The head of a popular Polish Youtube current affairs channel has produced documented evidence that a publicly funded NGO has commissioned a PR operation aimed at smearing the broadcaster as a peddler of Russian influence.
Krzysztof Stanowski, the owner of Poland’s channel Kanal Zero, has obtained a document prepared by the Open Dialogue Foundation.
It accuses the broadcaster of being “pro-Russian” and sending questions to advertisers aimed at discouraging them from continuing to sponsor the channel and co-ordination with journalists in other media critical of the Youtube channel.
The description of the activities in the planned campaign states that the goal is to “perpetuate this perception in the public’s mind” and “discourage advertisers from further co-operation with the portal Zero.pl and Kanal Zero“.
The plan includes preparing and publicising a report on Kanal Zero’s alleged “authentication of Russian propaganda in Poland”, distributing the material to mainstream media, think-tanks, NGOs and politicians, as well as issuing “warnings” to companies collaborating with the editorial office.
The plan also explicitly states an intention to “establish co-operation with journalists hostile to Stanowski and his media outlets”, naming names and, if possible, initiating legal action against Kanal Zero.
In practice, the first element of the “operation” has already been launched on social media where the Open Dialogue Foundation publicly attacked Kanal Zero. It suggested that it “warms up Russia’s image” and then sent questions along those lines to several advertisers who have been sponsoring the channel.
The operation seems to have unravelled, though, after being outed by Stabnowski with the partners mentioned in the document. They included PostPravda Info, OKO Press and a journalist from the liberal daily Gazeta Wyborcza.
Bartosz Kramek, the head and founder of the Open Dialogue Foundation claims there has been misrepresentation and stated: “The document was supposed to have been created after an initial initial reaction from journalists approached, which was enthusiastic.”
Stanowski has called the campaign “a classic smear campaign”, which tried to latch on to some negative reaction to a series of reports on Russia that were broadcast on the channel.
The reports, produced by experienced war correspondent Maria Wiernikowska, were criticised by among others the Polish Government’s press spokesman Adam Szłapka, with Kanal Zero being slammed for being “soft on Russia”.
Stanowski has defended the reports on Russia, saying they are a record of a journey made recently by Wiernikowska and include many critical comments about President Vladimir Putin’s Russia, portraying a country in trauma with regard to the war in Ukraine.
The criticism of the reports has focussed on the fact that Wiernikowska spoke to a wounded Russian soldier and she has been accused of failing to confront him and other interlocutors with allegations about Russian war crimes.
As Stanowski points out, though: “Wiernikowska’s style of reporting is to try and listen and allow people to tell their stories rather than conducting interviews.”
Kanal Zero was created in early 2024 by Stanowski, a former sports journalist. It now has 2.2million subscribers with several of its programmes attracting more han 1 million hits on the net.
Stanowski attracted huge interest of the news media in 2025 by standing for Polish president as an independent on a platform of doing it not to win but to report the election process “from within”.
The move resulted in increased interest in his channel, which was the only major broadcaster to produce lengthy interviews (conducted by Stanowski) with all of the candidates. It also carried reports about the idiosyncrasies of the way the presidential election is run in Poland.
Stanowski said, in conducting these in-depth interviews, he was “doing the job which the public television broadcaster TVP should have been doing as part of its public mission”, rather than favouring the pro-government candidate Rafał Trzaskowski.
An interview Stanowski did with the eventual winner, the opposition Conservatives (PiS) aligned-Karol Nawrocki, attracted around 2 million viewings and was later seen as a turning point in Nawrocki’s campaign.
Stanowski this year has launched the portal Zero and is in the process of activating an actual television channel after being granted a full broadcast licence.
His efforts at launching that channel, though, were for a time thwarted when just a few days before the launch date, the advertising broker he had agreed a deal with, TVN Media, suddenly pulled out leaving the new channel with no advertising.
TVN Media is part of the Warner-owned broadcaster TVN, which has for more than two decades been a close ally of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his party, the Civic Coalition (KO).
The Open Dialogue foundation was the subject of an investigation launched by the internal security agency ABW during the lifetime of the last PiS government.
The investigation came as an outcome of an audit that revealed funds paid to the Foundation owned by founder Kramek, were allegedly from Silk Road Biuro Analiz i Informacji, effectively from sources other than those officially declared.
Ludmiła Kozłowska, a foreign citizen who was the director of Open Dialogue Foundation and who is Kramek’s husband, was expelled from the European Union on August 14, 2018.
She was listed as an undesirable in the Schengen Information System (SIS) as a result of ABW’s security concerns around her dealings with Russian and Ukrainian subjects.
The Foundation had made its name in 2016 during protests against the PiS government when it published material on how a Maidan-style revolution could be triggered in Poland.
Stanowski also recalled how the Foundation had participated in action against Polish border guards during the migration crisis on the frontier with Belarus.
“There are even photos of Kramek himself cutting the wire fencing on the border, actions which were clearly in favour of Belarus and Russia and not Poland,” Stanowski sid.
In 2021, just months ahead of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Belarus had refused to take back any illegal migrants who crossed from its territory to Poland. It then proceeded to encourage migrants to attempt to cross that border, leading Poland to fortify the crossing and push back illegal migrants who had managed to get through.
Since Tusk’s partty has come back to power, all charges against both Kramek and Kozłowska have been dropped and the Foundation has received close to €150,000 for its activities out of funds controlled by the Speaker of the Polish Parliament’s second chamber, the Senate, Małgorzata Kidawa-Błońska.
Patryk Słowik, the chief editor of the portal Zero, has said it was particularly alarming that Open Dialogue Foundation is receiving public funds and using them to organise “a campaign aimed at bringing down independent media”.
Słowik feels that, this time around, the attack on an independent broadcaster and publisher has misfired because “our advertisers know they are dealing with such incompetent merchants of black PR who have got found out”.
He also points to the fact that Kanal Zero publishes scores of reports and comments critical of Russia and which describe in full what has been happening during the war in Ukraine.
But Słowik said he was concerned at the way such actions as those by the Foundation could affect the media market in future.
“We are capable of defending ourselves and are a strong media outlet with a big outreach. But there are smaller, weaker entities that profit from advertising sold through anonymous media houses who could easily be affected by such smear campaigns,” he said..
He said he recognised that it is all too easy to scare off advertisers who do not want to be associated with anything controversial.
In fact, he could delve into the experience of his own outlet since the sponsors of Kanal Zero, although they have not withdrawn advertising from the channel as such, asked the broadcaster to have their logos and ads removed from material about Russia produced by Wiernikowska.
