RSF calls on Slovenia, Czechia to preserve public media independence

Paris – The NGO Reporters without Borders (RSF) has urged authorities in Slovenia and the Czech Republic to stop exerting political pressure on public media, and to safeguard their independence in line with Council of Europe (CoE) recommendations from 2012.

Public media in Hungary and Poland – both ranked as problematic by RSF’s World Press Freedom Index – are already under political control, Friday’s statement reads.

“But the battle to maintain public media independence continues in the Czech Republic and Slovenia – which the Index still classifies as fairly good.”

Slovenia fell from 40th to 36th place this year, whereas the Czech Republic ranks 40th among a total of 180 countries.

RSF says the public service media in the two countries are resisting political pressure, including accusations of criminal acts and threats to funding, but their editorial and financial independence is clearly in danger.

The NGO details funding issues of the Slovenian Press Agency (STA) and of Czech public television ČT, as well as smear campaigns against the two organisations’ directors, Bojan Veselinovič and Petr Dvorak, respectively.

Pavol Szalai, the head of RSF’s EU and Balkans desk, says that Czech and Slovenian politicians must stop violating the limit to their powers by trying to fire the heads of public service media. “We urge them to stop pressuring these media via their supervisory bodies and to stop manipulating the issue of their funding.”

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