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WARSAW (Reuters) – The US private television channel, TVN, said it was facing intimidation after members of Poland's internal security agency entered the country. in the house of a TVN cameraman and summoned him to a hearing for Nazi propaganda charges.
FILE PHOTO: Satellite antennas are photographed at the TVN headquarters in Warsaw on March 16, 2015. REUTERS / Kacper Pempel / File Photo
The camera operator, Piotr Wacowski, secretly discovered himself filming a neo-Nazi group for a report broadcast in January by the network, which is controlled by the American entertainment company Discovery Inc.
The Polish National Prosecutor's Office said on Sunday that it was premature to accuse Wacowski and that he had referred the case to a regional prosecutor's office for further examination, reported the Polish news agency PAP.
A spokesman for the Polish Internal Security Agency declined to comment. A government spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Earlier this week, US ambassador to Poland Georgette Mosbacher told Polish lawmakers that the US Congress could withdraw support for Poland if the free press faced attacks, the Polish Polska Times website reported.
The US Embassy in Poland did not immediately respond to requests for comment regarding TVN's cameraman.
TVN24 is the most watched independent channel in Poland and the network has already been in trouble with the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS), accused by Brussels of trying to muzzle free media.
"We treat this as an attempt to intimidate journalists," TVN said Saturday in a statement. "The authors of the report acted in accordance with the standards of investigative journalism."
The images of TVN showed members of a far right group dressed in the Nazi uniform, burning a wooden swastika, making Nazi greetings and sharing a cake with the symbol of the Nazis. a swastika made of chocolate biscuits.
The Polish broadcasting regulator KRRiT fined TVN last year for covering demonstrations in the Polish parliament, claiming that it "promotes illegal activity and encourages behavior that threatens security".
The US government said the regulator's actions had undermined press freedom and KRRiT had overturned the January decision.
Report by Joanna Plucinska and Pawel Sobczak; edited by David Clarke
