The Open Dialogue Foundation had filed a lawsuit against Polish Radio for a series of materials defaming the organisation and its leadership during the Law and Justice (PiS) government. On Wednesday, the Foundation revealed that in December, after winning the trial, the court ruled in its favour for PLN 200,000 in compensation and an apology in four languages.
In mid-2017, amidst protests against laws politicising the courts, Bartosz Kramek of the Open Dialogue Foundation published an appeal: “Let the State Come to a Stop: Let’s Shut Down the Government!” In it, he called for civil disobedience against the Law and Justice government for violating the rule of law. The government subjected the Foundation to a series of tax inspections, attempted to take it over and eventually had Kramek’s wife, Lyudmyla Kozlovska, a Ukrainian citizen who runs the Foundation, expelled from Poland. PiS even tried to have her removed from the European Union, but to no avail.
At the same time, the media controlled by PiS was waging a smear campaign against ODF and the married couple who run it. They were accused of, among other things, arms dealing, money laundering, being controlled by Russian intelligence, betraying Ukraine, and even planning a “bloody coup”. “The [Polish] Radio not only parroted false accusations made by the PiS authorities and politicians about Lyudmyla Kozlovska, Bartosz Kramek and the Foundation, (…) but also shamelessly exploited Russian and Kazakh fake news,” reads a statement by ODF on the platform X.
Polish Radio stations were one of the main media outlets conducting the smear campaign. For example, on 11 October 2018, Dorota Kania, hosting “Puls Trójki” on Programme III, said, “What is interesting in this case are Kozlovska’s connections with the Kazakh oligarch Abliazov, and thus with the Kremlin itself”. A similar claim was made by Balli Marzec, from the Kazakh Community Association, on 27 August 2018 on the programme Debata Jedynki on PR 1. In turn, Marcin Wikło (from the weekly Sieci) argued that ODF is an “umbrella organisation protecting the interests of oligarchs”, while Tomasz Sakiewicz stated that the organisation is funded by Russian intelligence.
Similar statements were also made on the airwaves of Polish Radio by: Adrian Stankowski (‘Gazeta Polska Codziennie’), Marcin Makowski (‘Do Rzeczy’), Stanisław Żaryn (spokesman for the secret services), Witold Gadowski and Cezary Gmyz (TVP). [Tomasz] Sakiewicz was the author of several such statements, out of a total of 32 that ODF found on Polish Radio. Some were also published in foreign languages (including Russian and English). “The pro-PiS propaganda mouthpiece tried to destroy our reputation in Poland, in the West and in Ukraine,” explains ODF.
In August 2019, the Open Dialogue Foundation filed a lawsuit for “numerous violations of personal rights” that took place on the airwaves of Polish Radio. Last year, in December, a judgement was handed down by the Regional Court in Warsaw in favour of ODF. The judge ruled that the information disseminated by Polskie Radio was “harmful, unreliable, untrue” and ordered the publication of a lengthy apology in four languages. In addition, the judge ordered the payment of PLN 200,000 in compensation to ODF and its management.
The verdict is not final.
It is not yet known whether Polskie Radio will appeal. “We have submitted a request for a written reasoning of the judgement and will decide on the next steps once we have read it,” says Piotr Daniluk, spokesperson for Polskie Radio. When asked whether the company would seek recourse against the authors of the defamatory statements if the judgement was upheld, the spokesperson once again referred to the reasoning. “We must first check where the court placed the burden of responsibility, its centre of gravity,” he explained.
ODF hopes that the new management of the radio network “unlike TVP” will behave “honourably and will not defend the scandalous practices of their predecessors, and will take responsibility for those practices”, reads ODF’s statement.
The organisation is thus referring to another lawsuit, which it already won in mid-2023 for similar defamatory statements against the Foundation and its management on TVP. However, the new management of Telewizja Polska (TVP) appealed against the judgement, explaining the difficult financial situation — the awarded penalty in that case amounted to PLN 260,000.
In a statement following the judgement, Lyudmyla Kozlovska emphasised that the slander was “particularly damaging” because it was spread in many languages and also affected their business abroad. “Our case demonstrates how easily politicised, government-subordinated media can destroy lives,” she added. She stresses that the battle to win the case took a long time (5.5 years) and was costly.
In an interview with Presserwis, Kramek emphasises that Polskie Radio was one of the leading “propaganda centres of the rightly defunct government”. “It spread fake news in an extremely aggressive manner and, since 2017, has consistently accused us of the worst motives and crimes,” says Kramek.
After a series of attacks between 2017 and 2019, the Foundation brought a total of 20 lawsuits against PiS politicians, their propagandists and the state-controlled media. It has already won 10 of these lawsuits, including against Maciej Wąsik, Joachim Brudziński, Dominik Tarczyński, Patryk Jaki, and Tomasz Sakiewicz (twice) – most of them not yet final. Currently pending are, among others, lawsuits against the Karnowski brothers’ company Fratria, Marcin Wikło and Marek Pyza from the weekly magazine Sieci, columnists Wojciech Biedroń and Witold Gadowski.
Only at the end of 2024, after ODF won five lawsuits, was Kozlovska’s ban on entering Poland lifted. The Internal Security Agency, which imposed it at the request of PiS politicians, finally admitted that the ODF President had never been a threat to the country. The prosecutor’s office, on the other hand, closed the investigation against Bartosz Kramka as “unfounded”.
Source: press.pl
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In other media:
- Polish Press Agency: Polskie Radio to apologise to Open Dialogue Foundation (February 21, 2025)
