{"id":884425,"date":"2026-06-22T08:05:04","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T08:05:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/884425\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T08:05:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T08:05:04","slug":"czechs-rally-in-prague-against-government-plan-for-public-broadcasters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/884425\/","title":{"rendered":"Czechs rally in Prague against government plan for public broadcasters"},"content":{"rendered":"

PRAGUE (AP) \u2014 Thousands of Czechs rallied in the capital on Sunday to condemn a plan by the government led by populist Prime Minister Andrej Babi\u0161<\/a> to overhaul funding for public broadcasters that is considered dangerous for their independence.<\/p>\n

The protesters<\/a> gathered in front of the Czech public television offices in Prague to voice their support for the media a day before their staffers plan to go on a warning strike, and after recent protest marches in the regional capitals and Prague.<\/p>\n

According to the plan approved last week, public radio and television would be financed from the state budget starting next year, and not from fees paid by individuals, households and businesses.<\/p>\n

Critics say that change would give the three-party coalition government a means to take control of the media following the examples of populist governments in Slovakia<\/a> under Prime Minister Robert Fico<\/a> and in Hungary<\/a> under former Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe media don\u2019t belong to politicians,\u201d Mikul\u00e1\u0161 Min\u00e1\u0159, a main organizer from the Million Moments for Democracy group said. \u201cThey belong to us all and we won\u2019t allow them to be stolen from us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Babi\u0161, members of his government and loyal lawmakers have a record of attacks against the public and other mainstream media.<\/p>\n

The government plan, which has been criticized by international media organizations, would give the media about 15% less money than they have this year. It contains no guarantees of funding in the future.<\/p>\n

The directors of public radio and television said that would require them to lay off hundreds of staffers. Babi\u0161 said that the media need to save money.<\/p>\n

The agenda of Babi\u0161\u2019 coalition includes steering the country away from supporting Ukraine\u2019s fight against Russia, and rejecting some key EU policies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PRAGUE (AP) \u2014 Thousands of Czechs rallied in the capital on Sunday to condemn a plan by the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":884426,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[198152,64,183898,57,325,2850,50,2062,80,229218,402,50757,50759,16815,103,107],"class_list":["post-884425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-andrej-babis","tag-business","tag-czech-republic-government","tag-general-news","tag-government-budgets","tag-hungary","tag-news","tag-political-and-civil-unrest","tag-politics","tag-prague","tag-protests-and-demonstrations","tag-robert-fico","tag-slovakia","tag-viktor-orban","tag-world","tag-world-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116792729784596683","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/884426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}