Can public service broadcasting take root in soil devastated for part of a century of one-party rule?Adam Michnik had doubts. The former dissident and journalist once remarked that there can be no BBC without the “political culture” of the British: “this concept of pluralism, tolerance or non-unusual sense. “As for his local Poland, he says, all political factions need a station they can control; they had no appetite for “objective and fair public television” that served the common good.
In the early years of the transition from communism, the former one-party states of Eastern Europe put Michnik’s maxim to the test. In 1991, a former Czech dissident and lawyer, Hana Marvanova, introduced a new regulation to remake a broadcaster such as the BBC. He met with party leader and aspiring prime minister Vaclav Klaus to make the case for public service broadcasting.
It would be the father of the nascent democracy: impartial, editorially independent and, unlike a state broadcaster, financed through citizens who pay the payment of the state budget. Unlike a personal broadcaster, it would favor quality programming over market share. Conservative market supporter and eurosceptic who would continue to dominate Czech politics for the next 20 years, serving twice as prime minister and president of the republic, and according to Marvanova, he did not like what he heard. He said he identified that the media can be exploited by the private sector or by the state, but he did not perceive the transmission of public service,” he said. “I was worried about the negative politics of television and radio. “
Thirty years later, the Czech public service broadcaster is a beacon in a bleak picture. National broadcasters in Poland, Hungary and Slovakia have been severely weakened, if not completely co-opted, by intolerant governments. Only in the region, Czech public television and radio have maintained their position with audiences and a certain editorial independence, in the obvious words of Michnik’s saying. And yet, their survival is far from assured.
Like the BBC, the Czech public broadcaster’s reliance on an overridden investment style is pushing it toward a monetary cliff. It makes its profits from royalties, which are charged to radio and TELEVISION owners, at a time when more and more people have content online. The TV service’s price lists have been frozen since 2008, a resolution that is expected to lead to job losses and production cuts.
Experts also warn that existing media legislation does not protect the broadcaster from political pressure. The legal framework established in 1991, the analog era. According to Filip Rozanek, editor-in-chief of Digizone, a Prague-based media consultancy, it has been revised in a fragmentary and superficial way, resulting in “an incoherent whole” unsuitable for the twenty-first century.
The broadcaster faced its most dangerous hour under the government of Andrej Babis, ousted through a shocking election result last October. The billionaire media mogul has been accused of trying to undermine the station’s editorial independence by appointing its oversight bodies partisanly, an obvious variant of tactics deployed in Poland and Hungary, where governing bodies have been neutralized through tweaks to the law. Babis also accused of threatening the issuer’s monetary independence through gambling with a proposal to save retirees royalty payments, echoing measures in Slovakia and the United Kingdom.
Although Babis’ ANO party denied carrying out a crusade against the broadcaster, its maneuvers raised fears that the Czech media landscape would end up hunting just like its Hungarian and Polish counterparts. The public broadcaster plays an important role in this landscape, helping a certain degree of pluralism, as ownership of the Czech personal press is increasingly concentrated within a small organization of politically affiliated oligarchs. The Vienna-based press freedom organization, the International Press Institute, IPI, has warned that czech public television’s editorial independence is threatened by new appointments to its oversight body, or board. Meanwhile, Geneva-based industry body the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) said in April last year that it was alarmed by the increasing politicization of the board that oversees Czech public television. .
In the Czech Republic, fears about the long-term public service broadcasting would help generate opposition to Babis. During mass protests in 2019 and 2020, speakers condemned the crusade against public radio and television. While those opposition parties are now in government, they have so far failed to deliver on their promise to the broadcaster. Meanwhile, Babis was re-elected as party leader and is expected to run broadly for president next year, supported by the narrow margin of last year’s electoral defeat.
Without drastic reforms, experts say, Czech public television and radio will remain vulnerable to political and monetary pressures. According to media analyst Filip Rozanek, the survival of the public broadcaster requires a complete overhaul of its legal framework and investment model, as well as new regulations for the oversight bodies, or boards, that oversee its fulfillment of the public service mission. Babis’ defeat was hailed by the station’s supporters, but his relief may prove short-lived. Saved thanks to an election result last year, the broadcaster remains just the odd election result far from the fall.
Czech public television and radio, Ceska Televize and Cesky Rozhlas, have their origins in a venerable establishment of the Czechoslovak era: the first national broadcaster in continental Europe, established a year after the BBC, in 1923. Its broadcasts in 1945, in the agony days of World War II, helped trigger an uprising of opposition to the Nazi German occupiers. During the “Prague Spring” of 1968, its headquarters in Vinohrady, a central side street in Prague, scene of skirmishes between invading Soviet troops and the unarmed Czech resistance. . Bullet holes from the time still adorn the facades of neighboring buildings.
Public opinion towards the station tends to reflect the schisms within Czech politics. With the turn of the millennium, an internal war on the public television channel will spread through the streets. Journalists protesting against the new leadership occupied the newsroom for weeks. , camping there at night. The so-called “sleeping bag revolution” would bring tens of thousands of protesters into Prague’s public squares to striking journalists.
