Jan Wróbel - interview at press.pl

Are we serious?

I'm always serious.

In all interview, you run for jokes. You erstwhile explained: “No 1 who has a good pen will take the stupid face of the laughing-chich man. And I took it." And that is what I have heard as a charge against your “morning” at TOK FM, where you were late released.

I did not perceive to my mornings. As for jokes: they are the cultural code of Warsaw's intelligence. And more broadly, all intelligent people.

Before individual rejects my classy, due to the fact that I supposedly do not talk to people outside of intelligence – I will deny it. I do, but that intelligent code I grew up in.

Today no 1 refers to intelligence as a social class.

The intelligence code is based on the fact that you live very seriously, but you stick to fashion, and it's comic fashion. due to the fact that behind it lies the distance of a man who thinks of reality. The distance does not mean cold or neutral.

But not everyone got your jokes. 1 of the co-hosts of the “Mornings” at TOK FM told me that courting with serious topics “brings the gravity of public affairs.” Are you laughing?

Yes, due to the fact that a major part of the illness of the last 20 years is the poisoning of us with a consequence that equates Donald Tusk's regulation or Jarosław Kaczyński's regulation with that of Beeria or Goebbels. And in the light version – Lukashenko. These are crude lies that are repeated as fact by men of another virtue and thinking.

I'm gonna have a long occupation piercing balloons. due to the fact that in Poland we have political dilemmas, crucial matters about which people have the right to argue and fight. But there is no war in Poland for everything. So far – no 1 has the right to think that if individual with a visa or a parabellum in his hand had yet got that part of shit, then we would all benefit from it.

What time are you thinking?

Whatever. There are no people in Poland to be killed, sent to emigration or imprisoned in the camp. That's morbid thinking.

Today it is adequate not to think, like me, that we are under business in Poland, so that any journalists and listeners feel that I do not realize the fear of the governments of the NSDAPiS.

I myself like to identify with the Stańczyk Formation, or people who were conservatives, commonly hated, and utilized a very vicious gag against their political opponents.

No wonder they think you're at least symmetrical. You're the 1 who's backing up.

Except they're wrong, not me.

The same individual leading the “mornings” told me that these Lord's laughing-chichs could lead to relativism. I think that's the worst the Conservative can hear.

I'm not a relativist. The fact will set us free. What is easier to say is that this is why we are never liberated to the end. due to the fact that the fact is truly unattainable, but the march towards it is the sacred work of a conservative.

Except the dissensionary parties think they have the monopoly on the truth.

You were, until recently, the on-call right-wing Tok FM. Before the Lord were Rafał Ziemkiewicz and Igor Janke. Did you realize Eve Wanat, who fired Ziemkiewicz for speaking to Adam Michnik?

We conservatives respect our employers and if we take money from someone, we don't bark at them.

A lot of people do that.

I had the chance to work in different places and anecdotes, sometimes very malignant, I would collect rather a lot. I can't imagine smiling, standing up for a paycheck, and then taking notes to describe things neatly.

Five years later, Ewa Wanat said goodbye to Igor Janke. He lamented: “She told me that she received many protests from her listeners. So far, I have heard from TOK's boss that listening is very good on Tuesday. She encouraged me to make clear comments and to express my views as clearly as possible. Now it turns out that this is simply a problem.”

And what did I compose erstwhile I got fired from TOK? due to the fact that I can't remember.

You did not compose anything, but survived on the radio almost 3 presidential terms – almost 15 years.

Igor is simply a very good man with large abilities. And why he decided to compose those fewer sentences, in which there is no large deal – it is essential to ask him.

Have you been told about the comments of your listeners during the breakup?

I've never heard of it. Each Michał Probór creates the representation he wants. And if I were head of the TOK FM radio, I'd do it too. So if individual wants to have a different lineup and makes it clear, they thank the player for winning the squad and say goodbye to him.

You could have utilized another examples. I callback how the editors of the "GW" chiefs compared Agora to Daniel Obietek. Did you usage the name Probier on purpose?

Yeah. If you want an anecdotes, I can tell you how Ewa Wanat took me to work.

Please.

We made an appointment, and erstwhile it turned out to be a occupation interview, we made a deal. Finally, I said: “The director, remember, I am easy fired.” Vanat never made usage of it. erstwhile Kamila Ceran came, I said something similar: “Kamilo, remember, I was the school chief myself, I was firing people. I was the boss and deputy head of the paper, so I know you gotta break up sometimes. If you request me, I'm easy fired."

