“We want our voice to be heard. When we talk about public media, we mainly think about TVP, and when we talk about radio, we tend to think about Trójka, possibly Jedynka and PR24. Word, information and journalism are more important. Culture fades into the background, because first of all we need to turn off the propaganda as soon as possible and create standards of impartiality. And we understand it. Meanwhile, Dwójka has specific and slightly different, although equally painful, experiences than other Polish Radio programs. Related not to political propaganda (apparently there is no politics in our country), but to PiS’s cultural and historical policy. “It seems to be quite easy to reverse it,” reads the beginning of the letter.
When PiS took power, we were told: ‘It won’t affect you, you deal with culture and music.’ This is what the wonderful Adam Sławiński, former director of Program 2 of Polish Radio, said. What a misdiagnosis of the situation… It affected me very much. Starting with the erasure of Zygmunt Bauman, Maria Janion, Olga Tokarczuk, the Malta festival, Andrzej Wajda, Paweł Szymański, Agnieszka Holland, etc., through a gradual (not publicly announced, but implemented) change of the format of Dwójka.
“Manual control concerned changes in program topics, selection of guests, literature, coverage of less important cultural events, and finally music. Yes, music is also political! The safest are dead (read: long dead) composers – that is, old music (but not too difficult). – baroque), and the lighter one – mainstream ‘jazz.pl’ (it turns out that this has been a programming priority in recent years), classic rock and pop, an increasingly easier proposal of classical music, and if there is contemporary music, it is not necessarily under the banner of Warsaw Autumn (and not during the day, and not during the holidays!). Even the word ‘contemporary music’ disappeared from our website – it was replaced by the broad formula ‘Sounds of our times’, which covers everything that is produced today.” – we read.
“Cultural journalism has become historical and patriotic journalism”
The authors of the speech also point out that many distinguished journalists have left Polish Radio Program II in recent years. Some of them were to be forced to leave or thrown out. Mentioned here include: Ania Szewczuk-Czech, Joanna Szwedowska, Tomasz Obertyn, Bartosz Panek, Hanna Maria Giza, Małgorzata Pęcińska, Jacek Wakar, Dawid Dziedziczak, Adam Suprynowicz, Agata Kwiecińska and Grzegorz Dąbrowski. They also develop the above-mentioned topic. PR2 format changes.
In place of Jerzy Kisielewski’s collaborators, ‘stars’ were brought in – Robert Mazurek, Piotr Gociek, Waldemar Malicki, Jakub Moroz… The Dwójka antenna was given to these and other presenters, who were not full-time journalists of Polish Radio. In the journalistic and journalistic-music broadcasts, the place of the journalists of the former Dwójka was also taken by the newly accepted hosts and publishers from PR24 and Czwórka, and cultural journalism became historical and patriotic journalism. Recordings from the archive dominate literary programs, emphasize Dwójka journalists.
“Our cooperation with foreign partner organizations, including the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), was increasingly limited. The culmination was the pandemic, when instead of two concerts a day from the best concert halls in Europe and the world, we broadcast Polish concerts from the archive to “support Polish musicians ” (this has largely remained the practice). The Prix Italia and Prix Europa competitions remain increasingly beyond the reach of Polish Radio journalists. We have no chance of producing radio programs or productions at the appropriate artistic level,” it said.
Next, the creators of the appeal make accusations against the management of Dwójka – two people since 2011: Director, Editor-in-Chief Małgorzata Małaszko-Stasiewicz and her deputy Jacek Hawryluk. They are charged for “all these changes devastating the Two, for preventive censorship and in any other form, and in the human dimension, for the destruction of professional life, for intimidation and discrimination of employees, for the destruction of a wonderful team of professionals“.
We read in the text that at the end of the appeal, the creators of the appeal asked for support for culture during the reform of public media. Moreover, at the moment there is no information about the dismissal of the director of Dwójka Małgorzata Małaszko-Stasiewicz. Let us remind you that from Wednesday, Paweł Majcher became the director of Polish Radio, who is to introduce changes in the functioning of public media.
Source: Gazeta
Bruce is a talented author and journalist with a passion for entertainment . He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.
