WARSAW.- Polish state television suspended a journalist this weekend journalist that, during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Gamesreacted to a rendition of Imagine by John Lennon saying that it was a: “vision of communism.”
Broadcaster TVP issued a statement on Saturday saying that sports journalist and commentator Przemyslaw Babiarz would no longer be able to comment on air during this summer’s Games.
Lennon’s song asks us to imagine that there is no heaven or hell, no countries, no possessions.
“This is a vision of communism, unfortunately,” Babiarz said during the opening ceremony in Paris on Friday night, comments that immediately sparked controversy for onlookers in Poland.
TVP said in a statement announcing the suspension: “Mutual understanding, tolerance, reconciliation – these are not only the basic ideas of the Olympic Games, but also the basis of the standards that guide the new Polish television. There is no consent to violate them.”
The legislation
State media have been an ideological battleground in Poland for years. They were used as mouthpieces by the right-wing populists who ruled Poland from 2015 to 2023. Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a centrist politician whose broad coalition took power in December, moved quickly to remove their control of the airwaves.
Conservatives and their allies, still reeling from the loss of control of state media, denounced the suspension, including conservative chairman Andrzej Duda and former prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki.
“The truth will defend itself! Your actions will be remembered and censorship will fail,” Morawiecki wrote in X.
Some commentators on the political left said they felt the punishment was too harsh.
Poland was under Soviet-imposed communist rule from the end of World War II until 1989, a time that still evokes great emotions.
Many of the same Polish conservatives also condemned the mixing of LGBTQ+ themes with allusions to the Last Supper during Friday’s grand ceremony.
Source: AP
