Suing and wise communication against slander on Poland
Immediate legal steps and wise communication are the best response to slanderous remarks about Poland in foreign media, concluded participants in a Thursday conference on the subject in Poznan, west Poland.
Attending the meeting headed "Media and manipulation. Poland's image in Western media" were Polish and foreign experts including a historian and an official from the Polish Embassy in Berlin.
German-resident Polish historian Bogdan Musial said Polish were not fully aware how firmly embedded anti-Polish stereotypes were in Germany. Musial observed that the negative picture of Poland in Germany dated back to the 19th century and was deeply rooted in German awareness.
"In my belief this is part of the German culture code, which formed already in the 19th century. This anti-Polish prejudice is deeply rooted in German society. The reality in Germany is that anti-Semitism is politically incorrect, anti-Islamism is politically incorrect, but anti-Polish stereotypes are politically correct", Musial said.
In this context he mentioned the use by western media of the term "Polish concentration camps" to describe Nazi-German death camps set up in Poland during World War Two.
"Not only in Germany, but in other countries too there are no inhibitions to call the death camps Polish. It is politically incorrect to describe them as German. The (western - PAP) media thus convey a distorted view of events in Poland, which they show through the prism of their own anti-Polish sentiments", Musial said, adding that western media "had their own good Poles who say what they want to hear".
Jadwiga Janukowicz from the Polish Embassy in Berlin informed that in 2016 the embassy sent a record 40-plus letters to German media in protest against manipulative and false reports on Poland. Explaining why the embassy had to intervene so frequently, Janukowicz reminded that 2016 was marked by "a critical, sometimes outright hostile tone in narratives about Poland in German mass media".
Janukowicz added that one of the reasons for the rise in false accounts about Poland in Germany was that German media mainly drew their information from politicians, intellectuals and journalists connected to Poland's political opposition.
In a videotaping played at the conference economist Matthew Tyrmand stressed that Poland-related issues needed and open debate and appealed against criminalising the issue.
Maciej Swirski from the Good Name Redoubt Foundation - The Polish League Against Defamation observed that counteracting anti-Polish propaganda was important for security reasons. Swirski stressed, that if Polish people were to be seen as "descendants of the Auschwitz henchmen", they would not have the sympathy of other NATO members and would not be aided when in need.
"If Polish people are viewed as descendants of the Auschwitz henchmen, then they will not be liked by the peoples of the other NATO countries. No help will be forwarded to Poland because politicians who have the deciding say regarding such aid act to win elections", Swirski warned.
The conference participants agreed that immediate legal steps and wise communication were the best response to anti-Polish content in western media.(PAP)
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