Prague, Jan 24 (CTK) – The election of the director of the public Czech Television (CT) is a hot issue also because it comes before the autumn general election and because President Milos Zeman and Finance Minister Andrej Babis (ANO) criticised CT for being biased, weekly Respekt has written in its Monday issue.
The six-year mandate of CT director Petr Dvorak expires in September. Dvorak, who headed the commercial Nova TV for seven years in the past, is ready to seek re-election.
However, former commercial Prima TV director Martin Konrad is considering running for the post as well. And there are likely to be many other candidates for the hot post. In the previous competition, 32 people fought for it, Respekt writes.
CT Council chairman Jan Bednar plans to declare the competition for a new CT director next month and announce the winner in May because he wants to avoid a nervous atmosphere before the election to the Chamber of Deputies, due in October.
“Politicians believe that the director can influence the news coverage, harm them or favour them,” Respekt quotes Bednar as saying.
There are very different opinions on how the public newscast should look like, the weekly writes.
The Council for Radio and TV Broadcasting recently concluded that the CT reporting on the U.S. presidential election violated law by allegedly siding with Hillary Clinton.
The broadcasting council criticised CT for saying that the potential victory of Donald Trump was connected with the feeling of a threat, that many Americans wrote on social media they would leave the USA in reaction to Trump’s victory, and for not inviting enough of Trump’s supporters to the studio. Dvorak backed his subordinates in this case.
Zeman and Babis said the state should directly run CT and pay its operation and that viewers should stop paying monthly fees for watching the public television channels.
Respekt writes that Zeman is angry with CT because it revealed his plan to remove Bohuslav Sobotka from the post of Social Democrat (CSSD) leader after the 2013 general election. Sobotka is prime minister now.
The rich businessman Babis, whose ANO has the ambition to win the next election, strongly protested against the CT reports on his conflict of interest. His huge Agrofert holding called on the CT Council to stop the broadcasting of such reports and demanded that the reporters be punished. Both the CT Council and CT director supported the reporters.
CT is not going to turn into a state institution, no such radical change is going to be pushed through, Respekt writes.
Parliament has nevertheless received a draft amendment to the law on CT that would give both the CT Council and the CT director less power. A five-member administrative board elected by the CT Council would have the main say and monitor the CT broadcasting and decide on the financing of its projects.
Konrad said he is considering running for CT director. He said he is checking whether he would have a chance to win since the current CT Council seems to favour Dvorak.
Konrad said he had many reservations about the present broadcasting, including the report on the U.S. presidential election. “They favoured Clinton and when Trump won, they looked like they got the news that their granny died,” he said.
Opposition lawmaker Nina Novakova (TOP 09), who sits on a committee monitoring media, said the present CT Council is allegedly close to the CSSD wing led by PM Sobotka, yet it has been the best CT Council so far. If the council recommended Dvorak to remain in the post, it would mean that Dvorak does his work well, Novakova said.
On the contrary, ANO lawmaker Martin Komarek said the CT Council was weak and uncritically supported Dvorak.
Former culture minister Vitezslav Jandak (CSSD) praised the current CT director. “His reports for the parliamentary committee are rich in content. No controversies are linked to him. I think he should get another chance,” Jandak said.
Lawmaker Martin Kolovratnik (ANO) shared the view that the CT Council sided with Dvorak, but he did not consider it a big issue.
Kolovratnik, who was a director of a regional radio station for a long time, said he minded the criticism of the CT report on the U.S. presidential election and Agrofert’s complaint about CT reports.
He said independent surveys proved that CT is not biased. “I have never seen anything in favour of this or that party,” Respekt quotes Kolovratnik as saying.
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