A Polish language service run by US broadcaster Newsmax has launched its news website, which is soon to be followed by a fully fledged TV news channel.
Allies of the current Polish Government, though, have tried to stop it.
The initial launch of the website was on April 20, offering news articles as well as opening statements from the Newsmax corporate and editorial leadership.
In an interview with the website, the founder and CEO of Newsmax Christopher Ruddy called the launch of the Polish service as “an important element of our expansion into international markets”. He said it strives to provide readers with “media they can trust not to filter reality through a narrow, ideological prism”.
Newsmax in the US is a conservative broadcaster broadly supportive of US President Donald Trump and had to pay $100 million (€115 million) after it lost a lawsuit with electronic voting companies over its reporting of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election in which Trump was defeated.
The editor-in-chief of Newsmax Polska is Wojciech Surmacz, who previously served as head of the state-owned Polish Press Agency (PAP) between 2018 and 2023.
He told Newsmax Polska website that the service would “above all write the truth”, with a “focus on credible, calm and factual news”.
In a statement published earlier in April, Surmacz admitted that “our editorial team is ideologically closer to a conservative perspective” but added that they would seek to be objective and avoid becoming “a political tool for any group”.
The leadership of Newsmax Polska has denied that the broadcaster would in any way be linked to the opposition Conservatives (PiS), who are the party in Poland most closely connected to the Trump administration in the US.
Newsmax is likely to be a direct rival to two Polish independent conservative news channels, though. They are TV Republika and wPolsce24, which have grown their audiences off the back of the Prime Minister Donald Tusk government’s takeover of public media.
Surmacz lost his job as head of PAP in late 2023 when the incoming centre-left government led by Tusk immediately on coming to office took over state television and radio as well as PAP by putting them all into a state of liquidation.
None of these state media have actually been wound down and the move to put them into liquidation was purely a means for a speedy management takeover of these outlets without having to go through the process of changing the law on public media.
Moreover, the Tusk government has placed two commercial broadcasters, the Warner Brothers Discovery (WBD)-owned TVN and Polsat, both of which are liberal leaning, on a list of strategic companies the takeover of which by foreign entities would require government approval.
Placing TVN and the Polish-owned broadcaster Polsat on a list of strategic companies was a controversial move made by the Tusk government last year. It came after stories began to circulate about WBD selling its assets to a Hungarian company that was likely to be sympathetic to PiS rather than the Tusk government.
That transfer of ownership never materialised but the current takeover of the WBD by Skydance Paramount, a company close to the Trump administration, could lead to the Polish Government intervening in a way the US administration would not appreciate.
During preparations for Newsmax Polska’s launch, reports that it was owned by Telekom Serbija, a public company in Serbia linked with the Russian state-owned state bank Sberbank, led politicians from Tusk’s party to ask the European Commission to take action to prevent alleged Russian interference in Polish media.
“We cannot allow entities linked to Russian capital or influence to have the ability to shape the media message in Poland,” wrote Lukasz Kohut MEP in justification of his intervention with the EC.
Responding to the attack, Newsmax CEO Ruddy wrote on social media: “Newsmax is and has been the leading conservative media in America supporting Ukraine’s fight for freedom! We would never support any media organisation that supports Russia’s aggression.”
