The Smolensk Subcommittee Responded to TVN and Instructed Media to Talk About “Russian Responsibility for Disaster”

January 4, 2023 | Presserwis

“The viewers have the right to know what the government does not want to disclose. This is what the freedom of speech is about,” said Anita Werner, the anchor of Monday’s Fakty. “In TVN 24’s report called Siła kłamstwa we questioned the reliability of the work of the so-called Antoni Macierewicz’s subcommittee. We disclosed the silenced facts and the accounts of the persons who participated in the committee’s work. At the request of Antoni Macierewicz, the National Broadcasting Council, instead of upholding freedom of expression, wants to impose a fine on us for this. Such a fine is aimed solely at limiting journalistic criticism. This is unacceptable in light of the constitutional tasks of the press, which is obliged to control public institutions. TVN will publish facts regardless of the people they are inconvenient to. The viewers have the right to know what the government does not want to disclose. This is what the freedom of speech is about,” reads the TVN statement.

On Tuesday, the Smolensk Subcommittee responded to TVN’s statement. “The TVN’s statement issued yesterday (2 January 2023) defended Świerczek’s report called Siła kłamstwa, which contained a number of untrue arguments, as demonstrated by the Subcommittee in its statement of 23 September 2022,” reads the statement signed by the Secretary of the Subcommittee, Marta Palonek.

“We would like to remind you that it is not true that the results of the NIAR simulation were not published in the Subcommittee Report (see Appendix 23 to the Report),” argues the Subcommittee. “It is also not true that the Report did not include the results of the experiments to prove the explosion in the left wing, and it is not true that the Report does not show the so-called low trajectory according to MAK/Miller as reconstructed by the NIAR. Here, we refer to only a few examples of untrue information presented in the TVN report” (original spelling), reads the statement. “The full list is available via this link,” it was stated.

“It should be mentioned that on 10 November 2022, the Regional Court in Warsaw issued an arrest warrant for 3 Russian officials suspected of deliberate action to cause the Tu 154 M disaster. On 5 December 2022, the National Prosecutor’s Office announced that the experts investigating the damage suffered by the bodies of victims in several cases did not rule out the hypothesis of a violent release of energy in the form of an explosion,” it was stated.

“Both the Subcommittee Report and the position of the Regional Court and the Prosecutor’s Office on the nature of the damage suffered by the bodies demonstrate that an act of unlawful interference with Tu 154 M No 101 aircraft took place on 10 April 2010,” mentioned the statement.

After that, the authors of the report added a sentence that shows a complete misunderstanding of the role of the media: “It is the duty of the media to inform the public about the true causes of the disaster and Russia’s responsibility for the disaster.”

The 77-minute report called Siła kłamstwa (Power of a lie) by Piotr Świerczek premiered in September 2022 during a special edition of the Czarno na białym magazine on TVN 24. The report depicts irregularities in the work of the committee investigating the Smolensk disaster, led by Antoni Macierewicz. The National Broadcasting Council decided that an ex officio investigation had to be initiated regarding the imposition of a fine on TVN SA to determine if “the program entitled Czarno na białym: Siła kłamstwa aired on TVN24 and TVN contains content that violates Article 18(1) and 18(3) of the Broadcasting Act of 29 December 1992, by promoting untrue information and actions contrary to the Polish raison d’état that endanger public security.”

The report was awarded Grand Press 2022 in the category of investigative journalism.