Czech journalists up in arms over a bill that would ban publication of police wiretappings
The lower house of Parliament on Thursday overturned a Senate veto on a bill that would outlaw publishing transcripts or broadcasting recordings of phone calls intercepted by the police without the consent of the person concerned. If the president signs the bill into law, journalists who violated the ban could face up to five years in prison or a fine of five million crowns.
“If someone is engaging in criminal activity, they should be made to stand trial and if found guilty serve their sentence. This is the legal procedure. But what you often get is that when police investigators lack the evidence needed to file charges they leak some of the wiretappings on the case to reporters and give the individuals concerned a public lynching.”
It is rare for the ruling coalition and the opposition to see eye-to-eye on anything, but in this case the Social Democrats joined forces with the coalition government to push the bill through. Bohuslav Sobotka who heads the Social Democrat deputies’ group in the lower house says the step is perfectly legitimate.
“We are convinced that police wiretappings belong in the hands of the police, state attorneys and the country’s intelligence service. That is what the Czech constitution stipulates and what our legal system allows.”
Journalists, on the other hand, are up in arms over the bill arguing that it will effectively put an end to press freedom in the Czech Republic. Josef Klíma is an investigative journalist with commercial TV Nova.
“In this country a lot of things get swept under the carpet. We know why and we work hard to bring them out into the open. Police wiretappings have a big cleansing role in Czech society.”
Friday’s edition of the daily Mladá fronta dnes came out with a picture of six investigative journalists with their mouths taped over. Zuzana Kaiserová, one of the daily’s investigative reporters, says that the ruling Civic Democrats and the opposition Social Democrats voted for the bill in their own best interests.
Zuzana Kaiserová says that the editorial staff of Mladá Fronta Dnes is always careful about what it selects for publication and defends the public’s right to information.
“I believe that the Czech media are not misusing these wiretappings. Whenever we publish such material in our paper we are very careful not to use any parts containing private information or any parts that have nothing to do with the corruption case in question. We only use the parts that prove some sort of corruption. And it makes a strong statement. When the readers get to see the transcript with their own eyes and they see how politicians are communicating with –let us say some mafia bosses or something like that, it tends to be much stronger than if we just described what was going on.”
The bill has been criticized by the European Newspaper Publishers’ Association and the Czech Syndicate of Journalists which has called on President Klaus not to sign it into force. If it should become law the syndicate says it will lodge a complaint with the Constitutional Court on the grounds that it infringes on press freedom and freedom of expression.
