Hopefully Czech press won’t rest on its laurels

Free access to information is one of democracy’s principles as well as plurality of opinions and freedom of speech. Reporters Without Borders published the annual World Press Freedom Index, this time for 2023. Let’s have a look at the result for the Czech Republic and its context.

So how is Czechia doing?

At first sight it’s doing just fine. The result is actually quite impressive. In the index Czechia was placed 14th out of 180 countries. For example bordering, in many aspects more progressive Germany took 21st place. The position of Czechia also improved compared to last year’s result when it ended on 20th place (you will understand why in a second).

In the Czech Republic, there are public media (not run by state but funded by fees paid by households), as well as independent media (funded by subscriptions) and mostly you can find private media owned by large media groups. Those several media groups produce dozens of different titles from dailies, weeklies to magazines, covering different genres, topics and opinions from all of the political spectrum. So where is the problem?

“In the Czechia, freedom of the press is threatened by the high concentration of privately owned media.” (reporters without borders)

One of those huge media groups is MAFRA owned by Andrej Babiš, former businessman, Czech prime minister in power in 2017–2021, candidate in presidential elections at the beginning of this year and also a billionaire by the way. It is clear that he was using his influence as an indirect owner of several of most read newspapers in country for his personal political marketing. (Yes, therefore the rise in the press freedom index after a few months of having our new government.) He is a man of several scandals, notoriously known for his conflict of interests when he used European grants for his private development project. Thanks to freedom of press in the Czech Republic, there were hundreds of investigative articles uncovering this affair, however he always argued that it’s only someone else’s anti-campaign and repetitively claimed that people shouldn’t trust media. What an irony, that it’s coming from a mouth of the biggest media owner in Czechia, right?

Not only Andrej Babiš publicly questioned the trustworthiness of press. Also our former president Miloš Zeman used to refuse to answer questions coming from media, despite the fact that free access to information (about the health of our head of state for example) is guaranteed by Czech law.

Not all journalists are safe

There are fortunately no abuses on Czech journalists, no one has been detained or even killed in our country for a very long time. There are however being attacked verbally, online insults or threats are quite common. Those verbal attacks increased with the Covid-19 crisis. Especially sexism takes place in Czech public space and some female journalists face comments on their physical appearance more often than on their work or receiving numerous hateful messages. For example on Twitter a questionnaire appeared about which Czech female journalist would readers rather had sex with.

“Online violence against women journalists is one of the most serious contemporary threats to press freedom internationally.”

(The Chilling: A global study of online violence against women journalists)

Here I would also like to compare the freedom of Czech press with freedom of a country very close to us, Slovakia. Sharing major common history, our lands are very similar in all possible aspects from cultures, economics to politics. In press freedom index 2023 Slovakia took 17th place. One would argue that their situation is basically the same. However not that long time ago, in 2018, investigative journalist Jan Kuciak was murdered together with his fiancé in their house. “In his articles, he has dealt with allegations of tax fraud, corruption and clientelism in the use of EU funds and links between oligarchs and political leaders.”, says Aktuality.sk where he used to work. Even after five years local media still remained vulnerable, for instance defamation is punishable by imprisonment until today.

Next time even better, ok?

Lastly, let me express my wish that the level of Czech journalism and press will only increase. There’s always space for improvements but it’s not that bad even now. However, freedom is in general very fragile, so we need to protect it. We need to defend independent media and stand up for all who are doing a great job and are hated for some personal, non-relevant reasons.

Sources:

https://rsf.org/en

https://www.aktuality.sk/tema/vrazda-jana-kuciaka/

https://www.ceskatelevize.cz/porady/11030967025-newsroom-ct24/222411058170036/

https://www.icfj.org/sites/default/files/2022-11/ICFJ_UNESCO_The%20Chilling_2022_1.pdf

https://www.instagram.com/lindabartosova/