Polish Public TV Management Heavily Linked to Soros Network

The Polish public broadcaster's management has been taken over in coup-like fashion and replaced by old leftist-liberals. Tomasz Sygut, president of the board of directors, makes no secret of his bias on social media. Sygut's career, and that of his old partner Marek Czyz, has been linked at multiple points to the Soros world, an influential force in Poland as well.

Varsó, 2023. december 21. A korábbi kormánypárt, a Jog és Igazságosság (PiS) támogatói tüntetnek a lengyel közszolgálati televízió, a TVP varsói székháza elõtt 2023. december 20-án. Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz, az új lengyel kormány kulturális és örökségvédelmi minisztere december 20-án felmentette a közszolgálati televízió és rádió, valamint a PAP állami hírügynökség vezérigazgatóit, és új felügyelõtanácsokat alakított ki a közmédiában. Donald Tusk baloldali kormányfõt és kabinetét december 13-án iktatták be. MTI/AP/Czarek Sokolowski Fotó: Czarek Sokolowski

In mid-December, the new government's Culture and Heritage Minister Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz dismissed the heads and supervisory boards of Polish public television (Telewizja Polska - TVP), public radio (Polskie Radio - PR) and the state news agency (Polska Agencja Prasowa - PAP). On December 20, the newly created supervisory board of TVP appointed Tomasz Sygut, already considered by Polish liberals an important figure at the public broadcaster prior to 2016, to head the company.

It is worth taking a brief look at Sygut's career to see that what is happening regarding public television in Poland is not about eliminating propagandists, but, in fact, quite the opposite. 

As a journalist, Sygut, born in 1978, published several articles between July 2002 and April 2006 in the weekly left-wing newspaper Przeglad, owned by the Fundacja Oratio Recta publishers. Jerzy Domanski is both the president of the foundation as well as editor-in-chief of Przeglad. In the 1980s, Domanski was head of the press department of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) Central Committee, in other words he was a propagandist for the ruling communist state party.  

It was under Domanski's tutelage that Sygut's eventual career as Tusk and company's pick for president of Polish public television took off.

Sygut later worked for the national tabloid Super Express, owned by ZPR Media Group. ZPR has joint projects with the Eurozet Group, which was bought by George Soros in 2019.

Sygut worked at Polish public television from February 2011 until the end of 2015, during which time he was Program Secretary at TVP Polonia, before becoming Deputy Director of TVP Info in 2013. Shortly after the election victory of the conservative right, he left TVP on January 1, 2016, together with several other managers and directors in a spectacular and coordinated resignation wave.

For more than two years after leaving public TV, Sygut was editor-in-chief of the ZPR Media Group's Nowa TV, which started broadcasting in the fall of 2016. At the same time, Sygut was also the managing editor of the news program 24 Hours. Then, at the end of 2018, nearly the entire 24 Hours team left Nowa TV, but the managing editor again, of course, managed to land a good position.

As of 2019, Sygut worked for the transport company owned by the Warsaw municipality under Rafal Trzaskowski, that operated bus services in Warsaw and the agglomeration. Liberal Trzaskowski is a long-time Soros ally, including through the Open Society Foundations (OSF) -funded New Pact for Europe project, the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and the Bathory Institute. In addition, Soros's man helped the pro-Tusk, liberal Trzaskowski's campaign in the 2018 local elections. 

Following this personal career path, Sygut returned to public TV at the end of 2023. It is also worth noting that, almost at the same time as his appointment, it was announced that Marek Czyz, whose career is intertwined with Sygut's in many ways, would also return to TVP. Like him, he also worked at Polish public TV from 2011 to 2016, and from 2016 to 2018 they worked together at Nowa TV. Czyz was the head of the news program 24 Hours, for which Sygut was the managing editor. After the resignation of the entire editorial staff of Nowa TV, they temporarily parted ways. Czyz recently left his post as news director of the Soros-owned Radio Zet, at Sygut's request to rejoin the public broadcaster.

Incidentally, it was this very same Czyz from the Soros-owned media outlet who recently announced quite theatrically on Polish public television that instead of the "paintings" created by PiS, they would finally show "photographs", i.e. facts. However, a Remix News report reveals that the old leftist-liberal propagandists have so far not disappointed and almost immediately started broadcasting pro-Tusk propaganda.

This is not surprising, in light of the above described history, or even a look at Sygut's social media activity. The social media likes of the new TV president, under the name Tomek Sygut, include the sites of several left-wing Polish politicians and people connected to the Warsaw city administration, as well as a large number of leftist-liberal media outlets, among them the George Soros-linked Radio ZET.

So it is clear that after Soros's man, Adam Bodnar, became Poland's new minister of justice, the new leadership of the country's public television is now also linked to the Soros world, an influential force in Poland.

Cover photo: Supporters of the former ruling Law and Justice party demonstrate outside the headquarters of Polish public television in Warsaw on December 20, 2023 (Photo: MTI/AP/Czarek Sokolowski)