Dorota Bawolek, a Polish journalist working in Brussels for Polish private TV channel Polsat TV, was targeted by hundreds of hateful messages on social media after the Polish public TV station TVP reproached her of having asked the European Commission an “upsetting” question on Thursday 13 July 2017. That Thursday, during the daily press conference of the European Commission in Brussels, Dorota Bawolek asked for explanations on the state of democracy in Poland. On that same day, the Polish Parliament had adopted a draft law that would weaken the independence and impartiality of the judiciary and of the Supreme Court…

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the European Magazine Media Association (EMMA), the European Newspaper Publishers’ Association (ENPA), the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF), Freedom house, Global Editors Network (GEN), Index on Censorship, International Press Institute (IPI) and South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO) have written to Polish defence minister Antoni Macierewicz urging him to withdraw his criminal complaint against Tomasz Piatek, the author of a new book about the minister’s alleged network of questionable Russian contacts. An investigative reporter for the independent newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, Piatek is facing a possible two to…

On July 14, the prosecutors General’s office and the national police searched the offices of Ukraine’s Vesti media group in Kiev which holds Radio Vesti, the daily newspaper Vesti, and the news website Vesti-ukr.com. The raid was conducted as part of an embezzlement case against ex-Tax and Revenue Minister Oleksandr Klymenko. The whole quarter was blocked off, units of special troops and armored vehicles surrounded the building. Police officers completely obstructed the work of the editorial board. The chair of the Board of Directors of the Media Holding Vesti Ukraine, Olga Semchenko, explained on a Facebook post that the radio…