Purge in Poland: Journalist who called for revolution against former conservative government made head of state media’s English-language TV channel
The new Polish left-liberal government took over the whole of the Polish public media at the end of last year, and did so in contravention of legislation on public media. Its nominees took TVP’s news channels, TVP Info and TVP World, off-air using police force. TVP Info has been back on air since the new year, and TVP World is scheduled to restart broadcasting next week. However, scores of conservative-leaning journalists have been purged from TVP and Polish radio after the government takeover.
On Feb. 29, TVP announced that the Polish Foreign Ministry-funded channel TVP World will, from the start of March, be led by Michał Broniatowski, who has in the past worked for Reuters, ITN, Associated Press, Politico, and the Russian news agency Interfax; he has also been chief editor for the Polish version of Forbes magazine. Michał Broniatowski’s father was a senior Polish communist security official, Mieczysław Broniatowski.
Broniatowski has in recent years been vocal in opposition to the conservative PiS government, which governed Poland between 2015 and 2023. In 2016, Broniatowski published a highly controversial Facebook post in which he issued an “instruction” on organizing a Maidan-style revolt to bring down the Polish government.
He did this right in the middle of the 2016 crisis, in which the parliamentary opposition occupied the parliamentary chamber and demonstrators attempted to storm the parliamentary building.
However, in 2021 Broniatowski roundly condemned the storming of Capitol Hill by pro-Trump demonstrators, blaming the then U.S. president for provoking the protesters. His appointment has been treated with dismay by conservative media and commentators, who believe it is an indication that Poland’s English-language television channel will become a mouthpiece for the new left-liberal coalition government led by Donald Tusk.
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