Thousands gather in Prague to protest public media funding changes

Several thousand people gathered in Prague on Sunday to protest against plans to change the funding system for public television and radio, accusing the government of stifling press freedom.

The Czech lower house of parliament voted on Saturday to fast-track a bill that would abolish licence fees for public media and replace them with direct allocations from the state budget.

The legislation, backed by the governing coalition led by Prime Minister Andrej Babis and including two far-right parties, must still be passed by the upper house before becoming law.

The plans have drawn criticism from the opposition, which has pledged to challenge them in the constitutional court.

In Prague’s Old Town Square, protester Petr Cekal, a 26-year-old architecture student, said politicians “want to restrict press freedom”, which he finds “quite alarming”.

Milan Kotal, 94, said that “in my lifetime there have already been two state takeovers of our television in Prague: once by the Nazis during the war and then by the Communists until 1989.

“Today the government is allowing itself things we cannot accept,” he said.

Under the proposed reform, state television and radio would see their budgets cut by around 15%.

The coalition argues that both public broadcasters need to make savings and insists that changing their funding model will have no impact on editorial independence or programme content.

‘Pillar of democracy’

“No one wants to interfere with programming or news coverage,” Babis wrote on X on Saturday.

“The funds will be guaranteed directly by law as a mandatory expenditure, so no government will be able to arbitrarily cut them based on whether it likes the broadcasting or not,” he said.

The European Broadcasting Union, European Federation of Journalists, Reporters Without Borders and the International Press Institute are among the organisations that have criticised the plans.

“The very future of the country for the coming decades is at stake. The government is testing how far it can go,” protest organisers said in their call to demonstrate.

A larger demonstration is planned in Prague on Nov 15.

President Petr Pavel, who has often clashed with Babis since he returned to power in 2025, said he believed that “public service media are among the fundamental pillars of our democracy”.

“Hasty steps that cannot be reversed cannot be taken,” he wrote on X.

Trust in the media is low in the Czech Republic at around 30–33 percent, according to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2026.

“Public service broadcasters remain the most trusted brands, despite increasing attempts by various political actors to undermine their credibility,” the report said.

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