Czech public television and radio are now among the country’s best-known brands. Generations have grown up with czech tv’s acclaimed children’s programming, its sports commentators are well-known names and it is a major player in the national cultural industry, genescore feature films and TV series. Television and radio facilities manage their own information-gathering operations with engaged correspondents at home and abroad. list of the maximum accepted as true media brands in the Czech Republic. The Institute’s 2022 report showed that public television and radio enjoyed acceptance as true by just under 60% of Czechs, reflecting their scores from previous years. Czech public television has also become a leader in terms of audience share, with the most recent figures appearing in that it is seen across a third of adults: the highest score re among TV channels.
The huge minority of Czechs who have a less favorable opinion of the station consider it an elitist institution. Public television in particular has been accused of liberal bias by supporters of Babis’ ANO party and its former coalition allies between the far right and the communists. However, according to European standards, the broadcaster has a good reputation. The hostility towards it is no greater than that directed against similar broadcasters in Western Europe, while its popularity makes it an outlier.
“Czech public service media are in very good condition, despite all the problems,” said Vaclav Stetka, a contributor to the Reuters Institute report and a professor of communication and media studies at Loughborough University. that of public broadcasters in several Western European countries, but they also have a significant percentage in the market, exclusive in Europe. “
The current incarnation of the station dates back to the early 1990s, when the former spokesman of the communist regime reinvented himself. “There is no continuity, there is nothing to depend on in terms of professional standards,” Stetka said. Journalists at the time were still adapting to “a new political and social reality,” he said, and only a few understood the price of impartiality and editorial independence. Array
For inspiration, the Czechs turned to Western media that had provided a select source of data in the communist era: Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, funded throughout the United States, as well as the BBC, whose shortwave radio broadcasts were Broadcast. The style of public service, embodied through the BBC and similar establishments in Gerguyy and Switzerland, proved influential, overcoming the objections of the guy who would become prime minister, Vaclav Klaus. According to Hana Marvanova, the former dissident and parliamentarian who helped draft the station’s new legal framework, Klaus would have liked a “government channel,” a state-owned company run by a government-appointed director.
However, a source close to the former leader downplayed his comments, Marvanova reports. According to Ladislav Jakl, Klaus’ former assistant who worked with Marvanova on new media legislation in the 1990s, the proposal was motivated by concerns that it would be enough. “to make announcements at press conferences,” said Jakl, now employed at the Vaclav Klaus Institute in Prague. “The government may simply not be sure that the data will succeed in the public as a whole and without distortions. “
Whatever Klaus has in mind, it won’t see the light of day. A new public service broadcaster, supported by politicians from all walks of life, has taken shape. Marvanova said that the temperament in parliament at the time was most commonly “idealistic”, with widespread confidence that democratic reforms would last “a hundred years”.
Despite the initial optimism of the post-communist transition, neither Poland, Hungary nor Slovakia will produce viable public service stations. From the beginning, existing news and affairs programs in the 3 countries have tended, with a few exceptions, to avoid contradictory journalism, serving instead as a spokesperson for governments. In Slovakia, the public broadcaster has yet to recover from the 1990s, when it was severely weakened due to the autocratic regime of Vladimir Meciar. In Hungary and Poland, the independence enjoyed by national broadcasters has been repressed beyond a decade as Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party and Jaroslaw Kaczynski’s Law and Justice party have tightened their grip on power.
Andrej Babis campaigned on an anti-establishment and anti-corruption platform that invited comparison with the intolerant governments of Hungary and Poland. However, unlike them, he struggled to maintain his grip on power. He was prime minister twice, both at the head of a minority government, first lasting only six months.
Once the richest man of the moment in the Czech Republic, his political career has been marked by controversy over his business relations. Through a trust, it owns an agrochemical conglomerate, as well as about 30% of the Czech media, adding two major newspapers and one national one. radio station. Allegations of tax evasion and conflicts of interest within its business empire have been investigated through the open-air media, as well as through the EU’s anti-fraud unit and Czech police. Although Babis has not been convicted of any crime, he is due lately to stand trial in September on allegations of EU subsidy fraud. He denied all the accusations that were opposed to him and described them as politically motivated.
Babis challenged Czech state television’s policy on his affairs, describing his hounds as “corrupt” and “manipulative. “each other. ” According to opposition parties and press freedom groups, verbal attacks on the broadcaster were accompanied by a behind-the-scenes crusade to undermine him, by appointing loyalists to his oversight body or board. The accusation was rejected through Babis. Stanislav Berkovec, an ANO deputy, told the online page iRozhlas. cz that the candidates for the council were selected only because they had fulfilled “all the various situations imposed by law. “
Board members will be replaced on a rotating basis at the end of their six-year term. Applicants regularly come from a representative sample of civil society teams, from churches to children’s theater corporations, sports and gardening clubs. However, since appointments will have to be approved by parliament, the government can decide significantly on the composition of the council. While the 15-member board has no direct influence on the production, it has the strength to remove and appoint the executive leader of public television.