Why did you say that?

In case my, 1 way or another, right-wing abruptly starts to bother someone.

When the lineup needs to be changed, Lewandowski does not play. I made this comparison ironically again due to the fact that I am not Robert Lewandowski of Polish media.

When this interview comes out, it's possible Lewandowski will be captain again.

And possibly I'll be working for TOK again. Kidding...

When did you learn that the show on 6 May, then called “Starts with 2 apartments and ends with betrayal of Poland”, will be your last?

No comments.

You can say that.

I can, but I don't want to. We agreed with Maciej Głogowski that we would keep good talks about the radio's past to ourselves. And I think we both will.

Did he say it was nothing personal?

I don't remember. But I frequently abuse this phrase in school as a "Godfather" maniac, so I would not remember if individual utilized it for me.

I heard on the radio they think Głogowski had to fire individual to prove he wasn't the painted boss.

But it wouldn't gotta fall on me. Secondly, I have no belief that people on the radio thought of Maciek as a paper man.

The listeners have doubts due to the fact that 1 of them wrote, “I hope, Maciej Głogowski, that you did not have your fingers on the release of Janek Wróbl.” Are you laughing?

Yeah.

I quote further: “He was a colorful, independent, interesting bird in this station, not a dull, monotonous, tranquilizing chicken.”

I'm certain I'm not a sleeping chicken, due to the fact that God gave me a advanced voice, which must have sounded terrible on the radio. I always felt sorry for my listeners.

Important note: erstwhile you conduct a radio or tv broadcast, unless it is simply a ceremony program, you gotta do a show. specified performance can, of course, be successful or not, can smuggle valuable content and may not. But the fact that a man avoids entering the function of a bad guy does not make him a thinker or a wise man. I would delegate a kind of deficiency of courage to reporters who do not make emotions for listeners, even the negative ones. due to the fact that it is simply a peculiar courage that man himself exposes himself to deserved ridicule.

What happened to the fact that from all radio stations in Poland in the first 4th of 2025 listening was the most decreased TOK FM?

I don't think I'm the kind of individual who could actually talk up about it. But I hope it's only better now.

That may be what the current Eurozet Group president may think, who stated that after the 2023 election, discouragement of politics affected all news media. We are working on changes," he said. The station logo was changed, its distinctive sound announcements to those that are unrecognizable, and the Sparrow was released. I think that's most of the change.

Maybe that's enough. As you know, I am a legendaryly modest man. If it were to turn out that due to a change in Tuesday's headphone, it will reflect upwards, it will be a good proof of my importance for the past of Polish media.

And seriously, I utilized to have an intuition that I shared with the bosses at the time, that there was besides much politics in TOK FM. I thought it was crucial to invitation people to the morning bands who are not politicians or talk about politics. possibly then the morning band would be saved. I have no idea. Media plan is going to be my next hypothetical success in life, and so far I don't have any merit in this field.

Listeners after your dismissal besides wrote: “I like pluralism, but Wróbel and his guests and their comments were besides much.” In their opinion, you were inactive inviting the same guests, journalists known from erstwhile editorials.

On the radio, where over the years on Friday there were always the same 3 people, it is hard to build a communicative that it is very bad. And I just happen to have a policy of looking for fresh faces. The problem was that I wanted them to be women's faces. And it's always harder with them. The inviteer always hears the question, “What will the broadcast be about?” A man never asks that.

He'll wear a coat and run to the studio.

Radio is simply a alternatively underinvested institution erstwhile it comes to the number of employees, so they are always under pressure. God forbid you give me any flu, covid, or vacation. Then the imagination that you gotta look for a fresh person, who will be hard to call, is already a pure horror.

Was there another guest list on the radio? Black?

In Eve Wanat's time, I asked myself. “Listen to whom do you not invitation to get rabies?” Eve thought for a long time due to the fact that this question was amazing to her. It was many years ago, I must point out. And finally, she mentioned 2 names. Both related to publications personally attacking people very closely associated with TOK. I thought that was a convincing argument. I never invited those 2 people.

And they didn't agree to any. Your guests?

These were very uncommon cases. There utilized to be a time for Tok FM Radio politics to not advance the Confederacy. She wasn't the good 1 at the time who had a chance to beat the PiS, but the bad old Confederation.

Honestly, for 15 years and hundreds of broadcasts, these were incidents.

