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Prof. Maciej Górecki is blaming coverage by some media outlets of a pedophile scandal for the suicide of an MP’s son who was reportedly a victim.
A Polish university professor has called for criminal charges to be brought against several public media journalists in Poland after the suicide of a teenager. The teen’s death may be linked to a pedophile scandal involving a boy who was presumably a victim of an activist from the liberal Civic Platform (PO) opposition party.
Prof. Maciej Górecki of Warsaw University took to social media to demand jail time for a number of journalists who covered the story.
The posts relate to the storm that has unfolded in Polish media and politics since opposition MP Magdalena Filiks announced the death of her son, Mikołaj, who committed suicide. Media reports linked the death with the pedophile scandal that shook Polish politics.
Late last year, Radio Szczecin covered the pedophile case in such a way that people were able to identify Mikołaj as a victim in the case. The liberal opposition alleged that the coverage of the story by public media led to the boy — whose identity had been revealed — committing suicide.
They have been joined by many journalists who accuse the public media of attempting to besmirch the name of the opposition party by alleging it has a serious problem with pedophilia in its ranks.
The journalists from TVP and Polish Radio however argue that revealing the scandal was in the public interest and that the identity of the MP and her son was covered in exactly the same way by several commercial media outlets.