Anita Gargas

Anita Gargas Wojciechowska (born 11 January 1964) is a Polish journalist specialising in investigative journalism and a mathematician by education. She is a journalist of the weekly Gazeta Polska and the daily Gazeta Polska Codziennie, where she is the head of the investigative section. From 1 August 2006 to 19 February 2010, she was a deputy director of the news desk and the vice-director for journalism at TVP1, and the author of the programme Misja specjalna (Special Mission).

Life Gargas was born and raised in Katowice. She graduated in mathematics from the University of Silesia in Katowice. During her studies, she was a member of the Independent Students' Association and Fighting Solidarity. During that time she took up investigative journalism, writing reports and investigative texts about members of the party nomenklatura of the Polish United Workers' Party. In 1991, together with Maciej Wojciechowski, she published a book entitled Partie polityczne w Polsce (Political Parties in Poland). In the same year, she left Tygodnik Solidarność and moved to the new daily Nowy Świat, created by Piotr Wierzbicki. Due to the political conflict in May 1992, under Jan Olszewski's government, both were dismissed from their posts.

Publishing Macierewicz's List In 1993, Wierzbicki founded the monthly (transformed into a weekly) Gazeta Polska, which Gargas joined. In June 1993, Gargas published the then secret . At the same time, she became the editor of a programme called (Special mission), initiated explicitly by the Ozon stations directors, due to the lack of investigative journalism programmes at the station. The order to prepare the new programme was given to Andrzej Godlewski, who invited Anita Gargas to run the programme. The Council of Media Ethics criticised Gargas for passing over the truth and mixing information with commentary. In March 2009, a group of people wrote an open letter in her defence, considering her dismissal as a restriction of freedom of speech. Gargas was the originator of the TV programme "The Big History Test". After her dismissal, she accused public television of intellectual copyright theft in connection with the continuation of the programme by TVP.

In 2007, Gargas began a trial with film producer Maciej Strzembosz, who suggested on an internet blog that she was working in a classified position in the WSI. Gargas won the trial because the producer failed to provide evidence for his accusations.

On 3 February 2010, the Misja specjalna programme returned to TVP1. In the same month, Gargas was dismissed by the board of TVP, from the position of deputy director of TVP1, without an officially stated reason.

Documentary maker Later on in her career in 2011, Gargas made documentaries about the tragedy of 10 April 2010, the Smolensk air disaster. She was the author of the first investigative documentary film devoted to the Smolensk catastrophe, entitled , devoted to the explanation of the Smolensk crash, which was published as a supplement to Gazeta Polska on 6 April 2011. In mid-January 2013, her next investigative film on the event, entitled Anatomia upadku (Anatomy of a fall), was premiered, and in late March and early April 2014, a continuation of this production entitled Anatomia upadku 2 (Anatomy of a fall 2) was produced. On 13 June 2016, a film entitled W imię honoru (In the Name of Honour) premiered, in which Generals Andrzej Błasik, Andrzej Karweta and Bronisław Kwiatkowski were portrayed in the statements of their spouses.

In 2012, Anita Gargas ended a lawsuit filed by Ryszard Grobelny, Mayor of Poznań, accusing her in a private indictment of defaming the public in one of the episodes of the Special Mission. In January 2012, the court discontinued the case, finding that the journalist had prepared the material in a reliable manner, adhering to the principles of objective journalism, and that there were no prerequisites for a criminal offence.

In January 2013, she sat on the supervisory board of , in the role of manager of the TV channel . From May 2013 to August 2016 she hosted the investigative programme Zadanie specjalne (Special Task) on the station. On 1 July 2013, she became a member of the supervisory board of Telewizja Republika S.A., managing the Telewizja Republika station. From September 2014 to August 2016, she served as deputy editor-in-chief of Telewizja Republika to .

From September 2016, she has hosted Anita Gargas' Investigative Magazine on TVP1.