And who didn't you want to invite?

I don't want to say names due to the fact that it would be a kind of public kick. I had a fewer politicians I tried not to invite. But if they were invited, I would always scowl my mouth. Of course, not to this person, but to the publisher that he disobeyed me. You see, I would like to invitation only a fewer people who answer questions and in a deeper way see reality. There are possibly 10 of them in Poland.

Do we invitation critics or actors? More like critics, then directors, and only at the end of actors.

But politics doesn't work.

Why?

Since Mariusz Walter, Adam Pieczyński and Grzegorz Miecugow created TVN 24, politicians have taken all the seats in the first rows. They're actors, orchestras, and viewers. Even in talked - out Italy, there are no regular political appearances in major news programs. At the most, they decision their mouths and what they say is spoken by journalists and analysts.

A organization message of the day is an ivy that should not be grown. Only that in Poland a tiny part of the commentator's environment gives messages of the day. Of course, rather accidentally, related to the good of the favourite party. It's not truly due to the fact that they're taking money for it or due to the fact that they're at someone's service. They simply believe in their conscience that the organization should be supported.

You erstwhile said: “There are 2 species of commentators. The first – as from “Rejsu” – writes what people know and want to read again. The another is trying to epatize by writing something another than you are utilized to reading. I do not know which is better," added the Lord.

Did I truly say I don't know?

Yes, but now you know for certain that in TOK you had to say what management and listeners heard and wanted to hear again.

Why? Do you think there have been dozens of specified reflections in these 15 years: ‘Does this Sparrow fit here’? I presume in the dark it must have been. I utilized to make fun of this pompous communicative about the affair with the alleged 2 towers in “Gazeta Wyborcza”. She supposedly described Kaczyński's “maphic deal” with muddy people, and was – whatever unwise – Kaczyński's talk, who told his future contractors: “You must go to court and do us a case, then we will be able to pay you.” Forgive me, this communicative about the mafia deal and the end of Kaczyński, due to the fact that supposedly his full cynicism was revealed, was false.

What's the real thing?

The real thing is that many investments that arise, especially in prestigious places, are not increasing due to the fact that a space transparent tender was held, where points were distributed by a device from Mars, but it is fundamentally any kind of contract between people who are well organized. It was a communicative about Poland, not about Kaczyński being a large gangster. I laughed at TOK and it turned out to be mine. The journalistic world, apart from these especially believers, approached the full communicative with a distance.

It's all going down in me. Wojciech Czuchnowski, who revealed Kaczyński tapes, became writer of the Year a fewer years later. And the 2 towers were about something else. Not about Kaczyński's mafia, but about the fact that against the standards and with the money of the state bank PiS, he wanted to safe his backing for the time he lost power. It wasn't about who got the tender, it was about not paying for the work already done.

Yes, but between what you said and the communicative that there's a mob deal with Kaczyński as a trigger, there are no points in common. I saw it and I didn't keep it to myself, but I spoke loudly on the radio that belongs to Agora. What was the radio reaction? I have no idea, I can only guess that none, due to the fact that I worked there for a fewer more good years.

I am most amused by your confession from youth. You went to the media "to fight Adam Michnik and his clique".

I was 20 and a small old at the time. I went to work for “New State”, published by Jarosław Kaczyński, and then to “Life” by Tomasz Woł, due to the fact that the values I believed and believed in, conservative-Catholic-national-tolerant, were devastated by mainstream and having a immense media advantage camp under the leadership of Adam Michnik. Hence this ‘click’.

Your erstwhile boss, Robert Krasowski, wanted to deal with Michnik, too. He did it so perfectly, he most likely spent 2 years writing a book about him.

Krasowski's book showed that part of his legend stems from Michnik's own faith, that for years he was a origin of Polish political and moral life. This explanation has quite a few followers, but it ignores the fact – which Krasowski showed well – that with all his abilities Michnik was helped by the environmental origin and happiness. The thought to make “Gazeta Wyborcza” and then be severely invaded by it was the autonomous decision of Lech Wałęsa. At 1 point in history, Wales had a gold card in his hand and utilized it. As shortly as it turned out – against each other.

How do you feel about Michnik now?

Full of conversion. I'd have her in any situation, due to the fact that if a man doesn't break up in prison, and the case he's been there for is right, he's entitled to quite a few respect for the remainder of his life. It besides makes it easier for me to confirm Michnik so powerfully that he has late switched to conservative and national positions. He understood how many who mature late, that in fact there are also sources of moral and ethical attitudes in Poland than the national-Catholic tradition, but that these sources are not sufficient.

