Around 1,800 of the nearly 4,500 employees of Czech Television (CT) and Czech Radio (CRo) have signed a statement expressing concern about the government’s plans to abolish television and radio license fees and bring both institutions under the state budget, which they consider an attempt to control the public service media. Yesterday, Prime Minister Andrej Babis (ANO) denied that this was the government’s goal.
The coalition government of ANO, Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD), and the Motorists has included the abolition of public media licence fees in its policy statement. It wants to replace them with funding from the state budget. The government argues that this change, due to take effect from 2027, will result in savings for citizens. The opposition and part of the professional public see this as a threat to the independence of the media.
“Political attacks on both public institutions only deepen our concerns,” the statement reads. “We want to continue to be accountable to the public, not to politicians, whether in government or opposition. The current funding model guarantees the independence and stability of CT and CRo. We are also concerned about the circumstances surrounding the preparation of a proposal for a fundamental change in the status of public service media without sufficient public and expert debate.”
According to the signatories, the government is preparing changes to funding without convincing arguments. “We are determined to protect the principles on which public service media – one of the pillars of democracy – have stood for decades,” they added.
“There is no question of control,” Babis told reporters during a visit to Bratislava yesterday. “There are 17 EU member states that finance public media from their budgets. If we had wanted to control these media in any way in the past, we would not have had to approve their annual reports. The ideal solution would be to push through the possibility of having these media outlets audited by the Supreme Audit Office.”
The signatories of the statement include CT’s news director Petr Mrzena, news editor-in-chief Michal Kubal, presenters Jakub Zelezny and Daniel Stach, editors Lea Surovcova and Pavla Kubalkova, foreign news deputy head Jakub Szanto, and Czech Radio editors Jana Klimova and Jan Kaliba as well as presenter Tereza Kostkova.
On Monday, the OS Media trade union sent an open letter to Culture Minister Oto Klempir (Motorists), saying it is ready to participate in negotiations on changes to the financing of public media. The union wrote that sustainable and predictable funding is an essential condition for the functioning of public media and for ensuring compliance with EU case law, as set out in the European media freedom law.
