photo - PAP/Radek Pietruszka
The editors of 57 Polish newspapers have signed an appeal to the Senate, criticising a draft law on the corrections of articles, describing the project as an attack on press freedom.
“If these provisions become law, the Polish press will be given over to politicians, officials, PR people and businessmen,” the appeal declares.
The signatories of the appeal are due to meet with Speaker of the Senate, Bogdan Borusewicz, on Tuesday, and several newspapers led with the headline “Senate is killing the Press” on Monday.
The bill, which is being read today in the Senate, the upper house of parliament, would oblige editors to publish an opinion on a given article by a person mentioned in that article, under threat of legal action.
The opinion may be as much as twice as long as the original press article, and it does not matter whether it was allegedly flattering, neutral or defamatory to the cited person.
In March 2010, Poland's Constitutional Court – the country's supreme legislative body – ruled that Poland's current law is unclear on the matter.
At present, corrections and responses by offended parties are applicable only when a complainant has been defamed.
However, according to the Constitutional Court, the current law does not specify either what a correction should be, or how a letter of complaint should be published.
This has the effect of leaving the chief editor to decide what is published, and if the complainant remains unsatisfied, the matter may go to court.
MPs from several political parties in the Sejm – Poland's lower house of parliament – have criticised the draft law.
Adam Hofman, press spokesman for conservative opposition party Law and Justice (PiS) has said that it is not the Senate that is “killing the press,” but the governing Civic Platform party, which he said was trying to turn newspapers into political party bulletins.
Leszek Miller, leader of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) has said that the present bill is “unacceptable” in its present form.
Meanwhile, junior coalition partner PSL is preparing its own bill which would provide editors with clarifications in how to avoid either publishing corrections or complaints by those cited in articles. (nh/pg)