36 Final Project

The State of Czech Television Within the Czech Republic

The Czech Republic’s public broadcaster, Česká televise (Czech Television), is moving forward with making significant cuts to both its staffing and budget. These cuts are in the wake of politically motivated efforts to appoint members to the Council of the Czech TV (ČT Council) to reduce the independence of public media, including attempts to remove Czech Television’s director general. Czech Television is the largest producer of audiovisual content within the Czech Republic, which could be subject to change once faced with these cuts.

Czech Television was originally founded under the Socialist government in Czechoslovakia as a means to disperse government propaganda and news with heavy censorship. After liberalization of Czechoslovakia and separation from Slovakia, Czech Television began to develop into the news media provider that they are today, serving the public by consistently curating and broadcasting programs for a variety of ages in the Czech Republic (Sarkissian, 2020). Though Czech Television has not gone without censorship claims since their socialist origins. From late 2000 to early 2001, Czech Television, facing increasing accusations of censorship, experienced a TV crisis in which journalists and reporters occupied the new station and prevented regular programming (Gosling, 2020). This crisis showcases the ongoing challenges with public broadcasting within the Czech Republic.

The proposed budget cuts are arising at a time of accusations of politicization of the platform, similar to the Czech TV Crisis of 2001. Although, Czech Television is facing compounding financial constraints that have been used to further justify the significant budget cuts. Czech Television is paid for by a television concession fee that is charged to households and businesses that own a television. The fee was last adjusted in 2008, making its real value in comparison to changes in inflation decline over the years (Kudláč, 2022). The Czech Republic is currently experiencing a period of more rapid inflation further accelerating this trend, leaving the real value of the television concession fee to be 36% less than it was in 2008 (Public Media Alliance, 2022).

The decline in real value of the collected fees is likely to have contributed to the announcement of budget and staffing cuts. Czech Television aims to maintain their accessibility to viewers and quality of their content despite these changes. The broadcaster also seeks to increase the amount of commercials that they are legally allowed to share to provide more revenue. Czech Television will also cut back on showing sports programming and even entire channels, notably removing the ČT3 channel (Public Media Alliance, 2022).

These cuts will reduce the quality of public broadcasting available within the Czech Republic. Despite previous challenges with censorship, Czech Television serves as an important public service that is currently known as a reliable news source that promotes Czech culture and entertainment. They currently serve as the largest creator of audiovisual content within the Czech Republic. In addition to this, they are known for supporting domestic filmmakers and serve as an important co-production partner (Kudláč, 2022). Both of these roles will be threatened if continual budget cuts are enacted. When addressing the role of Czech Television in the face of budget constraints Chief Executive Officer of Czech Television, Petr Dvořák, has stated that, “It is essential for us to maintain the status of Czech Television as a provider of relevant public services for all groups of viewers and as an institution that contributes to cultural development and the promotion of education,” (Public Media Alliance, 2022).

Under the previous Andrej Babiš government, the Council of the Czech Television faced sustained politically motivated pressure to realign its views. The nominees for the board in 2020 seemed to hold strong party affiliations with the governmental members nominating them, which raised concerns about the lack of thorough checks and balances in place for the nominating process. In November 2020, the newly appointed council members voted to dismiss all five members of its own Supervisory Board. The dismissals were made without justification and led to protests outside the headquarters of Czech Television as well as the resignation of the ČT Council chairman (Public Media Alliance, 2022). This precedent has continued into 2021, with pressure beginning to pick up as multiple members from the Action of Dissatisfied Citizens party, including Prime Minister Babiš, attempted to stack the Council of the Czech Television with candidates that hold party loyalty or have an established history of criticizing Czech Television. The newly appointed members that have been accused of having party ties additionally sought to unseat the current director general of Czech Television ahead of tightly contested parliamentary elections in October of 2021 (Public Media Alliance, 2022).

With the recent nomination of Petr Fiala to the prime minister’s office in November 2021, concerns of the politicization of the Council of the Czech Television were increasingly alleviated. The World Press Freedom Index in 2022, utilized to comparatively assess global media freedom, ranked the Czech Republic twentieth, rising twenty spots from just the previous year (Reporters Without Borders, 2022). This large shift was justified by the ascension of the Petr Pavel led government, which despite holding views that seek to protect public broadcasting, has not been able to enact significant change for media freedom that would give grounds for this large of a jump.

As Petr Fiala’s term has continued, media freedom gaps have largely stayed the same. This can be attributed to the large populist opposition that is in support of the previous Babiš government. Furthermore, the majority of media broadcasters and producers within the Czech Republic are owned and operated by oligarchs. Lastly, the ascension of politically-minded Council of the Czech Television members has made it difficult to enact sweeping reform for the broadcaster (Public Media Alliance, 2022). These sentiments are best summarized by the International Press Institute, which stated, “The same people continue sitting in the media councils, the same president still has less than a year in office at the Prague Castle, and media owners remain the same. Going forward, both the councils and the president will change, but for the moment, concrete examples of positive change in the area of Czech press freedom are few.” The Czech media landscape has still been able to make some positive growth, especially in the realm of small, digital media outlets (Public Media Alliance, 2022). These online media producers have been able to create high-quality investigative journalism in a media landscape filled with large conglomerates and while possessing limited resources.

