You're reading: Euro 2012 blog: Ukraine, Poland suffer from media bias, inept PR

The Euro 2012 football championship is over. Months of warnings proved unwarranted, and the tournament was an overwhelming success. Don't expect coverage to improve too much, experts warn, as many foreign outlets continue to take a slanted view on East European nations, while the latter's politicians don't do themselves any favors.

Ahead of the Euro 2012 a BBC Panorama report titled “Stadiums of Hate” portrayed Poland and Ukraine as hateful, racist-filled countries. In it, England player Sol Campbell urged fans not to visit the countries, as they could “come back in a coffin.”

The statement, widely criticized as sensationalist, is seen by many as the cause behind the poor turnout of foreign fans.

“When he found out I was going to Ukraine, my grandfather called me and said he would pay me not to go,” an England supporter in Kyiv told me.

Those who came, however, were quick to lampoon the warnings. “You’re wrong Campbell,” English fans in Donetsk chanted. “We’ll do what we want.”

They also built a wooden coffin with those same inscriptions in bright red letters on it. After parading through the city, many climbed into the box to have their photos taken.

The arriving fans’ positive experiences and the fact that the only registered racist incidents involved Spanish, Croatian and Russian fans, have led some to question to the premise of the documentary.

While noting there were problems with racism in Poland and Ukraine, a report by Chatnam House, a leading English think tank, highlighted that surveys show only 12 percent of Ukrainians and 13 percent of Poles would not want to have a neighbor of a different race. The corresponding number for France was 26 percent.

Yet the two nations continue to suffer from negative stereotypes in the British press, experts say.

Poland’s troubles with the British press date back to World War II, says Jan Niechwiadowicz, a British citizen of Polish background who defends Poles against misrepresentation in the media.

“What we are seeing today is an extension of what came after World War II,” he said, explaining that the Soviet Union’s switch to the allied side marked a turn in the portrayal of Poles, who had previously been France’s and England’s most important ally in the east.

The Soviet Union’s claims against Poland, however, needed some justification in the British press, Niechwiadowicz said.

“Poles went from heroes to villains; Poles were spat at and vilified; they were accused of anti-Semitism, racism and stealing women,” he deplored. “And the BBC was the worst offender.”

Since then, Poles, one of the biggest migrant groups in the United Kingdom, were also used to present sensitive ethnic topics without fear of being accused of racism. Media institutions keep passing the buck whenever an issue appears, something that would never happen to other minorities.

“We fall into a non-protected area,” Niechwiadowicz argued. “The papers can get away with it.”

In turn, Ukraine has been thrown into one bundle with other East European countries, and in many ways continues to be an unknown land. This dates back to communist days, when even well-educated Western journalists thought of the Soviet Union as being equivalent to Russia, said Askold Krushelnycky, a veteran British reporter in Ukraine currently working for the Lviv city press office.

“They were simply unaware that there was a Georgia, an Armenia or a Ukraine,” he explained.

Poorly informed and careless journalists are not the only problem, though, Krushelnycky said. Rather, incompetence and half-hearted efforts by the central administration, which has tried to solve the problem with flat-out denial, have made the situation worse.

The officials do not speak Ukrainian, and have little respect for Ukrainian national history, Krushelnycky deplored. Some are even downright hostile to Ukraine as a nation, like the Education Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk, he added.

“Its hard to imagine them making an effort to create a positive image of a country they have little respect for,” he said.

Moreover, many of the senior officials are Soviet-era people, Krushelnycky explained, and their knee-jerk reaction to any accusation is denial – just like they tried to deny the Chornobyl nuclear disaster.

This further translates into the perception that power and holding office is only used for personal gain, instead of trying to develop the country.

“While [President Viktor] Yanukovych will spend millions on a Western PR agency to polish his own image and that of his family, they won’t do that for the country,” Krushelnycky said.

Kyiv Post staff writer Jakub Parusinski can be reached at [email protected]