The Deputy Chair of the National Broadcasting Council (KRRiT), Prof. Hanna Karp, is seeking explanations from Council member Prof. Tadeusz Kowalski regarding his past and activities during the communist era of the People’s Republic of Poland. This follows an article by Piotr Lisiewicz titled “Enemy of the Republic. How Prof. Tadeusz Kowalski Supported General Jaruzelski’s Junta in Its Fight Against Freedom of Speech”, published in the weekly Gazeta Polska.
In the latest issue of Gazeta Polska, Piotr Lisiewicz published an extensive article devoted to the past of one of the members of the National Broadcasting Council, Prof. Tadeusz Kowalski, who has been actively involved in opposing the granting of a broadcasting license to TV Republika.
He cared about “the fullest possible implementation of the party’s propaganda program” and “sufficient influence of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR)” over RSW Press-Book-Movement (RSW Prasa-Książka-Ruch). He advocated limiting the guaranteed allocation of paper to titles “prioritized by the political authority”. Two years before the Round Table talks, he “expressed the view” that the creation of a publishing system “in the sense of disseminating content with diverse worldviews” was “very distant in time” – Lisiewicz wrote in the article titled “Enemy of the Republic. How Prof. Tadeusz Kowalski Supported General Jaruzelski’s Junta in Its Fight Against Freedom of Speech”.
Prof. Hanna Karp seeks explanations
Prof. Hanna Karp, Deputy Chair of the National Broadcasting Council, reacted to the article.
“In connection with a press publication concerning the academic and professional path of a member of the National Broadcasting Council, Dr. habil. Tadeusz Kowalski, I have addressed several questions to the minister. I am awaiting a response,” Prof. Karp stated.
In a letter to Prof. Kowalski, the Deputy Chair of the National Broadcasting Council notes that “the text contains many troubling pieces of information related to your professional and academic work, previously completely unknown.”
Prof. Karp asked him, among other things, to address the issues described in the above-cited passage from Piotr Lisiewicz’s article, including the proposed “improvements in the paper supply system” for a “strictly defined group of titles”, and the “very distant in time” conditions for a pluralistic and market-based publishing system.
The Deputy Head of the National Broadcasting Council also requested that Prof. Kowalski respond to questions regarding, among other things, the topic of his master’s thesis, his employment or affiliation with RSW Press-Book-Movement (RSW Prasa-Książka-Ruch), employment in party or state structures during the communist era, and membership in the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) or other party organizations at that time.
“And my final question: Do you feel comfortable sitting on the National Broadcasting Council as its member, while instructing the other members of the Council from a position of moral superiority and as a super-expert on contemporary media, when your doctoral dissertation, describing the reality of the martial law regime, defended in December 1985, was titled ‘RSW Press-Book-Movement in the Conditions of Economic Reform in the Years 1981-1983’?” – we read in the letter to Tadeusz Kowalski.