Poland / Europe & Central Asia

In late June, the general counsel of NSO Group, the Israeli company responsible for the deeply intrusive spyware tool, Pegasus, appeared before a committee established by members of the European Parliament (MEPs). Called the PEGA Committee colloquially, the Parliament established it to investigate allegations that EU member states and others have used “Pegasus and equivalent…

On a recent April morning in Warsaw, Joanna Krawczyk was sitting inside a café in the city center, her phone pinging nonstop. The head of Wyborcza Foundation, a Polish media support initiative, Krawczyk was fielding messages from colleagues coordinating the passage of a truckload of reporting equipment from Poland to Ukraine.  “It’s like a rotating menu…

The Committee to Protect Journalists today joined 16 other media and press freedom organizations in a letter calling on Polish President Andrzej Duda to veto an amendment to the country’s broadcast media law. The letter states that the amendment “poses a fundamental threat to media freedom and pluralism in Poland,” and calls it a “direct…

“Media without choice.” On February 10, this sentence ran on the otherwise empty front page of Gazeta Wyborcza, the largest critical newspaper in Poland. On the same day, Radio ZET, a commercial radio station, ran this message on repeat, evoking the country’s communist past: “You will not hear any of our normal broadcasts today…We are…

Polish security agents enter the house of a prominent TV journalist over accusations that he propagated Nazi propaganda. Police summon a reporter over claims that he breached the privacy of the vice-head of the constitutional court. And Poland’s central bank files gagging orders against two papers, demanding they remove several articles about a corruption scandal…

Entering the historic site of the Gdansk shipyard, one cannot miss the wooden boards hanging over the famous gate No. 2. Handwritten in 1980, they display the list of demands of the strikers led by Lech Walesa, the founder of Solidarity, the independent trade union movement that pushed for social change in communist Poland. Number…

Amid the public discourse of fake news and President Trump’s announcement via Twitter about his planned “fake news” awards ceremony, CPJ is recognizing world leaders who have gone out of their way to attack the press and undermine the norms that support freedom of the media. From an unparalleled fear of their critics and the…

The OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media plays a vital role that is valued by journalists and media freedom groups for its ability to speak out in defense of press freedom in participating states of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

On January 13, the European Commission–the so-called guardian of EU treaties–will meet in Brussels to debate a troubling law passed in Poland today that, according to reports, paves the way for the government to take control of public service TV and radio.