Controversial Law Threatens Czech Media Independence : Story of the Last Week

Czech people are protesting over a controversial law that threatens the independence of public service media.

What’s going on?

The Czech government, more precisely Minister of Culture Oto Klempíř (from the far-right Motorists Party), has proposed a law that would change how public media (= Czech television “ČT” and Czech Radio “ČRo”) are funded. Instead of being financed by licence fees paid by citizens, they would get money directly from the state budget. The government claims this will save money and cut bureaucracy. But journalists, legal experts, and media watchdogs (like Reporters Without Borders or the European Federation of Journalists) warn that this will make media dangerously dependent on the Czech government. Once funding comes from the state, politicians can decide how much (or little) money public media get based on how much those media criticize them.

What are public service media?

In total, there are 3 types of media:

public media
private/commercial media
community media

Public service media

Public service media are official national media that are not-profit. This doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t make any money, it means that making money is not the main goal of their existence (unlike commercial media). The main aim is to serve the citizens, and their and their country’s interests. So instead of making only content their public wants to see or hear, they also make content their public NEEDS to see or hear as citizens – like emissions about their country’s history, news, or special broadcast during natural disasters or wars with safety instructions…

Yes, such content isn’t always the most attractive, but it helps people to step outside their echo chambers and have access to verified information. Because unlike private media, public service media are more transparent about their functioning, funding, informational sources, and ethics. For this reason, public service media are also a good source for you, if you, as a foreigner, want to find out what is happening in some country and want to have it firsthand.

Here is the list of public service media by country.

Private/commercial media

Commercial media are privately owned. There is always one person behind who is trying to get as much money as possible from advertisements placed in their programs. The ultimate goal is to create content that attracts huge numbers of people. Because the more people are watching, the more will see the advertisement (and the more money the medium makes from it). Unlike public media, commercial media have no legal obligations to provide unbiased news, educational content, or emergency information in times of crisis.

Community media

Community media fall in between these two categories. They are non-profit like public media, but they are not national institutions. So there are no obligations for their content production – similarly like commercial media, they can create whatever they want. Although, unlike commercial media, they are not dependent on advertising (because they aren’t supposed to make huge profits). They are funded by their members and sometimes by subsidies. And since it’s the community who pays, it’s also the community who decides what content the media will produce. IR Media belongs to this category.

Types of financing of public service media

Even though all public service media are financed by citizens of the countries in which they exist, there are different ways of how it’s done:

Licence fees (Czechia, Germany, UK) = every household owning a device through which the public service media can be watched (like a TV) pays a small fixed monthly fee. This system is immune to political interference
Electricity bill (Italy, Portugal, Greece) = a small extra charge is added to electricity bills
Tax-based funding (France, Sweden, Finland) = public media get a fixed percentage of income tax or a dedicated tax. This system can be politically influenced if governments change tax laws.
Direct state budget (Hungary, Slovakia, Romania) = the government decides how much money public media get each year. This is the riskiest model because politicians can use funding as a weapon.

What does the law propose?

The proposed law would replace licence fees with direct funding from the state budget. The government argues this will save money and reduce bureaucracy, since collecting licence fees does cost some administrative resources. But what they forget to say is that it would also put the public media at their mercy…

Why is the law controversial?

Since the state budget from which the media would be financed is in the hands of the government, the media would also be in the hands of the government.

Which is not a very hopeful prospect, given that the current Czech government includes right-wing extremists from Motorists Party, who do not hide their admiration for Nazi ideology, threaten their ideological opponents (including the Czech president), and carry out purges among state employees calling it “deratization”…

The change in financing would also mean less money for public media. Licence fees currently bring in around 5 billion CZK per year (about €200 million). The government hasn’t guaranteed the same amount from the state budget, and historically, state-funded media get underfunded – especially when politicians want to silence them.

Moreover, the law is poorly written and legally flawed. Experts say it lacks clear definitions of key terms and introduces experimental concepts that aren’t used anywhere else. This makes it easy to abuse – politicians could interpret the rules however they want to punish unloyal media.

Why should we care?

Because such a law can be easily proposed even in your country. Especially nowadays, when we observe the increase in popularity of far-right populistic movements across countries. When they manage to come to power, one of the first things they do is silencing their critics – including the media.

Because such movements already do enormous efforts to convince you that you don’t need public media because you can “pay for the content you want to see”.

Because someone needs to do the dirty job of covering boring, commercially unprofitable but important stuff. If public service media didn’t exist, who would it be? Because commercial media certainly wouldn’t…

How can you make a difference?

Follow the story: check the below-mentioned sources to get deeper information.

Support independent media: whether it’s Czech public broadcasters or outlets in your own country, they need audiences and funding to survive.

Pressure your politicians: if they try introducing shady laws, sign petitions, go to demonstrations, send complaints… If you’re in the EU, demand that they enforce the European Media Freedom Act.

Stay alert: don’t abandon the story once it loses hype. Check out for latest developments.