Polish public radio protesting new media law

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New legislation is giving the government of Poland control of the state media and the power to directly appoint the heads of public broadcasters. The new law may jeopardize Poland’s voting rights at the European Council.

Many thanks to SWLing Post reader, Andrea Borgnino, who notes that Polish public radio “Jedynka”  is protesting this new media law by playing the European Anthem every hour, at the top of the hour.

Andrea shared the following SoundCloud recording via Twitter:

[Small correction/Update: The European Anthem (of course) is being played in protest, not the Polish National Anthem as originally posted. Thanks for noting the mistake, Andrea.]

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4 thoughts on “Polish public radio protesting new media law

  1. Chris D

    Another small correction – Jedynka plays The Polish Anthem AND The European Anthem. Polish every odd hour and European every even hour.
    You can check it in the video I’ve lately posted – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0VBn_xspL8

    …and few words @DL4NO. Well, the situation is not such dramatic as you described 🙂 Yes our current government do wrong things, but the former one wasn’t even better. They’ve made also nasty things to the prime court, and many others which I don’t want to describe here.

    In my opinion the current situation is a great example of the Informational war.
    Now our public media are still in hands of the former government, that why they make a lot of noise about how bad the new government is. In other hand the new government don’t like the situation when public media want to discredit them, so that why they want to stop it taking control over public broadcasters.
    Furthermore some European media entered the war because old government was pro-European (pro-EU) and the current one is more “eurosceptic” and more conservative.

    Another thing – imho there is no such thing like “Independent Public Media”. Why? Because government pay their bills, that why. So they will always represent the government side and it’s in every country, even in Germany 😉 And we SWLers who receive broadcasts form all over the world should be aware of it…

    Please don’t fire up MW transmitters, nobody in Poland listen to MW anymore (except enthusiast like us 😉 ) Also we have full access to the all information neither through the Internet or other independent and commercial broadcasters. Really freedom of speech is not the problem here and I don’t think that this situation will change even if our new government will do another stupid things… at least I have such hope 😉

    best,
    Chris

    Reply
    1. DL4NO

      > …and few words @DL4NO. Well, the situation is not such
      > dramatic as you described 🙂 Yes our current government
      > do wrong things, but the former one wasn’t even better.

      From my view either way is bad. A people consists of varied groups. If only very few groups have any influence on politics the rest remains unsatisfied and forms the basis for despair and violence.

      Only very few countries have developed a culture that includes nearly everyone. The most advanced example I know of is Switzerland. But this scheme slows social change to a crawl as most Swiss will confirm.

      > In my opinion the current situation is a great example
      > of the Informational war.

      This is definitely so. Presently we have an extreme example about violence against women at new year’s eve celebrations in Cologne and Hamburg. Some media directly blamed the refugees that came to Germany over the last years, especially in 2015. At that time they could not know for sure about this. Now the discussion moves to blame the politicians because they reduced the headcount of police forces so far.

      > Now our public media are still in hands of the former
      > government, that why they make a lot of noise about
      > how bad the new government is.

      This is why the independence of the courts is so extremely important. This is what makes a society pluralistic: Single persons or smaller groups get a chance to have a law or a decision of the government overthrown because it violates the law. This is what happend here in Germany at data security, to name a single example.

      > In other hand the new government don’t like the situation
      > when public media want to discredit them

      Obviously the detest that 🙂

      > so that why they want to stop it taking control over public
      > broadcasters.

      Which must not happen.

      > Furthermore some European media entered the war
      > because old government was pro-European (pro-EU) and
      > the current one is more “eurosceptic” and more
      > conservative.

      Lets put it mildly: If a few governments start not to play according to the rules that were agreed upon you should not wonder about it.

      > Another thing – imho there is no such thing like
      > “Independent Public Media”. Why? Because government
      > pay their bills, that why.

      This is why our public broadcasting system is directly funded by the people and not by taxes. It is the same in GB.

      The control of the public broadcast systems here in Germany (we have 18 or so of them) is organized pluralistically: A minority of the members of the control committees is sent by the political parties. Others come from churches, workers unions and more.

      If journalists from within the public broadcast systems do not make problems known from within we have the privately owned media to do so.

      > So they will always represent the government side and it’s
      > in every country, even in Germany ?

      Of course even here some people are created more equal than others. But our balance of powers works quite well and much reduces the feelings of powerlessness and despair. This is where much of the violence starts. Therefore my remark that I am waiting for voilence in Poland.

      > And we SWLers who receive broadcasts form all over
      > the world should be aware of it…

      This is another story: Traditionally most of international broadcasting is funded by the governments. But even this is changing: These days you can privately rent transmitter hours.

      Reply
  2. DL4NO

    The course of the new Polish government is highly controversal: First they reduced the power of their state court which gives the government more unrestricted power. Now they bring the public media under control – as every dictator does.

    Somehow it needs more than 25 years until the basic rules of a democratic, pluralistic society have been learned. I am waiting for violence to start in Poland.

    Here in Germany many things need a loooooong time to happen. But no German government would dare to do such things as discussed above. We had a comparable try more than 50 years ago (“Adenauer TV”) but they did not succeed – because of the state court. See http://www.deutschlandfunk.de/adenauer-fernsehen-als-alternative-zur-ard.761.de.html?dram:article_id=114435 .

    Back to our theme here: Where are the medium wave transmitters to provide the Polish people with different views? Mostly east of Poland as those to the west are being dismantled at the moment…

    Reply

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