The Truth About Press Freedom in the Czech Republic
LABELLED “FREE” BY REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS IN 2017, JUST HOW FREE IS CZECH TV?
Over the past few years countries across Europe have been debating the necessity of broadcasting services paid for by the public. Citizens across Europe have began questioning the ever-rising costs and whether they are trustworthy. In the Czech Republic however there seems to be differing views to their respective services so we ask: how free is the Czech TV?
Created in 1991 by an Act of Czech Television, Czech TV became a station free of the Soviet era restrictions which came with the Communist Party’s censorship. The network of publicly-owned channels provide a big variety while promising “objective, verified and diverse information” that is “balanced”. Public opinion differs on this, however citizens interviewed on the streets of Prague labelled it “trustworthy”, while one citizen, originally from Slovakia, believed it to provide less biased information. The reasons for less backlash from the public however could come fromas well as the way that the funds for their national television service are collected.
This however doesn’t mean the station hasn’t been involved in scandals in it’s small history. Although rated 34th out of 180 countries on how free it is (World Press Freedom Index), it was also stated ownership by politicians is the network’s main obstacle of freedom. As recent as last year, leaked audio revealed the now-prime minister Andrej Babiš suggesting how a journalist should attack his political rivals. It is also said that the state pushes a pro-Russian campaign against the west providing false information; with a recent example being during the Novichok investigation where misinformation about the attack was spread across the media. This disinformation campaign coincides with attempts on Freedom of Information violations, with one such occasion resulting in military police storming the Czech TV offices for declassified documents, something which the IPI condemned.
Czech TV has always been rife with criticism and that it is censored with the earliest being in 2001 when there was a period of sit-ins by staff amidst calls of censorship of the news where it was cut off. However today the calls come from international bodies and Western groups, arguing that the media is closely aligning with Russian media and foreign policy, something which is denied. As a result of this the results in recent polls by the IRI suggest large minorities have begun to care less and less about Russian influence and ‘alternative news’ with 33% of Czech citizens both not caring about believing that Russia funds alternative media.
Even with the above being true, an IRI study found that 68% of Czech citizens used national news sources to seek out news, with 39% of people trusting CT1 and 27% trusting CT24. This suggests that the public are not very engaged in media ownership as people across Western Europe, however as one tutor at Charles University suggested it could have been down to the fact that ”we [they] hardly pay anything, and [the] price doesn’t change much” compared to places such as the UK which has a much higher population with a bigger variety of public opinion as well as rising TV licence prices over the years.
