Czech media strike erupts as Babis accused of power grab

Czech democracy activists issued a warning on Tuesday, accusing Prime Minister Andrej Babiš’s populist government of trying to place public media under control. 

The warning, published on X by pro-democracy association “Milion chvilek pro demokracii” (Million Moments for Democracy), reacted to the government’s announcement of a complete abolition of television and radio license fees in favor of direct state funding over a week ago. 

In a joint declaration, striking employees of both public TV and radio warned that moving funding to the state budget opens the door to direct government censorship. 

"We want to remain accountable to the public, not to politicians, whether in government or opposition," the workers wrote, slamming the government for drafting the structural overhaul without public debate.

"We are determined to protect the principles on which public service media—one of the pillars of democracy—has stood for decades. For you. Not for politicians."

The government decision also prompted a wave of public anger over the weekend, when thousands of demonstrators defied intense summer heat to rally across major cities, forming human walls outside the headquarters of Czech Television ahead of a planned warning strike.

"The media don’t belong to politicians," Mikuláš Minář, a chief organizer for the pro-democracy association, told the roaring crowds. "They belong to us all and we won’t allow them to be stolen from us."

The standoff escalated on Monday as the strike alert transformed into an active, 24-hour programming disruption, with both public TV and radio experiencing uncharacteristic minutes of silence, delays, and sudden reruns. 

The Syndicate of Journalists of the Czech Republic threw its full weight behind the demonstrations. Speaking from a protest hub in Ostrava, Syndicate Chairwoman Ivana Šuláková warned that destroying public media independence is part of a systematic plan to silence critics. 

"Independent media are an unwanted mirror for politicians of their actions—at least for those politicians who do not have clean intentions," Šuláková said, framing the free press as a vital counterweight to algorithmic disinformation echo chambers.

International watchdogs, including the International Federation of Journalists, have called for the funding proposals to be withdrawn, warning that making public media dependent on state-controlled budgets mirrors the authoritarian playbooks of neighboring populist regimes in Hungary and Slovakia.

The government dismissed these concerns as political theater. 

Culture Minister Oto Klempíř struck back on X, framing the rebellion as a financial dispute disguised as a battle for freedom. “Yesterday’s demonstration was about money, not about values or media independence," Klempíř wrote, defending the overhaul as a promised campaign pledge while dismissing the organizing group as "so-called ’momentum chasers’.”

Critics warn the new framework will severely cripple public media budgets by moving Czech Television to a fixed 5.74 billion crown ($270 million) state allocation and Czech Radio to 2.06 billion crowns ($96.9 million). This effectively strips the two entities of roughly 1.4 billion crowns ($65.9 million) compared to current levels, forcing broadcasters to operate on the same nominal budgets they had nearly two decades ago despite inflation cutting their real purchasing power in half.

For the audience, the stakes extend far beyond missed sports broadcasts or cancelled entertainment shows; it threatens to blind entire regions of the country. According to internal projections, the financial starvation will force immediate, drastic cuts, including hundreds of layoffs and the widespread closure of regional studios.

Media analysts warn that stripping funding from these regional public studios will dramatically expand "news deserts" (zpravodajské pouště) across the Czech Republic—areas completely devoid of local watchdog journalism. A 2025 study by the Center for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom revealed that 50 percent of the country’s local print media had already collapsed between 2009 and 2019, with revenues plunging another 40 percent since the pandemic. 

Activists warn that if public broadcasting now retreats from the provinces, the resulting news desert will swallow almost the entire territory of the Czech Republic, silencing the very reporters who hold local powerful actors accountable.