Between a Rock and a Hard Place? Market Concentration, Local Ownership and Media Autonomy in the Czech Republic (original) (raw)
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Changes in the ownership structure of mainstream Czech dailies are transforming what had been a relatively stable Czech media environment over the previous 20 years. Newspapers are now owned by major national business groups with political ties. This text discusses the developments in the ownership of Czech print media and illustrates the changes that the evolving ownership structure brings in terms of media content, media legislation, and public service media. It argues that changing ownership patterns have made media more dependent on the political and business elite and concludes that legislative changes are desirable with a view to protecting media pluralism in the country.
In this article we map some of the key developments on the Czech print media market following the fall of communism in 1989. We focus on ownership changes and their impact on the conduct of professional journalism. In the 1990s foreign media companies (dominantly German and Swiss) entered the Czech media market and brought with them a profit-oriented model of journalism. Our research in the mid-2000s explored these changes and their impact on journalists' professional conduct. At the time journalists stressed commercial pressures, however, in the mid-2010s with the departure of foreign print media owners (except for one) and the emergence of local ones, journalists voiced concerns about interference in content for political purposes. We also note that the journalists we interviewed did not reflect on the influence of government on the conduct of their profession, for example, through media regulation.
Our paper focuses on the issue of security and independence of modern day mass media. The majority of mass media is owned by large corporations and business companies and there has been noted a certain pressure on the quality and the content of media coverage that is happening with a varying degree of success in various countries. Our paper is based on the results of the Czech branch of the Worlds of Journalism Study project that took place between 2012 and 2014 and consisted of 291 interviews with journalists from all types of media, both at the regional level and nationwide. The results addressed changes in the way Czech journalists perceive their roles and ethical responsibilities and showed the altering manner in which these changes are reflected in emerging media projects. It appears that Czech journalists are now keener to accept the role of public “watchdogs” and the newly found role of journalism becomes a catchy marketing idea for the new projects.
2012
This article presents a comparative analysis of the changing patterns of media ownership in ten new EU member states from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and discusses the implications of these processes for media freedom and autonomy. Briefly outlining the history of internationalization of CEE media markets, it argues that the presence of Western-based multinational companies on the CEE media markets has been recently diminishing rather than further growing. In addition, a different type of actor has been gaining prominence on the CEE media map, unspotted or largely overlooked in most previous analyses, namely, local business elites acquiring stakes in news media. Combining secondary sources and field interviews with media experts and practitioners, this study explores the various practices of business and political instrumentalization of media by their local owners, often resulting in a constrained editorial independence and increasing intertwinement of the systems of media, politics, and economy in the region.
2012
This paper offers an overview of the Czech Republic’s media landscape, putting it into its demographic, economic and political context. It gives a basic overview of the country’s media structure, including details on media markets; media regulation and regulatory authorities; and journalism culture. The aim is to present this information in such a way as to facilitate comparison across the ten nations studied by the project. The findings are based on secondary academic sources and a series of elite interviews conducted in Prague and Brno in May and June 2010. The report was last updated in August 2012.
2013
This report summarizes the main outcomes of the research conducted within Pillar 1 of the MDCEE project, entitled Media Ownership and Commercial Pressures. The primary goal of the project’s first research area was to investigate the market structures underpinning the conditions of news media organizations in Central and Eastern Europe and consequently to analyse the influence of economic factors on the relationship between the media and democracy in this region. While the overall scope of Pillar 1 was broadened in the course of the MDCEE project (2009-2013), and also included explorations in the area of administrative and regulatory capacities of the state vis-à-vis the market in general and the telecommunications markets in particular (see Stetka 2012a), this report focuses specifically on the original core issues of Pillar 1. It attempts to present a systematic and comparative overview of media ownership structures, as well as other important features and tendencies shaping the character of news media markets in the ten Central and Eastern European countries studied by the MDCEE project, particularly with respect to the 2008/2009 financial crisis, which has had a profound and dramatic effect on ownership patterns and on the overall situation of the media in this region.
This essay examines the transformation of the culture of the Czech news media in the wake of the Cold War. Existing research on transitions from statist to capitalist media models emphasizes pol- itical or economic variables, and so this analysis is distinguished by a focus on culture—specifically, the collective beliefs and attitudes among networks of journalists and political actors in a particular national context. This research incorporates a synthesis of existing literature as well as in-depth interviews with key informants (including journalists, scholars, and political strategists) in the Czech Republic during fieldwork in the fall of 2015. It attempts to explain how the pivot to a market-oriented media culture within the Czech Republic led to: the fortification of a nationalist identity, an abundance of journalism outlets, and ultimately a celebritization of the political culture within the Czech Republic. These outcomes are described and interpreted within the context of globalization and media change.
Czech Journalists’ Refreshed Sense of Ethics in the Midst of Media Ownership Turmoil
In recent years, the Czech Republic has seen the largest changes in media ownership since the early 1990s. Most strik-ing was the purchase of one of the largest publishing houses Mafra by the tycoon Andrej Babiš in June 2013, followed by the takeover of the Czech branch of Ringier by other Czech businessmen later that year. The first case in particular instigated immense discussion about the economic and ethical crisis facing Czech journalism since Babiš is also a power-ful political figure (currently the Minister of Finance). In response, a significant number of leading, well-known journal-ists left media owned by big business and launched projects of quality or “slow” journalism which had until that point been merely discussed theoretically. This paper—based on the results of the Czech part of the Worlds of Journalism Study project—addresses the shift in the ways journalists perceive their roles and ethical responsibilities before and af-ter the 2013 ownership changes. We also present the manner in which these changes are reflected in emerging media projects. It seems that those journalists not affected by the ownership change tend to view journalism ethics and the ability of journalism to exert power more seriously than before.