In September, when the election campaign was in full swing, Krzysztof Luft sent a complaint to the head of the National Broadcasting Council about three television stations: TVP1, TVP2 and TVP Info. He wrote in it that, in his opinion, the public broadcaster was violating the Broadcasting Act “through extremely unequal treatment of entities operating on the Polish political scene.”
PiS was present on TVP for 252 hours – over 80%. airtime
Krzysztof Luft, who sat in the National Broadcasting Council in 2010-2016, pointed out that in the second quarter of 2023, the presentation of the positions of the parties constituting the United Right and the offices of the president, prime minister and speaker of the Sejm amounted to a total of 80.37%. time that TVP devotes to politicians of all parties. In his complaint, a member of the TVP Program Council also mentioned that TVP Info only broadcasts conferences and rallies of Law and Justice, completely omitting the opposition parties.
According to data provided by the TVP Information Center, in the second quarter of this year, PiS politicians appeared on Telewizja Polska for a total of 252 hours, which is the dominant result compared to other political parties. For comparison, members of the Civic Platform on the so-called they were presented to the national media for only ten hours. Taking into account all opposition parties, the New Left had the most air time on TVP – over 26 hours.
The head of the National Broadcasting Council denies the allegations. He sees no grounds to initiate complaint proceedings
The KRRiT head’s responses to Luft’s complaints appear on the KRRiT website. The first one appeared at the end of September, and the second one was published on October 30. In it, Świrski replies to Luft that “he did not provide any specific examples confirming the observations”, which he supported with a quote from his complaint: “the speeches of opposition politicians, their meetings with voters or journalists are NEVER broadcast! Their speeches, if they appear, are only in fragments and after editorial processing, usually with a negative comment.
Moreover, Świrski mentioned Art. 23 of the Broadcasting Act and the regulation of the National Broadcasting Council, which do not authorize the body “to determine the time of presence of, among others, representatives of political parties (…) in the programs of public radio and television broadcasting units.”
“Only statements by party representatives on current important public issues are included until this time, and not on all matters. Meetings with city residents of both representatives of the ruling party and the opposition (including Donald Tusk) concerned primarily the plans of these entities for the future. And the most important issue: the currently applicable legal provisions do not oblige public radio and television broadcasting entities to broadcast this type of meetings. In order for this to happen, the currently applicable provision under Article 23 of the Broadcasting Act should be amended and a delegation to the National Broadcasting Council to issue an appropriate regulation in this respect “- says the head of the National Broadcasting Council.
To sum up, I state that there are no legal grounds to initiate complaint proceedings in the above case, which is what you are requesting. I still maintain my statement that I am not familiar with the methodology of your calculations, so in this respect I will rely on the data I provided to you in my reply of October 19, 2023 – concluded Świrski.
Świrski believes that the speeches of the most important state politicians should not be included
In an earlier response, the chairman of the National Broadcasting Council also indicated that he was not aware of the method used by Luft to determine the shares of representatives of individual parties in TVP programs. He then cited other data, which did not include the times of speeches by representatives of the highest state bodies. He believes that, according to applicable law, they should not be treated as representatives of political parties.
“The percentages of speaking times of representatives of individual political parties, which were indicated in your speech, are not confirmed after the verification and analysis of TVP SA reports for the second quarter of 2023. In Polish Television programs: 60% of the quarterly broadcasting time for representatives of parties forming the government (Law and Justice, Solidarna/Sovereign Poland, Republican Party); 40% of this time for representatives of opposition parties (this includes the remaining parties shown in the company’s report for the second quarter of 2023),” the chairman of the National Broadcasting Council explained his position.
Source: Gazeta
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