TOK FM is the largest independent news radio station in Poland. It has been operating since 1998 and has over 1 million listeners every day, providing them with current information and journalistic comments.
Radio TOK FM is a place of pluralistic debate and exchange of opinions. The freedom of speech is the DNA of its editorial team. Dealing with all matters present in the public debate in Poland, we always implement all principles of independent journalism. However, the institution responsible for broadcasting regulations in Poland – the National Broadcasting Council (KRRiT) – regards any criticism of the authorities as hate speech.
Now, TOK FM Radio, which is one of the most important sources of information in Poland, is in danger of being deprived of its license and stopping broadcasting.
Below you can find the transcription of punished show and the statement of the editor-in-chief of Tok FM Radio – Kamila Ceran, in which she presents the position of the editorial team.
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Penalty imposed by National Broadcasting Council (KRRiT) on Radio TOK FM
Statement of the editor-in-chief Kamila Ceran | 8 May 2023
Radio TOK FM is a place for pluralistic debate and exchange of opinions. The freedom of speech exercised in this way is in the DNA of our editorial office. It also means that, while dealing with all issues present in the public debate, we subject them to evaluation – by our journalists, publicists, invited commentators and experts.
I have been acting as an editor-in-chief at TOK FM for more than eleven years. In all that time, the station has not received a single penalty from the National Broadcasting Council.
During this time, we have expanded our audience to over one million listeners a day, we have become the fourth-largest station in the country among national and supra-regional radio stations, and we have reached over 33,000 active subscribers to our already broadcast podcasts, which is the best result in Europe and perhaps in the world. These figures alone indicate that the quality of our programme is widely appreciated by listeners.
This is due to the fact that we make constant and consistent efforts to make journalistic integrity our hallmark and – in my opinion –we are one of the pillars of free media in Poland.
The Chairman of the National Broadcasting Council (KRRiT) initiated ex officio proceedings to penalise Radio TOK FM for violation of Article 18(1) of the Broadcasting Act. So let us look at what this provision says:
Article 18. 1. Broadcasts or other transmissions may not promote actions contrary to the law, to the Polish raison d’état and attitudes and views contrary to morality and social good, in particular, they may not contain content inciting hatred or violence or discriminating on the grounds of sex, race, skin colour, ethnic or social origin, genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, nationality, membership of a national minority, property, birth, disability, age or sexual orientation or incitement to commit a terrorist offence.
This provision was applied to a programme in which a journalist from Radio TOK FM criticised the use of hate speech, i.e. negative and xenophobic, non-objective or even propaganda content, in a textbook for the school subject “history and the present times” (historia i teraźniejszość, HiT). It brought to his mind associations with hate speech used to indoctrinate young people by Nazi propaganda.
That is to say, the Chairman of the National Broadcasting Council accused us of using hate speech because we criticised hate speech.
I think it is worth quoting one more provision from the Broadcasting Act in this situation.
Article 6. 1. The National Council shall safeguard the freedom of speech in radio and television, the independence of media service providers and video sharing platform providers, the interests of service recipients and users and shall ensure the open and pluralistic nature of broadcasting.
It is therefore the task of the National Broadcasting Council (including its Chairman) to protect the constitutional principle of the expression of opinions, as long as those opinions are sufficiently argued. I still stand by the position that the broadcast dealt with propaganda and the comparison of propaganda methods. Using specific quotations, we showed an attempt to inject prejudice into the young people’s core curriculum, to allow the achievements of the European Union or feminism to be discredited, to deprecate people with a different sexual orientation, and to antagonise social groups on the basis of beliefs. Furthermore, after the broadcast, “taking into account the social good”, the publishing house removed the most emotionally charged passages from the textbook in question, which concerned in vitro fertilization.
Since the broadcast, we have exchanged a number of letters with the President of the National Broadcasting Council. On 12 January 2023, he addressed us with a “general call to avoid comparisons of books/works/authors (…) to Nazi works if there is no factual basis for such an opinion”.
In my opinion, we have not used any unauthorised comparisons and do not intend to do so in the future.
It was therefore with surprise that I received the National Broadcasting Council’s announcement of 28 April this year that a fine of PLN 80 000 had been imposed on the station for violation of the – already mentioned –Article 18 of the Broadcasting Act. In addition, the allegations presented to the broadcaster and their motivation are quite new (never even mentioned in the correspondence before).
What the Chairman of the National Broadcasting Council found in TOK FM’s programme now, was the promotion of illegal activities, views and attitudes contrary to morality and social good, content inciting to hatred and discriminatory content, as well as humiliation and violation of the dignity of World War II victims, including Jews. These allegations, when juxtaposed with the programme subject to the National Broadcasting Council proceedings, sound absurd, and such a situation has never occurred in the history of Radio TOK FM.
