On Wednesday, a Szczecin court required MP Izabela Leszczyna of the Civic Platform to air a correction on TVN24 about claims that Dariusz Matecki, a candidate on the PiS list, received a large sum of money for a 2023 referendum campaign. The court rejected Matecki’s bid to ban the spread of false information and to compel corrections on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook. Judge Renata Tarnowska noted that Leszczyna had already posted a correction on those platforms on Tuesday evening in response to the contested statements.
Matecki wins with Leszczyna in the courtroom
The court decision states that the rectification must be broadcast on TVN24 within 48 hours. The text reads: The information provided by Izabela Leszczyna on September 3, 2023 during the Coffee on the Bench program on TVN24 is false. It wrongly claims that Mr. Dariusz Matecki has received a substantial amount of money to fund his referendum campaign while he was running for parliament of the Republic of Poland.
The statement must be read aloud and, simultaneously, a full-screen text display must accompany it.
In a separate reminder, Matecki noted that in 2018 he won a local election lawsuit, which required Civic Platform to correct the record. He asserted that the platform had since misrepresented him, and he urged the party to stop falsehoods and to withdraw from the campaign if it could not engage honestly.
– Matecki commented on X after the ruling.
Clarifications on the correction
Judge Tarnowska explained that the election-related request was filed before 3 PM on Tuesday. Izabela Leszczyna received the papers around 4 PM, and by 23:00 she had released a statement on X and Facebook admitting that the contested information was inaccurate.
The court viewed this acknowledgment as evidence that the participant did not intend to disseminate the false claim further, which influenced the decision to dismiss the request to bar dissemination of the statements.
The request to order an additional publication by October 13 was not considered necessary because online content persists and can reach the same audience that saw the original broadcast.
Matecki pressed for a broadcast of the correction on TVN24 and TVN before the main edition of Fakty. The judge concluded that since the false information originated from a TVN24 program, issuing the correction on the same channel was appropriate to reach the same audience.
The request for a PLN 50,000 fine against Izabela Leszczyna was denied. The court clarified that simply sharing false information is insufficient; a violation of personal rights must be proven, which Matecki did not demonstrate in court.
During the hearing, Matecki’s lawyer, Marcin Bury, accepted the ruling in full, despite Leszczyna posting the correction on social media and including the MP’s commentary.
Leszczyna added the line: I acknowledge that my statement in the Coffee on the Couch program was inaccurate.
There was also a note about the potential financial implications of free airtime for media coverage that could benefit Matecki, highlighting that even short TV commercials carry substantial costs.
Izabela Leszczyna’s representative, Elzbieta Kosinska-Kozak, highlighted that election law does not prohibit adding commentary to a rectification, though press law governs such amendments; the latter was not cited in the filing.
The district court’s decision left room for appeal within a 24-hour window.
In the wider context, discussions emerged about how media coverage and campaign funding interact during electoral periods and how corrections affect public perception in the run-up to elections.