Radio Taiwan International (Rti) Chairperson Cheryl Lai (賴秀如) is leading a delegation to Poland and Ukraine. The group arrived in Warsaw last Thursday, and will take part in the annual Lviv Media Forum (LMF) this Thursday through Saturday in Lviv, Ukraine, making Rti the first Taiwanese media organization to become a forum partner.

Rti is co-hosting a Taiwan-focused session at the forum, matching this year’s “Reality Under Attack: Flight, Freeze, or Fight?” LMF theme. Lai says Taiwan and Ukraine both stand on the front lines of democracy, and that cooperation and dialogue between public media has become an important part of mutual support among democratic societies.

The delegation visited Polskie Radio, Poland’s national public-service radio broadcasting organization, last Friday. Chairman of the Board Paweł Majcher received the group, exchanging views on security in Eastern Europe, wartime news operations, and cross-border information warfare.

Majcher shared that Polish society faced a large amount of disinformation and propaganda manipulation from Russia following the outbreak of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He said that public media needed to fulfill their functions of social stability and public communication in addition to maintaining journalistic professionalism.

Rti Chairperson Lai stated that Poland and Taiwan share a high degree of similarity on issues of information warfare and democratic defense as Poland is the country most severely affected by disinformation attacks within Europe and Taiwan is the country most severely affected globally. She said the two should cooperate more closely.

This Monday, the delegation visited the University of Warsaw, where they held discussions with Political Science and International Relations Professor and Dean Łukasz Zamęcki and several scholars including topics regarding Poland and Taiwan’s democratization processes and challenges.

The delegation also visited Poland’s largest and oldest public service broadcaster Telewizja Polska (TVP), where Sława, the Ukrainian-language editor-in-chief, noted that Eastern European societies have begun paying more attention to China’s information influence and Indo-Pacific security issues, adding that Eastern European media has increasingly focused on the situation across the Taiwan Strait.

When visiting the Polish nationwide daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, 80-year-old founder and prominent dissident Adam Michnik shared that he also pays particular attention to Taiwan’s situation. He said that the true value of the media lies not only in conveying information, but also in maintaining people’s trust in truth and reason amidst social chaos and political confrontation. He said he believes this is the core that democratic societies need to safeguard most in the era of information warfare.