
The list has since been expanded as readers send in the names of more people they want gone, too.
Persons:
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Organizations:
Justice, Gazeta Wyborcza