In July 2024, journalist Mateusz Teska was sentenced to two months of restricted liberty. He was convicted under Article 212 of the Penal Code. On appeal, the verdict was upheld, but the sentence was modified to a fine of 5,000 PLN. The journalist will also remain in the criminal record registry for the next year.
The first-instance conviction was issued by Judge Magdalena Nowakowska of the District Court in Płock. The appeal was reviewed by Judge Robert Dobaczewski of the Regional Court in Płock.
Convicted for Asking Questions
What did the journalist do? Via an email addressed to a press spokesperson, he posed questions to the authorities of a certain institution. Ultimately, he did not publish any journalistic material; he was merely gathering information for a future publication.
The questions posed by Teska concerned a retired judge, who deemed their content defamatory and initiated a criminal lawsuit against him. The details of the proceedings remain confidential at the request of the complainant herself.
Convicted for… Sending an Email
In an interview with Niezależna.pl, Mateusz Teska described the verdict as scandalous and an attack on media freedom.
“In my view, this ruling means that every journalist will fear addressing certain topics related to public figures, as it now appears that even at the preparatory stage of a report—before publishing anything—one can be held criminally liable and ultimately convicted,”
he told Niezależna.pl.
“The absurdity of this case lies in the fact that I sent an email via an official channel as part of the preparations for a report. As a journalist, I send dozens, if not hundreds, of such messages,”
he emphasized.
“The report never appeared in the public domain,”
he noted.
He also stressed that the questions in the email were never made public anywhere.
Furthermore, he stated that the judge’s case was just one of the aspects that was supposed to appear in the report, which ultimately was never produced. “There was no report, only an email,” he emphasized in the interview.
When asked about the consequences of being listed in the criminal record registry, he admitted that it affects his private life. “It is an inconvenience—more so than the sentence itself,” he remarked.
Journalistic Community Expresses Solidarity
The Press Freedom Monitoring Center of the Association of Polish Journalists has called for the declassification of case materials and announced its intention to petition President Andrzej Duda for the pardon of the unjustly convicted journalist.
The editorial team of Anita Gargas Magazine, for which Teska was preparing materials, has also come to his defense.
“Punishing journalists for seeking information from legally accessible sources contradicts their duty to verify knowledge. This is a violation of fundamental civil rights concerning freedom of speech and poses a threat to the freedom of all media in Poland. We cannot allow the act of obtaining information through a press spokesperson to be criminalized!”
— reads a statement on platform X.