The newsroom of wPolsce24 said Thursday that it received “official police letters demanding the release of video recordings from the October demonstration in front of the Constitutional Tribunal,” the wPolsce24.tv website reported. According to the letter, the request concerns preliminary proceedings being conducted by the Warsaw District Prosecutor’s Office.
According to wPolsce24.tv, after an analysis by its legal department, the channel refused to hand the materials over to law enforcement. The channel’s editor-in-chief, Jacek Karnowski, called the authorities’ action a “worrying signal” and announced a “firm defense of freedom of speech and media pluralism.”
Earlier on Thursday, plainclothes police officers entered the headquarters of TV Republika and left an official letter at the reception desk demanding video recordings of a public assembly held in mid-October in front of the Constitutional Tribunal’s headquarters. The wPolsce24 newsroom said it received a similar request.
In a letter dated Oct. 15 and made public by the newsroom on Thursday, the Warsaw District Prosecutor’s Office, “in connection with the events of 14.10.2026,” asked the channel to hand over recordings “of the course of the demonstration from the moment the police decided to move the protesters away to allow vehicles to enter the grounds of the Constitutional Tribunal (…) until 1 p.m.”
Karnowski said on the air at wPolsce24 that the channel’s lawyers concluded that no “sufficient and precise legal basis” had been cited that would oblige the newsroom to give law enforcement unaired journalistic material. As a result, the channel decided not to hand over the recordings at this stage.
Karnowski added that although law enforcement requests for materials do occur during investigations, sending plainclothes police officers directly to a newsroom is a “particularly worrying procedure, unprecedented in previous press practice.” He spoke of a “lack of trust in the intentions of the authorities and concern for the safety of the demonstration’s participants.”
“We will definitely not hand over any recording from in front of the Constitutional Tribunal to this government. I can say that because we have low trust, and it could be used, for example, to profile or identify protest participants. So we will definitely not do that, and I can declare that on our behalf,” wPolsce24’s editor-in-chief said on the air.
Meanwhile, on Thursday afternoon, Julia Szozda, a spokeswoman for the District Prosecutor’s Office in Szczecin, told PAP that in an investigation launched on a complaint from Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński, head of the Ministry of Interior and Administration (MSWiA), concerning the Oct. 16 incidents in front of the Constitutional Tribunal — to the detriment of police officers and the prime minister — a prosecutor demanded that TV Republika’s editor-in-chief hand over materials. They include recordings of the demonstration, logs from the broadcast and on-screen banner creation systems, and the channel’s organizational documentation, including copies of its licenses and copies of employee records in the form of work schedules, divisions of duties and attendance lists.
Prosecutor Szozda stressed that the demand did not concern electronic devices or documents covered by journalistic privilege. (PAP)
