The Czech Exception: A Public Broadcaster Dodges the Illiberal Bullet

In the early years of the transition from communism, the erstwhile one-party states of eastern Europe would put Michnik's dictum to the test. In 1991, a former Czech dissident and lawyer, Hana Marvanova, was working on new regulations designed to remake her country's national broadcaster in the image of the BBC. She sat down with party boss and aspiring prime minister, Vaclav Klaus, to set out the case for public service broadcasting.

It would be a custodian of the nascent democracy - impartial, editorially independent and, unlike a state broadcaster, financed by the licence-fee paying citizens rather than the government budget. Unlike a private broadcaster, it would prioritise quality programming over market share. Klaus was a socially conservative free-market enthusiast and Euro-sceptic who would go on to dominate Czech politics for the next 20 years, serving twice as prime minister and as president of the republic, and according to Marvanova, he did not like what he heard. "He said he recognised that media could be operated privately or by the state, but he did not understand public service broadcasting," she said. "He was worried about negative coverage from television and radio."

Thirty years on, the Czech public service broadcaster is a beacon in a gloomy landscape. National broadcasters in Poland, Hungary and Slovakia have been severely weakened, if not totally co-opted, by illiberal governments. Alone in the region, Czech public TV and radio have maintained their standing with audiences and a measure of editorial independence, in seeming defiance of Michnik's dictum. And yet, their survival is far from assured.

Like the BBC, the Czech public broadcaster's reliance on an outdated funding model is nudging it towards a financial cliff...