WARSAW, POLAND (AP) – Poland’s state broadcasting authority has received multiple complaints over the way state media covered a huge anti-government protest over the weekend, an official said on Tuesday. State broadcaster TVP played down the size and significance of the protest led by the main opposition leader Donald Tusk. Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in Warsaw, making it possibly the largest demonstration in decades in Poland.
Organisers estimated that 500,000 people took part. The number is impossible to verify but the march stretched for kilometres through the streets of Warsaw along the main route and down side streets. Protests were also held in other Polish cities.
TVP, which has long vilified Tusk in its reports, said there were no more than 150,000 people.
Unlike independent broadcasters, TVP didn’t show the march live. At one point, however, it did offer viewers live coverage of the National Parade of the Circles of Rural Areas’ Housewives. It referred to the peaceful and orderly demonstration as a “march of hate” because of some isolated vulgarities chanted against the government.
Secretary for the independent Society of Journalists Andrzej Krajewski, said that his group considered TVP’s coverage “scandalous”.
National Broadcasting Council spokeswoman Teresa Brykczynska, told the Associated Press in an e-mail that the council had received 12 complaints alleging “a lack of pluralism, of objectivity, violation of media law, lack of live coverage of the march and (complaining) over the content of news tickers”. The council, also controlled by the Law and Justice party, would analyse the complaints and will write to TVP for an explanation Brykczynska said.