Under Babis’ rule, seven new members were appointed to the board, some of whom were blatantly hostile to the principles of public service broadcasting and the more sensible control of Czech public television. The appointments would coincide with a media crusade opposed to Petr. Dvorak, the general director of public television.
In 2019, for example, a newspaper owned by Babis’ accepts as truth it published a front-page article that said Dvorak had a real estate portfolio “worth one hundred million Czech crowns”, the equivalent of about four million euros. There is no evidence that Dvorak acquired those assets illegally rather than a source of income accrued during a long career in senior management. replaced through a leader willing to dismantle the station from within.
Rene Kuhn, a marketing entrepreneur who has been a TV board member since 2017, said the vast majority of councillors have agreed on the need for independent, good-quality public media. However, under Babis, the balance of force within the began to change. “Suddenly, there were other people who vehemently opposed the public media, or saw them as redundant,” he said.
The virulent maxim of those Hana Lipovska, an economist appointed to the board of Czech TELEVISION in 2020, who allegedly said she had not “understood” the public service media. “he told the Parlamentni Listy online page in April 2019. Czech television broadcasts a diversity of programs aimed at minority and niche audiences as a component of its public service mission, in contrast to Czech business opportunities in search of profit and market share.
In the spring of 2021, Lipovska would accuse CEO Petr Dvorak, without transparent evidence, of a conflict of interest. The fee was presented at a meeting of the regime council, which Lipovska attended along with two plainclothes policemen. According to a policeman later quoted via Respekt magazine, Lipovska had asked for the escort because she feared her role on the council would endanger her life.
The appearance of the bodyguards caused a sensation in the global posing of the assemblies of the press councils. Covid restrictions. He exchanged text messages with other board members who were as bewildered as he was, and some even speculated that officials had come to arrest the CEO. “It was a planned attempt to cause chaos,” he said.
The previous government would also be accused of undermining the station’s independence by threatening its revenue. As prime minister, Babis spoke out in favor of a proposal by his ally, President Milos Zeman, to exempt retirees and other low-income people from having to pay the fee.
Babis’ electoral defeat last year was a respite from the broadcaster’s execution. While some of his supposed loyalists on the board of Czech public television, they no longer have the political cover to oppose the institution. Petr Dvorak should, for the time being, fully fulfil his mandate as Director-General.
The new centre-right government, headed by Petr Fiala, has pledged to strengthen the position of public television. The cabinet had first proposed a slow increase in the tariff, frozen for 14 years for public television, and for 17 years for public radio. However, 8 months after the elections, the government backtracked. During a live televised debate on July 3, Culture Minister Martin Baxa said it was “necessary to say openly” that the ruling coalition “does not need to build the dizzying inflation and economic effect of the war in Ukraine have been cited as the reasons for this decision. As a preferred source of revenue, Baxa said, Czech public television deserves to try to increase the amount of advertising. Transmits.
Therefore, for the time being, Czech public television and radio will continue to offer seven and 25 channels respectively for a monthly payment of 180 CZK, or around seven euros, the charge of a decent lunch and a beer or two. They also continue to lay off staff and gradually diminish their audience and listeners.
Vaclav Stetka, from Loughborough University, said payment remains the most productive style for funding public service broadcasters around the world, adding that the BBC. in a significant loss of profits and decrease in standards, he added. “Most of the proposals to update it are motivated in one way or another by a preference to weaken public service media,” he said.
The new government is also drawing up plans to reform public television and radio boards. Lately, potential council members are appointed through a wide diversity of civic organizations, and nominations are ratified, by election, through the shrinking space of parliament. Under the new proposals, some of the candidates will also be elected through the parliament’s top space, the Senate. The group of civil society organizations that can nominate candidates will also be limited to those that have been in operation for at least a decade. Proponents of the new regulations say they will improve the professionalism of councils by getting rid of applicants from hard-to-understand organizations who likely owe their candidacy to their political loyalty.
However, the revised media legislation is far from coming into force. Legislative momentum slowed in the spring of 2022 in plans to dissolve existing councils to make way for reformed ones. The government’s legal advisers warned that such a resolution would be unconstitutional. Babis’ ANO party was quick to criticize the plan, describing it as a “dangerous” attempt to undermine state-owned media, encouraged across Poland and Hungary. The government, however, approved the amendments in June, and they will now have to be presented to parliament.
Hana Marvanova, the former dissident and MP, briefly collaborated with the government on the most recent amendments to the media law, as she did with the original 30 years ago. But his old idealism is gone. While he sees the planned reforms of media councils as an improvement, he believes they will provide the public broadcaster with good enough coverage of political pressure. As long as councils are elected through politicians, either from one chamber or both, it will be “an independent election,” he said, “because politicians have an interest in positive media coverage. “
Vojtech Berger is the editor of the online research site founded in Prague, HlidaciPes. org. This story edited by Neil Arun. Il produced as a component of the Journalistic Excellence Fellowship, supported through the ERSTE Foundation, in cooperation with the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network.
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