Czech television workers are on strike, saying the government is threatening their independence Freedom of Journalists News

The plan to put money under the control of the government has caused a lot of opposition, and the opposition is afraid of getting involved in politics.

Czech television workers staged a one-day “warning” demonstration, demanding that the government abandon plans to invest in Czech Television (CT) and Czech Radio (Cro) under its control.

The strike, which had been threatened in recent weeks, was concentrated at the CT headquarters in Prague on Monday and followed a large public demonstration at the same site yesterday. It was the latest in a series of meetings to warn that the government is threatening the freedom of the country’s most respected media outlets.

Activists, civil society groups, and civil society groups are concerned that the government of Prime Minister Andrej Babis is seeking to control politics in the media. The cabinet last week approved a long-threatened change from the license fee system to direct funding from the state budget.

Under the plan, the center will also see its fees drop to 2008. The government last year raised CT fees for the first time in 17 years.

Babis said the new way of raising money would be good for poor families and encourage the center to work harder.

Critics say the change will give the government more power to interfere in the radio’s operations. He points to similar efforts by authoritarian governments in Hungary and Slovakia in recent years.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and other media watchers have criticized the government’s actions and the implications for state-owned media.

Several programs on Monday began with a one-minute delay and a countdown clock on the screen, with explanatory information, as thousands of journalists and other state media workers joined the demonstration.

Hundreds of CT workers protested outside the television company’s headquarters in the southern part of the Czech capital. Cro workers formed a human chain around the radio station’s building in central Prague.

Most of the protesters wore black. They flashed signs saying, “We are not the media” and “Independence is not just spending money”.

Babis promised to abolish fines before taking office last December, and says his three-party government is only making good on its promise to voters.

But under the plan, the broadcasters will get a 15 percent cut in revenue next year, and radio and television executives say it will force them to lay off hundreds of workers and cancel programming.

Babis insists that his government has no intention of interfering with the freedom of commerce, but he and other government officials – who include people with right-wing and extremist views – have long been criticized for their liberal views and bias.

Opposition to attempts to suppress public media in the Czech Republic is not unusual.

In the year 2000, in an effort to seize political power, journalists sitting in the CT studios, broadcasting their own, and large street protests that helped to force the government at the time to step back and strengthen their rights.