A completely new accusation made by the Chairman is also “inciting to hatred on the grounds of political views and to the presentation of content discriminating on the grounds of political views, by referring to the political affiliation of the author of the textbook – indicating the Law and Justice party”. According to the Chairman, the presentation of the textbook’s author – prof. Wojciech Roszkowski – at the beginning of the broadcast as a former Law and Justice MEP resulted in the negative opinions about the content of the HiT textbook mentioned in the broadcast, being offensive to this party and all people who share its views. So this time the President, in addition to defending Prof. Roszkowski’s good name, also took it upon himself to protect the good name of the Law and Justice Party, caricaturing the meaning of the broadcast, which was not political in any part. After all, the interviewees had just explicitly opposed hate speech and the presentation of discriminatory content in the children’s textbook, pointed out and condemned expressions such as: “gender ideology”, “European integration is an external oppression saturated with Eurosceptic discourse”, “intellectual European deviation”. Such content would certainly have been stigmatised by them regardless of the political connotations of its author.
In view of this, I have to ask the question: why is it that a station which, since its inception, has been based on values such as freedom of speech, tolerance and respect for diversity of opinion, is today being accused of promoting hate speech and views contrary to morality and the social good, and consequently fined? What has changed recently? I see one such issue. We have applied to renew Radio TOK FM’s licence for another ten years. The current concession expires on 3 November this year.
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“First breakfast at TOK”
[Piotr Maślak] It’s 6:43 and 51 seconds. Paweł Nawrocki, a teacher of history and social studies from the Polygraphic School Complex in Warsaw, is now your and my guest. Good morning sir.
[Paweł Nawrocki] Good morning.
[PM] You were looking at the HiT, or more precisely, the HiT textbook for the school course called ‘The History and The Present’.
[PN] Yes, I did, I did it yesterday based on the excerpts published by Biały Kruk publishing house and by Wojciech Roszkowski – they’ve been published by Onet portal, but as I say it is also available on the publisher’s website.
[PM] I will now quote to our listeners a few, a few short fragments so as not to dwell there: ‘The European Union promotes atheism and implements it in through bureaucratic and administrative methods’. ‘European integration is an external oppression saturated with Eurosceptic discourse, which has nothing to do with the realities of the formation of the first European organizations in the 50s of the twentieth century’. And here I will reach for the flagship phrases: ‘gender ideology’, ‘intellectual European perversions’, is this a history textbook in your opinion, for the present, for knowledge about society or rather some kind of textbook for xenophobia?
[PN] Well, I didn’t find these curiosities. I came across others which I will gladly share now, but of course yes – let’s leave ‘gender ideology’ out because it is abused and already…
[PM] But this is a textbook…
[PN] Many words were said about this. Yes, I know, I want to criticize it, but to do it on the basis of other phrases. Well, undoubtedly it is something that is to replace WOS (a course on ‘Knowledge of Society’), i.e. a subject that is to shape the citizen of a democratic state in a wider community of European families. From what you have quoted this textbook actually discourages this, right? So it probably shouldn’t be a textbook. Well, this is my simple answer. It is hard to imagine that it could be any different coming from the WOS teacher. Well, I regret that this HiT appeared at all, replacing WOS in the obligatory courses for high school students, first grades, I repeat, in the obligatory part, because students who have signed up for profiles with extended WOS will still have it in the original form, while it (WOS) should be widely available and shape all young citizens. The end result is that they will learn this historical mush, instead of the civic skills that are actually useful to them later in life. They will come out from this course perhaps very proud of the fact that they are heirs to the legacy of the Cursed Soldiers, or the suffering victims of the WW2 still entitled to something that they won’t get – see lessons about the sacrifice after World War II and German refusal of fulfillment of new claims, but as I say, competent citizens will not come out of these courses.
[PM] Let me interrupt you.
[PN] Yes, please.
[PM] But you will be forced to use this textbook. Sławomir Drelich, PhD, political ethicist from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and author of textbooks for WOS – probably a well-known figure – reviews this HiT textbook as follows: ‘It’s simply a tragedy, journalistic gibberish mixed with very detailed academic historical knowledge. This is the best way to ideologize young people, but at the same time to build in them a lasting hatred for historical education, civic knowledge and shaping the ability to function in the modern state and the world.” End of quote.
[PN] Well, exactly. I think so too. But, you know what, I was surprised that the author of this is Professor Wojciech Roszkowski, that he would sign it.
[PM] Former Law and Justice MEP.
[PN] Well, but you know what, I remember him – because I already teach for quite some time…
[PM] But me too, I remember him too.
[PN] Then welcome to the club.
[PM] I apologize for interrupting, but I think we are talking about the same memory from times rightly past.
[PN] Yes, but I remember him as the author, together with Anna Radziwiłł, of a very good textbook, one of the firsts on the 19th and 20th century, the history of modern Poland. Perhaps, here, Anna Radziwiłł’s influence was missing? If she was next to the professor, an academic, Wojciech Roszkowski, and she had this knack, skill, experience, teaching practice, among others, from the great Lelewel High School in her time, then well, such a gaffe would not be made by the professor Roszkowski today. But then you have as a reviewer professor Andrzej Nowak – also an academic – who is a great academic historian, but with little contact with the present educational school system, then it all comes out the way it goes.
