A Warsaw court has decided to waive journalistic privilege protecting a senior broadcaster from a conservative news channel from having to reveal his sources for obtaining material from illicit tapings of conversations between public figures.
Michał Rachoń, a senior editor who works and broadcasts for conservative independent news channel TV Republika on June 8 had his journalist’s confidentiality obligation lifted in matters concerning recorded conversation which took place between Donald Tusk who as Prime Minister leads Poland’s centre-left coalition government and Roman Giertych, an MP from the party Tusk leads and attorney to the Tusk family.
The ruling also covers Giertych’s recorded conversations with Jarosław Kurski, deputy editor-in-chief of the daily Gazeta Wyborcza, extracts of which were broadcast by TV Republika. According to the station, none of the extracts published relate to any legal matters discussed between an attorney and his clients.
Rachoń’s attorney Artur Wdowczyk told portal Niezależna that the court’s decision was “extremely flawed”.
“This is not a final decision, and we will certainly appeal it”, said Wdowczyk.
The journalist himself also reacted to the court’s move by publishing a video on X in which he protested that he would not comply with the ruling and maintained that he would not disclose the identities of his sources regardless of the court’s decision.
“I will not betray my sources, even if this crypto-dictatorship [Tusk government-ed.] releases me from journalistic privilege. My answer to all questions from the prosecutors is simple: You will learn nothing from me, because I am protected by journalistic confidentiality” Rachoń said.
This is not the first time that revealing the contents of illicit recordings involving public figures has caused pressure to be applied against working journalists.
During the time of the previous Tusk government (2007-2014) a whole raft of the contents of illicit recordings between officials and businessmen were revealed by the weekly Wprost.
The tapes revealed how a minister had tried to persuade the head of Poland’s central bank to make moves favourable to the Tusk government and foreign minister Radosław Sikorski’s derogatory remarks about relations with US allies.
The recordings were embarrassing to the Tusk government also because of the vulgar language used in admittedly private conversations about matters of state.
It is that embarrassment which led to a nervous reaction from the authorities with the security services forcefully entering the premises of Wprost and attempting to seize the laptop of the editor of the magazine Sylwester Latkowski.
Recordings from the security services actions of Latkowski holding on to his laptop while security officers tried to wrestle it from him went viral and created a situation in which even media sympathetic to Tusk and his government became critical of its actions.
That kind of journalistic solidarity is no longer on show in Poland after two decades of polarisation between the liberal Left and the Conservative Right. Today the pro-liberal Tusk media have not expressed any sympathy towards Rachoń and TV Republika whom they often describe as “media workers, not journalists”.
TV Republika and another conservative broadcaster wPolsce24 have on several occasions been debarred from government press conferences and their journalists have regularly been called in for questioning by public prosecutors over allegations made against them.
Tomasz Sakiewicz, the CEO of TV Republika was recently questioned by prosecutors on suspicions of aiding and abetting the escape from Poland of former Conservative (PiS) justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro, wanted by the Tusk government’s prosecutors on charges of abuse of power.
The TV Republika CEO was questioned because the broadcaster had chosen to employ Ziobro as a commentator in the USA which may have helped the ex-minister obtain an entry visa into that country.
However, Ziobro is not being pursued on a European Arrest Warrant and is therefore a free man and before leaving for the USA had been granted asylum in Hungary. Sakiewicz and his news channel therefore had no role whatsoever in him leaving Poland nor travelling to the USA, neither of which were in any case illegal acts.
Relations between the Tusk government and TV Republika deteriorated further still in recent weeks when a spate of false alarms regarding journalists at the channel led to police interventions in their homes.
Sakiewicz’s apartment was visited by the police with his assistant actually handcuffed after a series of such false alarms against TV Republika staff leading the channel’s CEO to accuse the authorities of a campaign of harassment against the station.
The government later announced that it had identified the perpetrators of these false alarms, after a false alarm affected the family of the opposition PiS allied President Karol Nawrocki and a false alarm at the home of the PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński.
However, instead of hearing an apology from the authorities for the police actions taken at Sakiewicz’s home he was accused of having revealed the identity of a police officer and may yet be prosecuted for it.
The court ruling, casting doubt on the journalistic right to protect sources, comes in a country in which laws governing the media put journalism at a distinct disadvantage.
Poland’s defamation law regime makes it a criminal offence, meaning journalists get a criminal record when they are found to have defamed anyone and some have even served prison sentences for it.
The European Commission in its reports on the rule of law in member states has on several occasions criticised Poland for making defamation a criminal offence, rather than a matter to be covered by civil law only.
But Poland’s media legislation also makes it difficult for journalists in the world of publishing rather than broadcasting via a provision that all interviews must be authorised by the person interviewed before publication.
This provision has led to situations in which those interviewed end up rewriting the interview and retracting from what they had originally said, often under the influence of their peers. It also slows down the process of publication, often tendering the material to be out of date on publication.
However, the removal of the right to protect one’s sources is a new and dangerous development in Poland’s media environment. If individuals who for instance want to act as whistle blowers on corruption fear that they may be identified it will build a climate of mistrust which will severely reduce the chances of many stories seeing the light of day.