How do you explain that? For it is indeed amazing that who was a socialist in his youth becomes a supporter of John Paul II.

John Paul II placed himself in the Polish tradition as a patron of the Church friendly to the freedomists. And in years crucial to Michnik: 70, 80 and 90. I don't justify all Michnik's decisions, but I have the ability to realize people I disagree with. That makes me humble and great.

You're ironic again.

Seriously, “Gazeta Wyborcza” thought that she had the only chance that happens erstwhile all 500 years, that she could modernise Polish society like Western society. Whether this even existed is another matter. But the pattern was. And then the Church disagreed with Adam Michnik and had to be punished by him. I do not say this ironically – the punishment is that since the Church, with a fewer exceptions, which were promoted in the pages of “Gazeta”, does not realize that Poland needs to be upgraded at the expense of its tradition, tradition goes into a bag and the bag goes into a dumpster.

Now the Church by Michnik is pulled out of this bag.

Because what do we see after years? That the main problem of Poland is not that there is simply a Church, but that we have a weak Church. Weak erstwhile it comes to evaluating your staff.

A church that is afraid of throwing out workers for failing to keep a certain moral standard. This is our biggest problem. The thought of “not the Church” had a short period of validity.





Such idolatrous texts of journalists towards Rafał Trzaskowski helped Karol Nawrock?

I never thought journalists had a crucial impact on the results of the elections.

During the debates, it was clear that the last run could have been without journalists.

I happen to be very audible to the debates where the candidates themselves ask themselves questions. We don't live in the 15th century, we don't have a fistful of educated people and a mob to compose for and to read for. 2 doctors of humanities, who clashed in the second round, were able to ask themselves questions that were correct and in Polish. And so they were. Worse with answers, especially on the side of Karol Nawrocki, who was eager to talk about nothing.

The real threat to conventional media comes alternatively from politicians like Sławomir Mentzen. His conversations with the counter-candidates had ratings comparable to presidential debates. Yet he was 1 of the participants in the debate. The threat is that individual who is not a writer will shut down the wire from contact with the writing of the media, and yet the planet goes on.

When will you yet fear populism that can lead us to something truly bad in Europe?

I do not like socialist thinking, although I am close to the perfect of socialism of the PPS, especially from the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, erstwhile the PPS-iacs realized that not only the strong hand of Piłsudski is evil, but that a strong hand is simply a weak consequence to people's needs.

If all populism in the planet ended with governments like PiS, it wouldn't be bad. due to the fact that what did this part of the Polish nation, which has been convinced since the 1990s that the elite are playing her? due to the fact that it is worth going to elections due to the fact that they are changing politics in the country.

And the fact that we were robbed of dense billions at the time doesn't matter?

I think like you do. You shouldn't bargain from people or the state. In addition, these chosen ones did not change politics solely for good. They lied and spit on God’s spirit of guilty through state media and any private ones. So this communicative of mine is not a fairy tale for children. But from the point of view of the triumph of democracy, we have a 100 percent success.


How many classes do you have at school now?

I think it's sixteen, in 2 befriended schools. It's almost full-time.

My peers say they stopped teaching students due to the fact that they don't read or know anything about the world.

Such a individual would go to a folk school in 1900 and say: “The water hole, nobody reads or knows anything about the world. I'm a space character to them. They do not know where the Vistula is, where Odra is, and what is Argentina.”

Fortunately, there were teachers who said it was hard to teach where Argentina was. possibly that'll come in useful for the students someday. In education, you play a small as your partner allows.

Hasn't this partner changed in fresh years?

Very. I survived a change that could only be explained in terms of biological changes in the brain, and that is impossible. due to the fact that it takes thousands of years.

The impact of social media?

Lifestyle. Young people present have much greater dispersal and tunneling of knowledge.

Why are the main Polish media not talking about genocide in Gaza?

Because there is simply a generation in them who believes that Israel is the good that must be protected from the Polish public. That's why we don't like Gaza very much. We have not yet found a good, widely readable key that would describe the situation differently than that in Gaza Poles are murdered by German occupiers.

W Gases are exterminated.

I believe that if – and this will happen – individual abruptly changes the communicative and the 1 popular present only in left-wing youth environments will become commonplace, then the media will change the communicative too. We will gotta say, "From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free". But it will besides be a disaster, due to the fact that it is not about us saying that Israel should be first and then that it should cease to exist. This is not an attitude worthy of Polish intelligence.