The Introduction is very promising, isn’t it? There is a talk about what teachers will be doing with students – they are supposed to discuss things, they are to understand reality and not just copy the answers from the answer key, they should look for truth, and that this textbook has the ambition to be almost a good novel for everyone, for teachers, students, even for parents. And it is a good introduction to academic studies, especially the humanities. And this introduction is a great beginning, but then when you read next chapters, not much of it stands up.
I like to test those fragments that – well – are close to me, but also provide a litmus test; I especially like to browse through the lessons of recent American history – where young people are the subject. And this is such an important period for me, which, as opposed to the wars, changes these cultural, mental environments and civilizations the most, right? And that’s where reading about the march on Washington by Martin Luther King appears. At the end of a that passage one can read that ‘today the N-word is considered offensive’ (something like that) and that the so-called progressive circles, organizations, Marxists, left-leaning and so on try to remove it from literary works. And then the author claims there are much worse words that are allowed in public discourse – for example, the expression ‘f***-off’. We know what it is about and we know that it is an allusion (to the slogan used during the women’s marches in Poland after the right to abortion was abolished in all the cases but rape and incest – editorial note). Well, to be honest, how would I use such a paragraph during a lesson? I doubt that I could establish such a good relationship with the first graders, well, with those who remember these events of the women’s strike from three years ago to be able to explain this. But there is a bigger disadvantage of using this, this allusion – well, it will be taught to the first classes with future 14-15-year-olds, who will no longer remember the context or did not live it and do not understand this. Well, maybe they heard about it, but they certainly do not know the content of the women’s strikes of 2020 and they will have to be told about the women shouting ‘f***-off’ to the government politicians, just like about any unknown event, thus popularizing it. And I do not know if this is the intention of the authors of the textbook and especially their boss (the Minister of Education).
[PM] But then what the intention is? Because, you know, I read it and I have the impression that the intention is to convince young people to leave the European Union as soon as possible. If not now, then in a few years. Maybe they, convinced that the European Union is evil, will believe in – I do not know – the extermination of non-heteronormative people, because they maybe are a threat to the healthy social fabric. It reads like a textbook – excuse the comparison – for the Hitler Youth a little bit. Sometimes, not everywhere, but at times.
[PN] Well, yes, but you know what, you are right, of course. And I should also criticize and scold it, and I do it, but.. [PM] Then what will you be teaching the subject from, the History and the Present?
[PN] First of all, this subject is not included in the final exams – matura (the high school diploma), and so we do not have such obligation to make the students learn it by heart, because otherwise they would suffer. In the contrary, they will not suffer the indoctrination, if we try to use alternative content. I cannot tell you the details yet, but there is already such project in which I will participate and we will try to prepare another textbook. Still based on the program points of HiT course, but consistent with our conscience and consistent with social benefit, as we – the teachers, understand it.
But insofar as this textbook is what it is, which is to say, it is awful and this idea of pushing into our heads such content as you have quoted, which I have quoted, that for me is disastrous. Well, you know, in the same way as textbooks functioned in the People’s Republic of Poland. I will also use the example of American contestation and a famous saying of Malcolm X, who valued the Ku Klux Klan – do you know why? Because it built up very strongly, created and consolidated the consciousness of African Americans, right? I mean, as long as we have such a counterbalance, an author of this textbook and his principals, then we know what to stick to, right?
I will say one more thing to you and to the listeners. When I was making a presentation about refugees in one of the schools in which I teach, the students prepared a thread called “Authorities on refugees”. They did it a bit mockingly, that is, they dichotomously opposed different authorities from the two political bubbles. There were pictures of the current government and well, no comment was needed, because immediately there was a volley of laughter. In this way, the young people – at least the ones I teach – perceive those who want to create reality for us. So I think I have more – I don’t know – positive emotions associated with this.
[PM] Do you think that it will be, as I remember, from the times – I will refer to them again – rightly past, that is, the times of the Polish People’s Republic, that the more they push Polish-Soviet love on us, the more it will be the opposite, because young people are contradictory by nature?
[PN] Yes, I think it will be.
[PM] Let’s keep our fingers crossed for the Polish youth, their wisdom and intelligence in that case.
[PN] Let’s keep them crossed. We will share with you, when something cool arises. And in addition, I can advertise another initiative. Because we have HiT at schools, we decided to leave the school desks and with a group of young people we have created a ‘Senate talks’ and ‘Senate dialogues’ meetings, where once a month, at the invitation of the Senate Speaker Dr Grodzki, we talk about what we want – that is, I speak on behalf of the youth – what we want, with whom we want. So there are still people who care about it. And they will last.
[PM] It is still possible in Poland. One of such people is Mr. Paweł Nawrocki, a teacher of history and social studies from the Polygraphic School Complex in Warsaw, who was your and my guest. Thank you very much.
[PN] Thank you very much to Piotr Maślak and I say goodbye to you – have a nice day.