Tadeusz Kowalski, a member of the National Broadcasting Council, proposed that the Council discontinue the proceedings in the resolution of Piotr Świerczek’s report “The power of lies”, broadcast on TVN24. However, as he informed, the National Broadcasting Council did not want to consider the position proposed by him, and the chairman, Maciej Świrski, decided that the conducted proceedings were his exclusive right.
Tadeusz Kowalski, a member of the National Broadcasting Council, announced that during Wednesday’s meeting he proposed to the members of the Council to “adopt a position on adopting a resolution on discontinuing the proceedings regarding the ‘Force of Lie’ broadcast”. Its content reads:
The National Broadcasting Council, after reviewing the complaint of Mr. Antoni Macierewicz, chairman of the Subcommittee for the Reinvestigation of an Aircraft Accident, of October 5, 2022, against the broadcast “Siła lie” broadcast on September 12, 2022 on TVN24 and on September 18, 2022 in the TVN program and with the collected documents, decides to discontinue the proceedings.
In the justification, Kowalski wrote that “the vast majority of the comments contained in the complaint of the chairman of the Subcommittee for the re-investigation of the Air Accident refer to the request to correct information that is inaccurate or, in the complainant’s opinion, untrue”, and “some of the reservations are a polemic with the opinions expressed by persons appearing in the of the contested broadcast.
“After reviewing the presented documentation, the KRRiT states that it is not the competent authority to resolve issues related to the right to rectification, regulated by the Press Law. Respecting art. 1 and art. 6 and art. that the above-mentioned law does not assign any competences to the National Broadcasting Council in this regard,” he wrote.
He added that Antoni Macierewicz’s “polemic” is not and cannot be the subject of a resolution of the National Broadcasting Council or a decision of its chairman, because in accordance with Article 213 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, National Broadcasting Council was established to safeguard the freedom of speech, the right to information and the public interest in radio and television broadcasting, and the broadcast being the subject of the complaint meets all the criteria listed in this article of the Constitution.
As Kowalski informed, the National Broadcasting Council did not want to consider the position proposed by him, and the chairman of the Council decided that the conducted proceedings were his exclusive competence.
Report “The Power of Lies”
In December, we received a letter from the National Broadcasting Council informing that in connection with the broadcast of the report “The power of lies” by Piotr Świerczek, the chairman of the National Broadcasting Council initiated ex officio proceedings to punish us. He accuses us of “promoting activities that are against the law, the Polish raison d’état and activities that threaten security” and “unreliability and non-objectivity”.
However, the National Broadcasting Council did not provide any concrete evidence to support its allegations.
On Wednesday, we published on tvn24.pl a detailed response to Antoni Macierewicz’s allegationsincluding a NIAR document that the subcommittee has not released to date.
The documents have been published in their entirety, also in the original (in English) and in Polish (sworn translation). The TVN station sent them to the National Broadcasting Council on January 19, 2023.
The published documents detail the first letter in which on January 5 TVN requests the discontinuation of the proceedings “as groundless – pursuant to Art. 105 §1 of the Code of Administrative Procedure – because the Broadcast fully complies with the law”.
Statement of “Fakty” TVN and TVN24 from January 2
On TVN24, in the material “The power of lies”, we questioned the reliability of the work of the so-called Macierewicz subcommittee. We have disclosed the hidden facts from the American NIAR report and the accounts of people who participated in the work of the Smolensk subcommittee. At the request of Antoni Macierewicz, the National Broadcasting Council, instead of guarding the freedom of speech, wants to punish us for it. The purpose of such a penalty is only to try to limit journalistic criticism related to the activities of the subcommittee. This is unacceptable in the light of the constitutional tasks of the press, which is obliged to control public institutions. On TVN we will publish facts regardless of who they are inconvenient for. Our viewers have the right to know what the authorities do not want to disclose. That’s what freedom of speech is about. “The power of lies” is a material awarded with many awards, its author is the winner of, among others, Grand Press. This reportage is available on tvn24.pl.
Report “The Power of Lies”, premiered on September 12, 2022 on TVN24, is the result of many months of work by TVN24 journalist Piotr Świerczek. The author has accessed recordings, photos and international expert opinions concerning catastrophe in Smolensk in 2010, which – although they were commissioned by the so-called Antoni Macierewicz’s Smolensk Subcommittee – were never included in its reports, including the last one, which was supposed to be the final report. These materials either explicitly exclude an attack or point to a catastrophe as the cause of the tragedy. Świerczek also talked to people who worked for the subcommittee, but do not agree with its conclusions that there was an attack in Smolensk. What’s more, the journalist’s interlocutors directly say that their research has been manipulated or selectively used for theses assumed in advance by the subcommittee.
As a sign of solidarity with our editorial office, several dozen of the largest nationwide and local media decided to publish “The power of lies” on their websites.
Main photo source: PAP/Leszek Szymanski