Commenting on Barbara Nowacka's mistake, which mispronounced Polish alternatively of German Nazis, you suggested that during the flood of the word hurtful, hurtful, and lying, the fetish of freedom of speech should be considered. What does that mean?

Forgive me, sir, but I don't think the freedom to say any nonsense is of large value. Now freedom of speech means that everyone can spit on another man without consequences, so I guess we did something incorrect with our freedom.

In times of our youth, in order to compose about individual we don't know anything about, that he's a sellout and a bad son, you must have scribbled a wall spray. Next to the inscriptions “Solidarity Fights” and “Today Kuron, next day You”. fewer people did, but it was possible.

And today, all you gotta do is sit on the keyboard. So we are in a different cognitive situation and we must respond to it differently than to repeat that freedom of speech is the most sacred. It's sacred. But delight explain this to individual who has spoken publically and had to read about himself and his parent and his wife a bunch of anonymous names.

Isn't that a cost? How do you want to respond to hurtful words without being censored?

Poverty and unemployment are besides the consequence of someone's economical mistakes, but we do not wait many years with them, only in a short time we effort to destruct them.

Similarly, we should respond rapidly to human suffering caused by hatred on the Internet. I'm a reset supporter. I'll fool myself more than Mentzen talking about his perfect world, but I think the net needs to be closed and opened on fresh terms. We most likely won't, not due to the fact that this proposal is bad, but people who want to make billions on the net all day won't let us.

Maybe it would be adequate to change the law and educate?

You should do everything at once. The net needs to be closed and reopened, on conditions that will make it impossible to compose anonymously what you like about another man.

Is there any chance for Poland and the world? Are we always gonna get out of those bubbles we're stuck in?

I'm sure. Welcome to my podcast in “Super Express” – “POPiS Sparrow”. I'm making fun of the po and pis fight. Donald Tusk in his parliament speech praised only the elements of the PiS program, which he now implements PO.

PiS failed to defend the border, ineptly allowed immigrants from Asia and Africa, ineptly built a policy of historical memory, ineptly distributed 500+ and ineptly built CPK. Now the same, only better, will do us the PO. In Poland, we have a program of the right, very social and nationalistic colors, and this program is implemented either by Kaczyński or by Tusk.

However, PO took care of in vitro funding, a tablet day after...

Did Donald Tusk say this, praising the success of his government? No, due to the fact that it's not a PiS program, and Tusk knows that if you say something that isn't a PiS program, people won't buy it. Donald Tusk concluded that he would stay in power only if he pursued the PiS program, but without that crazy writing.

The barbarisation of societies, with fast technological development, makes it all gotta end badly. Not only for your students' brains, but for the full world.

In the long word – not necessarily. For me, the iconic example of the event that preceded the net was the introduction of the customized of drinking vodka in Poland.

What does that gotta do with anything?

Everything. In the 15th-XVI century vodka in Poland was only for health. But erstwhile the grain began to cheap, drinking vodka was introduced as a custom. It was a bonus for peasantry for work, a social compulsion to drink was created. The consequence was mass alcoholism in the 18th-XIXth century. We were threatened to disappear, we had all these credential villages and quite a few degenerates in cities. People got sick and died. And then the Catholic Church began to fight alcoholism, and this conflict was more crucial to past than even the 1 with the possessors. Our nation was saved biologically and that is why present we can talk Polish. Now it is no shame to say among young Poles that vodka is poison, and alcohol harms all dose.

Only the young like another drugs to him, so bars and restaurants are slow disappearing.

I don't want to talk anyone into drugs, I just say that alcoholism killed this nation. This communicative is dark, and the net is similar.

In the beginning, a fewer men at the Pentagon exchanged data, were besides done in elite technological institutions, and in the end, a billion people sit on a computer to compose lies about another man. Many people will be destroyed mentally, others will become addicted to the Internet, and others will get frustrated and have a life of misery. But... there is besides a note of optimism for the historian – possibly in 250 years any young man in Warsaw will say “Internet? No, thank you.’

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This conversation between Andrzej Skworz and John Wróbel comes from the magazine “Press” – issue no.7-8/2025. Now we have made it available in full for the most active Readers.




I'm not. "the most active Readers"I'm coming here in an accident.

whole: Press.pl