Attempts to further solve the problems public broadcasting faces within the Czech Republic have culminated into amendments that have been drafted for the Act on Czech Television and Czech Radio. With the current language of this act a parliamentary majority can determine the composition of the boards, which allows for politicization of boards assumably in their favor. This fear of politicization has already become actualized with the changes of the Council for the Czech Television board in 2020 and 2021. These amendments were drafted collaboratively by journalists’ groups and media associations within the Czech Republic to strengthen the institutionalized freedom of Czech Television and Czech Radio. Their proposed amendments seek to establish five important elements. These include clear criteria for who is able to run for a council member position, create set rules for who is eligible to nominate candidates, expand the power to appoint council members to both chambers of government, and make dismissals of council members more thorough through judicial oversight (Public Media Alliance, 2022). These amendments comprehensively provide institutionalized safeguards to better insure media freedom for public broadcasting services within the Czech Republic.

The first element discusses establishing clear criteria for who is allowed to run for council member positions. By focusing on the qualifications of the candidates, this amendment aims to remove the politicization of the council members that has risen in recent years. The amendment instead highlights professionalism, experience within the field of public broadcasting, and above all integrity as important criteria for council members (Public Media Alliance, 2022).

The second element outlines who is able to nominate candidates to public broadcasting boards. As of now, the nominations can be provided by any social organization or association. This practice does not limit the abilities of politically minded social organizations and associations, even those that are directly associated with political parties, from nominating candidates. These gaps in specific regulations of how nominees are selected has led to unqualified and unprofessional candidates, many of whom have taken an oppositional approach towards the management of Czech Television. The new policy will require nominators to be established institutions and to have ten years of experience in the fields such as media, culture or human rights (Public Media Alliance, 2022).

The third element expands the power to appoint council members to both chambers of Parliament. As the act currently stands, only the Chamber of Deputies is involved with appointing candidates to the governing councils of Czech Television and Czech Radio (Public Media Alliance, 2022). This allows for a government to use a parliamentary majority to decide the makeup of the public broadcaster’s boards. By allowing the Senate to additionally weigh in on appointments more oversight will be instituted to serve as a checks and balances for the appointing process.

The fourth element involves the dismissal of council members. The amendments propose involving the Supreme Administrative Court in reviewing the decision to dismiss councilors from the public broadcasting boards (Public Media Alliance, 2022). As of now there is no legal process to conduct oversight or review of the dismissal of councilors. This policy will strengthen the processes instituted for dismissing council members, which will in turn allow for less politicized turnover of the board’s composition.

Lastly, the fifth element addresses the financial constraints that Czech Television has faced in recent years. The amendment seeks to raise the Czech Television concession fee to be equal to the 2008 value adjusted for the current inflation level. This proposed change will create a more sustainable funding avenue for Czech Television moving forward. Additionally, it is hoped that this change in fee price will help compensate for the budget cuts that Czech Television is currently facing (Hovet, 2022).

The development of the amendment bill was swift, but has since slowed down. The recent appointments to the governing bodies of Czech Television and Czech Radio stand in opposition to the amendment as it seeks to institute changes to the nominating and appointing process that they have benefitted from (Public Media Alliance, 2022). Furthermore, the Ministry of Culture has stalled the bill’s progress as they decipher the complex legal processes for implementing such reform.

The changes to the Czech media landscape arrive at a turning point in the Czech Republic’s role within the greater European region. The Czech Republic assumed the role as president of the Council of the European Union in mid 2022. They have the opportunity to take a stance on ensuring the institutionalized freedom of public broadcasting within their own country and to further set a precedent for media freedom within the European Union. Currently, numerous European Union members are facing declining status for the World Press Freedom Index, such as Italy, Greece, Poland, and Spain.

Bibliography

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Anonymous. (2022, June 10). Focus On: The future of the Czech Republic’s public media. Public Media Alliance. https://www.publicmediaalliance.org/focus-on-the-future-of-czech-republics-public-media/

Gosling, Tim. (2020, March 10). In the middle of pandemic, Czech Television risks repeat crisis. International Press Institute. https://ipi.media/in-the-middle-of-pandemic-czech-television-risks-repeat-crisis/

Hovet, Jason. (2022, July 25). Czech finance minister proposes raising 2022 budget deficit to $13.6 bln -Czech TV. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/czech-finance-minister-proposes-raising-2022-budget-deficit-136-bln-czech-tv-2022-07-25/

Kudláč, Martin. (2022, September 6). Czech Television plans to dramatically cut costs, curtails support for film production. Cineuropa. https://cineuropa.org/newsdetail/426499/

Reporters Without Borders. World Press Freedom Index 2022, https://www.refworld.org/docid/5108f621e.html

Sarkissian, Nouneh. (2020, May 16). A Little Bit About Public Television: Czech Diary. Media.am: People are the Media. https://media.am/en/critique/2020/05/16/21530/